STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Let's get a music recommendation now. Each month, NPR Music asks public radio hosts and DJs to tell us about a new song they play on the air a lot, the song in Heavy Rotation. And recently we asked DJs to reflect on some of their biggest songs of the year just past. Benji McPhail of KUNC nominated the song, "Hey Mami."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HEY MAMI")
SYLVAN ESSO: (Singing) Hey, mami. I know what you want, mami.
BENJI MCPHAIL, BYLINE: Sylvan Esso is a duo out of Durham, North Carolina. The thing that makes the vocals so appealing - the woman is named Amelia Meath. Nick Sanborn is her partner, and he gives her a lot of room to really project that voice.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HEY MAMI")
SYLVAN ESSO: (Singing) She walking so fast. She walking so fast. She walking so fast. Oh, our lady, she don't know how she go.
MCPHAIL: It almost feels like it's recorded on a street corner somewhere. She's walking so fast - you know, you've got this mental picture of a woman kind of going, you know, through the street corner. Cat calling is definitely an aspect. It's just part of the street scene that they create at the beginning, I think. You know, she might be walking past a construction zone. In fact, there are parts where the music really does sound like, you know, there's hammering or there's people working on jackhammers.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HEY MAMI")
SYLVAN ESSO: (Singing) She walking so fast. She walking so fast. Oh, our lady, she don't know how she go.
MCPHAIL: It really isn't until, you know, about a third of the way through taht you realize that there's a lot more to this song than just the vocal performance. And, you know, that's when it kind of pulls you in even more.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HEY MAMI")
SYLVAN ESSO: (Singing) Flies right through the sound, moving her body all around town. Hey, hey mami. Hey, hey mami. I know what you want. I know what you want.
MCPHAIL: This is the only band I can think of where they combine the street corner kind of a cappella sound with an electronic sound, and in theory that really shouldn't work. But for whatever reason, the combination works for these guys, and it works really well.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HEY MAMI")
SYLVAN ESSO: (Singing) She floats. Along she goes. She owns the eyes as she flies right through the sound
INSKEEP: That was KUNC's Benji McPhail talking about Sylvan Esso's song "Hey Mami." You can hear that and many others on our Heavy Rotation music stream at npr.org/music.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HEY MAMI")
SYLVAN ESSO: (Singing) Sooner or later, the dudes at bodegas will hold their lips and own this. Curling their toes on a shivery tip. But out here, oh, she don't know the gravity she owns as she pulls on the eyeballs of all the kids standing tall. Hey, hey, mami. I know what you want, mami. Hey, hey, mami. I know what you want, mami. Hey, hey, mami. I know what you want, mami.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
INSKEEP: This next story, from my colleague David Greene, is about pastries, which may make you wonder why we're playing this music.
DAVID GREENE, BYLINE: It's because we're with a chef and punk rocker named Brooks Headley.
So as we're coming into the kitchen, Brooks, I got to ask you about your other job. You are a musician and were in punk bands for years.
BROOKS HEADLEY: Yeah, it's still something I do. I'm actually, like, in three different bands right now. None of them are - there's no attempt to, like, actually, like, even make a dime.
GREENE: His day job is as the head pastry chef at one of New York City's premier Italian restaurants, Del Posto. We met with him to cook a few recipes from his new cookbook. And I actually thought we'd be blaring some music while we were baking, but...
HEADLEY: No, actually, like, if I listen to music while I'm working, while I'm cooking, I get horribly distracted. I guess even though I say that I don't like to listen to music, like, music is always kind of, like, going through my head. It's, like, I have a few different songs that kind of get stuck in my head while I'm working that I sort of hum to myself.
GREENE: Like?
HEADLEY: Like "Warrior In Woolworths" by the X-Ray Spex.
GREENE: OK.
HEADLEY: And also - and this is - I don't know why this gets stuck in my head, but the theme song to the first "Police Academy" movie - dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. Right, like, if it's super stressful and things are kind of, like, going off the rails, I'm not really sure why that gets stuck in my head.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "POLICE ACADEMY THEME SONG")
GREENE: You might wonder how exactly Brooks Headley has found success in the pastry kitchen. Well, the truth is he keeps it simple. He says he doesn't want to be a pastry chef so obsessed with presentation that the conversation at the dinner table stops when the dessert arrives.
And you use this wonderful phrase in the book that simple food is an act of defiance.
HEADLEY: (Laughter).
GREENE: What do you mean by that?
HEADLEY: Well, I mean, that's, like - that's kind of, like, a reaction to a lot of the really, really super-fancy, fine-dining desserts. A lot of times pastry chefs have this need to make things overly complicated. For me, like, I like to be perceived as kind of like an Italian grandma - to me that's the ultimate compliment. Like, a lot of times, like, cooks or chefs want to be considered kind of like scientists, especially for dessert because it can be kind of, like, an exacting thing, but for me I like to kind of, like, cook from the gut.
GREENE: But cooking from the gut, that's an Italian grandmother thing.
HEADLEY: Yeah, I mean, like, your Italian grandma, she doesn't, like, there's no scales - there might not even be a knife. She's just, like, kind of tearing stuff up with her hands and she kind of knows what she's going to do, maybe just from, you know, years of - years of experience.
GREENE: And that's the thing about his baking - if you use the right, fresh ingredients, follow his instructions carefully and harness the Italian grandmother inside you, you can pull off his recipes in your own kitchen and make stuff that tastes like it could be in a fancy restaurant. His cookbook is called "Fancy Desserts," but it doesn't feel like you're making anything that fancy. Like, his grilled lemon pound cake with lemon glaze, which we wanted to try. First ingredient - that other song he plays in his head, "Warrior In Woolworths."
(SOUNDBITE OF X-RAY SPEX SONG, "WARRIOR IN WOOLWORTHS")
GREENE: Great, OK, let's get started. Step one - mix traditional cake batter ingredients with some zest.
HEADLEY: Lemon and orange 'cause there's so much flavor in the skin. And you want to kind of get all of the yellow stuff.
GREENE: All right, add to that almond paste, sugar, some butter, egg and vanilla.
HEADLEY: It's sugar, but it's going to kind of, like, grind everything together. It's almost like the sugar is exfoliating the oils out of both the zest of the citrus.
GREENE: And finally, add some dry ingredients, pour it all into a cake pan and send it into the oven for 20 or 25 minutes.
(SOUNDBITE OF X-RAY SPEX SONG, "WARRIOR IN WOOLWORTHS")
HEADLEY: Yeah, so the cake's all finished.
GREENE: It looks fantastic.
HEADLEY: It's beautiful. It's, like, nice and caramelized on top.
GREENE: Yeah.
HEADLEY: And we're going to soak it then. We're going to mix our lemon juice and our orange juice and kind of poke holes in it with a toothpick and, like, let that syrup soak into it, so...
GREENE: That's just what I was thinking.
HEADLEY: That's just going to add another level of, like, delicious, citrusy-ness to it, you know what I'm saying?
GREENE: That sounds great.
Now, to polish this off, toss slices of the cake onto a grill for a few seconds, add some persimmons that were slow roasted in honey and serve. Now, Brooks never went to culinary school. In 1999, one of his bands broke up and he wrote a letter to a Washington, D.C., chef, talking about what he had learned from, you guessed it, his Italian grandma.
HEADLEY: I think I just wrote about, like, cooking with my family and, like, I mean, I made potato gnocchi with my grandmother all the time and, you know, she would, like, talk to me about the elasticity and the texture of the dough or something. And I guess I mentioned that, which is funny because that's something that, of course, is really important, like, that - the feel of the dough when you're cooking.
GREENE: Those years cooking with grandma shaped Brooks Headley's philosophy in the kitchen, and maybe his boss summed him up best. The executive chef at Del Posto in New York says Brooks isn't about showing off how creative he is. His food just expresses soul. And that food can be so simple. There's this dessert he makes that could be perfect as a final taste of the holidays before you begin that New Year's diet. It's a chocolate tree.
All you need is some high-quality chocolate and ice. You temper the chocolate - that means heating it, cooling it. Don't worry, it's at our website, npr.org, and I promise it's not that hard. You end up with this liquidy chocolate that you pour over ice, let it cool and...
HEADLEY: Very gently pull out of the ice
GREENE: Oh, it seems like you're about to do surgery.
HEADLEY: Yeah, sort of, like, it's like Operation.
GREENE: Don't break the chocolate.
HEADLEY: Woops, that's OK. And you can see, like, you can make all sorts of different shapes.
GREENE: So what he pulls from the ice is something that looks like a branch made of chocolate. We decorated ours with chunks of leftover candy cane, but you can get creative.
How do you normally decorate this tree?
HEADLEY: Normally, like, I would have other chocolate confections, I guess, kind of, like, sticking in the, like, crevices and nooks. In this case, like, we'll use it and we'll just kind of put these candy cane - makes it super, like, weird and craggy and organic, you know, so...
GREENE: All right, we got this. That looks beautiful. Can we taste this together?
HEADLEY: Sure, sure, yeah, you can just, like, kind of, like - the idea is you just, like, rip off some chocolate and then in this case, like, kind of smash it in with the peppermint chunks.
GREENE: Wow, this is cool.
HEADLEY: So yeah, I mean, basically, this is sort of perfect because we're using, like, you know, Tuscan chocolate mixed with super American candy cane chunks, which is...
GREENE: Mashing it all together.
HEADLEY: Which is totally my jam, man.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
INSKEEP: That's David talking with pastry chef Brooks Headley, whose new cookbook is "Fancy Desserts."
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The feeling of crisis over Ebola has faded, but it's still not entirely clear how this country would handle the next fear-inducing virus. Two months ago, a dramatic argument erupted over how to treat health care workers returning from Ebola-stricken countries to New York and New Jersey. Those states quickly imposed mandatory quarantines which went beyond federal guidelines. And there is still confusion over whose word should rule. NPR's Joel Rose reports.
JOEL ROSE, BYLINE: Sara Back is not the kind of person to turn down a tough assignment. She's a nurse practitioner at a public hospital in the Bronx. This month, she's going to Sierra Leone to work with Ebola patients.
SARA BACK: I am beyond ready.
ROSE: Back is passionate about treating patients suffering from the deadly disease. What she is not so keen on is the mandatory 21-day quarantine she faces when she gets home.
BACK: Yeah, it's definitely a pain in the tush. I mean, jokingly my colleagues say, well, we'll see you in, like, June.
ROSE: It's been just over two months since New York and New Jersey rushed in the strictest Ebola travel rules in the nation. For a lot of people, it was scary moment. New York City had just diagnosed its first case of Ebola - Dr. Craig Spencer. Then nurse Kaci Hickox was held against her will, first at the Newark airport, then in a tent outside a hospital. Here's Hickox on NBC's "Today Show."
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE TODAY SHOW")
KACI HICKOX: If you're going to put a policy like that in place that impedes on my civil rights, then you need to have the administrative details worked out before you start detaining me in an airport for no reason.
ROSE: New Jersey officials said Hickox was running a high fever, which she denied. A few days later, she was allowed to go home to Maine. After she was released, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie tried to clarify the state's rules.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
GOVERNOR CHRIS CHRISTIE: There's been no reversal or change in any way of our policy or approach. People are symptomatic, they go in a hospital. If they live in New Jersey, they get quarantined at home. And if they don't, and they're not symptomatic, then we set up quarantine for them out of state.
ROSE: This is where it starts to get confusing - in-state this, out-of-state that. Here's how state officials in New Jersey and New York explain the rules today. A health care worker who treated Ebola patients can serve her mandatory quarantine at home in New Jersey or New York. But if you don't live in those states and you're not symptomatic, you can pass through the airport and go back to where you live. But that is not how some international aid groups are interpreting the rules.
MARGARET AGUIRRE: We don't want people to be quarantined unnecessarily.
ROSE: Margaret Aguirre is with the International Medical Corps in Los Angeles. Her group has been telling returning health care workers to avoid JFK and Newark airports so that they don't wind up like Kaci Hickox.
AGUIRRE: We have not gotten any different information that anything has changed. So we will continue to route people the way we've been routing them.
ROSE: That is not the only aid group that's been avoiding New York and New Jersey. Franklin Graham is the president of Samaritan's Purse.
FRANKLIN GRAHAM: We're having to make sure that our people come back from Liberia don't go through those two states. We've got to bring them in some other way. Get them into Washington through Dulles or Atlanta - some place like that.
ROSE: So you're really avoiding New York and New Jersey then?
AGUIRRE: Oh, you have to. No question.
ROSE: Other states and municipalities have adopted a patchwork of regulations, many of which go beyond what's recommended by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC says most returning health care workers should monitor themselves for 21 days, but they don't need to be isolated unless they start showing symptoms. If you're having trouble keeping all these rules straight, you are not alone.
LAWRENCE GOSTIN: I think there's a ton of confusion about this.
ROSE: Lawrence Gostin is a quarantine expert at Georgetown Law school and a critic of mandatory quarantines.
GOSTIN: It was not just confusing, it was a message that, in a way, was a significant deterrent to health workers flying both to and from the region.
ROSE: The mandatory quarantine rules do seem to be popular with the public, at least in New Jersey. Patrick Murray is a pollster at Monmouth University. He says more than half the people he surveyed approve of Governor Christie's response to Ebola.
PATRICK MURRAY: I think people were feeling that they didn't know what was going on, and they just wanted somebody to take a real strong action. So, you know, Governor Christie's action was pretty much exactly what the doctor ordered in political terms.
ROSE: For all the drama surrounding New York and New Jersey quarantine rules, they haven't actually been used much. State health officials in New York say only a handful of returning health care workers have been quarantined at home. In New Jersey, since Kaci Hickox, that number is zero. Lawrence Gostin at Georgetown thinks the level of public concern has changed.
GOSTIN: The temperature has dropped precipitously. And it's been quite clear that there is not going to be an epidemic in the United States, that we do have it under control and that these quarantines are not helpful.
ROSE: But Gostin concedes that the mandatory quarantine rules may be here to stay. Now that Ebola no longer feels like a crisis in this country, he says many Americans have the sense that the epidemic is under control in West Africa, too. Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth. Joel Rose, NPR News, New York.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
There's a reason so many people make New Year's resolutions - more than any specific goal, people yearn for a chance for a fresh start. On this New Year's Day, NPR begins a series of reports called Starting Over - we tell stories of people who had to reinvent themselves. First, we traveled to the mountains of Colorado where a congregation has returned to their chapel after flooding destroyed the building. They've restored the building now, but KUNC's Grace Hood reports the real challenge lies ahead.
GRACE HOOD, BYLINE: Chapel of the Interlude is a fitting name for a church in the middle of a narrow, winding canyon. In 1969, benefactors built the intimate wood-paneled structure to provide an oasis next to one of the busiest roads leading to Rocky Mountain National Park.
HARRY FIECHTNER: Well, good morning.
HOOD: In 2013, a raging river between Estes Park in Loveland, Colorado, deposited mud, sticks and debris inside the chapel's Fellowship Hall. After stripping down the walls and carpet to remove mold and water damage, about 40 of its members have returned, including Harry Fiechtner.
HARRY FIECHTNER: There's a lot of work, there's a lot of strain, a lot of stress, but we just kept coming together.
HOOD: Decked out in suspenders, a handlebar mustache and beard, the 68-year-old tinkers with a new thermostat.
HARRY FIECHTNER: You should see what we've got today; it's just building right back.
HOOD: The church shed its '60s wood paneling for white walls and a tile floor, but one hurdle down, another to go. That's what it's like when you're starting over. Bus Tarbox, who's attended Interlude for 10 years, lays out the dilemma.
BUS TARBOX: We have very few young people. We don't have any children. So we're going to have to appeal to the people who live up here and so far we haven't been real successful in doing that.
HOOD: The average age in this congregation is 75. The oldest member just turned 101. Inside the tiny sanctuary, Pastor Dave Orrison kicks off the service.
PASTOR DAVE ORRISON: What are we thankful for this morning?
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: I'm thankful that...
HOOD: One churchgoer, who's 90, says she's happy to finally get scheduled for an MRI.
ORRISON: If they don't hurry and find out why you're sick, you might just get well first, right (laughter)?
HOOD: Orrison then starts a service he describes as gentle and nonabrasive.
ORRISON: All right, let's go to the Lord in prayer. Our heavenly father...
HOOD: Everything from Orrison's delivery to use of traditional hymns is by design. Rock music may help fill the church pews, he says, but it can alienate those who are older.
ORRISON: I think many pastors have been pushed into the idea that growth is so important that disenfranchising certain groups is acceptable.
HOOD: Orrison says there's a delicate balance between bringing in younger members and retaining the older ones.
ORRISON: They're 90 years old. I mean, we have several of them who are 90 years old (laughter). I'm not going to encourage them to get out there and knock on doors and tell their neighbor they need Jesus, you know (laughter)?
HOOD: And there are limits to how many people Chapel of the Interlude can recruit. The new sanctuary is already cramped. With overflow seating, they're squeezing in 60 people. After Sunday service, the congregation snacks on brownies and cookies. Liz Fiechtner, one of the youngest members at 55, says she loves the small community and from-the-heart sermons. Building up the church is about connecting with the right people.
LIZ FIECHTNER: See, before the flood, there was a house and a lot of trees in front of the church. You never knew there was a church here.
HOOD: Now, Feichtner says, the house and trees are gone. Their oasis is more exposed.
LIZ FIECHTNER: So trying to bring some of them regular traffic maybe to come here, and put it out that we're back open, that we're here again worshipping together.
HOOD: Chapel of the Interlude doesn't have a whole lot of extra space, but when you're starting over, there's plenty of room for growth. For NPR News, I'm Grace Hood.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Florida Senator Marco Rubio is spending the holidays thinking of his future. Rubio was a prominent member of the contentious Congress that just ended. Some analysts gave it a label as the worst Congress ever. In a few days, Republicans take control of both chambers, which raised a question when we reached Senator Rubio on the phone.
What is a label that you would like the new Congress to have?
SENATOR MARCO RUBIO: Well, I would hope it would be a Congress that would be seen as one whose work is relevant to people's daily lives. And right now across America, that is people that are reading all this news about how great the economy is doing, but they're not feeling it.
INSKEEP: Rubio has tried to make economic opportunity a signature issue as he considers a presidential run. He has also been associated with immigration reform, though a reform measure he once supported died in the last Congress, like so much else. Rubio is hoping for better results in 2015 on a range of issues at home and abroad, although much depends on the politics and that will turn in part on how the Republican Congress works or does not work with the Democrat in the White House.
In his year-ending interview with this program, President Obama said that he may have to use his veto pen. Do you anticipate sending the present legislation he doesn't like?
RUBIO: Well, we certainly have different ideas about how to solve problems, and so I think you're certainly going to see that. And that's not unique. Other presidents have had to that as well, and that's certainly within his power to obstruct the movement of legislation. There are some bills where I think he won't be able to do that on, for example, sanctions on Iran. I think we'll have supermajority, a veto-proof majority, to impose additional sanctions on Iran and to require the administration to come before Congress for approval of any deal that he has with Iran. I think the same is true for the Keystone pipeline, potentially.
INSKEEP: I want to remind people the United States in the middle of nuclear negotiations with Iran. They've been repeatedly extended. Would you be willing to push for additional sanctions on Iran even knowing that that might destroy prospects for a deal with Iran?
RUBIO: Yes, because I don't believe there is a prospect for a deal with Iran. First of all, we have to understand that the negotiators are not the decision-makers in Iran. They have to come back to the supreme leader, and I'm fairly confident that the supreme leader in Iran and others around him have made the decision that the purpose of these negotiations were to buy time to make progress on their nuclear program.
INSKEEP: So do you wait a few months for the negotiations to take their course or go right away toward an additional sanctions bill knowing that might wreck the talks?
RUBIO: Well, first of all, I'd say we've waited for more than months. We've waited now for close to over a year, and really no serious progress has been made. And on the contrary, a number of concessions has been made by the United States. In fact, now the U.S. has conceded the right to enrich or reprocess, and if you give them the right to enrich or reprocess at any level, that infrastructure could very easily be ramped up in the future to produce a nuclear-grade uranium or plutonium.
Second, I would say that probably the first vote will be something that will require any deal to come before Congress for approval, the way a treaty would. Additional sanctions will probably be put in as being triggered by a failure to reach an ultimate agreement. That's my sense of how this is shaping up. Of course, there are other opinions here about how we should move forward.
INSKEEP: So it sounds like your sense is then, Senator, that you would let the negotiations play out, however skeptical you are, but Congress might say to the president, look, we expect you to come to us for approval.
RUBIO: Well, I'm prepared to vote for additional sections today. I'm not sure that's the majority position. I think it could be, but I think that's something we'll have to debate.
INSKEEP: Let me ask about immigration, Senator Rubio, because President Obama spoke of his executive action that allows temporary legal status for millions of people. The president now says he does want Congress to finally act on immigration reform. Let's listen to little bit of that.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Does it spur them to work once again with Democrats in my administration to get a reasonable piece of legislation done, or does it simply solidify what I do think is a nativist trend in parts of the Republican Party? And if it's the latter, then probably we're not going to get much more progress done, and it'll be a major debate in the next presidential election.
INSKEEP: Senator Rubio, do you see it as the president sees it?
RUBIO: I don't. First of all, I think the use of nativists to describe opposition to his form of immigration reform is inaccurate and unwise. I think they are very legitimate reasons to believe that this country has a right to have immigration laws and to have those laws respected. A million people a year come to the U.S. legally, and there aren't any voices out there saying that that should be stopped.
Now, there are voices, including my own, saying that how we immigrate to the U.S. should be reformed. It should be more of a merit-based system and less of a family-based system because of the dramatic economic changes that we've had in the 21st century, where it's difficult for low-skill workers to find jobs.
INSKEEP: There certainly are people that we have interviewed in our travels around the country who express concern about immigration and how it is changing the United States. They express attitudes that you could describe as nativist, I would think. Is that actually a small part, at least, in your view of the Republican Party, and does that complicate your efforts?
RUBIO: Yeah, I believe it's a very small part of the Republican Party. I believe it's a very small part of the American people. The vast majority of people I've spoken to just want to see our laws enforced. And that's the point that's not talked about enough. No one has a right to illegally immigrate to this country, and what - what we're being asked to do here is to ignore the fact that we have immigration laws because of the human aspects of the story. So certainly there are compelling humanitarian stories and exceptions made to some of those, especially when it comes to political asylum or people fleeing near certainty of death. But we also have a country that has to apply immigration laws, and the vast majority of people I've talked to, that's all they're asking for is for us to have an immigration system that functions and that works.
INSKEEP: Although, if we think about what happened in the last Congress, ultimately Republicans could not agree among themselves on immigration bills that they could support. Why do you think the Republican Party is having such trouble making up its collective mind?
RUBIO: Well, actually, it's a pretty straightforward disagreement. There are those who - they're open to doing the sorts of things we talked about with regards to those who have been here illegally for a long period of time. But they don't believe we should do anything about that until first illegal immigration is brought under control.
And the reason they believe that is two-fold - one, because they've been made promises in the past that enforcement would happen in exchange for some form of amnesty, and the amnesty happened but the enforcement never came. And the other is because they fear that the announcement of these changes in our immigration laws would spur people to try to come into the U.S. illegally, and they point to crisis we had on the border over the summer with - young people in Central America were misinformed by trafficking gangs that somehow the U.S. had created new laws that allowed them to come and stay. And I think that's what the disagreement has been, is based on the bill we passed out of the Senate didn't have enough guarantees that the enforcement would happen.
INSKEEP: That's Florida Senator Marco Rubio in our first political talk of 2015. Rubio is considering a run for president, and we ask him about that elsewhere in today's program.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Some other news - we are nearing a high point of the presidential book season. Several potential candidates have books coming out soon. Serious contenders of course can use books like these to get their message out, and their book tours become shadow campaigns. One book out in January will come from Florida Senator Marco Rubio. It's a book on economic opportunity called "American Dreams." Elsewhere in today's program, we questioned Rubio about the new Republican Congress. Right now, we'll hear just a bit more about Rubio's own ambitions. He's considering whether to run for president. But in recent days, another Floridian, ex-Governor Jeb Bush, says he's exploring a run, too. And also incidentally putting out his own e-book. They are both part of the same political network, which leads to a question for Rubio.
Do you think that the state of Florida and its donors and political supporters, activists can support two presidential candidates at once?
SENATOR MARCO RUBIO: Well, first, let me say I have tremendous respect for Governor Bush. And I've said repeatedly, if he runs, he'll be a very credible candidate, potentially the front runner, at least in the early stages because of all the strengths and advantages that he brings to the process. As far as, you know, speculating about whether two people from this same state can run - it's not unprecedented. We certainly know a lot of the same people, we also know some different people. The decision I have to make is where is the best place for me to serve America, to carry out this agenda that I have to restore the American dream given the dramatic economic changes we've had in the 21st century. Where is the best place for me to achieve that? Is it in the Republican majority in the Senate or is that as candidate and ultimately as president of the United States. If I decided its president, then that's what I'm going to do irrespective of who else might be running.
INSKEEP: What's your gut been telling you as you spend the holidays where you are?
RUBIO: Well, this is not a gut decision. This is one that one needs to make obviously on the bases of facts and reality. And so, you know, I haven't made a decision yet on it. I don't have a date in mind or timeframe in mind, but it's certainly soon. We're closer to a decision than we were a month ago.
INSKEEP: That's Florida Republican senator Marco Rubio. He talks with us elsewhere in today's program and at npr.org about the new Congress, Iran and immigration.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
An old political saying goes, if you want a friend in Washington, get a dog. Americans are following this advice whether they live in Washington or not. In many states, the demand for dogs now outstrips the supply of those available for adoption. Shelters in some states now import dogs from other regions and even other countries, which is leading to concern about what's called dog trafficking. NPR's Greg Allen reports.
GREG ALLEN, BYLINE: Just north of Boston, the Northeast Animal Shelter is one of the largest private shelters in New England. It started in the 1970s, but about six years ago, it went through a big expansion building a new 13,000-square-foot shelter with three isolation rooms. The rooms were designed to house the increasing number of dogs the shelter transports from other states and Puerto Rico.
LAURIE MCCANNON: This room here is the room that has 10 kind of dog stalls in it.
ALLEN: Laurie McCannon is the director.
MCCANNON: These dogs actually just arrived to us on Saturday from Tennessee. So they would get their health checks today. It's been almost 48 hours - so when our vet comes in tonight.
ALLEN: In another isolation room are some of the 20 dogs that arrived to the shelter a few days earlier, flown in from Texas. In its early days, Northeast Animal Shelter used to place about 300 dogs a year in new adopted homes. Last year, McCannon says, they adopted out 4,400 dogs, three quarters of them from out of state.
MCCANNON: Started out with Puerto Rico and went to a great shelter in Nebraska that we worked with forever. I think at one point, we actually dealt with five different shelters in Georgia alone.
ALLEN: Shelters tell a similar tale throughout New England and the Northeast, also in the U.S. Northwest and the Great Lakes region. Decades of spay and neuter programs, combined with a strong participation by rescue groups, have greatly reduce the number of unwanted dogs and cats. McCannon says it's a different story in rural states and in the South.
MCCANNON: You know, the South still has a lot of work to do with spay-neuter laws and, you know, getting people to feel that pets are more companions and parts of their family than yard dogs or that kind of thing.
ALLEN: Some people point to Hurricane Katrina as a turning point. Efforts to rescue and find new homes for dogs stranded in New Orleans showed groups a new way to find homes for unwanted dogs. Now a network of shelters and rescue groups transport tens of thousands of dogs each year from other states and other countries. Patti Strand is director of the National Animal Interest Alliance, an organization that represents the American Kennel Club and other dog breeders. She calls it retail rescue.
PATTI STRAND: There is a lot of money in this new kind of rescue that has emerged, and these groups move dogs from just about any place that they can get them.
ALLEN: Exactly how many dogs are being transported is unknown. The USDA doesn't track how many dogs are transported across state lines or even how many are important by rescue groups from other countries. Some states, though, do.
ARNOLD GOLDMAN: In 2012, 14,000 animals were brought into Connecticut from other states.
ALLEN: Arnold Goldman is veterinarian in Connecticut who has been concerned about the booming interstate movement of dogs. He's seen a lot of health issues, like mange and heartworm, as a result. And he says there's a deeper issue.
ARNOLD GOLDMAN: There are Connecticut-origin animals in our brick-and-mortar shelters who wait for homes themselves, and there is something disconcerting about that.
ALLEN: Rescue groups are finding unwanted dogs to transport in the South and in other countries, including Mexico, Taiwan and India. Those are all countries where rabies is endemic in the dog population. Strand says the concern about rabies is more than theoretical.
STRAND: We've had a dog with rabies come in from Iraq. One came in from India - Thailand. We've had a dog from Puerto Rico that wound up in a shelter in Massachusetts with rabies.
ALLEN: In Massachusetts, Connecticut and some other states, regulations have been tightened in recent years requiring rabies certificates and quarantine periods, but problems persist. Last year, a puppy transported to Vermont and adopted by a family was euthanized after it developed rabies. The Association of State Public Health Veterinarians has asked the federal Centers for Disease Control to ban the import of dogs from countries where rabies is endemic. Greg Allen, NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The kind of New Year's celebration that people joined around the world overnight turned grim in Shanghai. Thousands of people gathered in Shanghai's Bund, a famous waterfront district, and then a stampede killed around three dozen people. The BBC's John Sudworth is covering the story from Shanghai. Can you just tell us where you are and what you're seeing?
JOHN SUDWORTH: Well, I'm on Shanghai's Bund, Steve, the historic waterfront area. It's one of the sort of iconic parts of this city. Shanghai itself, of course, an iconic showcase city of China. So that this could have happened here at all will cause deep concern. Crowds were gathered here last night. This is a traditional gathering place for the New Year's celebration. Many, many thousands turned out. Around 20 minutes before the stroke of midnight, there was a crush, a stampede. The crowd jammed very closely together between this historic sweep of old colonial buildings and the river, a large space. But nonetheless the sheer volume of numbers meant that that crush turned into a very serious incident, and as you say that dozens of people killed more than 40 injured, some of them seriously, and taken to a number of hospitals.
INSKEEP: Is it clear what would have caused people to stampede?
SUDWORTH: We don't know yet. There is speculation on social media based on eyewitness accounts that it may have been triggered by somebody throwing fake money, basically coupons being used in one of the clubs and bars here to be exchanged for drinks as part of the New Year's celebrations, coupons printed in the form of $100 bills. According to reports from the siege, somebody was throwing those coupons out of the balcony down to the crowd below. And it seems as if at least one possible explanation is that those people rushed forward to try and collect what they thought was real money that caused this stampede. There is no official confirmation of that. The authorities here in Shanghai say they are launching an investigation, but that's one possible cause that I think will be looked at very carefully.
INSKEEP: Nevertheless, an element of mystery here because you say this is a place where people traditionally gather. They would've been accustomed to it. The authorities would have been accustomed to controlling the crowds - a very strange event.
SUDWORTH: It's interesting, Steve, because this has been a traditional gathering place, and for the last few years, there's been a sort of an official celebration, an official fireworks display and light show. And last week the Shanghai authorities announced that that part of the celebrations has been canceled this year. It wasn't going to be held out of the concern, we understand, for public safety. There was something like 300,000 people along this riverfront last year. Clearly they felt there that there was a potential for something to go wrong.
So what's interesting is it looks as if somebody had anticipated the possibility of trouble. The official part of the event had been canceled in the hope that it would keep numbers low, but nonetheless, large crowd turned out. And I think the inquiry you'd expect - you would hope perhaps - will ask questions as to whether enough was done to anticipate the sort of numbers who would be here last night and whether the right kind of resources were in place in terms of policing manpower and emergency services to make sure that people were safe.
INSKEEP: The BBC's John Sudworth is in Shanghai. Thanks very much.
SUDWORTH: It's a pleasure Steve.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep. We are not going to say a word right now about 2014. We'll just use a symbol. It's an emoji, one of those drawings in a text message that's supposed to show how you feel. The Global Language Monitor's Top Word of 2014 is not a word. It's an emoji of a heart. The company says the spread of pictures in place of words reflects a broader transformation of English. Fine with me, as long as there's a picture of somebody rolling his eyes. You're listening to MORNING EDITION.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The first day of 2015 is a historic day for college football - the first ever playoff in the game's highest division begins today. We've got two semifinal games - Oregon against Florida State and later Alabama takes on Ohio State. NPR's Tom Goldman is so excited he can barely contain himself. Hi, Tom.
TOM GOLDMAN, BYLINE: Happy new year.
INSKEEP: And happy new year to you, of course. This is something that sports fans - college football fans - have been demanding for quite some time, but would you explain how the world is different today?
GOLDMAN: We have these two playoffs and people will be able to say, well, now we have a national champion who's proving it on the field. There was always this complaint that the national championship was settled by polls and computers and not on the field, but you've got four teams playing then the winners will play for the title a week-and-a-half later. It gives more a sense that the winner earned it.
INSKEEP: Two of them, of course, are Florida State and Oregon - each with a great quarterback.
GOLDMAN: Yeah, that's the headline here. This year's Heisman Trophy winner - Oregon's Marcus Mariota - he's an athlete as dangerous running as he is passing and he has been pretty darn good passing with 38 touchdown passes, only two interceptions. Then there's Florida State's Jameis Winston - the 2013 Heisman winner - not as efficient as Mariota.He had 24 touchdown passes, 17 interceptions, but Winston led the Seminoles to another undefeated season. The team has won 29 straight. They are the defending national champion. It's also billed as a quarterback match-up of good guy versus bad guy - a morality play here. Winston's troubles are well known, from his shoplifting charge to a rape allegation that he's been cleared on twice. He has been brash and immature, at least off the field. On the other hand, the media and Oregon fans have placed a halo over Mariota's head. He's a nice guy, very humble, polite, the pride of Hawaii, although, he's not perfect, Steve. He got a speeding ticket in November for going 80 in a 55-mile-per-hour zone.
INSKEEP: But, of course, on the field, what people might focus on is the fact that you have one quarterback who's thrown a lot of interceptions and another who's hardly thrown any. Who's got the advantage?
GOLDMAN: Oregon is favored, a very explosive offense, but Florida State is dangerous. The Seminoles have won a bunch of close come-from-behind games. They're the underdogs and, you know, they can use this us-against-the-world feeling as motivation. Also Oregon is missing a key defensive player. Cornerback Ifo Ekpre-Olomu - he's out with a knee injury. That could make things easier for Florida State's top wide receiver, Rashad Greene.
INSKEEP: Now, the other game here - we've got Alabama against Ohio State. For a Midwesterner like me, it's always a tough moment of deciding whether you are going to, you know, just kind of ancestrally despise Ohio State because you grew up a Purdue fan or you're going to root for the Big 10. But what's going to happen in this game?
GOLDMAN: (Laughter) Well, you've got a typical Alabama team - big and skilled. They are the class of this four-team field. 'Bama is a 10-point favorite, but Ohio State comes in on a role, playing its best football at the end of the season. But they've also got a third string quarterback going. They lost their top two quarterbacks to injury. Cardale Jones was great against Wisconsin in the Big 10 championship game, but tonight is only his second career start. He's going against a fearsome defense that most likely will stop the run and put even more pressure on an untested cornerback. Alabama is very tough on offense and defense, and lest we forget, Steve, it's also a match-up of two of the best college coaches - Alabama's Nick Saban against Ohio State's Urban Meyer.
INSKEEP: NPR's Tom Goldman, thanks very much.
GOLDMAN: Why, thank you.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Three Al-Jazeera journalists have begun another year in prison in Egypt, but they received some hopeful news on this New Year's Day. The country's highest court has canceled their sentences and ordered a retrial. The journalists' imprisonment for what they say was just reporting caused an outcry and many news organizations, including NPR, demanded their release. NPR's Leila Fadel was at the courthouse in Cairo today and joins us now. Hi, Leila.
LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: Hi.
INSKEEP: So why were their sentences canceled? What does that mean exactly?
FADEL: Well, basically, I think it shows how deeply flawed this case has been from the beginning. Both the defense lawyers and the prosecution called for a retrial, the defense saying the charges were not proven and the prosecution questioning the constitutionality of the proceedings as a whole, according to lawyers. So today that means that they will remain in prison, but they do get another day in court, and the seven years that two of them got - the tenures for the other man - have all been canceled.
INSKEEP: OK, so it's a do-over. They remain in prison while they wait for the do-over. What was the scene like in the courtroom today?
FADEL: Well, you know, the families were extremely sad, actually. I mean, it's good news that they get to go on trial again. But it's been over a year now that they've been in prison, and another trial means more time in jail. So there was a lot of grief. They were hoping and expecting the possibility of actual release today when the sentences were canceled, but that didn't happen. And there's no date yet for the retrial. So this really means more of their lives lost sitting in prison for crimes they really say they didn't commit and that weren't proven against them.
INSKEEP: Can you remind us what the crimes were, according to the authorities?
FADEL: Well, Peter Greste, Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed were arrested and convicted then on terrorism charges. But the evidence that was put out in court showed run-of-the-mill tools that journalists use, like cameras and notebooks, and doing things that journalists do, like taking notes and reporting, asking questions. And a lot of rights groups say that this trial was really a sham trial, and it was more political than actually criminal over a beef between Qatar, which owns Al-Jazeera, and Egypt.
INSKEEP: Oh, there were people, as you've discussed on this program before, who thought that this was actually part of power diplomacy that these people from Qatar - associated, anyway, with Qatar - were imprisoned. But now we have this situation where their sentences have been canceled. Is it a possible for Egyptians then to argue that, well, their system is working?
FADEL: Yes. I mean, the argument of the Egyptian state all along is put your trust in the judiciary. We cannot interfere in judicial procedures because there has been so much international pressure to release them. This court, the highest court, in Egypt has now canceled the sentence meaning that they may soon be released, but it doesn't console the families that their sons, their fathers, their brothers, have been in jail now for a year. Baher Mohamed - his baby was born while he was in jail. Mohamed Fahmy hasn't been able to get married. His fiancee's waiting for him to get out. And Peter Greste's parents and family have been coming here from Australia spending Christmas in a prison in Egypt visiting their son.
INSKEEP: And is there a sense of how much longer they have to wait until this retrial takes place?
FADEL: It's unclear. One of the family members did say they expect a date set within the month and the trial could begin. But again, the last trial took months before they got a verdict. So that could mean another year in prison for them. There are couple other options. There's been a recent law passed that says that foreigners can be deported if they're accused or convicted of a crime. Now, that would only apply to Peter Greste and Mohamed Fahmy, if he renounces his citizenship, and the other option is a presidential pardon, but that is something that would only happen after the proceedings are completely finished.
INSKEEP: Leila, thanks very much.
FADEL: Thank you so much.
INSKEEP: That's NPR's Leila Fadel in Cairo.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Cuban authorities detained several dissidents this week. Officials took them into custody before a free speech rally that was planned in Havana's Revolution Square. Such detentions are common in Cuba, but they're prompting new scrutiny now because of the timing. They come soon after President Obama normalized relations with Cuba. Marc Frank is a journalist in Havana. He's covering this story. Welcome to the program, sir.
MARC FRANK: Hello, good morning.
INSKEEP: So what did the dissidents plan to do?
FRANK: Very simply, they planned to set up a microphone and a speaker in front of the headquarters of the Communist Party and the Cuban state and let people go up to that mic and just speak out on how they felt about the country and its future.
INSKEEP: Just like an open mic event in effect, only to a political cast to it.
FRANK: Yeah, exactly. That basically was the plan.
INSKEEP: Had anything like that happened in Cuba before?
FRANK: There are demonstrations all the time in Cuba. It's very rare that somebody would come in, basically from Miami, and announce that they're going to do this. And of course, the moment is what's really different from the past.
INSKEEP: You said it was unusual someone would come in from Miami and do this. Who were these dissidents?
FRANK: Well, Tania is an artist, lives some in Cuba and mainly in Miami. People now go back and forth. They can have residences in both places. But she's not really well-known in Cuba at all. And she was joined by a number of fairly well-known dissidents, at least outside of the country - Yoani Sanchez, a blogger, and a few others. One of the things that did happen, though, is that text messages were sent from somewhere in Miami to a lot of cell phones here, including mine, basically saying that there's going to be an event at the Plaza de la Revolucion, and there'd be free beer.
INSKEEP: Now, is the timing of the protest or, for that matter, the timing of the arrests in any way connected to the recent U.S. restoration of diplomatic relations with Cuba?
FRANK: Yeah, I mean, the promoters of the protest said they were basically testing what this thaw in relations or potential thaw meant. And - so, yeah, it's very clearly time, at a minimum, to see what the Cuban reaction would be. And the Cuban reaction was, as it always is around here, temporary detention, and that was about it. Only 12 people showed up at the site when the demonstration was planned. Meanwhile, there's about 20, 25 people who are either being temporarily detained or basically detained in their houses.
INSKEEP: I want to ask about a subtlety here. Clearly this incident demonstrates that there are severe limits to free expression, free speech in Cuba. But what is it that the government itself says? Does Cuba proclaim that there is free speech and free expression in that country?
FRANK: No. Cuba has always said, we repress opposition because it's always funded or backed by our enemies in the United States or in Miami. And we consider it to be an attempt to overthrow us, so we have the right to repress it. That's basically their position.
INSKEEP: And I want to ask also about the Cuban dissident community, if you can call it that. We've heard from some of them who were very unhappy that the United States decided to normalize relations with Cuba, even though the U.S. says this is a way to try to open up the country. How widespread is that unhappiness with the U.S. as far as you can tell?
FRANK: Within the dissident community, it's very clear about a third oppose the normalization and two-thirds have said they support it with conditions, which are that, you know, continued support for them as we go forward - so about a third. In terms of on the island, it's unanimous. Everybody is overjoyed. There's almost nobody who opposes it. Everybody is thrilled.
INSKEEP: Marc Frank is a freelance journalist in Havana, also author of the book "Cuban Revelations: Behind The Scenes In Havana." Thanks very much.
FRANK: No, a pleasure. Thank you.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
And if you spend this New Year's Day in front of a screen, you have a choice. You can watch college football or take in one of the movies our listeners recommended on Facebook. Jean Ann Woll (ph) told us her favorite New Year's movie is "When Harry Met Sally," including the final New Year's party scene.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "WHEN HARRY MET SALLY")
BILLY CRYSTAL: (As Harry) I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want your rest of your life to start as soon as possible.
MEG RYAN: (As Sally) You see? That is just like you, Harry, you say things like that, and you make it impossible for me to hate you.
INSKEEP: Listener Michael Faust (ph) calls this holiday the day of sloth. His family watches "The Awful Truth."
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE AWFUL TRUTH")
CARY GRANT: (As Jerry) Maybe you had the wrong partner.
RALPH BELLAMY: (As Daniel) There's a lot in what you say.
GRANT: (As Jerry) Can I have this waltz, Lucy?
INSKEEP: And Mary Beth Whitehouse (ph) greets the new year with "It's A Wonderful Life." She calls it, my annual reminder that who I am and what I do makes a difference to others.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE")
KAROLYN GRIMES: (As Zuzu) Look, Daddy. Teacher says every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings.
JAMES STEWART: (As George) That's right. That's right. 'Attaboy.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
All this week, we're hearing about our nation's 2 million military children, children of military families. They are children like 10-year-old Ayssis Longoria. Her father has been deployed to Iraq twice. Ayssis is 1 of approximately 82,000 children attending Department of Defense schools. There are 180 of these schools around the world that report to the Pentagon, not the Department of Education. WAMU's Kavitha Cardoza takes us inside.
KAVITHA CARDOZA, BYLINE: Ayssis Longoria is a fourth grader at Irwin Intermediate, a Department of Defense school at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. She wears a bright, yellow hair band and smiles a lot, but that changes when she talks about her father deploying. It's hard to talk about this stuff, so that sound you hear is the rustling of tissues. Ayssis's father, Staff Sergeant Adam Longoria, provided security to convoys in Iraq.
AYSSIS: I'm kind of scared that when he is deployed, he's not going to come back. On his first deployment he got - he came back with this thing we call a daddy bear. It's a bear that has his voice recorded in it. And every time I miss him, I just press the button, and it talks to me.
CARDOZA: What does it say?
AYSSIS: It's just saying how much he loves me and how much he's proud of me and what I've accomplished.
CARDOZA: Ayssis says she missed playing basketball and softball in the yard every evening with him.
AYSSIS: Whenever he was gone, it was hard for me to do my homework because his pictures were everywhere.
CARDOZA: Did you still try?
AYSSIS: I still try to do my homework, and I still manage to get done and get it correct.
CARDOZA: Ayssis isn't alone. The average student at this school has had their parents deploy at least four times in the past decade.
JULIE ALLEN: And subtraction. Make sure you read the...
STUDENTS: Questions.
ALLEN: This is the most compassionate, flexible, wise, worldly group of kids I've ever worked with.
CARDOZA: Teacher Julie Allen checks in with her 8-year-old students as they rotate through different tables solving math problems. They use blocks, computers, even a board game.
ALLEN: Remember you're looking for the largest difference.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD #1: Oh.
ALLEN: Can you visualize what a triangle looks like?
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD #1: I outsmarted the teacher.
ALLEN: (Cheering).
CARDOZA: On the latest national test, DOD students did better on average than those in public schools on both reading and math for fourth and eighth graders. Those results are even more striking when you can consider that approximately a third of military children move every year, and 45 percent of students in DOD schools in the U.S. are low-income.
So how do they do it? Student success often starts with strong, effective teachers, but as a journalist who covers urban education, I was surprised that of the 50 teachers in this school only 1 is new. I was even more surprised Julie Allen doesn't consider herself a veteran teacher.
ALLEN: I've worked with different student populations, you know, only eight years.
CARDOZA: Only? You've done eight years which to me is, like, a really long time for a teacher.
ALLEN: OK (laughter).
CARDOZA: But a really long time means something completely different in military schools.
JULIE GIBBONS: My name is Julie Gibbons. I've taught for 19 years.
GRACE MERKEL: I'm Grace Merkel. I have 36 years.
DONNA SCHULAF: I'm Donna Schulaf. This is my 27th year.
CARDOZA: A big reason teachers rarely leave is because the pay and benefits are much better. Deborah Bailey teaches the third grade.
DEBORAH BAILEY: If I went back to the county now, I would take over a $30,000-a-year pay cut. It's probably closer to $40,000.
CARDOZA: The curriculum, textbooks and graduation requirements are the same. Next year, all military schools will adopt the Common Core standards, making it easier for military children who move often. Another reason - they've got money. Principal Ginny Breece says there's also a lot of support in terms of personnel.
GINNY BREECE: I've got two full-time counselors, a full-time nurse. I've got a speech therapist, an occupational therapist. We have 20 percent of kids on special education, and we have a lot of resources to support those kids.
CARDOZA: And these efforts are paying off. The achievement gap between white and black students is significantly lower than the national rate. Experts believe while the military system may not be perfect, it still sets high expectations for everyone.
GINETTE PENA: I'm Ginette Pena.
CARDOZA: Ginette Pena's husband has served for 22 years in the Army. They live on base just so their children can attend Irwin Intermediate, both for the academics and emotional support.
PENA: I have a 12-year-old, an 11-year-old and a 9-year-old.
CARDOZA: You've got three boys?
PENA: I do. I have three boys.
CARDOZA: Oh, my God.
(LAUGHTER)
PENA: It's always a fun day in our house every - as soon as we walk in. I know my husband - he loves it though. He says he has to stretch before he comes into the house 'cause that's the first thing they do is jump on him.
CARDOZA: Pena says her husband has had multiple deployments and has missed half of his 12-year-old son's birthdays.
PENA: My son said his stomach was hurting, and the teacher said he started laying down a lot of the floor. And I said, yeah, I don't know why he's doing that. Well, come to find out, from the counselor, he was just missing my husband, and he didn't know, I guess, how to say I miss daddy.
CARDOZA: Pena says she reassured her son all the time, but...
PENA: As much as we went through it on a map - this is where daddy is, you know, he's over the Atlantic Ocean, he's over here. He said, daddy's lost. And, you know, that broke - it still hurts because he'll be deploying again.
CARDOZA: He's going to be deploying again?
PENA: Yes, shortly. And it takes a - it takes a toll on families.
CARDOZA: You can find those same pressures at military bases across the country. Quantico base in Virginia is known as the crossroads of the Marine Corps because there are so many military training and educational institutions here. At Quantico Middle/High School, the daily attendance rate is around 94 percent. And Daniel Mulhern, the assistant principal, says discipline issues here are almost nonexistent, in part because in the military, parents can get into trouble if their children misbehave.
DANIEL MULHERN: There's seldom times when I have to call the parents. I always have full support. There's never been a, you're picking on my son or daughter. We got it, Mr. Mulhern, we'll have a discussion with our son or daughter this evening.
CARDOZA: But perhaps the biggest reason many children go to these schools is the sense of belonging and shared experiences that can be hard for them to find in the civilian world. Sixteen-year-old Destiny Oakley is a junior here.
DESTINY: You may have friends who are not military who say, ugh, I don't want to go to my grandma's house for Thanksgiving, and it just almost seems like a pain to them. I don't even remember spending a Thanksgiving with any of my distant family. Sometimes people complain, and you just think to yourself, maybe you shouldn't take it for granted.
CARDOZA: Destiny says maybe military children understand what it means to cherish every moment you do have because you don't know what moments you might not have together. For NPR News, I'm Kavitha Cardoza.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep. An Iowa woman says it was just a joke. She was arguing with her neighbors, they complained about her barking dog, so she took advantage of a service on a website. The website promised to anonymously mail her neighbors a package of cow dung. Police quickly suspected her and accused her of harassment. And that raises another question. This website obviously failed to protect the woman's identity, so what should she mail them? It's MORNING EDITION.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Plenty of people complain about the huge compensation collected by corporate CEOs. But as this story from our Planet Money team shows, actually cutting a CEO's pay turns out to be difficult. Here are David Kestenbaum and Jacob Goldstein.
DAVID KESTENBAUM, BYLINE: It takes an unusual person to wage a war against the CEO and his pay. A Tim Stabosz was definitely an outsider.
JACOB GOLDSTEIN, BYLINE: He lives in a small town, LaPorte, Indiana. He has a small house. In the dining room, there's a broken Dungeons and Dragons pinball machine.
TIM STABOSZ: Here it is, yeah. It was just a disaster.
KESTENBAUM: Tim has been investing in the stock market for decades. He's done well. And back in the mid-'90s, he bought stock in this small company on Long Island called P and F Industries. It makes pneumatic tools. Over the years, something began to gnaw at him - the salary of the CEO, Richard Horowitz.
STABOSZ: Roughly one and a half million dollars a year total compensation.
KESTENBAUM: Is that a lot?
STABOSZ: Well, one and a half million is outrageous and outlandish.
GOLDSTEIN: Stabosz couldn't find any similar companies where the CEO was paid even half of what Horowitz made.
KESTENBAUM: Now, if you just own a few shares of a company's stock and you think the CEO is overpaid, there isn't much you can do. But if you own more, that's different. And by the fall of 2009, Tim Stabosz owned 180,000 shares.
STABOSZ: I came to own 5 percent.
GOLDSTEIN: Five percent of the whole company?
STABOSZ: Five percent of the entire company.
KESTENBAUM: His stake was worth more than a half a million dollars.
GOLDSTEIN: Sometimes when people complain about CEO pay, they talk about it as if the money is coming out of the pockets of ordinary workers. That is not how Stabosz sees it. Every dollar the CEO gets is a dollar less profit. A dollar less for Stabosz and all the other stockholders. That's why Stabosz wanted to cut the CEO's pay.
KESTENBAUM: Richard Horowitz, the CEO, declined to be interviewed. But there are plenty of recordings of him from P and F's quarterly earnings calls. In this one, Tim Stabosz wants to talk about Horowitz's pay. Horowitz wants to talk about the company's results in the second quarter, Q2.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
RICHARD HOROWITZ: Please, please, Tim, please let's keep the comments to the Q2, count the numbers, thank you.
STABOSZ: Well, that's fine, but executive salaries are relevant to the future profitability and what not.
HOROWITZ: I can't comment any further, Tim.
STABOSZ: Well, it would have been helpful if you would have simply said we're not going to talk about executive compensation period because that's what you're essentially saying, right?
HOROWITZ: Any other questions about Q2, Tim?
STABOSZ: I'll get back in queue, I'm frustrated right now, Richard.
KESTENBAUM: There are a lot of calls this and letters. Tim Stabosz starts writing these letters to the company with words in all caps.
GOLDSTEIN: A CEO's salary is set by a company's board of directors. So Tim nominated himself for the board. Another investor who also wanted the CEO's pay cut suggested several outside candidates.
KESTENBAUM: One of those outside candidates actually made it onto the board. And then in 2011, after years of fighting, the board did cut Richard Horowitz's base pay by a lot - from $975,000 to $650,000. A cut of over $300,000.
STABOSZ: Well, it felt fantastic. It felt great. It felt like I had served to affect this change, that I was an agent of change.
GOLDSTEIN: That feeling didn't last. The new contract also made it easier for Horowitz to get a bigger bonus. And in 2012, he actually ended up making more money than he had the previous year. Then earlier this year, Richard Horowitz got a raise. The board boosted his base pay by $50,000.
KESTENBAUM: The company only let us talk to one person on its side of things, the new board member. The one nominated by the investor who wanted to cut the CEO's pay. The board member's name is Howard Brownstein. And Brownstein told us Horowitz's pay is not too high.
HOWARD BROWNSTEIN: You know, there's no one number that's the right number, there's probably a range. And I believe it's within the range of reasonableness.
KESTENBAUM: We asked Brownstein about a compensation study that the company had done, comparing Horowitz's salary to that of other CEOs. Tim Stabosz had written a letter demanding that the company release it. Stabosz wrote it I demand in all caps.
BROWNSTEIN: Mr. Stabosz obviously has been able to find the caps lock key on his typewriter. Look, he may say he demands it, but the fact is he doesn't have a right to it. What he really meant when I he said I demand it is I really, really want it. I get it. It's OK. You can't have it. Next.
KESTENBAUM: Since P and F wouldn't release the study, we asked a firm called Equilar that does this sort of thing to take a look. It found that depending on how you crunch the numbers, Richard Horowitz is either one of the highest-paid or the highest paid for what he does.
GOLDSTEIN: As for Tim Stabosz, he is not complaining about Horowitz's pay anymore. After we talked to him, he had a momentary cash crunch - had to sell all his shares in P and F. The company bought them from him and as part of the deal, Tim and the company promised not to say anything bad about each other for three years. I'm Jacob Goldstein.
KESTENBAUM: And I'm David Kestenbaum, NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
You may be taking it slow this New Year's morning-after, but for some people, the party is just now getting started. They're going to attend a rave, you know, a big party or festival. And there is a type of rave for people who want to party all morning long. Here's an encore presentation by NPR's Ari Shapiro on Morning Gloryville. A spreading phenomenon that started in London.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
ARI SHAPIRO, BYLINE: So this is the start of Morning Gloryville. It's just about 6:30 a.m. The sun is coming up and already there's a line of people, who were probably asleep about an hour ago. But right now, they're wearing florescent, neon-colored tights and headbands and leggings and sunglasses. They look like they're ready for a party.
NATASHA LYTTOM: Hi, I'm Natasha Lyttom.
SHAPIRO: Do you go to raves typically?
LYTTOM: Not at 6:30 in the morning, normally. But I like that everyone's in a really good mood. It's not the kind of sticky, alcohol everywhere in a club dance floor, with guys trying to come and grind up on you, which is what normally happens in raves.
SHAPIRO: After this, do you have a 9-to-5 job that you go to?
LYTTOM: Unfortunately, living the Dolly Parton dream. Don't tell them, I'm not going to be dancing at 6:30 in the morning. I'm a communications manager.
UNIDENTIFIED DJ: So let him know how much you appreciate him.
(CHEERING)
SHAPIRO: In a typical club, you arrive at some point in the evening and work your way towards more drinks, towards a late night, towards crazy, wild abandon. Here, people are working their way towards the 9 a.m. workday. And yet, the dance floor looks like a rave - people are sober, having just woken up, rocking out.
MEENA MILLER: We've actually had a problem here with people crawling under the bar to come hug me while I'm making smoothies.
SHAPIRO: Meena Miller blends smoothies here. She's the closest thing this party has to a bartender, along with Peter Duggan who makes espresso drinks. He's been here from the beginning, just over a year ago.
PETER DUGGAN: Well, I didn't think it would work. When I - the first few months we were like, oh, yeah, it's over.
SHAPIRO: And now it's in what - like a dozen or so cities around the world?
DUGGAN: Right, yeah. And it just seems to be getting busier and bigger every month.
SHAPIRO: The woman who started this phenomenon is an exuberant 28-year-old named Sam Moyo.
SAM MOYO: What Morning Gloryville's been doing is making happiness and being joyful, cool.
SHAPIRO: Moyo says she used to love clubbing. She had a club kid nickname that's not appropriate for public radio.
MOYO: It was absolutely amazing. I'd be partying for days on end. To be honest, on a mental and emotional level, it wasn't doing me that good. (Laughing) But I did time of my life.
SHAPIRO: She and her friends created Morning Gloryville to try to capture the joy of clubbing without the messiness. These parties have now popped up Bangalore, India and Sydney, Australia. In the U.S., it's taken root in New York and San Francisco. The sunlight is now streaming into the packed and sweaty room. The DJ at the front has cranked up the music all the way. There are dancers on stage, prancing around wearing unicorn horns and fairy wings. Without the booze, people can even bring their kids to this party. Tyler Wagner is wearing a red, sparkly cape - his 6-year-old and 3-year-old where headphones to protect their ears.
TYLER WAGNER: I'm a satellite engineer. And I love taking the kids to events like this because this lets them enjoy their fun, artistic side. They get plenty of their engineering, science side from science at home with dad and mom. So this lets them get out and dance and have a good time.
SHAPIRO: OK, we've done plenty of interviews. The music is still pounding. The dance floor is packed. Enough of the reporting - let's go join the party. Ari Shapiro, NPR News, London.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
In Berlin, street fashion's most trendy figure is an octogenarian named Ali. The dapper 85-year-old's colorful attire is the focus of a blog called What Ali Wore. That blog went viral last year. And its creator, a 31-year-old waitress, won Germany's biggest design prize for it. But now that the online fame has faded, the blog is more about a friendship than about fashion. Esme Nicholson has the story from Berlin.
(SOUNDBITE OF PASSING TRAFFIC)
ESME NICHOLSON, BYLINE: Ali Akdeniz and Zoe Spawton are outside the cafe where they first met in 2012. Ali strikes a pose, one hand on hip, the other holding out his prayer beads.
(SOUNDBITE OF CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKING)
ALI AKDENIZ: (Speaking German).
NICHOLSON: Zoe, who's taking his picture, used to waitress here. She'd see Ali walk by every morning on his way to work as she was setting up tables and chairs out front. He caught her eye because of his put-together, plucky apparel. And despite their age difference, they were soon on first name terms. Today, Ali has turned out in an immaculately tailored beige suit, pork-pie hat and sheepskin coat.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
AKDENIZ: (Speaking German).
ZOE SPAWTON: (Speaking German).
NICHOLSON: We head into the warmth of the cafe. The 85-year-old snappy dresser came to Berlin 45 years ago from his native Turkey. He says he's always made an effort with his wardrobe.
AKDENIZ: (Through interpreter) I've always loved fashion, particularly my own fashion. But at my age, you have to go that extra mile to look good. I'm an upright citizen. I had a respectable career. So that is how I dress.
NICHOLSON: Zoe, who arrived from Melbourne, Australia three years ago, was so taken by his du jour ensembles, she asked to take a photo. It became a daily ritual, and the pictures form the blog, What Ali Wore.
SPAWTON: His staple is a classic suit. But when I say staple, he's got suits in every color - electric blue, red, pale pink, green, everything. But then, he also has these outfits which are quite unexpected. But he wears them with such style and panache. So for example, the full army camouflage, which is army pants, army shirt, army jacket, army hat.
NICHOLSON: Ali says he was happy to oblige.
AKDENIZ: (Through interpreter). I knew when Zoe greeted me for the first time that she was a good one. But then, I tip generously for my coffee, right boss?
NICHOLSON: The twinkle in Ali's eye has produced fifteen sons, three daughters and he thinks eighty grandchildren, although he says he's never counted. But none of them are in Berlin, and Ali lives alone. So Zoe has fast become part of his informal family.
SPAWTON: It's not like any friendship I've had before because there is a language barrier with this. Our conversations are pretty simple.
NICHOLSON: Ali and Zoe communicate in broken but ever-improving German.
SPAWTON: In a way, that's what kind of makes it exciting, when I find out these little snippets about him.
NICHOLSON: Zoe only recently found out that Ali had once been a circus performer.
SPAWTON: Of course he was in the circus. I think he was a - like a clown, comedic. Yeah, yeah (laughter).
NICHOLSON: Ali is a jack of all trades. He just retired last month as a tailor. Before that, he says he was a shoemaker, a hairdresser and even a doctor. Self reinvention is part of the immigrant experience Ali and Zoe both share.
SPAWTON: It is quite interesting because we both represent two quite distinct waves of immigrants to Berlin. So I guess, yeah, maybe that is sort of an unspoken understanding that we have, yeah.
AKDENIZ: OK.
SPAWTON: (Speaking German).
NICHOLSON: In this city, punks perfect their mohawks and hipsters curate their look. But the average Berliner wouldn't bat an eyelid. It took an outsider's eye to spot Ali's unorthodox street style.
SPAWTON: Bye.
NICHOLSON: For NPR News, I'm Esme Nicholson in Berlin.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
A small group of scientists saw some ominous signs a few years ago, signs of a possible outbreak of Ebola in West Africa. They had trouble getting anyone to listen to them. Now an outbreak has killed thousands there, and people are starting to listen to those scientists. They're beginning to pick up clues of where Ebola could strike next. NPR's Michaeleen Doucleff spoke with them.
MICHAELEEN DOUCLEFF, BYLINE: A few years ago, disease ecologist David Hayman made the discovery of a lifetime. He was a graduate student with the University of Cambridge, studying Ebola. And he spent a lot of that time hiking around the rain forest in West Africa...
(SOUNDBITE OF INSECTS CHIRPING)
DOUCLEFF: Catching hundreds of fruit bats.
DAVID HAYMAN: We would set large nets up into the tree canopies. And then, early morning, when the bats are looking for fruit to feed on, we would catch them, pull down the nets and then take the bats out.
DOUCLEFF: Hayman held each bat in his hands, spread its giant wings and pricked it with a tiny needle. All he wanted was one drop of blood. You see, bats have a huge number of viruses in their blood. When Hayman took the samples back to the lab, he found a foreboding sign.
HAYMAN: A high level of antibodies against Ebola virus.
DOUCLEFF: The antibodies meant the bats had been infected with Ebola or something related to it. Hayman knew right away that West Africa was at risk for an outbreak. And he thought health officials would be worried too.
HAYMAN: We were all prepared for a sort of response for questions. And I have to say, not many came.
DOUCLEFF: That was two years ago. Now health officials are definitely listening to Hayman. Scientists think that fruit bats triggered the entire Ebola epidemic in West Africa, just as Hayman predicted. So a big question now is, where else in the world is Ebola hiding? Kevin Olival is an ecologist at EcoHealth Alliance in New York City. He hunts down another virus in bats called Nipah. It causes your brain to swell and then puts you in a coma. Olival says Nipah is so gruesome, it inspired a Hollywood movie.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "CONTAGION")
KATE WINSLET: (As Dr. Erin Mears) Hello?
DAN AHO: (As Aaron Barnes) Hello?
WINSLET: (As Dr. Erin Mears) Mr. Barnes?
AHO: (As Aaron Barnes) Yes.
WINSLET: (As Dr. Erin Mears) This - this is Dr. Mears from the Centers for Disease Control.
DOUCLEFF: That's Kate Winslet in the movie "Contagion." Her job was to break the bad news to people that they had the Nipah-like virus.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "CONTAGION")
WINSLET: (As Dr. Erin Mears) Listen. It's quite possible you've come in contact with an infectious disease and that you're highly contagious.
DOUCLEFF: And Nipah is also quite deadly. It causes outbreaks every few years in Bangladesh, so Olival went there in 2010 and captured a bunch of bats. Many had signs of Nipah in their blood. Others had something surprising.
KEVIN OLIVAL: There's antibodies to something related to Ebola Zaire.
DOUCLEFF: Ebola Zaire is the type of virus spreading around West Africa right now. It's also the most deadly form of Ebola. Until this discovery, scientists thought Ebola Zaire was found only in Africa. Now they've found signs of it in Bangladesh and China.
OLIVAL: If you think about geographic space, it was a big shock to find, you know, evidence for this virus in a very faraway place in South Asia.
DOUCLEFF: Does that make you think that Ebola could emerge in Bangladesh?
OLIVAL: (Laughter). Well, that's a tricky one. I think if you have the right, you know, combination of potential events and sort of the perfect storm brews, then yeah, it's possible.
DOUCLEFF: Olival is working with USAID to build an Ebola early warning system around the world. Now, there's no sign bats have infected people in Asia yet. And David Hayman says it's actually quite rare for bats to pass Ebola on to people.
HAYMAN: There's an enormous amount of human-bat contact in - generally. And, you know, in a way, maybe we should question why there've been so few outbreaks.
DOUCLEFF: Still, these ecologists say it's not whether a virus in the Ebola family will cause an outbreak outside of Africa, but a matter of when and where. Michaeleen Doucleff, NPR News.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
OK, let's think about some of the apps and websites that are really popular these days. People who need a place to say use Airbnb, and they share a person's home. People who need a ride might use Uber, and they share space in someone else's car. NPR's Eleanor Beardsley recently visited a company in the Netherlands that allows people to share things like power drills and bicycle pumps.
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: It isn't surprising that the idea for the borrowing platform Peerby originated in one of the world's most densely populated countries, the Netherlands. At the Amsterdam headquarters of Peerby, which stands for peer to peer nearby, founder Daan Weddepohl says he had the idea for the start-up after his house burned down and he had to borrow everything. At first, he says, he felt dependent but then realized people generally like helping each other because it creates a bond.
DAAN WEDDEPOHL: People are social animals. We like to help each other out. Borrowing things is probably one of the oldest behaviors in nature. And we are just making it easier through technology. So we created a platform that makes it easy for people to find that neighbor that's willing to lend what they need.
BEARDSLEY: Peerby hooks up 100,000 borrowers and lenders a month in the Netherlands. The company is also active throughout Belgium and in Berlin and London. Amsterdam native Cindy Bakum is a regular user.
CINDY BAKUM: Last time I had a friend over, and we were watching a movie on his laptop, but he forgot his adaptor. And my adaptor didn't fit. So I put out a request. It was actually my neighbor. He really lived on my block. And he had an adapter, so we could finish washing the movie. So that worked very well.
BEARDSLEY: The sharing economy is booming. Some estimates put the peer to peer rental market in the billions. Herman Kienhuis's firm Sanoma Ventures is an investor in Peerby
HERMAN KIENHUIS: We see that more and more consumers start to realize that access to stuff is actually cheaper, more convenient and greener than ownership.
BEARDSLEY: Access over ownership may be gaining fashion, says venture capitalist Guillaume Lautour. But to really change people's habits, a company has to have scale. Lautour says there are other borrowing sites and size will make the difference between profitability and failure.
GUILLAUME LAUTOUR: It's the kind of service where you need enough liquidity to be really efficient. You need hundreds of thousands of things to lend or borrow.
BEARDSLEY: Lautour points to the success of eBay, which he says works because it is global, not local. Peerby will launch in 50 U.S. cities in 2015, where it hopes to build scale and become a household name in borrowing. Eleanor Beardsley, NPR News.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
It is time for StoryCorps, where people tell their own stories through conversations with loved ones. Six months ago, Raphael Hameed was walking with his five-year-old son Ish when they were hit by a speeding car. Raphael was seriously injured. Ish, his only child, was killed. The driver is awaiting trial for vehicular homicide. But the driver's sister, Megiddeh Goldston, has formed a bond with the Hameed family. They connected after the accident, and now she visits Raphael and his wife Heidi to help with their day-to-day life. They recently sat down for StoryCorps in Colorado Springs.
RAPHAEL HAMEED: I was walking my son home from the library. And a car was speeding down the street out of control, jumped a curb and hit me and my son. I didn't know what was going on when I was laying on the ground. I was trying to get to my son, because I thought he was alive. But Ish was killed on the scene.
HEIDI HAMEED: About two days after the accident, your sister asked me to forgive her. My heart broke for her actually, because I know that she has to live for the rest of her life with this. And I told her immediately, yes, of course I forgive you.
MEGIDDEH GOLDSTON: It eased a lot of suffering. Raphael, you could easily be still in that hospital bed, angry, like, screaming at the world.
R. HAMEED: Nah, we love. That's how we roll. And your sister made a mistake. We all make 'em. It's why we try to embrace you guys.
GOLDSTON: I'm a single parent. And the first time that you contacted me, you told, oh, maybe we can give you some of Ish' old clothes. I'm just like oh my goodness. You guys are thinking of my son when you just lost your own. And I was afraid that it'd be painful for you guys to see Zach.
R. HAMEED: It was, because he's just like Ish.
H. HAMEED: They would have been fast friends quick.
R. HAMEED: Quick - but it was a good pain. It was like a tonic - kind of soothed my wounded spirit, so to speak.
GOLDSTON: You'll never have Ish back, but I want things to at least be as comfortable as they possibly can in the midst of worrying about how to heal your heart. I feel responsibility to like at least do what I can. And I want to be here to take you to the hospital. Anytime you guys need to leave the house I want you to call me.
H. HAMEED: You're a beautiful woman with a beautiful child. It's like if you've ever stitched anything together, there was a tear in the fabric. And we've been stitching it. And now my slacks are on. They look good.
GREENE: The voices you heard there - Megiddeh Goldston with Raphael and Heidi Hameed at StoryCorps in Colorado Springs. Megiddeh's sister will stand trial in May. Their conversation will be archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. And you can get the podcast on iTunes and at NPR.org.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
In the city of Cleveland, the investigation into the police shooting death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice continues this new year. No criminal charges have been filed. And now city officials tell NPR they are in talks to hand over the investigation to the county sheriff's department. NPR's Hansi Lo Wang reports.
HANSI LO WANG, BYLINE: While no final decision has been announced, a city spokesman tells NPR that Cleveland officials want an outside agency to handle all of its deadly use of force cases involving police. Calls for an outside agency to take over the investigation into Tamir Rice's death came last November. Tamir was reaching for a toy gun in a playground when he was shot by a Cleveland police officer. The day after the autopsy report was released, his mother, Samaria Rice, spoke at a Washington rally protesting the deaths of black males at the hands of police.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
SAMARIA RICE: My son was 12 years old, just a baby - a baby, my baby, the youngest out of four.
WANG: Tamir's death came as the U.S. Department of Justice was concluding an unrelated civil rights investigation into Cleveland's police department. Attorney General Eric Holder announced the results just weeks after the incident.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL ERIC HOLDER: We have determined that there is reasonable cause to believe that the Cleveland division of public police engages in a pattern and practice of using excessive force.
WANG: For now, the city of Cleveland is still in charge of collecting evidence. If the county does take over this case, it would be the second high-profile killing involving Cleveland police to be investigated by an outside agency in two years. Hansi Lo Wang, NPR News.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
New Year's Day was a day of transitions. Andrew Cuomo took the oath of office for a second term as governor of New York.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
And his father, former Governor Mario Cuomo, died at age 82. There is no better way to remember Cuomo than to listen to the sound of his voice.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
MARIO CUOMO: Thank you very much. On behalf of the great Empire State and the whole family of New York, let me thank you for the great privilege of being able to address this convention.
GREENE: It was the 1984 Democratic Convention in San Francisco. And Democrats were challenging President Ronald Reagan, who had spoken of America as a shining city on a hill.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
CUOMO: But the hard truth is that not everyone is sharing in this city's splendor and glory. A shining city is perhaps all the president sees from the portico of the White House and the veranda of his ranch, where everyone seems to be doing well. But there's another city. There's another part to the shining city, the part where some people can't pay their mortgages, and most young people can't afford one, where students can't afford the education they need and middle-class parents watch the dreams they hold for their children evaporate.
INSKEEP: Cuomo was speaking in support of Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale. For the record, Mondale was utterly crushed that fall in one of the most overwhelming landslides in American history.
GREENE: But Democrats took note of Cuomo's eloquence. They soon spoke of him as a presidential prospect.
INSKEEP: Might have known better - immediately after that 1984 speech, Cuomo caught a plane back to New York. He could rarely stand to leave his home state. That's how New York he was.
GREENE: And when his chance came to step on the national stage for the 1992 presidential election, Cuomo chose not to run. That cleared the way for another Democrat, and Cuomo spoke in support of him at the Democratic Convention.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
CUOMO: Prayer is always a good idea. But our prayers must be accompanied by good works. We need a captain who understands that and who will seize the wheel before it's too late. I am here tonight to offer America that new captain with a new course before it is too late. And he is Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas.
GREENE: Bill Clinton won that election. But Democrats then suffered devastating losses in 1994. The losers included Mario Cuomo, defeated for re-election.
INSKEEP: In later years, the ex-governor turned to writing. He wrote a book about Abraham Lincoln and came on this program to talk about it. We had a little argument that showed Cuomo's mind at work.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
INSKEEP: President Lincoln never professed to belong to an organized church of any kind.
CUOMO: Well, that's absolutely accurate. If he was anything, he was a rationalist.
INSKEEP: And yet, even though he did not belong to an organized religion, Lincoln often did invoke God in his speeches and used the language of the Bible in his speeches, which is a way he's like modern politicians, isn't he?
CUOMO: He used the language of the Bible over and over in his second inaugural. How religious his references are, that's absolutely true. But he never talks about Jesus as God, and he doesn't talk about God. He talks about creator. He was clearly not a person who accepted any specific religious faith.
INSKEEP: In the second inaugural, there's the line about as God gives us to see the right. I mean, there are references to God.
CUOMO: Yeah, well - yes, but he never makes an argument for God.
INSKEEP: I just wonder if it says something about the electorate that politicians were addressing then and now...
CUOMO: Well...
INSKEEP: ...Something practical.
CUOMO: Well, yeah, let me ask you a really grubby political question - I'm better at this than you are because I lived that life for a long time - would a politician stoop so low as to use religion to get close to voters?
INSKEEP: (Laughter).
CUOMO: Yeah, I just - I hope I didn't do it too much because when I drop dead and I find out there is a God and indeed he has a big book with everything noted - yeah, of course politicians do it. Did Lincoln do it for that reason? All I know is Lincoln was a master politician.
INSKEEP: The late Mario Cuomo's career as a politician was pragmatic. Behind the soaring rhetoric was a governor who was often centrist, managing New York's slow recovery from the economic disasters of the 1970s. He worked on the pragmatic details of governing his state and his shining city.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The world looks different from the Arabian Peninsula. Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah was admitted to the hospital this week. He's in his 90s, older than Saudi Arabia itself. The country is a huge U.S. ally. The king's ailment raises the question of succession. Journalist and longtime Saudi watcher Thomas Lippman says that is just one of the kingdom's challenges.
THOMAS LIPPMAN: In general, when princes of that level or kings have something that's serious but not immediately threatening, where they go is the airport. And they go to the Cleveland Clinic, or they go at least to Geneva or something like that. In this case, they felt the need to hospitalize him right there in Riyadh. He's at the National Guard Hospital, which may indicate either that it's just tests, which is what the official announcement said, or that it's something that was immediately life-threatening.
INSKEEP: Has the king, in his 90s, actually been the person who's been running Saudi Arabia?
LIPPMAN: Well, yes, he has. The king is also the prime minister, and he just did a Cabinet shakeup. He appointed six or seven new Cabinet ministers just last month. I don't know how many hours a day he's able to focus on business, but he's the boss.
INSKEEP: And is there a transition plan in place in the event of his death?
LIPPMAN: There is, which he created. He put in place, maybe six years ago, a succession law generally referred to as the allegiance law, which created a committee of 35 senior princes whose job it is to manage the succession.
INSKEEP: Does it appear to you that this is a stable government that is in a situation where it can manage a transition to a new king?
LIPPMAN: Absolutely. Right now, the house of Saud is in good standing because when you go to Saudi Arabia and you see the people look around them in every direction, they see violence and chaos - Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Egypt, Bahrain - and they don't see trouble in Saudi Arabia, except among the Shia minority.
INSKEEP: It's a majority Sunni country, we should say.
LIPPMAN: Correct.
INSKEEP: So you see here a country with a stable plan for its immediate governing future, and yet you're the author of a book called "Saudi Arabia On The Edge: The Uncertain Future Of An American Ally."
LIPPMAN: Right.
INSKEEP: What's uncertain?
LIPPMAN: Well, inherently there's the question of how long any monarchical regime that rules entirely from the top down can survive. The future is also uncertain because of energy. They consume so much of their own oil that they're reducing their own capacity to export.
INSKEEP: Oh, it's one of those countries that produces a lot of oil, so they sell it to their own people very cheaply. So they don't use it very efficiently at all.
LIPPMAN: They do, and they burn extraordinary amounts of oil to generate electricity, of which Saudi Arabia is a voracious consumer, partly for air-conditioning, partly because everyone has every electronic device known to man and partly because the electricity is used to power the desalination plants, which is a source for drinking water for now almost 30 million people.
INSKEEP: The drop in oil prices this year has brought the Russian economy to the brink of collapse. What about the Saudi economy?
LIPPMAN: Well, funny you should ask. I brought with me the finance ministry statement issued on Christmas Day introducing the budget for the coming year.
INSKEEP: OK.
LIPPMAN: And it projects a deficit of $14.4 billion. What it says about each category of spending - education, health and social affairs, municipal services, infrastructure - is that spending will continue with the planned levels, and they'll just eat the deficit because they have such deep reserves that they don't need to worry about it.
INSKEEP: So I guess we get an explanation here about why the Saudis have been willing this year to keep their production high, which keep oil prices low. They can pursue their own strategic goals there and not worry about the near-term.
LIPPMAN: And if it happens to inflict damage on Iran and Russia, so much the better.
INSKEEP: OK, that raises another question. You said Iran. The Saudis and Iran have a kind of rivalry across the Persian Gulf. Is that a source of uncertainty for the Saudi kingdom?
LIPPMAN: You know, they moved troops up to the northwestern border to make sure that there would be no attack by the Islamic State militants coming out of Iraq. But what ordinary people - very educated people - are worried about is three things - Iran, Iran and Iran. It's partly the historic rivalry between Arabs and Persians. It's partly the historic rivalry between Sunni and Shia, and it's partly because of Iranian behavior, which the Saudis see all around them. They see Iranian troublemaking in Yemen in support for these Houthi rebels; in Bahrain in support for the majority Shia dissidents; in Lebanon with support for Hezbollah; and in Syria where Iran is the mainstay of the Assad government; and of course in Iraq, which they think we handed to the Iranians when we got rid of Saddam Hussein. That's a lot of encirclement by a country that they believe is historically, traditionally and religiously hostile.
INSKEEP: What are Saudis thinking as their vital ally, the United States, tries to make a nuclear deal with Iran?
LIPPMAN: From the Saudi perspective, they lose either way - success in the negotiations or failure in the negotiations. Success in the negotiations brings a really bad outcome - restoration of the Iranian-U.S. de facto alliance that existed in the time of the Shah and...
INSKEEP: In the '70s, sure.
LIPPMAN: ...Inevitably to the Saudi detriment. They see this as a zero-sum game. On the other hand, if the negotiations fail, what they see happening is the triumph in Iran of the hardliners and a truculent response from Iran and an acceleration of the campaign to get a nuclear weapon.
INSKEEP: In an interview broadcast this week on NPR, President Obama spoke about Iran in ways that were seen as very optimistic or generous, and he spoke of the possibility that if Iran just makes a nuclear deal, they could emerge as a very successful regional power - that's a quote. What do Saudis think of Iran as a very successful regional power?
LIPPMAN: Well, I don't know how they responded to that particular interview. I was struck by the word successful. But if your view is Iran is a de facto threat - and remember, the Saudis see themselves as locked in a worldwide struggle with Iran for supremacy in Islam.
INSKEEP: One predominantly Sunni country, one predominantly Shia country.
LIPPMAN: Right. And so what you and I might think of as a beneficial outcome to Saudi Arabia and the whole Arab side of the Gulf - i.e. an Iran fully engaged with the world, sort of a new Turkey - that might look very good. It doesn't look appealing to them.
INSKEEP: Thomas Lippman, journalist and consultant. His latest book is "Saudi Arabia On The Edge: The Uncertain Future Of An American Ally."
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Good morning. I'm David Greene. A few weeks ago in Oregon, Roy Dufek sold his girlfriend's mattress. What he didn't know is that her cat Camo was hiding in the box spring. Off went the mattress and Camo strapped on top of the buyer's car. Mr. Dufek launched a search for Camo using social media. The cat was spotted near an airport outside Portland. He was a little roughed up and had to be lured with sardines and familiar-smelling clothing. But he's now back home, we hope snuggling into that new bed. It's MORNING EDITION.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
In his New Year's address, Russian President Vladimir Putin celebrated what he called a milestone in 2014 - the annexation of Crimea. Western countries were furious that Russia grabbed that piece of Ukraine. And when we went to Crimea to report a few months ago, we found a place where beneath the headlines about Russian aggression and changing borders, lives were left in limbo, and that remains the case.
Even though Russia runs the government, Ukraine still controls the power. And they began cutting off electricity last week. We reached Yevgenia Novitskaya, who served as our interpreter in Crimea. She told us that during the blackouts, she gets by using candles and...
YEVGENIA NOVITSKAYA: Movies downloaded on the laptop to watch with my son when it's too dark to do anything else.
GREENE: Now, Russian officials, she said, have promised to end the dependence on Ukraine and to provide Crimea with full power by 2017. But it's not just power.
NOVITSKAYA: The Visa and MasterCard credit cards are not working. They are blocked. You cannot use your money. You cannot even cash out your money.
GREENE: And last week, Ukraine cut train service to Crimea. Yevgenia was planning to visit her sister in Kiev who's about to have a baby. But now...
NOVITSKAYA: I don't know how to get there.
GREENE: And since Crimea came under Russian rule, Yevgenia has lost a lot of work.
NOVITSKAYA: I'm an interpreter and translator, so I used to work with international companies on international projects with foreign people. And now some people think that we don't need foreign languages anymore because we're in Russia.
GREENE: Who is coming to Crimea? Are there tourists who are coming still?
NOVITSKAYA: Now Crimea is full of government officials on business trips. As for tourism, there is tourism, but it's oriented on Russian markets. In Soviet Union times, Crimea used to be a main health resort of the whole USSR. Even now there are a lot of elder people who used to travel the Crimea when they were young. So they just want to come back to USSR, so to say.
GREENE: (Laughter) But the currency exchange in - I mean, the ruble, which is now the currency there - has just taken a nosedive and dropped in value. Does that mean that even pensioners might not be happy at some point soon?
NOVITSKAYA: Yeah, so the majority of all the goods and products here in Crimea, they are imported. And the price is directly influenced by the exchange rate. In the morning you are buying something at this price, in a couple of hours it will be twice more.
GREENE: So are you sensing a change in opinion in Crimea because of this? Are people starting to get more frustrated with this transformation this year?
NOVITSKAYA: Yes and no. I mean, there are several types of Crimeans, some of them who are absolutely unhappy with what is going on. The majority of them left to Ukraine. There are people who are like, we are ready to suffer and we are ready to feel whatever it takes, but we're in Russia. Thank God we are home.
GREENE: Yevgenia, what about your level of happiness? When we spoke a few months ago, you said you had lived through so many changes - I mean, the collapse of the Soviet Union and then living as part of independent Ukraine and now another change. You were ready to live as a single mom with your son and give it time and just sort of get by as best you could. Is that you're feeling still today?
NOVITSKAYA: What else can I do? I used to work for international companies. But now I need to find something else to survive.
GREENE: What about the option of just moving to Kiev like your sister?
NOVITSKAYA: If things are the same, I think I will move, but I don't want to. I want to stay in Crimea because I am Crimean. You know, I travel to Kiev. But I spent there one week there, and I was trying just to feel like I'm living here. How did I feel? That it's not my place.
GREENE: Yevgenia Novitskaya spoke to us from her home in the city of Simferopol.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
If you are one of the many Americans who resolved to spend more time at the gym in 2015, we have a little extra inspiration to help you stick with your new workout plan.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "PHYSICAL")
OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN: (Singing) Let's get physical, physical. I wanna get physical. Let's get into physical. Let me hear your body...
INSKEEP: That, of course, is the 1980s workout track, "Physical," by Olivia Newton-John. A couple of years ago, we started compiling our Ultimate NPR Workout Mix, a playlist designed to get your body moving. Olivia Newton-John was the first person we asked to tell us what tracks inspire her to get up and move.
NEWTON-JOHN: One is The Rolling Stones' "Browns Sugar," always love that. Every time that comes on and I'm in a club, I have to get up.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BROWN SUGAR")
THE ROLLING STONES: (Singing) Brown sugar, how come you taste so good?
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
We went on to hear from all sorts of people about the music that makes the move. Among them, First Lady Michelle Obama, Olympic figure skater Michelle Kwan, tennis stars the Bryan brothers, the commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service and a mailman from Florida.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MOVES LIKE JAGGER")
MAROON 5: (Singing) You want the moves like Jagger. I've got them moves like Jagger. I've got them moves like Jagger.
GREENE: Maroon 5's "Moves Like Jagger" was the workout track picked by Lieutenant Colonel Sheryl Dacy.
INSKEEP: When we spoke with her in May of 2012, she was stationed at Fort Irwin in the Mojave Desert. And she was preparing to deploy to Afghanistan as an Army nurse.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
LIEUTENANT COLONEL SHERYL DACY: I think music is vitally important for trading. It allows me to put my mind somewhere else off of sometimes the physical pain, or discomfort, or ache or just boredom.
INSKEEP: Exercising is not optional for Lieutenant Colonel Dacy. Like everybody else in the Army, she has to pass an annual physical fitness test or face a discharge.
DACY: It's a job requirement. It's a condition of employment. You can't just say, oh, well, today I'm tired. I really don't feel like going to the gym. You realize that you have to go, and you have to maintain that level of physical readiness.
INSKEEP: Dacy prefers training mostly inside, doing sit-ups, lifting upper body weights, peddling on the stationary bike and jogging on the treadmill. And what are the other songs that get her moving?
DACY: I like Garth Brooks' "Callin' Baton Rouge."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CALLIN' BATON ROUGE")
GARTH BROOKS: (Singing) Operator, won't you put me on through? I gotta send my love down to Baton Rouge. Hurry up. Won't you put her on the line? I gotta talk to the girl just one more time.
INSKEEP: And one final pick, a classic.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DECEMBER 1963 - OH WHAT A NIGHT")
FRANKIE VALLI AND THE FOUR SEASONS: (Singing) Oh, what a night, late December back in '63. What a very special time for me. As I remember, what a night.
INSKEEP: That's "December 1963," better known as "Oh What A Night," by Frankie Valley and The Four Seasons days in the last pick for Lieutenant Colonel Sheryl Dacy's last pick for the Ultimate NPR Workout Mix.
GREENE: And now we would like to hear from you. So tweet us what songs will help you get moving in 2015. You can tweet us, @MorningEdition.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Next we look back on a story that's right for today. Some of us surely have made New Year's resolutions to get more organized.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Steve, did you make that resolution?
INSKEEP: I think so. Let me just check my list of reso - where is that list?
GREENE: Yeah, maybe you didn't. Well, you need to. Well, many of us are feeling a little disorganized this time of year. And we're so disappointed in our own performance that Americans spend nearly $10 billion a year on self-help and personal organization products. Now, it turns out you may be able to get some tips from the highly-organized kitchens at culinary schools. Here's reporter Dan Charnas.
ROB HALPERN: All right everyone, here we go - Friday night.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: Saturday.
HALPERN: Saturday night.
DAN CHARNAS, BYLINE: A restaurant is organized chaos. Every day in kitchens across the country like this one at chef Rob Halpern's Marigold restaurant in Philadelphia, chefs and cooks have little room for error.
HALPERN: Order in. Table for four. Please fire popcorn for four.
CHARNAS: Communication and organization are crucial. A ticket comes in...
HALPERN: This table is going to do four asparagus, three quails with one vegetarian egg.
CHARNAS: When the crew is ready with an item...
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: Four dipping dots.
HALPERN: Heard that. Food runner, please.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: Heard.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #3: Behind.
HALPERN: Four dots are for table 36.
CHARNAS: Then a server grabs the order.
UNIDENTIFIED WAITRESS: Thirty-six walks.
CHARNAS: This complex call and call back routine is only one part of a larger philosophy of organization and readiness. It's called mise-en-place. Melissa Gray, a senior at the CIA, the Culinary Institute of America, describes the system that makes kitchens go.
MELISSA GRAY: Mise-en-place, it really is a way of life. I know people that have it tattooed on them. It's a way of concentrating your mind to only focus on the aspects that you need to be working on at that moment, to kind of rid yourself of distractions.
CHARNAS: Mise-en-place translates literally from the French as put in place. And CIA students like Alexandra Tibbats often find the work habits they learn in the kitchen extend beyond it.
ALEXANDRA TIBBATS: You mise-en-place your life. You set up your books for class. You set up your chef whites. Your shoes are shined. You know, everything that you need, every step of the day.
WYLIE DUFRESNE: Now, it starts with your list.
CHARNAS: Wylie Dufresne is a James Beard award-winning chef and owner of New York restaurants WD-50 and Alder.
DUFRESNE: What I used to do - let's say I had 23 items on my list and I knew that I had 23 items of mise-en-place I had to do every day. So I would take a pad and I'd write them all down on the way home. And then I'd crumple the list up and throw it out. On my way to work, I'd write the list again. And you become one with your list. You and the list are the same because the list is scorched into your head.
CHARNAS: The key to mise-en-place is not so much the list, but the preparation mindset. Cooks can easily do six hours of prep for a three hour dinner shift.
Mise-en-place forces cooks to account for every minute of their time. And, says Chef Dwayne LiPuma, an instructor at the CIA, every movement.
DWAYNE LIPUMA: Every component of one single dish is in one single corner. So their hand literally moves inches. Once they set up their station, I should be able to blindfold them, OK, and tell them, pick up that dish. And they should know that their tongs are always here, their oil is always right here, their salt and pepper's always right here. When they turn around and their back is to it, they literally can take their hand back and know exactly where it is so they could just pick it on up. Literally, they always have one foot pivoted, just like a basketball player.
CHARNAS: At Manhattan theatre district restaurant Esca, sous-chef Greg Barr sets up his station.
GREG BARR: I've got all my tools up here. I've got some cured meats. I've got all my vegetables cooked, ready to go.
CHARNAS: Barr describes what is perhaps the central tenet of mise-en-place; working clean.
BARR: It's a very Zen-like thing for me. It's so in the moment that, like, you don't have stuff from the past. I don't have something from this morning here. Everything's been cleaned down. All my knives are clean. Clean cutting board. Clear space to work. Clear mind.
CHARNAS: Working clean in the kitchen is paramount because unclean food is dangerous. People can get sick. Chef Wylie Dufresne illustrates another crucial step in mise-en-place - clean as you go.
DUFRESNE: Oh, my God, if you don't clean as you go, it's a mess. And that's another things that you people at home could do because isn't the worst thing at the end of a dinner party doing a bunch of dishes? Wouldn't you rather, honestly, break them all and buy new ones? You would. I know you would. It actually saves time to clean as you go. It makes life so much easier.
BILL TELEPAN: Let's go. One in one, please, to two, four. Seat two gets the veg. Pick up.
CHARNAS: Across town, at the restaurant Telepan Local, chef-owner Bill Telepan explains another principle - slowing down to speed up.
TELEPAN: I always say, look, I'd rather you take an extra minute or two and slow up service to get it right 'cause the one minute behind you are now is going to become six minutes behind 'cause we're going to have to redo the plate.
CHARNAS: Upstairs in the kitchen, this issue plays out as Telepan coaches a new cook on how to make, of all things, a grilled cheese sandwich.
TELEPAN: That's not done. Fire another one. Be patient. I know it's a grilled cheese sandwich but it's got to be a [bleeping] great grilled cheese sandwich. You know what I mean?
CHARNAS: Some chefs say that mise-en-place is nothing more than a kitchen version of good old-fashioned military discipline. After all, the rigid culinary hierarchy codified in the 19th century by George Escoffier is called the brigade system. Today Andres Soltner is one of the world's most revered chefs and dean of the International Culinary Center in New York City.
ANDRES SOLTNER: A chef - because of mise-en-place, he's always on time.
CHARNAS: He demands the same kind of efficiency outside his kitchen.
SOLTNER: I go crazy if I go to the doctor, and if he's not ready, I leave. And that's because of mise-en-place.
CHARNAS: Other chefs, like Ari Bokovza of New York's The Harrison, admit that this can make domestic life a little intense.
ARI BOKOVZA: We spent so many hours here that the way we are at work starts to translate into the way we are at home. You wish that you could switch it off, and you hope that you can. But, I mean, if you ask my girl how is Ari at home, she'll tell you, he's a [bleeping] nut job. He can't sit still.
CHARNAS: But practiced at its highest level, mise-en-place says that time is precious. Resources are precious. Space is precious. Your self-respect and the respect of others are precious. Use them wisely. Isn't that a philosophy for our time? Chef Dwayne LiPuma.
LIPUMA: The world is a giant gerbil wheel right now. I think if we just became a little bit more organized - a little bit more mise-en-place - understood what we really need and only do what we really need, I think we'll have more time. You'll be able to sit down at the table with your kids and actually cook a meal. Get up a little bit earlier so you breath - you want to greet the day.
CHARNAS: Because sometimes, what we need to excel is not so much a new system but a new metaphor. For NPR News, I'm Dan Charnas.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Mario Cuomo was a three-term governor of New York and one of the most powerful voices in American liberalism. He died yesterday of heart failure at the age of 82. Cuomo had been hospitalized weeks ago, but returned home December 10 and died surrounded by his family. The end came just hours after his son Andrew had taken the oath for a second term of his own as governor of New York.
Although Mario Cuomo has been out of office for 20 years and never reached for the national office many envisioned for him, he retained a legendary status among Democrats, many of whom will never forget his keynote address at the 1984 Democratic Convention in San Francisco. Joining us to talk about Cuomo and his impact on America's political life, NPR's senior editor and correspondent Ron Elving. Ron, thanks for coming in this morning.
RON ELVING, BYLINE: Good to be with you, David.
GREENE: So Cuomo - three terms as governor of New York, which is a big deal. Not many governors of that state last that long. But how did he gain national prominence?
ELVING: It was partly the staying power of the policies that he embodied. And perhaps he was the last avatar of New Deal liberalism. He had a strong belief in the power of government to make life better for the middle class, for wage earners and for people who were aspiring to get into the middle class. And that belief was distilled and conveyed to its greatest audience in that one remarkable speech on July 16, 1984 in San Francisco.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
MARIO CUOMO: Maybe, Mr. President, if you asked a woman who had been denied the help she needed to feed her children because you said you needed the money for a tax break for a millionaire or for a missile we couldn't afford to use.
GREENE: OK, powerful message there delivered to President Ronald Reagan at the time. We should remember, though, I mean, Reagan was about to trounce the Democrats in that campaign. You're covering the speech - take us there.
ELVING: I was covering the convention as a newspaper reporter embedded in the Wisconsin delegation directly below the daises where they were seated. And we were looking right up at the governor. And first, there was the usual sort of background noise there in the convention hall.
But as the speech went on, with one memorable moment coming after another, the hall seemed to really connect with Cuomo. And the crowd became increasingly emotional. There were tears. There was shouting, and there was real electricity in the room. People really believed that somehow this power that they were seeing before them was going to prevail against Reagan.
GREENE: Sometimes people say about politics there really can be one moment that can transform for somebody. You're looking up at this guy from right below the dais, as you said, and this really brought him from sort of governor to sort of a national voice.
ELVING: He had only been governor for two years at the time. And certainly most of the delegates hadn't really had any much of a sense of him. And of course, the convention was supposed to be promoting the ticket, which was going to be former Vice President Walter Mondale and Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro, who, like Cuomo, hailed from Queens in New York.
GREENE: Remind us of some of Cuomo's roots. Where did he come from?
ELVING: He - his roots were very important to him. His parents were Italian immigrants who ran a neighborhood store in Queens. He went to Catholic schools, and in college he signed a contract with a minor league team for the Pittsburgh Pirates. But his promising baseball career was cut short when he was hit by a pitch in the back of the head. They didn't wear helmets in those days.
And he went back to St. John's University in New York, got his college degree and his law degree there - first in his class in 1956. But when he tried to get a job in the most prestigious law firms in New York, he found all of those doors were closed to him. And he always thereafter attributed that to his background and his ethnicity.
GREENE: One door that seemed open to him was to run for president of the United States. A lot of people in the party really wished that would happen. Why didn't it?
ELVING: You know, in 1988 a lot of people talked about him running. They called the Democratic field that year the seven dwarves, but he still didn't get in. In 1992, he actually had a plane warming up on the tarmac to take him to New Hampshire to file in the primary, but he was in the midst of a budget fight with Republicans in Albany and they didn't get that resolved. And he said he couldn't leave New York and go to New Hampshire in a moment like that.
GREENE: What a dramatic political moment. In the few seconds we have left, what's his legacy?
ELVING: His legacy really is the issues, such as income inequality and the ability of government to do something to address all the inequities in society.
GREENE: All right, we've been speaking to NPR's Ron Elving about Mario Cuomo and his legacy. He died yesterday of heart failure. Ron, thanks very much.
ELVING: Thank you, David.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
For the young man we will meet next, 2015 promises to be very different than the year just ended. Junior Adriano is 18. He's a graduate of Anthony High School outside of El Paso, Texas. We met him last year when we visited that school for Borderland, our journey along the U.S.-Mexico border. In a radio and video story, Junior spoke of being in the U.S. illegally, brought across the border by his parents. They are now back in Mexico while Junior lives in Texas with his sister.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
JUNIOR ADRIANO: When I'm at school, I feel somewhat American 'cause, like, all my friends and all that, we all speak English and all that. But, like, when I start thinking about it, like, that I have nothing to feel American about really because I can't do nothing at all. Let's say I do something bad and the cops get me, like, I'm going to get screwed over, and I'm going to get sent back probably.
INSKEEP: That was Junior last March. Now, here's what's changing. Since we met, he applied for temporary legal status in the United States. He did it under DACA - D-A-C-A - Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a program started under President Obama. This week, Junior told us he's about to get an ID card.
ADRIANO: They told me I was approved 'cause, like, they called me to go take my fingerprints. And then after that, they told me that I should receive them by January.
INSKEEP: Which means Junior can legally work in the United States and also show ID if asked by agents at the Border Patrol. We spoke with Junior, along with his old high school principal, Oscar Troncoso. It was principal Troncoso who allowed a lawyer to come to the school and talk with students.
OSCAR TRONCOSO: Junior was there with his sister. And that's what kind of kicked it off. I started learning a little bit more about the process since I had some time. And I really - more than anything I saw a willingness in Junior to want to help himself. And he was asking a lot of questions, and so I could see that that willingness there to get something done. So it was just Junior gathering documents and me giving him rides and sometimes asking questions over there. And - but to Junior's credit, he was very persistent. He not only gathered all of the documents but he was able to raise the money himself.
INSKEEP: How much money are we talking about here, Junior?
ADRIANO: Four-hundred-and-sixty-nine in total.
INSKEEP: Is that a lot of money for you?
ADRIANO: Yeah (Laughter). It was pretty hard to come up with. I was just doing, like, yard work and, like, work like that, like construction.
INSKEEP: I remember when we spoke with your group of students - you were one of five we sat with at your high school - that a couple of you said you didn't particularly feel American. Living here, but not here with legal status or fully legal status and don't feel American. Of course, you're still not a citizen.
ADRIANO: Yes, of course I'm not.
INSKEEP: Do you feel American now?
ADRIANO: Now I really do, because now I'm able to be here, like, with no problems - like being scared of the Border Patrol now. Like, now I'm able to show that permit that I'm able to be here, go around the United States without no problems. So, like, now I do feel more American.
INSKEEP: Since we met in March, President Obama has taken another major step on immigration. In the face of much criticism, he took an executive action that is expected to allow millions of people to claim legal status. That must include some grown-ups, some adults -parents of children in your school, Oscar Troncoso. How widely felt has that been in your community?
TRONCOSO: Well, it's something honestly that they don't like to discuss too openly, but the few people that I have talked to, they seem to have mixed feelings. On one hand, they feel positive about it. But on the other hand, it kind of feels like it's something temporary. And so, I get the sense that some of them don't quite trust it because it's nothing that's really permanent.
INSKEEP: Do you feel you have a sense, having spent years as a principal and having dealt with hundreds of kids - some of whom are here legally and some of whom are not - how their lives are different based on what side of the legal line that they're on as they graduate from your school and go on into the world?
TRONCOSO: It's at times for me as a principal, because I see it every year, Steve, when we have a couple of kids - for whatever reason, they're not documented - they get to the point where they finish high school and then it seems to me like they hit a wall. There isn't a whole lot of opportunity for them. They're worried about their future because basically they can only get odd jobs.
INSKEEP: Junior, do you have a sense of what exactly you want to do, once you have your card in hand?
ADRIANO: Yeah, I want to go to school. I want to go to criminal justice, but then, I also want to work full-time job. So like, right now I'm kind of stuck in between. Like, I don't know if I should go to school and have a part-time job or, like, just get a full-time job.
INSKEEP: Why criminal justice?
ADRIANO: I want to do FBI.
INSKEEP: You want to be an FBI agent?
ADRIANO: Yes, sir.
INSKEEP: Now, what gave you that idea?
ADRIANO: I don't know. Like, I've always just been, like, interesting of being like an agent. I always wanted to be like an undercover.
INSKEEP: You want to be an undercover agent?
ADRIANO: Yes, sir.
INSKEEP: I suppose you've had a little experience with that, having had to spend some time without documents here in the United States.
ADRIANO: Yeah.
INSKEEP: Well, gentlemen, thanks very much to both of you and Happy New Year.
ADRIANO: Happy New Year to you, too.
TRONCOSO: Happy New Year, Steve.
INSKEEP: That's Junior Adriano and his former principal, Oscar Troncoso, in Texas.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
This new year will usher in huge changes to the global dairy industry. Thirty years ago, Europe put strict quotas on milk production. Now those quotas are disappearing. And that is likely to have a massive effect on Ireland, which exports dairy products around the world. NPR's Ari Shapiro reports Irish dairy farmers are planning to spring forward with the help of some high-tech tools.
(COW MOOING)
ARI SHAPIRO, BYLINE: When you hear about technology and farms, you sort of think about industrial factory farming. But this is kind of the most picturesque scene I can imagine. There's even a rainbow on the horizon.
(COW MOOING)
MICHAEL GRIFFIN: My name is Michael Griffin. I'm the fourth generation of my family to farm on my family farm.
SHAPIRO: Griffin raises dairy cows in this pastoral corner of southwestern Ireland. In some ways, he's carrying on traditions that have been in place for centuries. In other ways, not. He pulls out his smartphone to show me.
SHAPIRO: I just have to say the wallpaper of your phone is a cow.
GRIFFIN: Yes, she's one of the higher-yielding cows in the herd.
SHAPIRO: Wearable technology is all the rage nowadays. Google Glass, bracelets that monitor your daily exercise - those are for humans. Here in Ireland, wearable technology extends to the cows. In Griffin's herd, each cow wears a bright, blue necklace called the Moo Monitor. The necklaces send data to his phone.
So you're opening up the app.
GRIFFIN: Yeah.
SHAPIRO: It says welcome Michael Griffin.
GRIFFIN: Yes, right. Active cows - zero, which I would hope because we're finished our breeding season.
SHAPIRO: The app tells him how much his cows are eating and walking. Today it says one of his cows is less active than usual.
GRIFFIN: And this particular cow was treated for being lame last weekend. So it's flagging that, so...
SHAPIRO: And you know that just from looking - oh, this is that cow?
GRIFFIN: Her activity is down.
SHAPIRO: The man responsible for this technology is Doctor Edmond Harty, CEO of a company called Dairymaster. His corporate headquarters is the only three-story building for miles around here. It looks like a tiny piece of Silicon Valley plopped down in the middle of the Irish countryside.
EDMOND HARTY: A herd of animals is made up of individual animals. And if we are really to get better and to get more efficient, it's going to be about looking after each individual animal on an individual basis. And this is where I see a big change coming in agriculture.
SHAPIRO: Thanks to Dairymaster, Big Brother is watching the cows. And there are pressing business reasons for Irish dairy farmers to make these changes now.
SIMON COVENEY: We are planning to grow the volume of milk production in Ireland by 50 percent in the next five years.
SHAPIRO: Simon Coveney is the Irish minister for agriculture. In the last few months, he has visited China and Saudi Arabia to pitch Irish dairy products. Not so much high-end cheeses or butter, the big business here is baby formula.
COVENEY: About 12 or 13 percent of the world's infant formula is made on this little island.
SHAPIRO: Beyond the business incentive, farmers say new technologies are making them happier. And their herds, too.
PATRICK DWYER: Definitely. I'm 100 percent sure of that. They are giving more milk.
SHAPIRO: And happier cows give more milk?
P. DWYER: Oh, yeah. Definitely.
SHAPIRO: Patrick Dwyer and his wife Nicola just bought a new milking parlor where almost everything is automated. It used to take six hours to milk the herd. It was also dangerous. Cows would sometimes fall, pinning him to the ground. Now it's much safer and the whole process takes less than an hour. Nicola says the new parlor also let her take a weekend vacation with her husband. The last time they did that was eight years ago.
NICOLA DWYER: Simply because we just couldn't let anybody do the milking while we were away because of the safety aspect. So we had to stay and we had to do it ourselves.
SHAPIRO: When they left for the weekend, their two teenage daughters took over. Now, after four generations of men running this place, Nicola says technology may allow her girls to be the next inheritors of this Irish family farm. Ari Shapiro, NPR News.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Here's the flip side of a common political discussion. We hear often that Republicans have a problem with race. Their share of the minority vote has gone down to record lows.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The flipside is that Democrats have lately lost the white vote by huge margins. In a year-ending interview with NPR News, President Obama said white working-class voters are not hearing enough about their economic concerns.
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PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: That's not what they read about or hear about in the newspapers. They hear about an immigration debate, or they hear about, you know, a debate surrounding Ferguson. And they think I'm being left out. Nobody seems to be thinking about how tough it is for me right now. Or I've been downscaled. I've lost my job, et cetera.
GREENE: In the midterm election just passed, Democrats sometimes could not even manage 25 percent of the white vote.
INSKEEP: To find out what progressives are thinking about those voting trends, we met Ruy Teixeira. He's a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, which is close to the Obama administration. How big a problem is this for Democrats?
RUY TEIXEIRA: Well, I'd say it's a huge problem. There's no doubt that the demographics of the country are shifting in way that favors Democrats - more minority voters, minority voters more heavily supporting Democrats.
But mathematically, it's quite possible for a lot of that to be neutralized by an increased share of the white vote for the other side - for the Republicans. And that's particularly been the case with the white working class or non-college vote, which Obama and the Democrats have been regularly losing by vast margins. In the last two off-year elections, which have been so spectacularly unsuccessful for the Democrats, they lost the white working-class vote by 30 points.
So the Democrats are always sort of teetering on the edge there in terms of their coalition. They needed to put together their rising constituencies like minorities and unmarried women, professionals, millennial generation folks and what have you. They've got to put that together with a large enough share of the white working-class vote, in particular, to be competitive - and in fact, to be more than competitive, to win and to dominate.
INSKEEP: Two questions come to mind. One having to do with the way that President Obama has assembled a governing coalition. It's been very publicly an effort to assemble a lot of different groups, including groups that have been marginalized in the past in the United States. Is there a way in which that just automatically sends a different message to white voters? This doesn't include you.
TEIXEIRA: Yeah, I actually don't think that's the case. I don't think that's the problem. I think the Democrats are doing what any party would do in a situation where rising constituencies are available to them. They're trying to assemble as many of them as possible into a winning coalition. The problem is that this has been difficult for the Democrats to actually raise the living standards of sort of the broad mass of middle and working-class people, which includes most of these voters.
Now, why is that? Is that 'cause the Democrats didn't care? No, I don't think that's the answer. I think the answer is it's hard to do. We're really just getting to the point now where real wages are starting to rise in the economy as a whole. And that has not gone unnoticed by these kinds of voters, because they know that special bond to the Democratic Party that groups are affiliated with - the Democratic Party do - like Hispanics, like blacks and so on, who see the Democratic Party as their advocate. And even if the economy isn't performing dramatically well, nevertheless they associate that party with their upward mobility. The problem is that white working-class people at this point by and large do not associate the Democratic Party with their economic mobility.
INSKEEP: Is there a side of the Democratic Party or even a part of your own brain saying to you, well, actually, this is not that big a problem because the constituencies that are growing - minority constituencies in America - are constituencies that Democrats have in big numbers? And they're going to be bigger every election.
TEIXEIRA: It's not in my brain, really, but I think it is in some Democrat's brain. I just think 2014 should knock it out of you. I mean, yeah, you can win the presidency where all the stars are aligned and where relatively low turnout constituencies upon which the Democrats now depend will turn out in relatively high number. That's good for the Democrats, because by and large their policies align better with the majority of the American people now than the Republicans' do. But the majority of the American people don't vote a lot of the time. And they certainly don't vote in congressional and off-year elections in as large numbers as the Democrats need. So you actually - it's a necessity. It's not just optional. It's a necessity to do better among these weaker constituencies for the Democrats.
INSKEEP: Ruy Teixeira with the Center for American Progress. Thanks very much.
TEIXEIRA: Delighted.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Fewer young people are being locked up than in the past. In fact, the number of juvenile offenders behind bars in the U.S. has hit record lows. That comes amid broader debate over just how many Americans of all ages end up in prison. But if the total number of juveniles in custody is dropping, the drop is not the same for everybody. The system is giving harsher penalties to minorities and to girls. Here's NPR justice correspondent Carrie Johnson.
CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: About 60,000 juveniles are incarcerated across the country. Experts say two-thirds of them are locked up for minor offenses.
MARC SCHINDLER: For things like running away from home, failing to go to school and other types of what has been referred to as incorrigible behavior.
JOHNSON: Marc Schindler runs the Justice Policy Institute in Washington.
SCHINDLER: They have not exhibited behavior that would be a danger to the public. What they have done is they have made a judge upset (laughter) 'cause they have not followed the judge's directive. That shouldn't be a reason to lock someone up.
JOHNSON: But when it comes to black and Hispanic kids, small-time issues have become a big-time point of entry into the correction system. Liz Ryan works to reduce youth incarceration rates at Youth First Initiative. She says the system is the problem.
LIZ RYAN: White youth and youth of color commit crime at roughly the same rates. It's the justice system that responds much more punitively and harshly to youth of color than it does to white youth.
JOHNSON: So while the overall incarceration rate has fallen by more than 40 percent over the past 10 years, Ryan says racial disparities involving who gets locked up have risen dramatically.
RYAN: There's been a federal requirement in the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act for two decades now that has required states to reduce racial and ethnic disparities. And we've seen very little progress in this area. And actually, this latest news shows us that it's even worse than we thought.
JOHNSON: More girls are also being incarcerated. Many of them are girls who have mental health problems or have experienced violence in their homes. Elizabeth Cauffman of the University of California at Irvine has studied young offenders for years. She says there's a reason why girls are turning up in the system.
ELIZABETH CAUFFMAN: And it's not because girls are becoming more violent. I think that's a misnomer in the field that somehow girls are becoming more dangerous or more reckless. In reality, it's really a function - that the way in which we charge crimes now - we're criminalizing adolescents in general. And we're criminalizing girls in particular.
JOHNSON: Cauffman says one of the best predictors for boys escaping a pattern of crime is finding a steady romantic partner. But for girls, she says, the situation is more complicated, especially when it's a bad romance.
CAUFFMAN: We named it after Lady Gaga's song because one of the things we saw was these romantic relationships may not be good for girls. And so these bad romances can actually lead to bad outcomes.
JOHNSON: After studying more than a thousand young people for seven years, Cauffman says she's come to the same conclusion as many parents of teenagers.
CAUFFMAN: One of the best predictors of stopping crime is developing more impulse control, being able to think long-term, being able to resist peer influences. If you actually just let kids grow up, most kids will, what we call, age out of crime.
JOHNSON: And keeping them from lockup while still underage is a big boost in that direction. Carrie Johnson, NPR News, Washington.
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Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep. Steven Twomey and Lisa DeFluri altered their wedding plans. They meant to get married on an Oregon beach in July. But when their Oregon Ducks made yesterday's Rose Bowl, they saw their chance. They were married at a tailgate party outside yesterday's game. The bride's parents could not make it, so they watched by Skype. No doubt the happy couple grew even happier when Oregon crushed Florida State on the field 59-20. It's MORNING EDITION.
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Eric Bransby is one of the last living links to the great age of American mural painting. He studied with one of the country's most famous muralists, Thomas Hart Benton, and went on to create his own murals in prominent buildings across the West. Bransby's now 98 years old and still painting. Colorado Public Radio's Chloe Veltman recently visited the artist at his Colorado Springs studio.
CHLOE VELTMAN, BYLINE: Eric Bransby is attacking a drawing with tight, sharp strokes, a pastel pencil grasped between gnarled fingers. His studio is unheated, but he doesn't seem to notice the cold. He's completely engrossed in the image taking shape on his easel. It's a study for a new mural that he hopes to install at nearby Colorado College.
ERIC BRANSBY: I'm going to add some lights, a little stronger lights, on the side of the face. I've got to redo that mouth.
VELTMAN: Bransby says he draws between two and eight hours every day.
BRANSBY: Drawing has been a continuous thing for me, like exercises for a musician. It's refreshing. I draw better. I paint better.
VELTMAN: Drawing the human figure has been one of the few constants in the artist's patchwork career. Bransby was born in 1916 in Auburn, New York. His father was a preacher who took the family to Pennsylvania then Iowa. His parents didn't encourage his artistic pursuits.
BRANSBY: And I demanded then finally that during the Depression that I got to get to art school. And they said well, he'll do one year and he'll come back so discouraged that we'll make something out of him. But that didn't happen. I found heaven.
VELTMAN: Bransby had never heard of Thomas Hart Benton when he hitched a ride from Iowa to enroll in the Kansas City Art Institute in 1938, even though Benton was one of the most famous artists of the era. Under Benton, Bransby embarked upon a rigorous regimen of figure drawing and anatomy classes patterned after the European academies. Benton painted alongside his students and Bransby remembers him as a taskmaster.
BRANSBY: Benton was all business. You got in the studio, by God, and you worked like hell.
VELTMAN: Things looked promising for the young artist. Benton included two Bransby paintings in a high-profile show in New York in 1941. The following year, Bransby painted his first professional mural for what was then called the Work Projects Administration. Then he got drafted. By day, he painted military murals at Camp Leavenworth. Afterwards, he did his own work.
BRANSBY: I'd go down and paint at night in the latrine because they'd leave the lights on down there. So I was called the latrine painter.
VELTMAN: After the war, abstract expressionism hit the arts world. The human figure was displaced by drips, splashes and abstract forms.
Henry Adams is an art history professor at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio. He's studied Bransby's work for 25 years.
HENRY ADAMS: For that generation, it was very difficult to make your way as a figurative painter, and a number of artists who had been very successful in the late years of the 1930s then suddenly after World War II found that the whole art world had changed.
VELTMAN: Bransby and his family crisscrossed the country looking for work and grants. In the late 1940s, he got a grant to study at Yale under the exacting European abstract artist Josef Albers. Bransby started to incorporate what he learned from his teacher into his figurative pieces, says Blake Milteer. He's the museum director at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, which houses many of Bransby's works.
BLAKE MILTEER: One of the things that really makes his work unique is he combines that very much Renaissance-based figurative tradition with a dramatic sense of abstraction and of architecture, placing these figures in a shifting kind of space.
VELTMAN: Though Bransby managed to successfully combine the old with the new, his passion for the human form and for murals never left him.
BRANSBY: And I thought about quite a long time and I said, damn it, I'm going to draw the figure whether it's in favor or not. And if a wall comes along, I'm going to do it.
VELTMAN: In the 1980s and '90s, Bransby's profile as a muralist rose again. He received commissions in Illinois and Colorado. His stick-to-it-iveness impresses painter Sushe Felix, who has assisted Bransby on several mural projects.
SUSHE FELIX: Here he is - is it 98? And he's still doing it. Yeah, that was a really good lesson - to never give up, keep trying, keep growing.
VELTMAN: Bransby's age has slowed him down. He gets around with the help of a walker, and his hands shake when he paints. But he's always got his eye on the next project.
BRANSBY: I try to make each mural a project that will somehow expand my abilities a little bit more. Everything has to be a new adventure.
VELTMAN: He's hoping to finish his latest mural in time for his 100th birthday. For NPR News I'm Chloe Veltman.
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This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Eric Westervelt. The Ebola virus continues its deadly spread in West Africa. New cases of the disease are up in Guinea and Sierra Leone, and new cases in Liberia in recent weeks mark a setback after recent improvements. The World Health Organization now estimates that Ebola has infected more than 20,000 people in these three countries and nearly 8,000 people so far have died. Joining us now is Tony Banbury, the United Nations' outgoing top Ebola official. He leads the United Nations Mission for Ebola Emergency Response and has just completed his final tour of the Ebola-affected region. Tony, thanks for being here.
ANTHONY BANBURY: It's my pleasure. Thank you.
WESTERVELT: We're seeing new cases pop up in Liberia, a country that had previously made progress against the virus. How do you fight complacency in populations that might now be tuning out after months of being bombarded with public service warnings?
BANBURY: I just returned from a six-day tour of the three countries and was able to meet with the heads of state, but also travel into remote areas, and I did not see signs of complacency. I saw signs of strong commitment. And in Liberia, yes, there have been new cases, but just on December 31, the country reported zero new cases that day. So clearly, things are headed in the right direction.
WESTERVELT: How worried are you that Ebola could become endemic to West Africa, that these countries just may have to learn to live with this brutal hemorrhagic fever?
BANBURY: I'm not a scientist, but in my view, that's not an option. The only option is getting to zero cases and so there's no more presence of Ebola in humans. Ebola has just ripped apart communities and families and caused such huge, intangible damage of a social and psychological nature, as well as the human toll. And we have a very big obligation to get rid of Ebola completely so these communities can go about with the lives they had, and on the paths of development that they were enjoying before Ebola struck.
WESTERVELT: For months the worst-affected country was Liberia. Now it's Sierra Leone. But far less is heard about Guinea, where a group of health workers were killed earlier this year as they tried to distribute information about the disease. There's word now of ongoing attacks on health workers. Is Guinea the weak link among these three neighbors battling Ebola?
BANBURY: The disease of Ebola, the crisis we're facing, is a regional one. So we really need to solve it everywhere. That being said, we're facing particularly difficult challenges in Guinea due to the strong resistance, particularly in very rural areas, resistance to the idea that Ebola's real, that it's a disease that should be treated, resistance to efforts at community engagement. And if we're not more successful in our work with the communities in Guinea then we're going to have a tough time getting the crisis to where we need to. But I'm confident that we're going to get there. We're making progress in Guinea, but not as fast as we'd like.
WESTERVELT: As you leave, what are some of your most lasting memories of your time on the ground there?
BANBURY: One is from a visit I just made to the three countries. And in the town of Sanniquellie in Liberia, I met with some survivors, including a 10-year-old girl named Esther. She just had such a sparkle and sense of life about her, and she was really inspiring. And it was just so great that she had survived. It made me really, again, understand how important this work was and that we had to bring the disease down to zero so that there were no more Esthers getting it and that the communities could have a life without fear of Ebola ripping their families apart.
WESTERVELT: Tony Banbury is the outgoing head of the United Nations Mission for Ebola Emergency Response. He joined us from the mission's headquarters in Accra, Ghana. Thank you so much.
BANBURY: Thank you.
ERIC WESTERVELT, HOST:
The new collection of short stories by writer Megan Mayhew Bergman takes us into the compelling lives of independent, inventive women at the margins of history. These are fictionalized account of real-life, risk-taking women that have largely been forgotten and now are reimagined by Bergman in her new book "Almost Famous Women." And Megan Mayhew Bergman joins me now to talk about her book. Thanks so much for speaking with us.
MEGAN MAYHEW BERGMAN: Thank you for having me.
WESTERVELT: So you've brought these women back from obscurity. They've had brushes with fame, but are now kind of footnotes. And we meet a member of the first, you know, all-female-innovated swing band, a cross-dressing Standard Oil heiress who raises motorboats. We hear from conjoined twins and Lord Byron's out-of-wedlock daughter and a lot more. What inspired you, as a writer, to reimagine these women?
BERGMAN: Truthfully, I tried not to write the collection at first. There was something stopping me about playing with historical fiction. But these characters, these women - they took up residence in my imagination. This is - it really represents 10 years of my reading life. And, you know, they were living with me for so long that so many of the stories were almost fully formed by the time I put them to paper. I sort of fell in love, which is a dangerous thing to do with your characters, as any biographer will tell you.
WESTERVELT: Ten years of sort of reading and researching biographies and backgrounds of these women.
BERGMAN: Yeah, that's right. I think it all started when I was at Oxford doing a writing program. And I came across a book about Natalie Barney, the American woman who lived in the Left Bank in France and held a regular salon there. And a lot of the women belonged to that salon and gave readings there or she was a patron of their art. And that's when I really began to delve into this culture. And I think it appealed to me because Natalie was supporting female artists in a time where they really had to work very hard to make art and to have their art recognized.
WESTERVELT: There are many compelling female characters in this collection. I'd like to focus for second on Violet and Daisy Hilton, a pair of conjoined twins. Can I have you read from a section?
BERGMAN: Absolutely. So I first came across Violet and Daisy on a website called Roadside Americana. And they lived in North Carolina, where I was living at the time. And it really fascinated me to think about two women living together and sharing one body. And here's a passage where they're lying in bed at night.
Violet and I lay in bed at night talking about the latest sheet music or a boy who had come with his parents to see us play at the music hall. We talked about lace socks, traveling to Spain, how we'd one day hear ourselves on the radio, learn to dance beautifully with a partner on each side. Like King Tut's death mask, we were exhibited. The calling card, as I remember it - if we have interested you, kindly tell your friends to come visit us, the pretty, grown-together children.
These stories are really about risk-taking and chasing your passions, chasing your dreams, and that hasn't always been easy for women. They had a difficult road ahead. And in the short term, it may have been exciting, but in the long-term, a lot of them died poor and lonely.
WESTERVELT: Do you have a favorite in here - a character? You said you, you know, fell in love with many of them. Do have one you fell especially in love with?
BERGMAN: I particularly love Georgie, the girlfriend in the Joe Carstairs story.
WESTERVELT: I love that story - it's so great - where we meet this charismatic heiress, Joe.
BERGMAN: Joe really fascinated me when I read a Kate Summerscale's biography of her, "The Queen Of Whale Cay." And one of the things I noticed was that she was a female ambulance driver in World War I. And I think some of these women may have walked away with undiagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder.
She raced boats, was the fastest woman on water, was setting world records racing her boats. But I believe as the '20s and '30s came to a close, she found it more difficult to live in society as she wished. And she happened to have the financial means to buy her own island in the Bahamas, Whale Cay, and she developed it. She put an airstrip on it, built a beautiful mansion. And she really ruled it like a tyrant and had a string of girlfriends and movie stars and royalty that came to visit her on the island. Other people found it a refuge.
WESTERVELT: The undercurrent in the book is all about exploring risk-taking, and risk-taking can also have a price. What do you want your two daughters to take away from your book?
BERGMAN: I think about that a lot - what they'll experience when they read this book. And what I hope they'll feel first is intrigue and permission to have intellectual curiosity, permission to live passionately. And, you know, chasing dreams is sort of a silly expression, but I think people that do that are happier. I think there's a lot of dissonance for women where there's how we want to live and how we want to see ourselves and then what our real circumstances are. And I think the more we can close that distance between who we want to be and who we really are, the happier we are.
WESTERVELT: Making Mayhew Bergman's new book "Almost Famous Women" is out next week. Thank you so much.
BERGMAN: Thank you.
ERIC WESTERVELT, HOST:
People who inject drugs risk contracting HIV and hepatitis C if they share used needles. As a prevention strategy, organizations in many cities give out clean syringes. And these clean needles sometimes wind up on a black market for drug users - one that appears to help prevent the spread of contagious diseases. Reporter Emma Jacobs has our story.
EMMA JACOBS, BYLINE: On Friday afternoon, several dozen people are lined up in the narrow hallway of Prevention Point in Philadelphia. Men and women of all ages hold onto paper and plastic bags of used syringes.
How many are you bringing back?
JACOBS: Silvana Mazzella, the director of programs of the services center for injection drug users, raises her voice to narrate the exchange taking place at the front of the line.
SILVANA MAZZELLA: We obviously have a space challenge, but people come in, they drop off their used syringes, and they ask for what they need.
JACOBS: Most people are coming in with just a few needles, but participants can get as many as they want as long as long as they turn in a dirty needle for every one above a small supply. One of the clients who exchanges dirty needles in bulk does business on a corner about half a mile away.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: You can exchange pretty much one old needle off the ground for a new set right there. Some people come in 300, 400 works at a time.
JACOBS: We're not using his name because he's admitting things which are illegal, including selling needles. This is tolerated by the city, but still banned under Pennsylvania law. This man gets clean syringes from the exchange, but he resells them here for a dollar apiece, providing instant access a block from where users can buy drugs and close to the wooded train tracks were many go to inject. He says selling needles is a source of income for some.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Like, it's their hustle. It's how they survive and support themselves. So that's how I do it. So a couple of these - sell a ton of them, you can get a bag to get high.
JACOBS: This postindustrial neighborhood of North Philadelphia is dotted with empty factories and homes. It's one of the most active areas in the city where people buy and use cocaine and heroin at all hours. Paul Yabor says that makes it important that they can get clean needles right here, too. Yabor is an AIDS activist and educator at Prevention Point.
PAUL YABOR: It's 2 o'clock in the morning, and the guy's saying here's a syringe for a dollar. You know, there's a lot to be said for that.
JACOBS: Yabor was diagnosed with AIDS and hepatitis C years ago. He says some people don't feel comfortable picking up needles from the exchange. Others are looking to drop into the neighborhood, inject and get out fast. Needle distribution has always been controversial. Some people say it encourages people to use drugs. Yabor also acknowledges that when he sold syringes in the past, he used some of the money to buy drugs.
YABOR: Did it enable me? It did, but also, I mean, I was going get high anyway. And the cold, hard reality is that someone with a habit or under the influence of cocaine is going to go to extreme measures to inject.
JACOBS: One more extreme and even more dangerous way is risky sex work. Most city officials I talked with agreed they'd rather focus on keeping people healthy than policing people exchanging needles in bulk. Roland Lamb directs Philadelphia's Office of Addiction Services. He says there are people who manage shooting galleries in the neighborhood, acting as a dealer or bouncer who will exchange needles in bulk so they can sell or even give clean ones to their clients.
ROLAND LAMB: Folks who come in and who bring in syringes to exchange them are not looking - you know, are looking to actually, you know, have a cleaner place - have a place that - where there's not a chance for someone to accidentally stick themselves with a dirty needle.
JACOBS: He thinks the impact on health is significant. Without a dedicated study, it's hard for researchers to measure the effects of black market needles. But exchanges themselves reduce the spread of HIV. They get part of the credit in Philadelphia for a dramatic drop in new diagnoses. University of Pennsylvania researcher Philippe Bourgois studies how slight variations in drug use affect infection rates. He says Philadelphia's strong network of people spreading needles from the exchange plays a big role.
PHILIPPE BOURGOIS: You get this extraordinarily efficient distribution of needles exactly where they need to be at the right time. And so that's what, basically, I think prevents a much worse spread of HIV.
JACOBS: Bourgois takes the long-term view. He points out many of the people who hit rock bottom in this neighborhood will recover. If access to clean needles can keep them safe until they do, he hopes they'll be able to live the rest of their lives without the burden of another illness. For NPR News, I'm Emma Jacobs in Philadelphia.
ERIC WESTERVELT, HOST:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Eric Westervelt. This morning, we bring you a story of one woman who went from the pulpit to politics. It's part of a New Year's series called Starting Over, about how people are changed by choice or circumstance. Faith Whitmore was a pastor for three decades. But two years ago, she made the radical switch to work for a U.S. congressman from California. Reporter Emily Green has her story.
EMILY GREEN, BYLINE: Faith Whitmore emerges from the congressman's office with a burst of energy that fills the sparse surroundings.
FAITH WHITMORE: Emily.
GREEN: Hi.
WHITMORE: Hi, how are you?
GREEN: Hi, I'm good. I'm good.
WHITMORE: Good.
GREEN: If you had asked her three years ago where she'd be today, this office would not be the place. Whitmore was ordained as a pastor 30 years ago, drawn by a deep sense of God in spirit within her. She worked at churches throughout the Sacramento region, eventually becoming senior pastor at one of the largest United Methodist congregations. It was, she says, like running a small business.
WHITMORE: You have committees and property that you need to take care of and fundraising that has to happen. There are weddings and funerals and baptisms.
GREEN: And, of course, preaching - here she is in the pulpit in 2011.
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WHITMORE: Christ engages the woman at the well, finding the lost, calling them by name, calling them home. That's what a church can do. That's what a healthy church can do. That's what a healthy church can be, a place of knowing and being known.
GREEN: But after three decades doing this work, Whitmore was tired. She took a job leading a nonprofit that helps homeless people. Soon after, the Catholic Church stopped contributing to the group because as a pastor, Whitmore spoke out in support of same sex marriage and Planned Parenthood. She says she wasn't pushed out of the job, but soon after, she accepted a position as district director for Democratic U.S. Congressman Ami Bera.
WHITMORE: People say, well, how can you go from ministry to politics? Or they ask me, how long have you been in politics? I say, well, it depends on how you look at it, you know, maybe a couple weeks, maybe all my life.
GREEN: And as a pastor, you have to at least try to bring people together. Exactly how Whitmore came to work for Bera is a point of disagreement between the two longtime friends. Whitmore says he approached her. Bera says she approached him.
CONGRESSMAN AMI BERA: From my end, it was a no-brainer. You have someone who's trusted in the community, who's well-respected in the community, whose values align with my values, who really is a natural surrogate.
GREEN: Of course, there's also the bare knuckles politics of campaigning. Bera ran for reelection last year and won by a razor thin margin. The candidates and their supporters spent more than $20 million on the election, the most expensive congressional race in the country. Bera says Whitmore got mad about the ads running against him.
BERA: We might be driving somewhere in a car, going to an event, and she might vent to me a little bit. It's like, Faith, you're a member of the clergy.
(LAUGHTER)
BERA: You can't use colorful language like that.
(LAUGHTER)
GREEN: Swearing aside, Whitmore is still deeply religious. But things have changed. She doesn't go to church every Sunday and has no regrets about leaving behind her life as a pastor.
WHITMORE: I'm growing older, and my time on earth is getting shorter. So some of the things I care about are on a larger scale. If I can care about health care for everybody, that's legislation. If I care about immigrant status, that's legislation.
GREEN: Whitmore says it's about taking her Christian values into the world and fulfilling her vocation outside the pulpit. For NPR News, I'm Emily Green.
ERIC WESTERVELT, HOST:
The state of race relations in the U.S. today has captivated the country for months. But a group of Northeastern University law students is looking to the past, to a sometimes forgotten violent part of American history.
The Civil Rights Restorative Justice Project is working to document every racially-motivated killing in the American South between 1930 and 1970. So far, they've identified about 350 cases. Most of the crimes received no attention when they were committed, and often even the family members of the victims don't know how their relatives died. Professor Margaret Burnham is director of The Civil Rights Restorative Justice Project, and she joins us now. Welcome to the program.
MARGARET BURNHAM: Thank you so much.
WESTERVELT: Explain for us what your group does and why there's such a sense of urgency in this work.
BURNHAM: What we do is we recapture the legal and social history of the racial murders occurring, as you say, between 1930 and 1970 in the states of the former Confederacy. Now the project might seem unmanageable because the numbers might seem so large, but the cases from the 1940s and the early 1950s is really where we're focused at the moment. After the commencement of the Civil Rights Movement, which people typically date at the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955, the records about these cases grow more and more accurate. And so those are easily recoverable. And we'll do what we can do about the '30s, but it's the 1940s where we now live because in many cases, those who bore witness in one way or another are still alive, and their stories will be lost to history if we don't rescue them now. So that's the urgent piece of this.
WESTERVELT: Professor Burnham, there's a case in Tuskegee, Alabama, from 1943 that you investigated where a man was shot and killed by a local sheriff. Can you tell us about who that man was and what happened in that case?
BURNHAM: In the Tuskegee case, a man by the name of William Lockwood came to the side of a police car right near his farm where he was out picking cotton to ask the officer why he was holding his son, a veteran, in the back seat of the car. And the officer got angry because William Lockwood didn't address him as Sir. And he got out of the car, and he shot and killed William Lockwood. The son, Elijah Lockwood, and a second son were then arrested and taken to jail on completely trumped up charges and ended up spending seven years in Alabama prisons. Of course there was no investigation and no prosecution.
We recovered as much detail about this case as we could from Justice Department records and from the extensive record maintained at the time by the NAACP. Our student then gathered this material and took it to the Lockwood family just a few weeks ago. And they were of course elated to know the full facts about their relative's murder.
WESTERVELT: They'd been in the dark all these years about the facts?
BURNHAM: They had been. This is the case in which the family members want to know, but likely would not go out and hire a lawyer to get this information on their own. And so in part we're also just providing an important legal service to communities that wouldn't otherwise have access to this.
WESTERVELT: There are other cases you've identified in Mobile, Alabama, in the early '40s. Which of those stick out for you?
BURNHAM: Yes. We're working really closely with a history museum in Mobile and with family members to bring a number of these cases back home. In one of our cases in 1942, a soldier by the name of Henry Williams boarded a city bus to get back to his base. And the bus driver stopped to talk to someone. And as conversation began to drag on, and the soldier got nervous because he wanted to make his curfew. And he said - asked the driver to move on. And the driver was so enraged by this impertinence that he went to the back of the bus with a pistol and waved it in William's face and Williams apologized, but apparently not quickly enough.
He realized he couldn't placate the driver so the soldier ran for his life out of the back door of the bus. He stumbled down, his laundry spilling out of his suitcase, and the driver shot and killed him. The bus driver was never prosecuted. No one knows about the case of Henry Williams. His family members didn't know what had transpired, what had happened. The city of Mobile, African-American community in Mobile, don't know that case. So we're hoping to bring that back.
And in a second case in Mobile in 1948, a young, white man and a 56-year-old black man, coworkers at a base near Mobile, got off of a bus at the same stop on their way home one night. And the black man asked the white fellow if he wanted to have a beer with him. The white guy said I don't drink with blank. And then he beat the other man to death on the street.
The murderer was charged, but he was promptly released and served no time in jail. We found that man, the white murderer, living in Florida. We also found family members of the victim. And many of them still live in Mobile. And they weren't interested in reviving any criminal charges against the killer. But what they did want was acknowledgment that the legal system had failed them and their family member and some means of commemorating the life of their loved one, Raphael Davis.
WESTERVELT: Has doing this research changed how you think about race in America today?
BURNHAM: What most troubles me in this research is that we're doing it so late. We call people and they say to us, you know, we've been waiting for this call for 50 years. But many times we don't reach them because they've passed on, and their stories have died with them. And so what's most compelling about this is how easy it is to lose pieces of our history and how important recovering this particular piece of it is. If we're to understand what's going on today, not only should we not lose any of our history, but this is particularly important to understand the ways in which this past continues to resonate and recycle and reiterate itself through black experiences with the criminal justice system today.
WESTERVELT: Professor Margaret Burnham directs the Civil Rights Restorative Justice Project at Northeastern University. Thank you for speaking with us.
BURNHAM: Thank you so much for having me.
ERIC WESTERVELT, HOST:
Here's a question. What do all these songs have in common?
(SOUNDBITE OF SONGS, "MISIRLOU," "NOWHERE MAN, "VOODOO CHILD, "SMOKE ON THE WATER," "LAYLA," "S.O.S.," "TEXAS FLOOD," "TALK ABOUT LOVE," "WHERE WERE YOU," "GET LUCKY")
WESTERVELT: You're hearing the many sounds of the Fender Stratocaster electric guitar. The all-American instrument has had a worldwide impact, is more popular than ever and looks pretty much the way it did when it was introduced more than half a century ago. In fact, the Strat recently celebrated its 60th birthday. Guitarist and NPR music librarian Robert Goldstein shares his appreciation for the iconic guitar.
ROBERT GOLDSTEIN, BYLINE: The Stratocaster didn't sound or look like any other guitar when it came out of the factory in 1954. Leo Fender's small company was looking to improve the Telecaster, its groundbreaking, solid body electric first introduced three years earlier. Far more than a tweak here or there, Fender created an entirely new instrument that's become almost synonymous with the phrase electric guitar.
JUSTIN NORVELL: If you were going to draw an electric guitar from your mind's eye, most people would draw a Stratocaster as a shape.
GOLDSTEIN: Justin Norvell is Fender's vice president of marketing.
NORVELL: But the thing that connects people to that guitar and that shape is the music that they grew up on.
(SOUNDBITE OF JIMI HENDRIX SONG, "PURPLE HAZE")
GOLDSTEIN: The Stratocaster had a distinctive voice, thanks in part to its three pickups. Those are the wire coiled magnets that transmit string vibrations to the guitar amplifier. Most electric guitars at that time had one or two. Fender also designed a new vibrato, the metal arm at the end of the strings that allows a player to vary their pitch. Then, there was that supersonic, solid body shape. With all of these features, you'd think the guitar would have flown out of music stores. But it didn't, says Richard Smith.
RICHARD SMITH: It wasn't an easy sell because it was so radically different in so many ways. So it's important to note that it wasn't really that popular initially.
GOLDSTEIN: Smith is an author and the curator of the Fender Collection at the Fullerton Museum Center in California. Stratocasters hit stores in spring, 1954, but the first didn't sell until that summer. Leo Fender himself had given early models to country-western swing guitarists for their input. But something musically new was brewing across the country when the Stratocaster was introduced.
SMITH: When rock 'n roll arrived, the tools for making it already existed. They didn't have to invent a guitar to play rock 'n roll on because it already was there.
(SOUNDBITE OF BUDDY HOLLY SONG, "PEGGY SUE")
GOLDSTEIN: The Strat wasn't just for rock or country players says Tom Wheeler, author of "The Fender Archives," and several other books about the company and its product.
TOM WHEELER: We can't understate, I think, the versatility of an instrument that was adopted by the guitar players, with both Lawrence Welk and Pink Floyd.
(SOUNDBITE OF PINK FLOYD SONG, "COMFORTABLY NUMB")
GOLDSTEIN: Another key to the Stratocaster's success was how Fender advertised it.
WHEELER: In other companies' catalogs, you would see professional players wearing a business suit and, you know, wingtip shoes or whatever, sitting on a stool in a studio, playing an expensive guitar.
GOLDSTEIN: Open a Fender catalog from the 1960s, and you saw girls in bikinis and guys in board shorts with surfboards in the background, sitting around a campfire.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SURFIN' U.S.A.")
THE BEACH BOYS: (Singing) If everybody had an ocean across the U.S.A., then everybody'd be surfin' like Caloforni-a.
GOLDSTEIN: Surprisingly, Fender doesn't really know how many Strats have been produced since that first one sold in summer, 1954, but says the Stratocaster is the foundation of its business. Through six decades of musical, technological and cultural change, the combination of innovative design in the hands of talented players has helped the Strat not only persevere, but rule. Think of the names, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Stevie Ray Vaughan and, of course, Jimi Hendrix.
(SOUNDBITE OF JIMI HENDRIX SONG, "HOUSE BURNING DOWN")
NILS LOFGREN: That's just probably the greatest 22 minutes, or whatever the hell that side is, of Strat in history.
GOLDSTEIN: That's Nils Lofgren, and he's talking about side four of the Hendrix album "Electric Ladyland." Lofgren himself switched to a Strat early in his career. Today he's Bruce Springsteen's longtime guitar player and a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
LOFGREN: You know, there's just so many great guitars, but for me, iconically and just practically, if somebody gave me one choice I'd pick up the Strat to walk out in front of any audience.
GOLDSTEIN: Now that's a birthday complement any 60-year-old would appreciate. Robert Goldstein, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF JIMI HENDRIX SONG, "HOUSE BURNING DOWN")
WESTERVELT: This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. BJ Leiderman composed our theme music. I'm Eric Westervelt.
(SOUNDBITE OF JIMI HENDRIX SONG, "HOUSE BURNING DOWN")
ERIC WESTERVELT, HOST:
It's a common complaint about poetry. It's the oldest form of expression, but what can it do for us now in an age of social media, Twitter, Facebook and national urgency? Poet Claudia Rankine's new collection, her fifth, has an answer. Its cover shows a black hoodie against a white background, recalling Trayvon Martin. And it's a very personal meditation on race in America. The book is called "Citizen: An American Lyric." It was a finalist for the National Book Award. Claudia Rankine joins us now. Thank you, welcome to the program.
CLAUDIA RANKINE: Good morning, Eric. Thank you for having me.
WESTERVELT: Before we chat, I want to give listeners a sense of your book. It reads like a series of kind of diary entries, so to speak, and an anatomy of encounters with perceived racism. I'd like you to read, if you would. Could you start "You Are In The Dark"?
RANKINE: Sure. (Reading) You're in the dark, in the car, watching the black, tarred street being swallowed by speed. He tells you his dean is making him hire a person of color when there are so many great writers out there. You think maybe this is an experiment, and you're being tested or retroactively insulted or you have done something that communicates this is an OK conversation to be having. Why do you feel comfortable saying this to me? You wish the light would turn red or a police siren would go off so you could slam on the brakes, slam into the car ahead of you, fly forward so quickly both your faces would suddenly be exposed to the wind.
WESTERVELT: I honestly wish we could read even more of this book to our audience 'cause it's an experience to read in one sitting, as I did. I mean, the reader's really put in the situation of these encounters. You're sort of brought into it and made to think what the person might have been feeling or thinking. And I have to assume that was part of your aim.
RANKINE: That was part of my intention. I wanted to create the field of the encounter, what happens when one body comes up against another and race enters into the moment of intimacy between two people.
WESTERVELT: Maybe I could have you read a little bit more from page 15, "You And Your Partner Go To See The Film."
RANKINE: (Reading) You and your partner go to see the film "The House We Live In." You asked a friend to pick up your child from school. On your way home, your phone rings. Your neighbor tells you he is standing at his window, watching a menacing black guy casing both your homes. The guy is walking back and forth talking to himself and seems disturbed. You tell your neighbor that your friend, whom he has met, is babysitting. He says, no, it's not him. He's met your friend, and this isn't that nice young man. Anyway, he wants you to know he's called the police. Your partner calls your friend and asks him if there's a guy walking back and forth in front of your home. Your friend says that if anyone were outside, he would see him because he is standing outside. You hear the sirens through the speakerphone.
WESTERVELT: Ms. Rankine, are these encounters all things you've experienced? Or is it a mix of experience and imagination?
RANKINE: There's no imagination, actually. Many of the anecdotes in the book were gathered by asking friends of mine to tell me moments when racism surprisingly entered in when you were among friends or colleagues or just doing some ordinary thing in your day.
WESTERVELT: I mean, it must've been hard emotionally cataloging these racist verbal attacks, both for you and for your friends, and to get them on paper.
RANKINE: It was, rather. You know, I feel, like, surprise at my own surprise at some of the accounts. And then, when you start paying attention, it's amazing how many things occur in a single day or a week or a month. And, you know, in a way, you have to kind of step back and just let them go.
WESTERVELT: Well, it's hard to let go. I remember my wife, who's Asian-American, was walking down a street in Jerusalem, where we lived at the time. And an ultra-Orthodox couple walked up to her and said, excuse me, do you speak English? And she said, yes, I do. And they said, are you available to clean my house on Tuesdays and Thursdays?
RANKINE: (Laughter).
WESTERVELT: And my wife, you know, of course kind of lost it and was angry. And I think to this day, when I bring that up, even though it was years ago, she still says, you know, the nerve. And it can be hard to move on.
RANKINE: I think it's surprising because you go through the day assuming certain things, that other people are seeing you as a person. You know, that's sort of basic. And when these moments come into your day in these ordinary events, it's shocking. And it's disturbing. And the disturbance is deep because it goes back to the roots of racism in this country.
WESTERVELT: This is such a big, bold topic that's, you know, in the headlines and on the TV and on the radio every day when we're talking about Eric Garner and Michael Brown. But your prose is so intense and personal. You seem to be writing about how people hurt each other day to day. And it really brings it down to a personal level. Was that part of the aim as well?
RANKINE: Well, yes. You know, on the one hand, I am talking about institutionalized racism. But on another and I think equally important level, I'm just talking about what happens when we fail each other as people.
WESTERVELT: Your book is called "Citizen." What does that mean to you? Do you want people to meditate on the meaning of citizenship, partly, in reading your work?
RANKINE: Exactly. I want to - I want to understand that there are two worlds out there, two Americas out there. If you're a white person, there's one way of being a citizen in this - in our country. And if you're a brown or a black body, there's another way of being a citizen. And that way is very close to death. It's very close to the loss of your life. It's very close to the loss of your liberties at any random moment. And so I wanted that to be considered, to be considered.
WESTERVELT: Claudia Rankine's book of poetry is called "Citizen: An American Lyric." I found your book more powerful than a thousand commentaries on Eric Garner and Michael Brown. It was a moving experience. Thank you for writing it.
RANKINE: Well, thank you. Thank you for reading it and for having me.
ERIC WESTERVELT, HOST:
Amid all the holiday celebrations, you may have missed this story from overseas. An Egyptian court announced a retrial for three journalists from Al Jazeera who have been languishing in jail for more than a year for the crime of reporting the news. The scheduled retrial is a small step in the right direction for a nation that has seen its historic revolution of just four years ago almost totally reversed.
Since Egypt's first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi was overthrown by Egypt's military in the summer of 2013, the new regime has cracked down hard on all political dissent, on all news media. And as Human Rights Watch reports, just in the last few weeks, hundreds of civilians have been referred to military prosecutors. Reigning in the military courts was one of the few tangible gains from the 2011 revolution. Now that, too, has been reversed. That's why the case of reporters Peter Greste, Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed offers a window into post-revolutionary Egypt that looks a lot like pre-revolutionary Egypt.
By all independent accounts, the trial was - to paraphrase Woody Allen - a travesty of a mockery of a sham. The reporters were arrested and convicted on terrorism charges. But no evidence was presented to back up the charges. Two were sentenced to seven years in prison. Baher Mohamed got 10 years.
In announcing a retrial, the court did not suspend the men's sentences or release them on bail. Another trial means more time in jail. As one of the reporters who helped NPR cover the revolutions across North Africa, I was often awed by the courage of ordinary people, especially in Egypt to stand up to authoritarian regimes. I was in Tahrir Square on the euphoric, chaotic night Egypt's dictator, Hosni Mubarak, was removed by the military after weeks of a popular street uprising demanding change.
Recently, I was searching my disorganized reporter's kit for a recording flash card that still had some space on it. And I came across some of the hours of interviews in Tahrir Square that I and an NPR producer did while reporting on the revolution. I couldn't erase it. It was part of my snapshot of history. I began to listen back.
It was the day before Mubarak was ousted. Everyone in the square could feel that his departure was coming. When we asked one 20-something college student, who'd been in the square for days, what he would do if Mubarak leaves, he gave us the kind of flowery, lofty response that one might easily dismiss. But he meant every word. He said, I want to breathe deep the air of freedom. That student in Egypt is still waiting.
ERIC WESTERVELT, HOST:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. Scott Simon is away. I'm Eric Westervelt. President Obama said last month that the U.S. would respond to the hack attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment in the place, time and manner of his choosing. With an executive order signed yesterday, the president has taken the first steps in posing new sanctions on North Korea, which the FBI blames for the attack.
We're joined now by NPR White House correspondent Tamara Keith with more on the response. Tamara, what can you tell us about these new sanctions?
TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: This is the first time the U.S. government has imposed sanctions because of a cyber attack on a private company. But U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said North Korea, quote, "crossed a threshold here with the hacking of Sony Pictures, and the sanctions are meant to signal that cyber attacks will not be tolerated." They also say that this was just among a series of provocations from North Korea.
The sanctions target three entities and 10 individuals. And they say that these folks didn't have any direct involvement with the hacking, but that the sanctions are targeting the North Korean government and, in particular, its defense industry. These people and entities will not be able to do business with U.S. firms or financial institutions. And the executive order the president issued also leaves a lot of room for additional sanctions.
WESTERVELT: And remind us why the administration is adding these new sanctions against North Korea.
KEITH: Sony Pictures had their systems hacked. And the FBI says North Korea was behind that attack. Now some cyber security experts have cast doubt on that. But U.S. government officials made it clear in announcing these sanctions that they stand by the assessment that North Korea was at fault.
WESTERVELT: All because of the movie "The Interview."
KEITH: "The Interview," a bromance.
WESTERVELT: Tamara, are these mostly symbolic sanctions? I mean, North Korea's already under significant sanctions.
KEITH: Significant. There have been four UN Security Council resolutions adopted since 2006, as well as two U.S. sanctions programs. These are largely targeted at North Korea's weapons development - nuclear weapons development. So you could easily argue that these new sanctions are just piling onto a pretty big pile already.
U.S. officials insist, though, that these are new and different because they name 10 individuals, most of whom work for the country's main arms dealer. They say that this naming them is going to make it very hard for those people to do business basically anywhere in the world. The White House also says that there are more sanctions yet to come.
WESTERVELT: And some sanctions are targeting North Korea's military intelligence units. That could be more than symbolism.
KEITH: It could be, except it seems highly unlikely that anyone in U.S. financial institutions is doing business with the North Korean intelligence agency either.
WESTERVELT: Tamara, the White House press secretary says this is just the first phase of the response. I mean, does that mean the U.S. wasn't responsible for those Internet outages in North Korea in recent weeks?
KEITH: It's not entirely clear. U.S. officials were asked about that, and one U.S. official, speaking anonymously, said he wouldn't comment on the North Korean Internet outage and then went on to say that it's even possible they did it to themselves.
WESTERVELT: NPR White House correspondent Tamara Keith. Thanks for joining us.
KEITH: You're welcome.
ERIC WESTERVELT, HOST:
Gridlock has become synonymous with Washington politics. So when Republican Senator Mitch McConnell takes on his dream job as Senate majority leader in a few days, he may have a few obstacles to face. Here's Mitch McConnell just after the GOP's big victory in the midterm elections on the potential for compromise with President Obama.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
SENATOR MITCH MCCONNELL: We're going to function. We are. We're going to pass legislation; some of it, he may not like. But we're going to function.
WESTERVELT: Political reporter Alec MacGillis is here to help us get a better understanding of Kentucky's longest-serving senator and his challenges ahead leading the Senate. MacGillis is author of "The Cynic: The Political Education Of Mitch McConnell." He says McConnell is not your typical southern senator.
ALEC MACGILLIS: He's just not a natural politician, certainly not the kind of politician that usually does well in the Upland South, where he's from. That part of the country produces real sort of storytellers. And he's just not that type it all.
He has done it by being incredibly single-minded about winning elections and just focusing on winning elections above everything else, really. He's also been incredibly good at raising money so he's made that his main issue in Washington; maintaining the status quo when it comes to campaign finance report and fighting against any new restrictions in that area.
WESTERVELT: Many Americans look at Washington and see gridlock and dysfunction. From what you know of Senator McConnell, I mean, what are the prospects of the new majority leader and President Obama actually finding common ground, working together constructively and compromising to get things done?
MACGILLIS: His central sort of strategy these last couple years - his central insight, which was a very shrewd and you might say cynical insight, was that if he could really bog things down in Washington, that would hurt the Democrats and President Obama more even if it was McConnell and the Republicans who were doing most of the obstructing and bogging down.
So that was just his insight. That if he could bog things down, it'll help the Republicans in the midterm elections. And that happened both in 2010 and then just now in 2014. The question now looking forward is whether he changes that calculus. When he looks ahead to 2016, does he think that the Republicans actually need to change tax and start actually trying to get some things past, that maybe the obstruction is no longer more politically shrewd strategy for the next election. That maybe he feels like they actually have to get some stuff done.
WESTERVELT: What if some of the more conservative Tea Party members of his own party want to continue to push the obstructionist path? I mean, what's his relationship like with the GOP Senators he'll be leading?
MACGILLIS: It's a very fraught relationship, and it's something he's had to wrestle with these last couple years - senators like Ted Cruz and, before him, Jim DeMint. In a way, though, he was very adept at using those senators, that sort of far right wing of his caucus, to his advantage. He could point to these folks and say, in his negotiations with the White House on the various fiscal cliffs and debt ceiling crises that we faced, he could point to them and say, look, if you don't give me what we want, you better watch out because these guys here really could take us over the cliff.
Now that he's actually the majority leader, he feels somewhat more responsibility for maintaining a certain, you know, sense of order and government functioning.
WESTERVELT: After a recent dust up with two Tea Party members, McConnell said there are two kinds of people in politics - those who want to make a point and those who want to make a difference. Do you think he's lived up to that motto in his career?
MACGILLIS: No, until now, he has not. McConnell, more than anyone else really in prominence in Washington, has come to represent what is this mindset that has taken over Washington in both parties and also in the media, which is this permanent campaign mindset where it's always - it's all about winning that next election, winning that next cycle.
I asked a lot of people in reporting the book, including a lot of allies of his - Republicans in Kentucky and Washington - so what do you think it is that Senator McConnell really, really cares about? What's it been about all these years? What's it all been for - all of these elections, all this campaigning? And they had a very hard time answering that question.
WESTERVELT: What major legislation do you see the senator pushing for when the new congressional year starts?
MACGILLIS: You're of course going to have a big fight on immigration. There's going to be some Republicans pushing to pass their own immigration legislation to sort of cancel out President Obama's executive order. It's going to be very interesting to see how McConnell handles that because immigration has been a very good example of an issue where he's been reluctant to put himself out there and take a stand. He - even back when President Bush was in office and was pushing immigration reform, Senator McConnell took a backseat in that debate. So this is an issue that he's been very, very wary of that he sees as a political loser in Kentucky.
The other key thing to watch will be how he handles the new regulations on carbon emissions. He, you know, of course comes from a state that relies quite a bit on coal and the coal industry. And he's spoken a lot about trying to, basically, annul the regulations that Obama's put out on carbon emissions from existing coal plants, which is the big issue when it comes to climate change. So you're going to see him trying to knock down those rules in various big budget bills.
WESTERVELT: And he knows those rules, and he's been a master of them in his career.
MACGILLIS: Exactly, and now he has the chance to finally sort of put that mastery of the rules into practice as the actual majority leader.
WESTERVELT: Alec MacGillis is author of "The Cynic: The Political Education Of Mitch McConnell." Thanks a lot for speaking with us.
MACGILLIS: Thank you.
ERIC WESTERVELT, HOST:
Sean Carberry has just completed a two and a half year stint as NPR's Kabul correspondent. In his final postcard from Afghanistan, Carberry, a former professional musician, takes us into Kabul's underground music scene.
SEAN CARBERRY, BYLINE: This has been one of the most important places in my time in Kabul. It's a small restaurant called the Venue, tucked in one of the residential neighborhoods. And it's a melting pot of Westerners and Afghans. And it's the hub of the music scene here in Kabul.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: (Singing) All day long...
CARBERRY: Inside, people are gathered for one of the open mic nights, where musicians from Afghanistan, from all over the world, will get on stage and take turns playing songs together.
(SOUNDBITE OF DRUM BEAT)
CARBERRY: So what - what do you guys want to play tonight?
(SOUNDBITE OF CYMBALS)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: I have no idea.
CARBERRY: I grab my guitar and hop on stage with an Afghan drummer and bass player, and we start improvising.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
CARBERRY: Over the years, I've jammed with some talented and passionate Afghan musicians. Tonight's drummer is fairly new to the scene, but he's got some serious Ginger Baker chops.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (Chanting, unintelligible).
CARBERRY: After a few songs, the largely Afghan crowd starts calling for one of their friends to sing.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #3: (Singing in foreign language).
CARBERRY: For the next hour, Afghan musicians sing a mix of traditional and original songs.
HUMAYUN ZADRAN: The whole inspiration was bringing rock 'n roll to Afghanistan.
CARBERRY: Humayun Zadran is the owner of the Venue. He grew up in exile in Pakistan, where he listened to classic rock and watched grunge bands on MTV. Zadran returned to Kabul after the fall of the Taliban, who had banned music in Afghanistan. Three years ago, he opened this intimate restaurant with its blue lit stage and Led Zeppelin posters on the walls.
ZADRAN: And why did I need a venue - because we would do concerts back in the days in embassies and expatriate bars, where Afghans were not allowed. So I had to set up this place.
CARBERRY: And at this place, Afghans and Westerners mix on stage and in the crowd. When I first arrived, I jammed mostly with Western musicians. But that changed.
ZADRAN: Now you see, like, all the concerts we do, all the jam sessions we do, it's 90 percent Afghans who really want these things to happen.
CARBERRY: Zadran says that's what he's wanted all along, an Afghan rock scene. He says, musicians like me have been mentors for young Afghans, and they're now ready to take center stage.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
CARBERRY: And so I take my exit, but not before one last jam of AC/DC's "Highway To Hell." It's a crowd favorite here.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
SEAN CARBERRY AND UNIDENTIFIED MUSICIANS: (Playing AC/DC song, "Highway To Hell").
CARBERRY: Sean Carberry, NPR News.
ERIC WESTERVELT, HOST:
It's a new year - time to clean out the closet and the basement, start anew. Should you bother to save your kids' beloved baseball card collection, or are sports cards just too old-fashioned? Some kids today might be more likely to reach for cards of Magic the Gathering or Pokemon. Yeah, they're still around, instead of baseball. But Topps, the best-known of the sports card companies, is not ready to give up on the younger generation. Get the app. David Roth wrote about baseball cards for Slate.com, and he joins us now from our New York bureau. Welcome to the program, David.
DAVID ROTH: Hi. Thanks for having me.
WESTERVELT: So for a couple years now, Topps has had an app - say it ain't so - for baseball card-collecting and trading cards. These are virtual cards, not the cardboard ones that come with a stick of gum. I mean, it's called a Bunt, and you've tried it out. Tell us what you think.
ROTH: Oh, it does - I should point out the packs do come with a stick of gum. It's just a virtual stick of gum.
WESTERVELT: Don't try to chew that gum.
ROTH: No, that's what I was (laughter) - the whole thing is basically just an exercise in using your imagination, if you're old enough that you need to imagine for this stuff. If you're 13 to 25, which is, like - 80 percent of the Bunt users are - then I don't imagine there's anything weird about a piece of virtual gum showing up on your phone, exploding and then turning into baseball cards.
WESTERVELT: Well, it's been around for a while. I mean, can Topps call Bunt a success?
ROTH: Definitely yes. It's doing this crazy volume of - you know, trades are happening more than once a second. People are opening packs roughly at the same rate. It's big, and it's also - it's a strange breakthrough for the baseball card business because the expensive part has always been making the actual baseball cards.
WESTERVELT: Well, call me old-fashioned, but aren't we losing something about using an app? I mean, I loved holding the cards, reading the stats on the back - sometimes obscure information about number of home runs and the local hobby of the player. I mean...
ROTH: Yeah, I wrote baseball cards for Topps for some time, and I remember reading them as a kid. And most of that was plug-and-play from the media guide, but I still remember Greg Harris, I believe, is the pitcher who - it said his hobby was sleeping on the back. And I'm 36-years-old, and I saw that card when I was, you know, 10.
Topps is not stopping making regular baseball cards. But I think that they've sort of realized, in this case, that this can be a bridge to collecting actual paper cards that you hold in your hand. And if you can get a kid to care about baseball cards - you know, if they start of the phone, even if they never leave it, there's a generation that's gaining this experience that made baseball cards meaningful to us in the first place.
WESTERVELT: Fair enough. So as a kid, I developed a minor obsession with Charlie Hustle, Pete Rose, and I have a whole bunch of his cards and some signed baseballs. But as we know, Pete Rose has had his problems, and he may not ever get into the Hall of Fame. Those cards worth anything?
ROTH: Depending on when these Pete Rose cards are from and how thoroughly you went over them, which is, like, kind of - this is the ugly paradox of sports card collecting. If you really cared about Pete Rose, and so you're looking at his cards all the time, and you're going back over the stats, like, all those little kid baloney fingerprints on the back are not helping the value very much.
WESTERVELT: Bummer.
ROTH: Yeah, it is.
WESTERVELT: David Roth is the founder of the independent sports website The Classical. Thanks so much for talking with us.
ROTH: Thanks for having me.
ERIC WESTERVELT, HOST:
There's a new face - well, fin - in the waters around Seattle. The little black swoosh cutting through the waves is the unmistakable sign of an orca. And the birth of a baby orca whale excited researchers who've documented the mammal's declining population in that corner of the Pacific. But scratch marks on its dorsal fin puzzled longtime whale watcher Ken Balcomb. And when he noticed the youngest whale was swimming with a female who was too old to be the calf's mother, he came to a striking hypothesis - a midwife might have assisted the birth.
Balcomb thinks the baby's companion is actually its grandmother. And after using her teeth help pull the calf out, she's doing something even those of us without fins can understand - giving a new mom some well-deserved rest.
ERIC WESTERVELT, HOST:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Eric Westervelt sitting in for Scott Simon. In New York City tomorrow, the friends and family of slain police officer Wenjian Liu will gather to pay their respects. Mayor Bill de Blasio is expected to attend the funeral and so are thousands of police.
Yesterday, New York Police Commissioner Bill Bratton urged officers not to turn their backs on the mayor as they did at the funeral for Liu's partner last weekend. Tensions between de Blasio and police have spun into a bitter feud, and many officers blame the mayor for what they call anti-police words and policies. We invited New York Times reporter J. David Goodman to explain why the mayor's relationship with police is so fraught, beginning with his mayoral campaign, when de Blasio ran against so-called stop-and-frisk policies.
J. DAVID GOODMAN: He came in on a police reform platform. And that's something that even if some of the police unions didn't support the stop-and-frisk program under his predecessor, they certainly didn't seem to appreciate the platform that Mayor de Blasio ran on.
WESTERVELT: After a grand jury decided not to indict a New York City officer after the death of Eric Garner last month, protests broke out all over the country calling for changes in basic police practices. Mayor de Blasio gave a speech on Staten Island that seems to be one of the biggest tipping points in all this. Remind us what he said and what he didn't say to make things worse.
GOODMAN: Right. So you have all the sort of tension kind of simmering, and then Mayor de Blasio makes a speech that I think for a lot of New Yorkers rang sort of true. You know, what he said was what a lot of at least African American New Yorkers know to be their own experience, that when they're around the police you use a little bit more caution.
You know, he tells his biracial son that he should take extra care around the police. That's the reality we live in in the city. It seemed, at the time, as a statement of empathy with the Garner family, but for the New York City Police Department, what they heard was the mayor telling New Yorkers that he tells his son to be afraid of the police.
WESTERVELT: You report that the mayor had a two-hour meeting with police union officials just before New Year's. Did anything come out of that meeting?
GOODMAN: Not as much as might have been hoped for. The mayor and the police unions really were sort of as far part as two sort of groups of people meeting can be. They came in essentially just to hear each other out, and that's what they did. No results came in the meeting. There was no sort of final resolution.
WESTERVELT: After the murder of the two New York City officers in the patrol car last month, a memo circulated among officers telling them not to make arrests unless, quote, "absolutely necessary." Do we know at all if since then police arrests and citations are down?
GOODMAN: Yeah, I mean, this is an incredibly interesting and disturbing development. So that memo wasn't so much a memo as - it went around on social media, like a bit of text that essentially said not to make arrests, put your own safety first. And it was attributed to the patrolmen's union.
They denied having written it, but it turned out when the official statistics came in at the end of last week across the board in every police precinct you had dramatic declines in arrests, in parking tickets, in criminal summonses. Some places had absolutely no tickets written whatsoever for that week, when, you know, the previous week, they would've had hundreds. And looking at the statistics, even though all five unions deny having orchestrated any kind of slowdown, it's hard to imagine that this wasn't an organized effort, if not formally than informally.
WESTERVELT: That is incredible. This could have practical or potentially dangerous consequences, no?
GOODMAN: No, that's right. You know, I mean, it's interesting to look back on that week and to see, you know, crime did go down that week. There was about a 15 percent decline in crime. Criminologists that we spoke to said one week is not an example but, you know, if that behavior continues and people become accustomed to that, or the people that are criminally minded may not be committing crimes because of police pressure, feel like that pressure is off.
Not to say that they weren't making arrests. They were making the arrests when they have to, what officers will call a must arrest situation. But for the rest of them they weren't. Citywide there was about 66 percent in decline in arrests last week, which is incredibly stark.
WESTERVELT: So given the deep, lingering animosity, what's the way forward in repairing this relationship?
GOODMAN: This is the big challenge for de Blasio entering his second year. And, you know, it's exactly kind of ironic that he came into this year - he had two major challenges. The first challenge was as a, you know, liberal, reform-minded mayor, could he keep crime down in a city that had seen historic lows in crime before his time? And he proved that he could. But his other promise was that he could improve the relationship between police and especially the minority communities in which they're most active.
And at the end of this year, he not only has seemingly not made great progress in that area, but also now he's got to improve his relationship with the police department. It's not the police and the community; it's the police and himself. And so his mission is narrowed to this one very critical step because, you know, he's got three more years as mayor. And you need the police department on your back if you're going to govern a city as large as New York.
WESTERVELT: Reporter J. David Goodman covers police for The New York Times. David, thanks for joining us.
GOODMAN: Thanks for having me.
ERIC WESTERVELT, HOST:
Solar energy had a banner year in 2014. As more and more U.S. households make their own electricity with solar panels, they're paying less to electric utilities, and that's making the utilities a little nervous. In some states, those companies are fighting back. Lauren Sommer of member station KQED and Dan Boyce of member station KUNC tell us how sunny California and Colorado are handling the rise of solar.
DAN BOYCE, BYLINE: There's a quiet war going on, a slow simmering battle between electric utilities and solar companies.
LAUREN SOMMER, BYLINE: You probably haven't noticed this clash because it's happening one house at a time.
(SOUNDBITE OF DRILLING NOISES)
SOMMER: Example? Barb Gifford and her husband Don Dugger are standing out in front of their place in Boulder, Colorado.
BOYCE: And they're watching the installation of their new rooftop solar system.
BARB GIFFORD: These are the kind of the days in Colorado you go, oh, my gosh, we should have solar (laughter) because it's sunny, it's bright, it's blue.
SOMMER: For Don and Barb, the time feels right because solar has gotten a lot cheaper in the last few years.
DON DUGGER: Definitely cut our dependency on Xcel down dramatically by doing it that way.
SOMMER: Xcel Energy is their utility. Dugger thinks these panels could provide 80 percent of the power they use. That's power they won't have to buy from Xcel.
BOYCE: In fact, Xcel has to buy excess power from them.
FRANK PRAGER: That's a concern.
BOYCE: Xcel VP of Policy and Strategy, Frank Prager.
PRAGER: That's why we're trying to address it today, before it gets to be too big a concern.
BOYCE: Let's explain for a second. If you put solar panels on your roof, most likely, you're still going to be hooked up to the traditional electric grid. So you can still turn on the TV if the sun isn't shining.
SOMMER: But if the sun is shining, most state laws require your utility to pay you for any extra power you're feeding back onto the grid. And in California, it's starting to add up.
JONATHAN MARSHALL: We have, far and away, the most customers solar.
SOMMER: That's Jonathan Marshall, a spokesman for Pacific Gas and Electric, which is the major utility in northern California. It's home to a quarter of all the rooftop solar systems in the country.
BOYCE: And Marshall says with such low bills, solar customers aren't paying their share of keeping up the electric grid.
MARSHALL: In fact, they use the grid more than almost anyone because they're selling power back into it.
BOYCE: So PG&E and California's two other major utilities are proposing a big change to make up lost revenue.
SOMMER: A fixed monthly charge that everyone would pay, 10 bucks a month, $120 a year. The fee may not sound like much, but to solar companies, it's a direct attack.
SANJAY RANCHOD: Investor-owned utilities across the country are fighting rooftop solar.
BOYCE: That's Sanjay Ranchod of SolarCity, the largest solar company in both California and Colorado.
SOMMER: He says the extra fee would make solar a harder sell for his company.
RANCHOD: For a company that has depended on a monopoly, competition from SolarCity or any other solar company is scary.
SOMMER: He says it also makes solar less attractive at a time when states are trying to encourage renewable energy.
BOYCE: UC Berkeley economist Severin Borenstein says this whole debate shows solar is a disruptive technology, kind of like cell phones were to land lines.
SEVERIN BORENSTEIN: I think there's a big question in the electricity industry right now about what will happen to utilities and what their business model will be 10, or 20, or 30 years from now.
BOYCE: There's actually a name for the way solar is cutting into the utility business model.
SOMMER: The death spiral.
BOYCE: The more customers go solar, the more revenue utilities lose, so they have to raise prices to make it up.
SOMMER: But higher prices entice even more customers to go solar.
BOYCE: Which creates a cycle...
SOMMER: Spiraling out of control. Borenstein says that's why utilities may need to consider a new business model. Instead of being power companies, they could become electric grid companies...
BORENSTEIN: Where they don't actually bring electricity in, they just shuffle it around between one house and another.
(SOUNDBITE OF DRILLING NOISES)
BOYCE: At Don Dugger and Barb Gifford's house in Colorado, they actually feel defiant about it, like, the writing's on the wall.
DUGGER: Xcel either changes to match technology, or they're going to get left behind.
SOMMER: In states with a lot of solar, that struggle is already playing out. For NPR News, I'm Lauren Sommer in San Francisco.
BOYCE: And I'm Dan Boyce in Denver.
WESTERVELT: That story came to us with help from Inside Energy, a public media collaboration focusing on America's energy issues.
ERIC WESTERVELT, HOST:
Movement often starts with music. Choreographers hear a song. It delivers a feeling, a story. And it's their job to translate that into dance. As we leave behind 2014, we talked with three choreographers about the music that made them move, the songs from their playlists that made them get up and dance. This is award-winning choreographer Peggy Hickey. She chose Mark Ronson's "Uptown Funk," featuring Bruno Mars.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "UPTOWN FUNK")
MARK RONSON: (Singing) Doh. Doh doh doh, doh doh doh.
PEGGY HICKEY: It just really makes me happy. That's the most important thing. Even listening to it now, I'm bouncing.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "UPTOWN FUNK")
MARK RONSON AND BRUNO MARS: (Singing) Doh. Doh doh doh, doh doh doh. This hit, that ice-cold, Michelle Pfeiffer, that white gold. This one's for them hood girls, them good girls, straight masterpieces.
HICKEY: Music, since I was a little girl, always tells me what it is. For instance, when music swirls, it's some sort of turn. When music comes to a sharp, crisp stop...
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "UPTOWN FUNK")
MARK RONSON AND BRUNO MARS: (Singing) Don't believe me? Just watch.
HICKEY: It's really easy for me to sort of see, OK, this is a fall, this is an explosive run. The best choreography is the kind of choreography that helps you hear the music better.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "UPTOWN FUNK")
MARK RONSON AND BRUNO MARS: (Singing) Don't believe me? Just watch. Don't believe me? Just watch. Hey, hey, hey, oh.
HICKEY: I work with a lot of college kids, and this is just the sort of song that they will love. I'm always on the hunt for something that inspires me and inspires the kids. And this is a perfect, fun - just the song I know they'll be singing along with while we stretch.
MARK MORRIS: I'm Mark Morris and I'm a choreographer. Music is a gigantic world of infinite variety and dancing is considerably smaller. Music is the thing that drives me. I make up dances because of music.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE RITE OF SPRING")
THE BAD PLUS: (Playing piano).
MORRIS: Listening to a version of Stravinsky's "Rite Of Spring" by the incredibly fabulous, progressive, sort of jazz band, The Bad Plus.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE RITE OF SPRING")
THE BAD PLUS: (Playing piano).
MORRIS: I personally have had enough of "The Rite Of Spring" and had really no interest in choreographing it. But it was in the form of this new reading of the piece. It was thrilling. It re-approached the rhythms in a way that can't be done by a big orchestra.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE RITE OF SPRING")
THE BAD PLUS: (Playing piano).
MORRIS: I as a choreographer don't listen to a piece of music and see a gorgeous, completed performance of a dance in my head. It's the figuring out of the music that is interesting to me in applying a dance to it.
JAMAICA CRAFT: I'm Jamaica Craft and I am a choreographer and artistic director. My pick is Taylor Swift's "Shake It Off."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SHAKE IT OFF")
TAYLOR SWIFT: (Singing) I stay out too late. Got nothing in my brain. That's what people say.
CRAFT: If I did the dance that I'd just want to shake it off with, I want to do, like, crazy dancing, like, a freedom-style dancing of just letting it go.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SHAKE IT OFF")
SWIFT: (Singing) But I can't make them stay. At least, that's what people say.
CRAFT: You know, just like running around the house and just letting it play while you're drinking coffee and dancing around? That's it - get in your car, play it one more time before you enter the room with other people (laughter).
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SHAKE IT OFF")
SWIFT: (Singing) In my mind saying, it's going to be all right. 'Cause the players gonna play, play, play...
CRAFT: People can sometimes dance and it looks good, but if they're not attaching feeling to it, it doesn't touch me. Because if you feel good, you'll stay with people forever because people never forget a feeling.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SHAKE IT OFF")
SWIFT: (Singing) Shake it off, shake it off. You've got to shake it off, shake it off.
WESTERVELT: Choreographers Jamaica Craft, Mark Morris and Peggy Hickey, sharing their favorite dance grooves of 2014.
ERIC WESTERVELT, HOST:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Eric Westervelt. Time now for Sports.
(MUSIC)
WESTERVELT: What's new in 2015? College football has at long-last joined the rest of sports, using playoff games to pick a champion instead of that convoluted bowl system. In the NBA, King James has fallen to back and knee injuries - ouch. And speaking of playoffs, it's that time again in the NFL, and here to run it all down for us is Howard Bryant of espn.com and ESPN the magazine.
Hi, Howard. Happy New Year.
HOWARD BRYANT: Happy New Year, Eric. How are you?
WESTERVELT: I'm well, thank you. Let's start off with college football. I mean, two semi-final matchups this week produced two pretty clear winners. Oregon destroyed Florida State and Ohio State edged out Alabama. Tell us what happened.
BRYANT: Well, I think what happened - you know, Oregon - they're just a fantastic football team. They run the ball, they throw it, they do everything. You've got the Heisman Trophy winner Marcus Mariota. And I think that the clock sort of struck 12 on Florida State. They hadn't lost a football game in two years. They were a great team. But it so turned out that they'd had a lot of close games all year, and everybody was wondering when they were finally going to pay for playing relatively average football, but finding a way to win because they had so much talent. But this time, in a playoff system, you run up against another team like Oregon, and they got their doors blown off. They gave up more points than any Florida State team ever had in a bowl game - 59 to 20. And on the other hand, just a great football game between Ohio State and Alabama. And this is exactly what we've been talking about for all these years. Finally, instead of having a computer decide who the national champion is, play it out on the field - great games. And I think that over time, you're going to see them expand these playoffs even more than they have, for finally having them. I think four teams is not enough and after watching what we've seen this weekend, I think that's a good thing.
WESTERVELT: So they might expand them. And so Ohio State and Oregon - hopefully it'll be a great game - will play for the championship on January 12 in Arlington, Texas. I mean, are those the teams we would've expected to see come out of all this, under the old system?
BRYANT: Well, I think under the old system you were still going to get Alabama. You were going to get two of those four. I think more than likely you were going to get Alabama and Oregon. I think they were the two best teams coming in. However, Ohio State had earned the right to compete. Under the old system, Ohio State wouldn't have even had a chance to win, and Ohio State might be the most compelling team because they've played with three quarterbacks over the course of the season. They've dealt with injury, and now you're looking at a team that deserves to play for a championship. However, that wouldn't have happened before and you would've had everybody complaining that Ohio State didn't get the opportunity that they deserved. Play it on the field. That's why we watch the games.
WESTERVELT: Moving on to basketball. In Cleveland, Cavalier and king LeBron James has strains in both his left knee and his back. I mean, knees and back - how worried are Cavs fans, Howard?
BRYANT: Well, I think when you - the things you don't want (laughter). You don't get hurt at all, but you really don't want to hurt your back and your knees, especially as a basketball player. And I think that in the short term, the Cleveland Cavaliers will be fine. But when I look at LeBron James's injuries, you have to step back and think that he just turned 30, but he's been in the league for 12 years. He's in his 13th season right now. This is the price of not going to college. So he's been playing an NBA season since he was a teenager, and on top of that because he's so good, because his teams are so good, they've gone to the finals the last four straight years. He's been logging many more minutes. He plays every single game. He never gets hurt. And I think I agree with what Byron Scott said - the coach of the Lakers - that the human body was just not meant to play that much basketball. You have to include the Olympics and U.S.A. basketball to that, too. He needs a break.
WESTERVELT: And Howard, briefly let's go to NFL and playoff time, and let's start with today's games. The Cardinals take on the Panthers, the Ravens take on the Steelers. What are you going to be watching out for?
BRYANT: Ravens-Steelers is always good because you've got a rivalry game there. And then on top of that, I think Arizona - you feel bad for them because they lost their quarterback, and Carolina - well, they had a losing record so that's not a real compelling game. What I'm really looking forward to is tomorrow. I'm looking forward to the Dallas Cowboys starting a playoff run. That iconic name, the Dallas Cowboys, have not won a Super Bowl in 20 years. They've only won two playoff games. Incredible. They've only won two playoff games during that time since beating the Steelers back in '95. So love 'em, hate 'em, but they are an iconic name. It's great to see them back in the playoffs and I'm hoping that they're more than one-and-done against Detroit tomorrow.
WESTERVELT: Thanks a lot. Howard Bryant of ESPN, thanks.
BRYANT: Thank you.
ERIC WESTERVELT, HOST:
You know how it goes - you're getting a little older, your memory starts to go, you forget where you put the car keys or whether you've turned off the oven. And you can't remember what happened to all the telemetry data you collected while exploring the surface of Mars. All right, you might not experience that last one, but NASA's Mars rover, Opportunity, is experiencing what NASA scientists are calling amnesia. Opportunity has been on the planet's surface for more than a decade. That's pretty old in rover years. And it's having problems with one of its memory banks. When the rover tries to save data to that faulty bank, the data gets lost, or worse - it reboots and forgets the commands NASA has been sending it. NASA's working on a software hack to make the rover ignore the defective memory bank and once they get it fixed, they're hoping Opportunity can hold on just a little bit longer before it bites the red dust. The project manager told "Discovery News" that some of Opportunity's most important explorations could be just ahead in the Marathon Valley. The Marathon Valley, by the way, is named that because the rover will have rolled more than 26.2 miles across Mars if it makes it. Not bad for an old fella.
ERIC WESTERVELT, HOST:
So think of all the numbers you've encountered today - the clock in your smartphone, maybe the date on your calendar, the numbers on that highway sign. And those are just the ones you can see. It's easy to take numbers for granted. They're the scaffolding that our economy, our technology, huge parts of our daily life, are built on. But there was a time when a zigzagging line didn't mean two and a vertical line didn't mean one and a circle didn't mean zero. Just how that system developed is a question that's fascinated Amir Aczel since his childhood. He's a math and science writer, and his new book is "Finding Zero: A Mathematician's Odyssey To Uncover The Origins Of Numbers."
AMIR ACZEL: To me, the invention or discovery of numbers is the greatest intellectual invention of the human mind. I have say invention or discovery because that's a huge problem in the philosophy of mathematics. Did we invent numbers, or do they exist regardless of us? But writing numbers is certainly an invention, and that invention is what has obsessed me all of my life.
WESTERVELT: You also explore some of the faults, starts and dead-ends along the way to our current system of numbers, which are known as Hindu- Arabic numerals. Could you talk about some of the number systems that, I guess you could say, have gone extinct?
ACZEL: Right. The Maya had a very interesting number which they used in calendars. And there was a zero there, actually. That number system didn't go anywhere. And then of course, there's the Babylonian number, (unintelligible) numbers, and they did not really have a zero. Sometimes they'd leave a space. And the best example - and my favorite - is the Roman numerals. And if you want to try something interesting with the Roman numerals, try to create the multiplication table and you can see it's very complicated. So and, the reason is that the numbers don't cycle. They have to use, say, L for 50 and C for 100. So it's unique, while we can use the same sign, like two, in different places. Two with a zero after it is 20. Two alone is just two. You can create numbers using the cyclicity of the numerals. And that's something that no other number system that I know of has.
WESTERVELT: Why is zero, specifically, so important?
ACZEL: Without a zero, you couldn't allow the numerals to cycle. You couldn't do this example that I gave, the two followed by zero stands for 20, creating that great economy where just nine signs plus a zero allow us to write any number that we want.
WESTERVELT: What sparked your interest in finding the origin of zero? You take us on this quest around the world.
ACZEL: I first became interested in numbers - my father was a ship's captain for cruise ship in the Mediterranean, and one of the favorite ports was Monte Carlo. And what I saw there were these numerals, and they're very beautiful, on a roulette table in the fanciest casino in the world. These numerals just captured me, my attention and my fascination. And it sort of - that really led me to pursue a career in mathematics and statistics. And then I became very interested in where these numerals came from. Everybody says, oh, numbers come from India. And I wanted to know how they came from India, and then I became aware of the big controversy with British scholar G. R. Kaye.
WESTERVELT: Who was convinced that the zero came from the West.
ACZEL: Exactly, and he was actually an expert on India, but he was biased. He writes in one of his papers, like, Indians think that their history started several million years ago and of course this is nonsense and the numerals don't come from India.
And the person I follow in the book, Georges Coedes, a French scholar, tried to prove the opposite. And this particular style that I'm after throughout this book that I'm trying to find is that zero that he used to defeat Kaye and his followers.
WESTERVELT: Your book is called "Finding Zero," so this isn't really a spoiler. I mean, you traced the earliest-known written representation of zero to this crumbling 7th century tablet that you find in Cambodia, and its stacked amid ruins of other ancient artifacts. What was going through your mind?
ACZEL: It's the greatest euphoria in my life. And I have a feeling I'll never have a moment like that ever again. And I just looked at it. I couldn't dare touch it, as if it were fragile - which it wasn't, it's a piece of stone weighing several tons. Greatest moment in my life.
WESTERVELT: Tell us its significance, what it said. Where was the zero, and what did the zero mean there in that writing?
ACZEL: Well, it says Chaka 605 began in the fifth day of the waning moon. So it's really an astronomical description of the beginning of a year and a calendar called Chaka. So luckily, they had the date there. So because the date has a zero, we have the first zero. And they had to write a zero. And what the rest of the tablet talks about is about slaves to be given to a king and sacks of white rice and several other things. So it's a list of gifts to a local king.
WESTERVELT: Amir, we knew this tablet existed. I mean, why was it so important to find the physical object?
ACZEL: Well, often times you read when you do research about something that disappeared. And when something is gone, it's really far from being the same anymore. To me, it was important to recover this artifact with the earliest zero because I feel it's important to see it and continue to study it. And there's a monument to this great invention of the human mind, the ability to write something down that represents complete nothingness.
WESTERVELT: Amir Aczel speaking with us from WGBH in Boston. His new book is called "Finding Zero." Thanks so much for speaking with us.
ACZEL: Thank you very much. It was my pleasure.
ERIC WESTERVELT, HOST:
You probably won't realize that you recognize Christine Cavanaugh until you hear her. The actress gave voice to popular cartoon and film characters throughout the 1990s, and last month, she passed away. NPR's Jasmine Garsd has this remembrance.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BABE")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTRESS #1: (As character) Pigs are definitely stupid.
CHRISTINE CAVANAUGH: (As Babe) Ahem, excuse me.
JASMINE GARSD, BYLINE: That is the unmistakably lovable voice of a heroic little pig from the 1995 film "Babe," and it's the voice of actress Christine Cavanaugh.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BABE")
CAVANAUGH: (As Babe) I'm a large white.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTRESS #2: (As character) Yes, that's your breed, dear. What's your name?
CAVANAUGH: (As Babe) I don't know.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTRESS #2: (As character) Well, what did your mother call you to tell you apart from your brothers and sisters?
CAVANAUGH: (As Babe) She called us all babe.
GARSD: Cavanaugh did not start off as a voice actress. She had small parts in TV shows like "Cheers." But her big break came in 1991, when she joined the cast of the Emmy award-winning cartoon "Rugrats" as the cowardly Chucky Finster.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "RUGRATS")
CAVANAUGH: (As Chucky Finster) I'm not scared. I just don't want to be potty-trained, that's all. It's just not right.
CHERYL CHASE: (As Angelica Pickles) Don't you dummies know anything? Everybody who's anybody is potty-trained.
CAVANAUGH: (As Chucky Finster) Well, not me. I'm never going to do it. They can't make me. I'm going to wear my diapers forever and nobody is going to stop me.
PAUL GERMAIN: She was doing a slight variation on her normal voice to play Chucky, but it was her voice.
GARSD: Paul Germain is one of the creators and producers of "Rugrats."
GERMAIN: Christine was able to convey so much emotion in the character, and so much pain and change in emotion. It was just amazing.
GARSD: The show received critical praise, and until "SpongeBob" came along, it was Nickelodeon's longest-running cartoon. In a statement to NPR, the network said, Christine gave voice to one of the most beloved characters in Nickelodeon's history in Chucky Finster.
In 1996 she joined the cast of "Dexter's Laboratory" as Dexter himself, a child who was a genius scientist with an ambiguous foreign accent.
Here's Dexter firing his own sister from his laboratory.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "DEXTER'S LABORATORY")
CAVANAUGH: (As Dexter) Dee Dee, how long have we known each other? Our whole lives, you say? Do not interrupt, never. Or - or, should I say, you never knew me? Because if you did, you would know I am a soul who requires peace, quiet and most importantly, solitude.
GARSD: Dan Sarto is the publisher and editor-in-chief at Animation World Network, a website about animation and visual effects. He says a voice actor can make or break a cartoon character.
DAN SARTO: The voices are so critical, they make the characters. And some of our most iconic and famous characters that were made that way because of the voice actor behind the character.
GARSD: Cavanaugh retired from voice acting in 2001. She died on December 22. The cause of death has not yet been reported. Christine Cavanaugh was 51. Jasmine Garsd, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF "RUGRATS" THEME SONG)
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Rachel Martin.
Venezuela is dealing with food shortages, massive inflation, and rising discontent; all this despite the country's rich oil reserves. And it's happened under the leadership of the socialist government that's held power for the past 15 years. So you'd think these problems would present a golden opportunity for the political opposition in that country. Instead, that political bloc remains fractured and weak with one of its main leaders behind bars. Reporter John Otis explains why.
JOHN OTIS, BYLINE: Lilian Tintori climbs into the back of an SUV with her five-year-old daughter. They're on their way to a prison on the outskirts of Caracas to visit Tintori's husband, opposition politician Leopoldo Lopez.
LILIAN TINTORI: We are going to Ramo Verde prison. It's a military prison.
OTIS: Back in February, Lopez helped lead massive antigovernment demonstrations that he hoped would force the resignation of President Nicolas Maduro. Instead, Lopez was arrested and charged with inciting violence during the protests which left 43 people dead. His incarceration is taking a huge toll on his family.
TINTORI: My daughter, Manuela, 5 years old, she asks a lot, why Maduro put my father in jail? Why they don't want to open the door of the cell? So it's a lot for a kid. And she asked me, mommy, my father's going to die in jail?
OTIS: Human Rights Watch, the UN, and the Obama administration all say the charges are trumped up and have called for Lopez's release. Still, Lopez may have miscalculated. His jailing means that for the past 11 months, Venezuela's most charismatic opposition leader has been effectively silenced. His actions, critics say, form part of a pattern of blunders by the opposition that have ended up bolstering the socialist revolution launched by Hugo Chavez in 1999.
(SOUNDBITE OF PROTEST)
OTIS: In 2002, for example, opposition leaders supported a military coup that briefly ousted the democratically-elected Chavez. They also promoted a strike by oil workers that severely damaged the economy.
(SOUNDBITE OF PROTEST)
OTIS: In recent years, a more democratic opposition has been gaining ground. In the 2013 presidential election, challenger Henrique Capriles nearly defeated Maduro, who nearly defeated Chavez that same year following his death from cancer.
Since then, inflation has skyrocketed and Venezuelans face shortages of food, medicine, and consumer goods. However the government still holds huge advantages, including massive oil income. Most major news outlets are pro-government, making it hard for critics to get their message out.
Meanwhile, the opposition, which includes politicians from the far left to the far right, has been bickering over strategy and leadership. Capriles and Lopez have gone from close allies to bitter rivals.
LUCILA FLOREZ: (Speaking Spanish).
OTIS: As a result, average Venezuelans like Lucila Florez, who sells fruit in a working-class suburb of Caracas, remain skeptical.
OTIS: She says...
FLOREZ: (Through interpreter) I don't see any unity. Lopez and Capriles are each going their own way, and a divided country will never amount to anything.
(SOUNDBITE OF RALLY)
OTIS: With Lopez behind bars, Maria Corina Machado has emerged as Venezuela's most militant opposition voice.
(SOUNDBITE OF RALLY)
MARIA CORINA MACHADO: (Speaking Spanish).
OTIS: But she's also paying a steep price. In April, she was stripped of her seat in Congress for criticizing the government at an international forum. Last month, prosecutors charged Machado with plotting to assassinate President Maduro. As with Lopez, she says the government appears to be using the legal system to gag its critics.
MACHADO: What they want is a silence and docile opposition. And that's not what they're going to get. We have the right to speak out the truth.
TINTORI: (Spanish spoken).
OTIS: After an hour-long ride to the prison to visit Lopez, the guards won't let me in. So I say goodbye to his wife and daughter. But before leaving, Lilian Tintori insists her husband did the right thing. His unjust imprisonment, she says, has finally exposed to the world the authoritarian nature of the Maduro government.
For NPR News, I'm John Otis.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
For most of her career, Jennifer Aniston has played the cute, funny girl next-door.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "FRIENDS")
DAVID SCHWIMMER: (As Ross Geller) What is it?
JENNIFER ANISTON: (As Rachel Green) It's a trifle. It's got all these layers. First, there's a layer of ladyfingers, then a layer of jam, then custard, then beef sauteed with peas and onions.
(LAUGHTER)
ANISTON: (As Rachel Green) And then bananas. And then I just put some whipped cream on top.
SCHWIMMER: (As Ross Geller) What was the one right before bananas?
(LAUGHTER)
ANISTON: (As Rachel Green) The beef. Yeah, that was weird to me, too.
MARTIN: Ah, Rachel Green. Though Aniston is best known for playing characters like Rachel in "Friends," she's also dabbled in independent film. She was in the cult classic "Office Space," and took on a dramatic role in the 2002 film "The Good Girl."
Her latest project signals an even bigger turn for Aniston. The film is called "Cake." And Jennifer Aniston is the star and executive producer. It's a far darker role than she has tackled before. Her character, Claire, is in a support group for people who suffer from chronic pain. In the opening scene, the group counselor is trying to get members to open up about the suicide of another member named Nina. She calls on Claire to share her feelings.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "CAKE")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTRESS: (As group counselor) Would you like to say something to Nina?
ANISTON: (As Claire Bennett) No.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTRESS: (As group counselor) It might make you feel better to get in touch with your feelings.
ANISTON: (As group counselor) Well, then in that case, yeah, I do have a question. She jumped off the freeway overpass, right? Specifically where the 110 meets the 105?
UNIDENTIFIED ACTRESS: (As group counselor) Yes, but...
ANISTON: (As Claire Bennett) And is it true that she landed on a flatbed truck that was full of used furniture that was heading to Mexico?
UNIDENTIFIED ACTRESS: (As group counselor) Claire, we should be focusing on our feelings.
ANISTON: (As Claire Bennett) And that no one discovered the body until it reached Acapulco. That was, like, more than 2,000 miles away? Way to go Nina. Personally, I hate it when suicides make it easy on their survivors, but please continue.
MARTIN: I spoke with Jennifer Aniston recently about the film "Cake," and where it fits into her career. We started by talking about what kind of preparation she did to play someone suffering from debilitating pain.
ANISTON: It was a lot of studying the back, the leg, the neck. Pretty much every single part of her body hurt. And you really do start to manifest odd little, you know, cricks and pinches in your neck. And every week, I would have some form of bodywork just to sort of make sure my body didn't kind of lock into any of that permanently.
I mean, that's the other thing is, like, doing this and talking to women or men who have - who are suffering from chronic pain on a daily basis, it is so unimaginable. I mean, I was so grateful for my body at the end of the day. You know what I mean?
MARTIN: Little things we take for granted.
ANISTON: The little - exactly. Exactly.
MARTIN: I imagine you are at a stage in your life and career when you can pick your projects.
ANISTON: Well, you can and you can't. The truth is, you become established in a certain category. And I think you are given offers and opportunities based on how the industry sees you fitting into that - that job. And sometimes you have to kind of take the reins yourself or take a project on and get in made independently so that you can do that work that not necessarily another director or studio would see you fit for.
It is, I've said, such a catch-22. It's like I know I can do this, you just have to give me the opportunity. And then they - what comes back is, well, we can't give you the opportunity because we've never seen you do this so...
MARTIN: We obviously know you primarily as a comedic actress, first as Rachel Green on "Friends." When you think back on that chapter, I mean, I know you probably have lots of reflections because it was a long chapter. (Laughter).
ANISTON: It was a long, wonderful chapter; a chapter I miss
MARTIN: Was it mostly wonderful?
ANISTON: Oh, my God, mostly? It was awesome. It was the greatest 10 years. Not only were we having so much fun ourselves, but the amount of love that people felt for that show, still feel for that show, and I think that's so special to be a part of something like that.
MARTIN: You're 45. Am I allowed to say that? Are you...
ANISTON: What?
MARTIN: (Laughter).
ANISTON: That's absolute hogwash.
MARTIN: You have been in this business for more than 20 years. What do you still want? What does contentment look like for you?
ANISTON: I don't set goals like that. You know, I don't really...
MARTIN: Do you not?
ANISTON: No, I don't. I kind of live in the moment, and I don't have a five-year plan. And I don't have an, OK, so what we're going to do now is we're going to go for a character that takes you into a real dark territory. So hopefully you'll be - you know, it's not a strategy. You know what I mean?
MARTIN: You don't set out to play more dramatic roles? Is that something that you want, or you just see what comes to me?
ANISTON: I see what comes to me. I mean, I would love to play more dramatic roles. But I love comedic roles. I love just good material. But I have to - honestly, after doing "Cake," I mean, I feel like I scratched an itch that's been needing to be scratched. And I want, very much, to play really wonderful characters and telling a story, exposing a human experience; comedy or drama or both infused. I mean, I think comedy and drama go hand-in-hand. You know, life isn't one or the other.
MARTIN: Jennifer Aniston. Her new movie is called "Cake." Thank you so much, Jennifer.
ANISTON: Thanks, Rachel.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Ebola has been on the minds of many people here in the U.S. over the past year. Media reports showed the horror of the outbreak in West Africa. Hundreds of Americans traveled overseas to fight the disease. And in this country, hospitals and airports came up with plans for dealing with those who had been exposed to the virus. Meanwhile, members of a church in Washington, D.C., were affected by Ebola in ways they never expected. NPR's Anders Kelto has our story.
ANDERS KELTO, BYLINE: Trinity Episcopal Church is a beautiful place. There are stone walls, wooden rafters, stained-glass windows. And the congregation here is very international. They're from more than countries, including several in West Africa. Reverend John Harmon, who's originally from Liberia, says when Ebola hit West Africa, the church pitched in.
REVEREND JOHN HARMON: This congregation gave $5,000 and were part of a national effort to send containers to West Africa.
KELTO: Containers with medical supplies and protective suits. But then in the midst of all this giving, a funny thing happened. Church attendance went way down. Nearly a quarter of the congregation, 50 people, just stopped showing up. At first, Reverend Harmon wasn't sure why. And then he started getting phone calls from parishioners.
HARMON: Some folks called to say, you know, I'm not coming to church because I don't know who's traveling.
KELTO: As in who's traveling to West Africa. But here's the thing, no one was traveling to West Africa. Most West Africans in the congregation hadn't been back there in years. But still, some church members feared Ebola would somehow creep into the church. The low attendance continued for weeks, and Reverend Harmon started to get concerned. Then at a church service in October, he finally addressed the elephant in the Cathedral.
HARMON: In the middle of the service, we just had this honest conversation.
KELTO: You just kind of stopped and were like, we're going to talk about this?
HARMON: Yes, that's what we did.
KELTO: He asked parishioners to voice their concerns. And then he had several doctors from the congregation come up and talk about Ebola, including how it's spread. Cora Dixon, a church member, says the doctors' talk was reassuring.
CORA DIXON: Several of them got up, and they spoke to the cause. And they relaxed our minds.
KELTO: Then Reverend Harmon asked anyone traveling abroad to skip church for three Sundays, even if they weren't traveling to West Africa. He also said it was OK to nod or bow rather than shake hands during the passing of the peace. And he had the ushers put out two big bottles of hand sanitizer.
HARMON: I use them when I get back to the alter so that visible sign is that we are expressing for each other.
KELTO: And at any time, did you ever just kind of feel like this is all a little crazy that we have to do this? I mean, Ebola is thousands of miles away. You don't have people going there.
HARMON: Yes, we - (laughter). I think it's important to really make people aware and, you know, address their concern.
KELTO: Since Reverend Harmon addressed these concerns, attendance at Trinity has picked back up, almost to pre-Ebola levels. More people are showing at community service events, too.
Just before Christmas, the church hosted a dinner for homeless people. Adolphus Ukaegbu, a church member who is originally from Nigeria, was there helping out dishing up food and helping lead Christmas carols.
(SOUNDBITE OF CAROLERS)
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: (Singing) ...Hills of snow, in a one-horse open sleigh...
KELTO: Ukaegbu said some members of Trinity are still avoiding church events because they're scared of Ebola. But for the most part, things are back to normal.
ADOLPHUS UKAEGBU: Since then, everybody peace now, everybody shaking hands.
KELTO: And with that, he grabbed hands with the people around him and kept singing.
(SOUNDBITE OF CAROLERS)
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: (Singing) On the second day of Christmas, my true love sent to me...
KELTO: Anders Kelto, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF CAROLERS)
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: (Singing) ...Two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree. On the third day of Christmas...
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Rachel Martin. There are all kinds of problems along the U.S.-Mexican border - illegal immigration, drug smuggling, violence; now, a new financial complication. Companies on the Mexican side are finding it harder to get American banks to take their money.
U.S. banks are closing the accounts of longtime business customers in an effort to stop money laundering. But as Jude Joffe-Block reports from member station KJZZ, the moves are hurting legitimate businesses.
JUDE JOFFE-BLOCK, BYLINE: Here in the border town of Nogales, Mexico, the lunch crowd is settling in at La Roca Restaurant. Its live music and traditional cuisine have made it a landmark for 43 years. The prices are listed in dollars, and many of the diners come in from Arizona. The ownership is American and so was the restaurant's bank account and credit card until a couple months ago. Alicia Martin is one of La Roca's current owners.
ALICIA MARTIN: I actually got a phone call by two young ladies from the bank.
JOFFE-BLOCK: Chase Bank. They said they were closing some foreign business accounts, including the account for Martin's restaurant.
A. MARTIN: And I was like, what? What are you talking about? You know, why? And she says, well, because we can't monitor you.
JOFFE-BLOCK: It was part of the bank's efforts to stay in line with federal anti-money-laundering regulations.
A. MARTIN: I said I've been with you for over 40 years, and you can't monitor me? And she said, well, don't take it personally. And she says, because there have been some people that have been with us for 70 years, and we're closing their accounts as well.
JOFFE-BLOCK: A Chase spokeswoman confirmed the bank is in the process of closing fewer than 5,000 small foreign business accounts. Regulators have cited the bank in the past for not having adequate anti-money-laundering controls. In fact, that's one reason Chase had to pay billions in fines in recent years. Martin thought about moving her account to another U.S. bank, but heard others might soon follow Chase's lead.
A. MARTIN: What happens to those of us who do business transparently, and it's honest business? I don't know. I feel like we're being punished for somebody else's deeds.
JOFFE-BLOCK: The southwest border is seen as a higher risk area for money laundering because of drug and human smuggling organizations. Paul Hickman of the Arizona Bankers Association says banks are trying to do the right thing.
PAUL HICKMAN: They don't want to help facilitate illegal conduct. And if they find a concentration of high-risk accounts, they're going to scrutinize those. And they're going to decide, all right, what kind of resources do we have to police this?
JOFFE-BLOCK: And, Hickman says, if banks don't have the resources to properly monitor certain accounts...
HICKMAN: We're certainly not going to put society at risk by continuing to potentially facilitate this type of trade.
DENNIS LORMEL: Most of the major banks are either facing enforcement actions or there have been enforcement actions.
JOFFE-BLOCK: Dennis Lormel used to run the FBI's financial crimes program and now consults on anti-money-laundering issues. HSBC came under fire a few years back for failing to stop a Mexican drug cartel from laundering millions of dollars through its bank.
But as banks and regulators try to prevent that kind of crime, it's not always obvious which client accounts should be closed.
LORMEL: This is a very complex subject. There's no easy answer, and there's no easy fix.
JOFFE-BLOCK: Bankers worry if they can't properly monitor risky customers, regulators could slap them with fines or require expensive reforms. But Lormel says regulators and law enforcement say it's counterproductive for banks to close too many accounts since it sends transactions underground.
LORMEL: And unfortunately, some very honest and innocent people are getting caught up losing their banking relationships.
(SOUNDBITE OF CATTLE)
JOFFE-BLOCK: Cattle broker Juan Carlos Ochoa says he's another one of the honest, innocent people who lost his bank account. Ochoa is a dual citizen who imports cattle into Douglas, Arizona. And he runs this feedlot on the Mexican side of the border.
JUAN CARLOS OCHOA: (Through interpreter) The capacity is 5,000 head of cattle, and we are full.
JOFFE-BLOCK: Ochoa says business is good, except for the stress of where to keep his money. Back in his office, he says after Chase closed his account, he moved to Wells Fargo. Then Wells Fargo closed his account, too, without offering an explanation.
OCHOA: (Through interpreter) I can't be without a bank account because every day, I have to buy and sell cattle; every day.
JOFFE-BLOCK: He needs a U.S. account so American buyers can easily wire him his payments. But at the same time, a number of major banks have been closing branches on the Arizona border. So there's only one bank left in Douglas that hasn't yet rejected Ochoa.
OCHOA: (Through interpreter) The day there are no more banks left, I don't know what I'm going to do.
JOFFE-BLOCK: Ochoa says the irony is this trend could force some border businesses to use cash. And that makes transactions less transparent and more vulnerable to money laundering. For NPR News, I'm Jude Joffe-Block reporting from the Arizona border.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Jude's story comes to us from the Fronteras Desk, a public radio collaboration in the southwest focusing on the border and changing demographics.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
There is a similar kind of sentiment across the Hudson River in Newark, New Jersey. The murder rate is down in the city, but the new mayor there says it is just a small step in a very long effort to make Newark a safer place to live.
Ras Baraka took office this past July. I spoke with him recently about the unconventional tactics he's using to heal a city he says is in a state of emergency.
MAYOR RAS BARAKA: Let me just say that Newark does not have a monopoly on this issue. I think that every major city in America is struggling to get crime under control. We are not just targeting the one percent of folks that are doing the most violent crimes. What we want to do is attack the area, the place that helps become incubator for crime. So we're talking about improving people's environment.
MARTIN: After less than six months in office, you did something fairly unusual. You reached out to gang members in Newark and had a meeting with them; many of these gang members who had been responsible for much of the violence in Newark. Where was the meeting held?
BARAKA: Bethany Baptist Church. We chose a place kind of neutral and assessed the kind of cultural tone that if you want help, there's help available.
MARTIN: What was the public response? I mean, just members of the community were also invited, right?
BARAKA: A few members, you know, people who were really, like, doing activist work, antiviolence work. Folks like that, kind of ministers. And we had some of the victims of violence actually speak to them; a father who lost his son, who was a pizza delivery boy in the city of Newark who was robbed and killed. He spoke to them very frankly about losing his child and what it meant and how it felt to him and the kind of havoc that they're reeking on people's neighborhoods and families.
MARTIN: I understand probably a lot of that was shared in confidence, but can you talk a little bit about what those conversations were like? What did the gang members talk about as their concerns?
BARAKA: I mean, most people are looking for jobs, right, so they're looking for opportunities to be employed. They're looking for opportunities for meaningful employment. Like, people don't come to City Hall and say mayor, I need money or, mayor, I need welfare, which is what the prevailing opinion might be.
But the reality is, people - when I see people, they say I need a job. And they understand they got involved in some of these things at a very young age. And they made criminal life a career. They're trying to break that cycle, and unfortunately, they can't break it on their own. They need to be let know frankly that we know who you are. And if you continue on this path to violence, either you're going to die or we're going to arrest you. But ultimately, this is not what we want.
MARTIN: That meeting was in October. But then several weeks after that meeting, you described a recent spike in violent crime as a state of emergency. How much did you accomplish? Do you have to just fight this problem in the long run, or do you feel like you're making inroads in the short-term?
BARAKA: I think we're making great inroads. I wish there was one meeting that we could have and make violence go away. We could take that on the road. Ultimately, even though we have reduced murders in the city - 30 percent, carjacking's 50 percent. You know, we reduced a lot of it. We still are not out of the woods. And that's why I don't go around cheerleading those statistics because any time when you have anywhere between 80 to 100 African-American, Latino boys being killed in a community by homicide, then it's important for people to look at that as an epidemic.
MARTIN: We are talking as there is a national debate happening right now about police brutality and the relationship that communities have with their police departments. Just this past summer, the U.S. Justice Department wrapped up a three-year investigation of the Newark Police Department and found a pattern of what they called unjustified and excessive force. What have you done to change that?
BARAKA: We've moved internal affairs from the separate building. We brought them down into City Hall. We gave them longer hours. We have already put over 90 percent of our police in training - retraining. And we're also getting ready to establish a civilian police review board.
We welcome the kind of reforms that the Department of Justice said needs to happen here in the city of Newark around the police department, around the policing in the city. We believe that a police department that's more efficient, less corrupt will have a better agency that's able to solve the crimes in our city and to help us reduce violence in the community.
MARTIN: Just next-door in New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio is in a pretty tense standoff with police right now over this issue - aggressive policing tactics. What do you see when you look at that situation?
BARAKA: Well, let me just say that all of these things that are happening are part and parcel of the way people view black and Latino males in these neighborhoods, poor people in these communities. It's not just germane to police. I think police have a direct contact with folks every day. And all these kind of ideas are systematized in the way people are policing in these neighborhoods, in these communities. And it needs to be addressed, right, so I think that, unfairly, the mayor of the city was attached to heinous and brutal kind of crime.
MARTIN: We're talking about the murder of those two police officers?
BARAKA: Right. When people say black lives matter, if you take offense, and I think some people take offense to people saying black lives matter, and I think that that in and of itself is a deeper issue that people need to work out with themselves. It's just like if you saying black lives matter, it doesn't mean that you have no respect for other people's life.
What it means is that you want black people to have justice in the community just like everybody else. And I think what Mayor de Blasio did was right that he spoke out against the violence committed against those police officers, and he should have. And he should have questions the killing of Eric Garner by an illegal chokehold.
MARTIN: You have been able to decrease certain violent crime rates recently. But you don't want to hail those as any kind of big victory. So I wonder what you look to personally as a metric of success.
BARAKA: Well, I would like the people in the neighborhood, when you talk to them, if they feel safe, if they feel that the police are doing their job. Like, so we've targeted two neighborhoods in the city - Clinton Hill, lower Clinton Hill, is one of them, and the lower West Ward is another neighborhood that we are working - beginning to do some work in heavily. And as the year moves, we're going to increase the intensity of work that's going on in those two neighborhoods.
And it doesn't mean that all crime in the neighborhood is going to disappear. What it does mean, however, is that we've got a handle over what's happening in that community. And if people report to us that they feel safer six months later than they did when we first started, then I would look at that as a victory.
MARTIN: Mayor Ras Baraka of Newark, New Jersey. Thanks so much for talking with us Mr. Mayor.
BARAKA: Thank you.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
It has been a tough time for the music community of Memphis.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE BALLAD OF EL GOODO")
BIG STAR: (Singing) Years ago my heart was set to live. Oh.
MARTIN: Big Star, Robert Cray, ZZ Top, the White Stripes - much of the last 50 years of music recorded or produced in Memphis wouldn't have happened without the vision of John Fry, the founder of Ardent Studios. He passed away on December 18 at the age of 69. Music supervisor and producer Rick Clark has this appreciation.
RICK CLARK, BYLINE: John Fry started recording in 1959 out of his family's garage. And by the time he formally opened Ardent Studios in 1966 he had dabbled in radio and also released a handful of 45s on his own Ardent record label. One of those early platters featured the horn-driven frat party rock of the Ole Miss Downbeats.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GERALDINE")
OLE MISS DOWNBEATS: (Singing) Geraldine, you know that I have gone.
Goodbye, Geraldine.
Yes, goodbye, baby. Please don't follow the car.
Goodbye, Geraldine.
CLARK: During the mid-60s, Memphis was in its heyday of hit recordings. Many of them were released on the local Stax record label. Stax eventually enlisted Ardent to handle their production overflow and soon sent artists like Sam & Dave, Albert King, Booker T. & the M.G.'s, and Isaac Hayes to work there. In fact, the Staple Sisters classic "Respect Yourself" was mixed at Ardent.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "RESPECT YOURSELF")
STAPLE SISTERS: (Singing) If you don't respect yourself, ain't nobody going to give a good cahoot, na na na na. Respect yourself. Na na na na.
CLARK: That first flush of success would be the beginning of an uninterrupted line of artists coming through Ardent's doors, including Leon Russell, Led Zeppelin, R.E.M., Stevie Ray Vaughan, Gin Blossoms, and the White Stripes. Through a partnership with Stax in 1972, a relaunched Ardent record label signed a small stable of artists including Big Star, the band that would be closest to John Fry's heart.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SEPTEMBER GURLS")
BIG STAR: (Singing) September girls do so much. I was your Butch and you were touched.
CLARK: Fry produced those first two Big Star albums. While only a handful of them sold, the bright punchy sound of those records and the great music in the grooves served as a kind of audio business card.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SEPTEMBER GURLS")
BIG STAR: (Singing) December boys got it bad. December boys got it bad.
CLARK: It attracted even more artists and musicians to come there. And for Big Star, John Fry was first and foremost a mentor. Jody Stephens, the group's drummer, said that John was a person who could help you make your dreams come true. Fry showed them how to work the tools of the trade and he literally gave them the keys to the studio to refine their vision.
There's a lot of truth to the statement that art lives on long after the artist is gone. And in the case of John Fry, the art of mentoring, spotting someone's gifts and passions and offering the tools and wisdom for that person to flourish, was possibly his most enduring work.
So many musicians, artists, engineers, and producers learned the ropes of making great recordings thanks to John Fry, me included. And now it's hard to imagine Fry's gone, especially since his spirit inhabits every conceivable inch of Ardent.
But the Studio is in good hands with those Fry mentored. It will continue to thrive as one of the world's finest studios, tapping into that mojo of Memphis. Fry wouldn't want it any other way.
MARTIN: Music producer Rick Clark remembering Ardent Studios founder John Fry who died last month. This is NPR News.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Rachel Martin. You have opened all of your holiday gifts, maybe you've kicked off your New Year's resolutions. But before you get a chance to break them, let's do the puzzle.
Joining me now is WEEKEND EDITION's puzzle master, Will Shortz. Happy New Year, Will.
WILL SHORTZ, BYLINE: Happy New Year, Rachel.
MARTIN: Can you remind us of last week's challenge?
SHORTZ: Yeah. I thought it was a tough one. I said take the five-word sentence - Those barbarians ambush heavier fiances. And I said these five words have something very unusual in common. What is it? And as a hint I said look at the letters in the words, you don't need to scramble. Well, the letters in the odd positions in each word name part of the body - toe, brain, abs, hair and face.
MARTIN: OK, so we received around 445 correct answers. Our randomly chosen winner is Caryn Hart of Havertown, Pennsylvania. She joins us on the line now. Caryn, congratulations.
CARYN HART: Why thank you, and Happy New Year...
MARTIN: Happy New Year to you.
HART: ...To you and Will.
SHORTZ: Thank you.
MARTIN: And it's a great thing, you get to be our first puzzle champion of 2015.
HART: I'm excited but, of course, nervous.
MARTIN: You're going to be great. You're going to be great. I also understand that a winning streak runs in your family.
HART: It does. My husband, amazingly, was selected about a little over a year ago.
MARTIN: As our puzzle contestant. That's crazy.
HART: Yes, we were both stunned that he was selected because odds are, we believe, rather small.
MARTIN: Pretty small. And the two of you.
HART: Really.
MARTIN: You got some good luck. You need to go buy a lottery ticket or something.
HART: Exactly.
(LAUGHTER)
MARTIN: And you've been playing the puzzle for a long time, the two of you?
HART: I think since the beginning, but I can't remember not doing it.
MARTIN: Oh, wow. Yeah. That's a long time. OK, are you ready to play the puzzle Caryn?
HART: I will try.
MARTIN: You will try, and you will succeed. I bet you will succeed.
HART: We'll see. I will appreciate any help I could have from you, Rachel.
MARTIN: I am here for you every step of the way.
HART: OK.
MARTIN: OK, Will, let's do it.
SHORTZ: All right, Caryn and Rachel. The title of today's puzzle is Brr. Every answer is a familiar two-word phrase or title in which the first word starts with the letters B-R and the second word starts with R. For example, if I said a thing grasped on a merry-go-round, you would say brass ring.
MARTIN: OK, you got it, Caryn?
HART: Yes.
MARTIN: All right, let's give it a go.
SHORTZ: Number one, lead character in a story told by Uncle Remus.
HART: Brer Rabbit.
SHORTZ: That is correct. Number two, a restaurant freebie that usually comes in a basket.
HART: A bread...
SHORTZ: And what is it?
HART: A bread roll.
SHORTZ: A bread roll, yeah, that's it.
MARTIN: Bread roll.
HART: Bread roll.
MARTIN: Sure.
SHORTZ: Yes. Your next clue is Crimson.
HART: Bright red.
SHORTZ: Bright red is it.
MARTIN: Good.
SHORTZ: What a woman signs up for at a store when she's about to be married.
HART: Registry - bridal registry.
SHORTZ: Bridal registry, yes. Twenty-three-year third baseman for the Baltimore Orioles.
MARTIN: Oh.
HART: This one I have to pass on.
MARTIN: Oh, man. They're all kinds of baseball fans...
HART: Don't know sports.
MARTIN: ...Out there who are cursing me right now. Sorry everyone. I do not know my Baltimore Orioles roster.
SHORTZ: All right, I'll just tell you. People are screaming at their radios all over the country. The answer is Brooks Robinson.
MARTIN: Of course. Sorry, Brooks.
HART: Okay.
SHORTZ: OK, a leafy vegetable whose buds have small heads.
HART: Broccoli rabe.
MARTIN: Yeah.
SHORTZ: That's it. Try this, area of the house in which to have the morning meal.
HART: Breakfast room.
SHORTZ: That's it. And here's your last one, a nominal thing you win when there's no actual price.
MARTIN: A WEEKEND EDITION lapel pin.
(LAUGHTER)
MARTIN: Just kidding. Just kidding.
HART: What's the clue one more time?
MARTIN: Yeah.
SHORTZ: Nominal thing you win when there's no actual prize.
MARTIN: You just go around saying, hey, I won. I'm so awesome.
HART: Bragging rights.
MARTIN: Yeah.
SHORTZ: Bragging rights is it.
MARTIN: Like you're going to do right after you get off the line with us because you did such a great job on the puzzle.
HART: Well, I tried.
MARTIN: But you did great, Caryn. And for playing the puzzle today, you get a WEEKEND EDITION lapel pin and puzzle books and games. You can read all about your prizes at npr.org/puzzle. And before we let you go, where do you hear us? What's your public radio station?
HART: WHYY out of Philadelphia.
MARTIN: Great. Caryn Hart of Havertown, Pennsylvania. Thanks so much for playing the puzzle, Caryn.
HART: Well, thank you very much. I'm glad it worked out OK.
MARTIN: It was great.
HART: And Happy New Year again.
MARTIN: Happy New Year to you.
MARTIN: And, Will, what is the challenge for next week?
SHORTZ: Yeah. Last fall, I posed a challenge in which you were asked to name a country, change one letter in it and rearrange the result to name a world capital and then change a letter in that and rearrange the result to name another country. And the answer was Spain to Paris to Syria.
Well, listener Andrew Chaikin of San Francisco has posed a related puzzle. Name a world capital, change a letter in it and rearrange the result to name a country. Then, change a letter in that and rearrange the result to name another world capital. What names are these? So again, start with the world capital, changes a letter, rearrange, name a country, change a letter in that and rearrange. And you'll name another world capital. What geographical names are these?
MARTIN: OK, when you've got the answer, go to our website. It is npr.org/puzzle. Click on that submit your answer link. And just one entry per person please. Don't forget to send in your answers by Thursday, January 8 at 3 p.m. Eastern time. Include a phone number where we can reach you at about that time because if you're the winner, we'll give you a call, and you'll get to play on the air with the puzzle editor of The New York Times. And he is WEEKEND EDITION's puzzle master, Will Shortz. Thanks so much, Will.
SHORTZ: Thanks, Rachel. Happy New Year.
MARTIN: Happy New Year.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Rachel Martin.
ALLAN EDWARDS: I don't personally find it helpful to use my experience of sexual attraction to define myself as a person, so I'm Allan. I'm Donna Mary's son. I'm Leeanne's husband. I'm a follower of Jesus Christ. Those things are just more important to me, I guess, than the experience of same-sex attraction.
MARTIN: That is the voice of Allan Edwards. He's the pastor of the Kiski Valley Presbyterian Church in western Pennsylvania. It's a congregation of the Presbyterian Church in America. Edwards is attracted to men but he considers acting on that attraction a sin. He's been navigating what that means for most of his life. Allan Edwards is our Sunday conversation.
A. EDWARDS: You know, middle of high school I began to see and understand that my thought life was drifting more and more toward my male classmates and less and less toward my female classmates. And it was a pretty immediate realization that it was in conflict with my faith, and I didn't really understand what happened next, I think.
MARTIN: Was it the kind of thing that people knew about? I mean, how did your friends respond? Were you ever bullied?
A. EDWARDS: So this is like the mid- to late nineties, and we're not at a "it gets better" moment yet in secondary education. And so I didn't know anyone else who experienced same-sex attraction. And so I didn't talk about it much at all. I first started talking about my experience when I was at a small Christian liberal arts school. And my expectation was, if I start talking to other guys about this, I am going to get ostracized and lambasted. And I actually had the exact opposite experience.
When I started talking about this being part of my story, this being part of my makeup, I actually was received with a lot of love, grace, charity - some confusion but openness to dialogue.
MARTIN: You decided that your faith was so important, and you believed you couldn't be gay and a Christian, and so you just decided to sequester that part of yourself, to suppress that part of yourself.
A. EDWARDS: Yeah. And the word suppress is a pretty loaded word in this whole conversation, isn't it?
MARTIN: How do you think about it?
A. EDWARDS: So I'll push back.
MARTIN: Yeah, please.
A. EDWARDS: I think we all have parts of our desires that we choose not to act on, right. So for me, it's not just that religion was important to me but communion with a God who loved me, who accepts me right where I am - all of that is so transformative that the practical living part, the OK, I need to now decide what I do with my sexual orientation, what I do with my experience of sexuality, that kind of comes after this experience with a very transformative and gracious God.
So for me, not choosing to use the identity language, that was a choice. There are friends of mine who identify as gay Christians, and they believe that for them, a life of celibacy is necessary. I think I made conscious choices along the way to say this is something I experience but this isn't the thing that defines who I am personally.
MARTIN: So you decided that you didn't want to be celibate, that you wanted a marriage, you wanted a partnership, you wanted a sexual relationship with a woman.
A. EDWARDS: Mhmm. Yup.
MARTIN: We should point out there are several Christian denominations that do not consider gay relationships to be sinful, that allow ministers to marry gay couples. Was that just never an option for you?
A. EDWARDS: I actually tried to go down that road. Right, so the center of Christianity is the Bible, OK. Accepting that tenant, which is kind of an essential tenet of Christianity, I thought, OK, if we can get to a place where we understand that the Bible doesn't actually prohibit this thing that I think is prohibited then it would be OK. And so I studied different methods of reading the Scripture, and it all came down to this. Jesus accepts the rest of the Scripture as divine from God. So if Jesus is who he says he is then we kind of have to believe what he believes.
MARTIN: How do you view those churches, those Christians? Are they distancing themselves from God? Are they sinning?
A. EDWARDS: Boy, talk about, like - this whole conversation is super loaded. Right, so the word sin - also super loaded.
MARTIN: Do you not see it that way? Is that not the right word? You would not use that word?
A. EDWARDS: Well, it's not that I wouldn't use that word. Here's the thing. People in the Christian tradition who come to some of the same conclusions I come to have said some incredibly hurtful things and demeaning things about people in the LGBT community. And being hurtful and vitriolic is also outside of the Christian ethic. It's not true to the Gospel of God's grace.
So I want to try to speak in a clear way but also a gracious way. So friends of mine who are in the Christian tradition who don't see homosexual relationships or activity as outside of the bounds - I think that they're in error. And I would say that especially pastors and Christian teachers who tell people it's OK to engage in homosexual behavior that they're leading people astray, they're leading people away from something really beautiful that God offers, and that is wholeness, redemption, grace, yeah.
MARTIN: How did you meet your wife?
A. EDWARDS: Well, my wife and I - she's actually here in the studio with me.
MARTIN: Hi.
A. EDWARDS: My wife and I met when we were 15 and 16. We worked at a Christian summer camp. I always joke with her that she was one of the cool kids. And I was like a raging fundamentalist nerd. I was unbearable to be around when I was probably 16, 17.
But in 2006, she and I both applied for the summer camp director's job and she got it. And then she was leaving the position, so I took her out to lunch.
And I don't want to be, like, gushy and romantic but I just kind of like melted inside and thought, this is someone who understands graciousness. This is someone who understands acceptance. And this is someone I want to spend as much time with as possible. And out of that was birthed our intimate relationship.
MARTIN: I know she's sitting right there and I know this wasn't part of the plan but would Leeanne be OK if I asked her a question?
A. EDWARDS: She's putting on headphones now.
MARTIN: OK, good.
A. EDWARDS: She's pretty awesome.
LEEANNE EDWARDS: OK, I'm here.
MARTIN: Hi, Leeanne.
L. EDWARDS: Hi, Rachel.
MARTIN: It's nice to meet you.
L. EDWARDS: You, too.
MARTIN: You know, that's quite a story that Allan just laid out about how you two met and the bond that you obviously shared. But to outsiders, this is a big deal to be in a committed relationship, in a marriage with someone who feels a sexual attraction to other men, not to women. Were there any red flags for you?
L. EDWARDS: Sure. Absolutely. As we were dating and even through the process of being engaged, Allan had to come to me one day and share that he had fallen into the struggles of pornography again which is something he often would turn to whenever he wasn't feeling satisfied and was struggling against some of the feelings that he had.
And I wondered if he was going to be able to put something like that behind him or if it was going to be something that would affect our relationship.
MARTIN: This is another really personal question.
L. EDWARDS: That's all right.
MARTIN: I don't how to say it but just to say it. Do you two have a sexual element to your relationship?
L. EDWARDS: Absolutely.
A. EDWARDS: Yes.
L. EDWARDS: Yeah. Yeah. We do. It was something that we struggled with, you know. The way that we think about sexuality is not that it's always based on a sexual attraction. There's just as likelihood of being attracted elsewhere in a opposite-sex relationship as there is in somebody who's struggling with same-sex attraction.
A. EDWARDS: I think - just to jump in, if that's OK - I think the expectation of the world around us is if you struggle or experience same-sex attraction and you get married to a woman, you will suppress, suppress, suppress until you explode.
Folks have said that to me. They said, you know, one of these days you're either just going to ruin your family's life or you're going to commit suicide. And that's hard to hear, obviously. But I guess my response to that is everybody has this experience of wanting something else or beyond what they have. Everyone struggles with discontentment. The difference, I think, and the blessing, I think, that Leeanne and I have experienced is that we came into our marriage relationship already knowing and talking about it. And that actually, I think, is a really powerful basis for intimacy.
MARTIN: You do work with young people who are going through some of the same things. Do you worry that these are people who are really young and still haven't quite figured out their path? And while this may work for you, that your guidance or your counsel would perpetuate a sense of shame for young people who might be better served with another path?
A. EDWARDS: I think that's a great question because I think that some people have had that story and experience. They've been shuttled off to a camp or to a therapist against their will and just had really awful, traumatic experiences in that. My personal practice, when a parent calls me - I get this call like once or twice a year. I get the call, the fix my gay kid called. And the real work I find is with parents to open up dialogue with their children. If an older student, you know, someone in their mid- to late teens is willing to talk to me, I'll talk to them. But I tell parents, I'm not going to work with someone who doesn't want to have these conversations. I don't think that that's fair or loving or just.
MARTIN: I read on your blog that the two of you are trying to have a family. Is that right?
A. EDWARDS: Yeah. We both wanted kids right away. And we are now expecting. So we're expecting our first in July.
MARTIN: Congratulations.
L. EDWARDS: Thank you.
A. EDWARDS: Thank you. Yeah, we're really - I'm sorry, I'm going to, like, start crying. You know, I'm so super excited.
(LAUGHTER)
MARTIN: Allan Edwards is a pastor at Kiski Valley Presbyterian Church in Leechburg, Pennsylvania. We were also joined by his wife, Leeanne. Thanks so much for talking with us, you two.
A. EDWARDS: Thank you.
L. EDWARDS: Thanks, Rachel.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Rachel Martin. For the second time in two weeks, one of New York City's finest will be laid to rest. Funeral services today for Officer Wenjian Liu will be held at a funeral home in Brooklyn. Liu and his partner Rafael Ramos were shot to death last month in their patrol car.
At Ramos's funeral, scores of police officers turned their backs on the city's mayor in a sign of disrespect. The police commissioner is urging his officers not to repeat that gesture at Liu's funeral. NPR's Joel Rose reports.
JOEL ROSE, BYLINE: In a memo distributed to police across the city, Commissioner William Bratton asks officers not to repeat last weekend's act of disrespect toward Mayor Bill de Blasio when he delivers the eulogy today. The hero's funeral is about grieving not grievance, Bratton writes. At a press conference earlier this week, Bratton said the department has received dozens of threats on social media since Liu and Ramos were killed.
(SOUNDBITE OF PRESS CONFERENCE)
POLICE COMMISSIONER WILLIAM BRATTON: Any threat made against my officers is going to be dealt with very quickly, very effectively. And we're not going to let any of them go by the board, believe me.
ROSE: Those threats have led to at least 20 arrests. Many in the department and beyond see them as proof of an anti-police climate in the city; one they say Mayor de Blasio himself has encouraged.
LEONARD LEVITT: He has set a tone that the rank-and-file and the many New Yorkers feel is truly anti-police.
ROSE: Leonard Levitt is the author of the book "NYPD Confidential" and a blog of the same name. He says this feeling has its roots in the mayoral campaign when de Blasio ran and won on a promise to perform the relationship between the NYPD and communities of color. And Levitt says many cops don't like the way City Hall handled the aftermath of a grand jury's decision not to indict the white police officers in the case of Eric Garner, an unarmed black man who died in police custody.
LEVITT: There was a feeling among the police that the demonstrators were allowed free reign across the city. They were allowed to take the roadways, the bridges and whatever. And one former deputy commissioner said to me, there's going to be a tragedy coming out of this because you're setting a very dangerous tone.
ROSE: Tragedy did strike on December 20 when Ismaaiyl Brinsley traveled from Baltimore to Brooklyn, where he shot officers Liu and Ramos before taking his own life. The head of the city's largest police union, Patrick Lynch, said Mayor de Blasio had blood on his hands. This week, Lynch and the heads of the other police unions sat down with the mayor for two hours before briefly addressing reporters.
(SOUNDBITE OF PRESS CONFERENCE)
PATRICK LYNCH: There were a number of discussions, especially about the safety issues that our members face. There was no resolve, and our thought here today is that actions speak louder than words.
ROSE: Mayor de Blasio didn't speak to reporters after the meeting and hasn't taken questions all week. But his backers insist de Blasio has supported the police.
ERIC ADAMS: I don't think the mayor owes the police department an apology. I think he has been an extremely supportive mayor.
ROSE: Eric Adams is the Brooklyn Borough president and a former sergeant in the NYPD. He expects rank-and-file officers will heed Police Commissioner Bratton's call not to turn their backs on Mayor de Blasio today.
ADAMS: So I don't believe you're going to see a duplication of what you saw at Officer Ramos's funeral. I think you're going to see officers understand that this is a solemn time.
ROSE: There are signs that the NYPD's rank-and-file might have engaged in another kind of protest. Arrests across the city were down more than 60 percent for the week after the shooting of officers Liu and Ramos. Minor infractions and traffic tickets dropped more than 90 percent. But Police Commissioner Bratton tried to downplay the signs of a possible work slowdown.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BRATTON: Dealing with the demonstration since December 3, we have used in excess of 50,000 tours of duty. So that's been a significant strain and drain on our resources around the city. That's 50,000 fewer cops who have been out there this month making arrests, issuing summons.
ROSE: Bratton points out that the most important number, overall crime, was down 15 percent last week. For the year that just ended, New York City recorded fewer than 330 murders; the lowest total since reliable record-keeping began in the 1960s. But with today's funeral looming, no one at the NYPD is celebrating.
Joel Rose, NPR News.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Odds are that by this point in the year, either you or someone you know has been stricken by the flu. Tracking the annual flu season is a perennial news story, but this year, it really is worse. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have already declared an influenza epidemic. The CDC's director, Dr. Tom Frieden, joins me now from Atlanta. Dr. Frieden, welcome to the program.
DR. TOM FRIEDEN: Thanks very much for covering this.
MARTIN: What is going on this year? Why is it different? Why are we seeing so many more infections?
FRIEDEN: Each year, we have a flu season, but how bad that flu season is depends on a few things, including the virus that's circulating, how many people get vaccinated and whether people get promptly treated if they get the flu.
MARTIN: We've heard reports that the current flu vaccine isn't actually the right vaccine for this current flu strain. Why is that?
FRIEDEN: Flu vaccines have three or four different strains of influenza in them. And this year, one of the strains, what's called H3N2, began changing just after the world made the decision to use this particular strain. That is the dominant strain that's circulating now, but not the only strain. So limited as the effectiveness may be, the flu vaccine is still the best single thing you can do to protect yourself and prevent getting influenza.
MARTIN: So it was just very unlucky timing.
FRIEDEN: Well, there's still a lot that people can do to protect themselves against the flu. First, get a vaccine and, of course, if you're sick, stay home. And this year, we're particularly focusing on antiviral drugs. People who are sick with flu, if they're very sick in the hospital or if they have underlying, chronic medical conditions, like asthma, diabetes, heart disease, women who are pregnant ,children under two and people over the age of 65 - all of these people, if they get flu, should get treated with antiviral drugs. The evidence indicates that it will shorten how long you're sick, might keep you out of the hospital and could even save your life.
MARTIN: Antivirals like Tamiflu. The CDC website, though, does say that people who are generally healthy who happen to get the flu do not need to be treated with antiviral drugs.
FRIEDEN: If you don't have one of these underlying conditions, then we say you can take Tamiflu, but we don't necessarily recommend it. But for the others, who are really at significant risk - we hope that patients and doctors are much more likely this year to use Tamiflu than the past because we know from past years, that the rates of use are very low.
In fact, just before this interview, I spoke with one of our leading experts in influenza. His mother was hospitalized with influenza. He asked the doctors to give her Tamiflu or another antiviral, and they didn't.
MARTIN: Why are health care providers reticent to administer it? Is it because supplies are low?
FRIEDEN: There are ample supplies, though, there could be spot shortages in some places. Generally, there's enough. We think doctors aren't used to the idea. We're used to the idea of treating bacterial infections with antibiotics. But we're just not that accustomed to treating the flu with antivirals. And that's something we hope will change.
MARTIN: Let's say you're a healthy adult but you happen to come down with the flu. So ordinarily, you wouldn't necessarily go out and get an antiviral. But what if you live with someone, a child or an elderly person, who is in that category of immunocompromised folks? Should you then go seek antiviral treatment?
FRIEDEN: There is some evidence that suggests that taking antiviral medications may reduce the risk that you'll spread the disease to others in your family so it may be helpful for others as well as for yourself.
MARTIN: Dr. Tom Frieden. He is the director of the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. Dr. Frieden, thank you so much.
FRIEDEN: Thank you. All the best for a healthy 2015.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
With the flu-ridden dark days of winter upon us, here's a prescription to help you navigate the months ahead. It's not an antiviral, but it may boost your immune functions, help with stress and, who knows, maybe it'll get you motivated to take on your New Year's resolutions.
We are talking about meditation. And the practice of meditation or mindfulness has an unlikely champion these days. Ten years ago, ABC News anchor Dan Harris was not in a good place in his life. His first warning came in the form of a panic attack live on national TV.
DAN HARRIS: My heart started racing. My mind was racing. My palms were sweating. My mouth dried up. My lungs seized up. I just couldn't breathe.
MARTIN: Dan Harris wrote a book about how meditation helped him make his way back from that moment of panic. It is called "10% Happier: How I Tamed The Voice In My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, And Found self-help That Actually Works - A True Story." The panic attack was the alarm bell, but he didn't find meditation until he started covering religion and spirituality for ABC News. And let's just say he was a teensy bit skeptical.
HARRIS: I initially thought it was only for people who were into crystals and Cat Stevens and used the word namaste un-ironically and lived in a yurt. I was vehemently anti-meditation and everything it stood for. But then, I did a little research, and I found out that there's been an explosion of science that suggests meditation can lower your blood pressure, boost your immune system, reduce the release of the stress hormone cortisol.
And then things get really sci-fi when you start talking about the neuroscience. Neuroscientists have been peering into the brains of meditators, and they find that you're effectively rewiring your brain. That's why I decided to give it a shot.
MARTIN: So you speak with this authority that comes from someone who's done this for a while. But it didn't start out that way. Can you walk us through what your very first experience with meditation was like?
HARRIS: Oh, it was a mass. It was a total mess.
MARTIN: (Laughter).
HARRIS: I mean, you can tell yourself that your life is about all sorts of big things like faith and love and patriotism, but if you sit down and close your eyes and look at what is happening in your mind in any given moment, most of your life is about what am I going to have for lunch? What did I say that dumb thing to my boss? Why do celebrities only marry other celebrities? Whatever. Your mind is just going to go off. And when you sit down to try to meditate even for just five minutes, which is what I did the first time. I had a head-on collision with reality, which is that your - our minds are out of control.
MARTIN: So give me an example. Layout a scenario, some kind of situation where you can point to meditation and say, wow, that changed how I responded to that situation.
HARRIS: Think about this scenario. You're driving, somebody cuts you off. Generally speaking, you have a thought - I'm pissed. What happens next? You automatically and reflexively inhabit that thought. You actually become pissed. And there's no buffer between the stimulus and your reaction to it.
With mindfulness on board, with just a little bit of meditating, you might be able to notice when you get cut off, my chest is buzzing, my ears are turning red. I'm having a starburst of self-righteous thoughts. I'm getting angry. But you don't need to act on it. You don't need to chase the person down the road screaming expletives with their children in the backseat. So for me, what I've been able to just see in my life quite frequently is the urge to do something or to say something stupid or hurtful or whatever and to let it pass.
MARTIN: Did you not do that before?
HARRIS: No, no, no, no, no. I was horrible. So I'm not claiming perfection. What I'm saying is - and why I called the book "10% Happier," which is obviously an absurd, unscientific estimation, is that this is not going to solve all of your problems, but it is a significant value add and a good return on investment for not a lot of time.
MARTIN: Is it funny to you as you have developed this new sense of introspection, as you look down on yourself now doing interviews about mindfulness and rattling off these details about meditation - is it funny to you that this is now the thing that animates you like this?
HARRIS: Yeah. It's ridiculous. I mean, I say, at the beginning of every speech, if you had told me 10 years ago that I was going to be a public evangelist for meditation, I would have coughed my beer up through my nose. I mean, this is just the last thing I ever saw coming.
But I honestly believe this is the next big public health revolution. The big problem is that there's this PR issue around meditation. People think it's either too weird or too difficult. And so my goal is to dispel both myths and to say, A, if somebody like me, a skeptic like me is doing it, you can do it. And, B, if somebody with the attention span of a kitten, like me, is doing it, you can to.
MARTIN: (Laughter) The book is called "10% Happier." Dan Harris wrote it. He is an anchor for ABC's "Nightline" and "Good Morning America." He joined us from our studios in New York. Thanks so much, Dan. Happy New Year.
HARRIS: Thank you, an absolute pleasure. And Happy New Year to you.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Listening to the way science is typically portrayed in the media, you might get the impression research proceeds by leaps and bounds from one breakthrough to the next and that scientists are these aloof geniuses.
Well, NPR science correspondent Joe Palca has been trying to change that picture. He's been working on a project called Joe's Big Idea. It's an effort to explore the minds and motivations of scientists and inventors and reveal the process of science as it truly is. We checked in with Joe a year ago to see how his project was going, and we are checking back today to see what is new. Hi, Joe.
JOE PALCA, BYLINE: Hi.
MARTIN: Happy New Year.
PALCA: Thank you.
MARTIN: So one of the stories I remember from this past year involved a scientist whose son had this kind of rare eye cancer. And he was working on software that could help other parents. Can you give us an update on his work?
PALCA: Right, so he wanted to build this software that would - you could take a picture with your smartphone. And then the software would look for a white reflection from the picture, which might give you an early warning that there was a problem and that you should get it checked out - it might be cancer, it might be nothing, but it might be something.
Now it's kind of easy to understand why a scientist would want to do something like this for his son. But then the scientist, whose name is Bryan Shaw, told me he had an even more compelling reason for wanting to create the software.
BRYAN SHAW: 'Cause I'm a Christian, and if I can make good come from this bad stuff that happened to my son, and I can show him when he grows up what happened to you, son, isn't as bad as it might seem.
PALCA: He wanted to be able to tell his son that when he grew up, that something good had happened from this terrible experience. That his disease would lead to an invention that would save another kid's.
SHAW: I know it's going to strengthen his faith 'cause it helped other people out.
MARTIN: His faith?
MARTIN: We don't often hear scientists talking about their faith as a motivation for science.
PALCA: No, you don't. And I thought it was an interesting reminder that science and faith needn't be at odds with one another.
MARTIN: Let's talk about another scientist you met this past year. Her name is Rebecca Richards-Kortum. Can you tell us what you learned from her?
PALCA: She's at Rice University, and she runs an undergraduate program where Rice freshman, in fact, are encouraged to design and build hospital equipment for places that don't have a lot of money to spend on hospital equipment.
MARTIN: OK.
PALCA: So one of the devices that these students created was a device that helps premature infants breathe. It's called a bubble CPAP. And they made one that was affordable.
REBECCA RICHARDS-KORTUM: One of the wonderful things about working with 18-year-olds is that they're so creative. They don't have fixed ideas about what might not work. And so you get really crazy ideas like inside our bubble CPAP machine, there's aquarium pumps.
PALCA: Aquarium pumps.
MARTIN: A lot of times scientists, as you know, are accused of not considering the consequences of their work. But you showed that's certainly not always the case.
PALCA: Right, well, this comes from a story about a scientist at Berkeley named Jennifer Doudna. She's invented a way of editing genes. That's not being done on humans now. It's way before that. But it does raise a lot of really interesting questions and...
MARTIN: A lot of consequences to that work.
PALCA: ...And she's thinking a lot about that.
JENNIFER DOUDNA: You know, as time goes by, it's more and more clear how powerful a technology it really is. And so I've had moments of, I wouldn't say cold sweats, but, you know, waking up in the night thinking, wow, that's kind of profound.
MARTIN: One of the more interesting parts of Jennifer Doudna's story is that she has developed this tool that could be powerful in curing diseases, but that's not what she set out to do, right?
PALCA: Right. She was actually studying something fairly esoteric. She describes it as she was studying how bacteria fight the flu. But she had one of those lightbulb moments that maybe she could modify this to do something different.
DOUDNA: For me, this just kind of really hammers home the serendipity of science.
PALCA: And that's what I really liked about her story. I mean, she starts out with something that's very basic and then it turns into something that's potentially really important. But it wasn't what she was looking for.
MARTIN: Before I let you go, Joe, I want to remind people that last year, you did not feature any female scientists when you and I spoke. And this year, there are two. So that was something that you did set out to rectify.
PALCA: Yep. No, I made a promise that I would make a point of covering more women in this project. And I have, although I have to tell you, there's still room for improvement.
MARTIN: OK. We'll check back with you. NPR's science correspondent Joe Palca.
PALCA: Thank you.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
This country's first popularly elected African-American senator has died. Edward Brooke was 95.
Brooke led an impressive life. After graduating from college, he became a soldier in World War II. And like most black service members, he faced open discrimination. He described his time on a segregated base in Massachusetts as, quote, "filled with frustration and bitterness." Still, he went on to earn a Bronze Star and a Distinguished Service Award.
After the war, Brooke earned two law degrees and got involved in Massachusetts state government as a liberal Republican. In 1966, while many blacks were still struggling for the right to vote, Ed Brooke was elected to the U.S. Senate.
He described himself as a moderate when it came to civil rights and famously said he was not a civil rights leader. History will likely see it differently. President Obama said Edward Brooke, quote, "stood at the forefront of the battle for civil rights."
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Five years ago this month Haiti was hit by a catastrophic earthquake. Just a couple of weeks after the tragedy, writer Dimitry Elias Leger was on a plane bound for the capital city, Port-au-Prince. Growing up, Leger split his time between New York and Haiti until his family fled that country for good when he was a teen.
When the earthquake hit, he, like so many others, wanted to help. So he signed up to work for the UN on relief efforts. In Haiti, he was inundated with stories of loss and survival. Leger told me everywhere he went those who had survived wanted to share every detail of the moment.
DIMITRY ELIAS LEGER: Wherever you turn, for months and months and months, hi, my name is, here's how I spent those 35 seconds.
MARTIN: Leger compressed hundreds of those stories, slowed them down, and used them to describe the earthquake in his new novel "God Loves Haiti." When we spoke recently, Leger told me he had long felt pulled to write about Haiti and that only intensified after the earthquake. When he finally did it, Leger used the quake to tell a timeless kind of tale. And that's where we started our conversation.
This book is in many ways a universal love story. It is about a woman who loves one man but is married to another man who happens to be the fictional president of Haiti. Can you give us a short description of each of these three main characters?
LEGER: Yes. Natasha, the star of the book, she was an artist. She grew up poor. She had a carefree, artistic, bohemian life. But she hated poverty and she wanted out.
Her boyfriend grew up privileged, had left, went to NYU. He found being in Haiti to be a romantic adventure. She did not find Haiti particularly romantic.
And her husband, the president, kind of fell into the job and was looking for an excuse to get out. And she was kind of like his beacon, if you will. Those three characters each wanted the other to save them. And the earthquake threw the cards up in the air.
MARTIN: Would you mind reading an example of this that struck me? There are several in the book, these moments, how people spent these 35 seconds. But this is Alain's perspective as the earthquake is happening. And you kind of slow time down. So this is - it's like slow-motion.
LEGER: Alain saw the house and the house next to it and the house next to that one and most of the other houses on the street tumble onto the street, the people, and passing cars.
What the [bleep]. Alain's car had been catapulted into the Caribbean sky by an invisible and powerful force. From the sky, strangely, Port-au-Prince looked uncommonly beautiful. He hadn't visited Paris yet but surely Paris couldn't be as beautiful as his hometown, this jewel of the Caribbean, this diamond in the rough. When viewed from the driver's seat of a car launched 20 meters above sea level - awesome. Natasha, he thought - I've got to show her this.
MARTIN: Such an amazing line of thought, right, to be in the midst of this tragedy and to be observing everything from above and thinking oh, man, this is gorgeous. I have to show Natasha.
LEGER: The earth shaking around you and throwing you back and forth is almost the most violent betrayal of natural laws a person could experience. Because when the ground is shaking, there's nothing to turn to. You can't duck. It's the ground.
And the shock of that I wanted to illustrate. And how mentally while experiencing that shock people want to grab onto things to hold onto. And it won't be the ground. It can't be the walls 'cause they're all in the process of tumbling around you. It tends to be memories. It tends to be images of lovers and parents and whatever you turn to for safety when things go bump into the night.
MARTIN: Have you satisfied that need that you felt years ago to write about Haiti? Have you done it or is there another book in you? Do you think you'll need to write a sequel or another story?
LEGER: So there was a lot of bittersweet Haiti stories, Haitian love stories I hope to write and publish. But this was my earthquake book.
MARTIN: May I ask about the title of this book, "God Loves Haiti"? Where does that come from?
LEGER: One of the American big religious figures had implied something about Haiti and religion and Haiti and sexuality.
MARTIN: This was Pat Robertson.
LEGER: Yes.
>>MARTIN It was 2010, right after the earthquake.
LEGER: He kind of implied that we kind of deserved it. And when I got to Haiti and discussing the earthquake and aftermath of the earthquake survivors, it was a common conversation. What did we do to God to deserve this? Why us? I dedicated the book to the 9 million survivors. Like 300,000 died but roughly nine million people survived. And there's goodness in that. There's God's will in that, to my mind anyway.
MARTIN: The book is called "God Loves Haiti." It is a debut novel by Dimitry Elias Leger. He joined us from our studios in New York. Dimitry, thank you so much.
LEGER: Thanks, Rachel, so much for having me. This was a blast.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: 52.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: 452.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: 25.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: 6.112.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #3: 25,856.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Time now for some number crunching from our data expert Mona Chalabi from fivethirtyeight.com. She has given us this number of the week.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: 44.
MARTIN: And that is the percentage of Americans that said last month they were likely to make a New Year's resolution for the year 2015. And what do they want? To lose weight, live healthier lives, become better people. Mona Chalabi joins us from our studios in New York to talk more about this. Hey, Mona.
MONA CHALABI: Hi, Rachel. Happy New Year.
MARTIN: Happy New Year to you. So we know lots of Americans make resolutions for the new year, but do we know how many Americans are successful in keeping them?
CHALABI: Yes we do. Our number of the week comes from a survey that asked over a thousand adults if they'd be making a resolution for this year. And it also asked them if they managed to keep the resolutions they made last year.
MARTIN: Mhmm.
CHALABI: Only 41 percent said they had managed to stick to their resolutions for 2014.
MARTIN: Oh. I mean, 41 percent. That's not horrible but it's not so great.
CHALABI: No.
MARTIN: Do we know anything about how long people are able to keep them? I mean, how long does it take them to break the resolution?
CHALABI: Well, there's a professor of psychology who has been researching the way that people make and keep resolutions since the late eighties. Now one study from this professor - his name's John Norcross at the University of Scranton - contacted people who had made a New Year's resolution every couple of weeks by phone to see how they were doing.
By mid-January, 29 percent of respondents were no longer following their resolutions. By February, it was 36 percent. And by June, over half had given up.
MARTIN: Oh, man.
CHALABI: I know. And maybe those numbers are a bit of an underestimate because if I had a researcher calling me every few weeks to see how I was doing, I think I'd make an extra effort with my New Year's resolution.
(LAUGHTER)
MARTIN: That's true, right. So it sounds like people get off track pretty quickly. Does that mean if you give up on your resolutions for one year, does that make you less likely to make them again the following year?
CHALABI: It doesn't look like it. People seem completely undeterred. That survey I mentioned about New Year's resolutions has actually been conducted since 1995. Every year, about two in five people say they failed in their previous resolution and about two in five say they will be making a resolution for the year ahead. Of course, they might not be the same two people but it still seems remarkably consistent. And actually, there's another source of evidence that we don't give up - our Internet search history.
MARTIN: What do you mean?
CHALABI: So using Google trends, I looked at how people have searched for the words gym and diet over the past ten years. And sure enough, every January 1, people start Googling those words in huge numbers.
MARTIN: What? What do you mean? I never do that. I don't know what you're talking about.
CHALABI: By February, the number of people looking for diets and gyms trails off. And by December, it's about a third lower. And then you see it pick up all over again the next January.
MARTIN: Funny how that works. So a diet and exercise. What other kind of resolutions do people make typically?
CHALABI: It's a pretty diverse wish list. So about four percent of interviewed people said they wanted to go back to school in 2015. Another four percent said they wanted to be closer to God. And nine percent said they wanted to be a better person. But again, the most popular New Year's resolutions by far were to lose weight and exercise more. About a quarter of people chose one of those.
MARTIN: See, I have to say, planning to be a better person - that one you're asking for failure. I think the key is to make them specific so they're achievable. That's just my two cents. I mean, there is value in just trying, though, right. I mean, at least naming change that you want to see in your life?
CHALABI: I'd agree with that. It all depends on what you want from these resolutions, right. So I mean, I've been using the word failure here but a lack of success isn't necessarily failure. I have this friend who each January 1 quits smoking. Even if she's frustrated when she starts up again each February, she always says to me that those four weeks without cigarettes are better than none. So if you want to change your life and change it for good, then my advice would be if at first you don't succeed, don't try and try again each January. Just keep trying whenever you can.
MARTIN: Good advice. I like it. OK, so a moment of truth. Do you do this? Do you make resolutions, Mona?
CHALABI: Um, yeah. I actually told myself that I'd try to start telling more positive stories with data. And it looks like I failed in a pretty ironic way this year. But I'll try again. I'll try again for the next number of the week, I promise.
MARTIN: It only took you, like, seven days to break that resolution.
CHALABI: Oh, what can you do?
MARTIN: Mona Chalabi of fivethirtyeight.com. Thanks so much, Mona.
CHALABI: Thanks, Rachel.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Rachel Martin.
The 2005 film "March of the Penguins" took us to the edge of the world where we got an inside look at the life of penguins - their migration patterns, daily routines, even their love lives. Well, for those of you out there who are craving more penguin in your own lives, here is your chance. A group of scientists in the UK are trying to sort and catalog thousands of photographs of penguins and they're turning to the public for help. The project is called Penguin Watch. Caitlin Black is a penguin researcher at the University of Oxford, England, and she joins me from our studios in New York. Hi, Caitlin.
CAITLIN BLACK: Hi, Rachel. Thanks for having me.
MARTIN: Just start off by explaining how this whole thing works. Where do these pictures come from, first of all?
BLACK: Right now, we currently have over 50 cameras installed at over 30 sites, with a large range from the Antarctic Peninsula to the island of South Georgia to the Falkland Islands. At the moment, we're monitoring five species which includes Gentoo, Chinstrap, Adelie, Rockhopper, and King penguins. And data from the cameras provides us information on the winter behavior as well as the breeding success - so how the colonies are faring. So as you can imagine, the cameras have produced hundreds of thousands of images at this point which has become too much for just myself and our team to annotate.
MARTIN: Alright, so I'm on this website right now, PenguinWatch.org. In this moment, I can observe some of these photographs and theoretically help you by sharing some information about what I see?
BLACK: Exactly. So you login to the website and it will provide a short tutorial for you. And so I'm on the website, as well. And a random image from our hundreds of thousands we have will pop up for you. So it pops up. It asks you if there's an animal there. You click yes if there are like the penguins I see in mine.
MARTIN: I've got penguins in mine.
BLACK: And all we're asking is for you to click on adults, chicks, and eggs as you see them.
MARTIN: And how is it helpful to you, me just clicking on a photo and saying yes, there's a penguin here?
BLACK: It's very helpful for us. So there's a few things. We have a couple objectives. For instance, in the winter, it's logistically incredibly difficult to study winter behavior in these guys. So by clicking on the penguins for us, we're able to see how many are there in our cameras' view year round. As far as the eggs and chicks go, it helps us to understand breeding behavior.
MARTIN: So as I click through this, it's also giving me an option to talk with a scientist about this photo. What happens if I say yes?
BLACK: It brings you to a discussion webpage where you can talk with me and a few other moderators who know a bit more about their biology and what might be going on in the photo.
MARTIN: And you're sitting there, Caitlin, 24 hours a day, ready to respond me if I want to talk to you about a picture?
BLACK: Not quite 24 hours, but we do try to respond as much as possible.
MARTIN: And so I can just ask you any kind of question I have and you'll engage with me?
BLACK: Absolutely. So for instance, you know, what are they doing here? Are they on an egg? Or is this a chick or not? All of these sort of questions we can answer for you.
MARTIN: And how far along are you? I mean, how many photos did you start out with and how many do you still have to work through?
BLACK: Right now I think to date we have 175,000 images. And that doesn't include any of the ones we're getting back from this season. Each year, the data essentially doubles or triples. So we're really hoping the project can continue for a long time.
MARTIN: OK. The work is not done.
BLACK: No.
MARTIN: Everyone out there, get online and click on the penguin photos.
BLACK: Yes, please.
MARTIN: Caitlin Black is a penguin researcher at the University of Oxford, England. She joined us from our studios in New York. Caitlin, happy penguin watching.
BLACK: Thank you. To you, too, Rachel.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Writer Thomas Pierce has included no penguins in his new short story collection. It's called "Hall of Small Mammals." But the mammals he does showcase, besides humans, of course, tend to be highly unusual - part prehistoric, part ahistoric, magical even.
Thomas has a vivid imagination. We first noticed some years back when he worked at NPR on a journalism fellowship. In his first story of the collection, we are introduced to an older woman called Mama. She has a grown son named Tommy who is anything but dependable.
THOMAS PIERCE: So one night she's throwing this party for some cousins, a wedding party. And her son is supposed to be there. He's totally let her down. He has not shown up. He's late.
And then when he gets home, he comes in his work truck. He works for a show called "Back from Extinction." It's this kind of reality show meets science. It's a show in which they clone dead or extinct animals and bring them back and you get to watch that magic in his television show. And he's the host of the show.
So here he is at home. He takes her out back as a way of kind of apologizing and also he reveals this small, this dwarf woolly mammoth, this brought back to life woolly mammoth. He tugs up his quilt and there it is. And she, you know, she thinks what is this, you know?
MARTIN: As you would...
PIERCE: As you would, of course.
MARTIN: ...If someone brought a woolly mammoth into your backyard.
PIERCE: Absolutely.
MARTIN: So the next story I'd like to talk about is the one called "Videos of People Falling Down." This is vignettes of moments of literally that, people falling in various circumstances.
PIERCE: Yeah.
MARTIN: And each small story builds and connects to another. And I mean, there are several different characters in this but I want to pick out one in particular, Adam Fitzgerald.
PIERCE: The little boy on the Slip 'N Slide.
MARTIN: Yeah, that, the little boy on the Slip 'N Slide. So walk us through what happened to Adam Fitzgerald as a child.
PIERCE: Sure. So Adam Fitzgerald is the slightly pudgy boy who is at a birthday party and there's a Slip 'N Slide, which - that's always fun. But he's not prepared. He hasn't brought his swimsuit. So he's in his whitey tighties, you know, which is already embarrassing.
And so he's on the slip and slide. He's having this wonderful, miraculous slide. He gets to the bottom. He stands up. And then the kid who's sliding behind him knocks him down. He knocks the legs out from underneath Adam. And he has this terrible fall and chips his tooth, I think. And it's really embarrassing.
It's caught on film. And it ends up on one of these television shows, these "America's Funniest Home Videos" type show. This happens when he's young. His mom signs a consent form, you know, and says sure, yeah, put this - I give you permission to use this video. She has regrets about it later.
He grows up to discover one day - someone sends him this link to an online video. And it's this montage of people falling down. And there he is. There's his little boy self falling down.
MARTIN: There are other falls - a local news reporter falls during a live shot, a famous author bites it on a treadmill, several others. And they end up as part of an art exhibit.
I mean, is there a larger message in here about what we do with all this stuff that's everywhere online?
PIERCE: Yeah. I think it was an exercise in empathy. I wanted to - I mean, these clips are three to four seconds long. So I wanted to expand, you know. I wanted to look beyond these three or four embarrassing seconds and try to find the real people, the people whose lives exist on either side of those three or four second clips.
I mean, I think that, you know, this is a story about people at moments of weakness. But I think it's at moments of weakness that we begin to see ourselves more clearly.
MARTIN: Do you ever get the urge to keep writing these stories through? I mean, I realize that this is a specific art form, the short story.
PIERCE: Yeah.
MARTIN: But have you ever had to fight a desire to keep writing, to keep writing the characters?
PIERCE: Yes. Yeah. It's hard for me to stop a story. It's hard to know when to stop, when a story is finished.
MARTIN: So how do you know?
PIERCE: Yeah. That's a tough question
MARTIN: Don't tell me you just know.
(LAUGHTER)
PIERCE: No, I don't. I'm trying to get better, too, about letting go. At some point you just have to say, this story is finished and I can do no more for it. I like getting to an ending and feeling like you realize the story has been writing around something. There's this hole at the bottom of the story and you could tumble right into it. So I try to reach that moment.
MARTIN: How did writing this collection change you as a writer? Did you learn something about your style when you look back at all of these pieces put together?
PIERCE: When I first started writing stories I wrote what I hoped would be considered Southern fiction. And I was probably trying a little too hard. So I've slowly come to see that I don't have to try that hard, that I am who I am.
You know, I used to have a very - when I was a little kid - this very squeaky, sharp southern accent. And somehow I lost it, for better or worse. For worse, I think, maybe. I would say the stories, maybe, are a lot like my accent now. There's this slight Southern accent to the stories. It's kind of inevitable. I don't have to do much and that's going to be the case.
And that's something that I did learn as I was writing these stories, too, I'd say. I can let go.
MARTIN: Thomas Pierce. The book is called "Hall of Small Mammals." He joined us from our member station in Charlottesville, Virginia. Thomas, thanks so much for talking with us.
PIERCE: Thank you, Rachel. I really appreciate it.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Inspiration can come in many forms, and it can strike at some unexpected moments. That was the case for the musician Jascha Hoffman. Hoffman writes "The Scan." It's a monthly science and culture column for the New York Times. And he was a freelance obituary writer for the paper. While researching the famous and sometimes not so famous lives of those who passed away, Hoffman found himself wanting to put some of these life stories to music.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE MERCY MACHINE")
JASCHA HOFFMAN: (Singing) Oh, my doctor. Oh, my doctor. Am I ready to go?
MARTIN: He wrote this song about Dr. Jack Kevorkian, who died in 2011. And then there's this song about someone perhaps less well-known. Maynard Hill was the first to fly a model airplane across the Atlantic.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE LITTLE AIRPLANE")
HOFFMAN: (Singing) How many years in the wood shop with the circuits and the superglue? Now the big time's coming for you. Oh.
MARTIN: Jascha Hoffman has a new album. It is called "The Afterneath." He joins us from our studios in New York. Welcome to the program.
HOFFMAN: Thank you. Thanks for having me, Rachel.
MARTIN: So how did this happen for you? When did it occur to you that there was some musical inspiration in what you were doing?
HOFFMAN: Well, I didn't go out looking to write songs from obituaries. I was casting around to find a way to get some really credible characters and stories in my songs. Some of the songwriters I admire the most like Paul Simon or Steely Dan seem to have this knack for just implying a whole screenplay worth of story in just a couple lines. So I was looking at short stories and poems and screenplays. And I was also writing obituaries of scientists for the New York Times at the time. And my editor there sent me a collection of the year's best obituaries. And I opened it up and I was just like, this is the material.
MARTIN: Let's listen to a song from the album. This is called "The Atom Bomb." It is about an American physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE ATOM BOMB")
HOFFMAN: (Singing) As the sky guy pulled up inward, she was pressed to the sand like an ocean above her or God’s left hand. When it hit Hiroshima, she was out of her heart. So she boarded a steamer, the red, red star.
MARTIN: This is about Joan Hinton.
HOFFMAN: I was just taken by her story. I mean, she was really young when she went to work for the Manhattan Project. She was in her twenties. She was one of the only women there. She was involved in making the bomb. And then when it was dropped, she was so disillusioned with the fruits of her labor that she fled to China and lived for the rest of her life there. She died, I think, in 2010. And she really settled into this communal farm. Her husband was there. Her brother came and joined her for a time. And she was often touted by Mao as a proof that there are some reasonable Americans out there. And it just seemed like the sweep of her life included this sweep of an American century.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE ATOM BOMB")
HOFFMAN: (Singing) You're still burning and I'm still breathing. We're alone now, alone believing.
MARTIN: You know, this is probably an issue that faces obit writers, as well, but how you keep the song from being just a litany of events, a resume or a thumbnail biography set to music?
HOFFMAN: That's a really good question. I think there's a sense in what's your first priority as a writer of an obituary is to be faithful to the world as it exists. With a song, there's a sort of internal coherence that requires an almost more stringent attention to detail. But it's a different kind of detail. And sometimes you have to peel away a little bit from the world of facts and events in order to get the song off the ground. Other times it seems like the obituary would deliver to me these details that were so strange and so specific that they were just this incredible gift for the song. I would never have imagined my way into them.
MARTIN: Can you give me an example? I know that's a big question. But one strange detail that has made its way into a song for yours.
HOFFMAN: Well, there's a song called "The Freezer" which tells the life of a survivor of one of the Cambodian prison camps. And there's a line in that song.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE FREEZER")
HOFFMAN: (Singing) If you slip me your supper.
If you slip me your supper.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE FREEZER")
HOFFMAN: (Singing) I will draw you an empty bowl.
I will draw you an empty bowl. See the insects humming. We could steam, eat them whole.
I would never have been bold enough to come up with something like that.
(LAUGHTER)
HOFFMAN: But I think there was a line - if I'm not mistaken, there was a line in the obituary about eating insects. And I just felt like there was something so perfect about that image.
MARTIN: The last song on the album is not based on an obituary but let's listen to a little bit of this. This is called "The Shepherd."
HOFFMAN: Sure.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE SHEPHERD")
HOFFMAN: (Singing) So I loved a Montana man in the shade of the redwoods. Gouged our bodies instead of the world. He lit up such a tiny place.
MARTIN: This is inspired by a poem by D. A. Powell. Why did this song round out the collection for you?
HOFFMAN: The song is kind of an elegy for a love that was lost. It was based on a poem that's inspired by a Greek myth about a pair of shepherds who kind of lose each other's love. But it just felt like it fit. And in a way, I don't know, I was actually just listening to that song this morning and the chorus came back to me in a new way. Did he go back to his fields and caves? Yes, but they all were gone. I think it has something to do with the idea of maybe when one dies, one returns but the place one returns to isn't there anymore. I don't know. I have to think that through a little more.
MARTIN: Jascha Hoffman. His new album is called "The Afterneath." He joined us from our studios in New York. Thank you so much.
HOFFMAN: Thank you for having me.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE SHEPHERD")
HOFFMAN: (Singing) After the day was done. Did he go back to his fields and caves? Yes, but they all were gone.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Rachel Martin. For the second time in two weeks, one of New York City's finest will be laid to rest. Funeral services for NYPD Officer Wenjian Liu are drawing to a close at a funeral home in Brooklyn. Liu and his partner, Rafael Ramos, were shot to death last month in their patrol car. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio delivered a eulogy for the fallen officer.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO: All of our city is heartbroken today. We've seen it over these last two weeks. We've seen the pain that people feel from all walks of life, the sense of appreciation for the sacrifices of this family and of the Ramos family.
MARTIN: Reporter Stephen Nessen from member station WNYC is outside the memorial service. He joins us now on the line. Stephen, you've had a chance to be in the crowd talking with people. What have you been hearing from mourners there?
STEPHEN NESSEN, BYLINE: Well, among the police officers who came, there were several hundred from around the country - Utah, Indiana, Texas. They said they're here to support a fellow officer. In fact many of the officers are Asian-American, part of various Asian-American law enforcement organizations. And they say they certainly felt this death very acutely and wanted to come to show their support.
In the crowd this is a mixed sort of Chinese, old-Italian, American neighborhood. Some of them are here to support Liu because he was Asian-American. Others say they're just here because they'd be out for any fallen NYPD officer. I even ran into a group from New Jersey, about 60 of them organized together, mostly all Chinese-Americans, somewhat recent immigrants. And they came out because they said they wanted to support the family who lost their only son. They understand the importance of familial piety and how losing an only son will affect an elderly Chinese couple.
MARTIN: At the funeral of Officer Ramos last week, scores of police officers turned their back on Mayor Bill de Blasio. That prompted the police commissioner to then urge officers not to do something like that again at this service. From what you've seen, did officers comply?
NESSEN: They did not comply. There we're several dozen police officers, from what I saw, of the thousands who are here who turned their back on the mayor as he was speaking. There's a big-screen TV outside, and so the officers are packed very tightly down the street, several city blocks long. And they turned their backs to the mayor somewhat awkwardly for the officers who didn't turn their backs because they were then standing nose-to-nose with fellow officers. But many officers did turn their back. And many officers just looked around to see who else was doing it.
MARTIN: This service is a Buddhist ceremony, but I understand there are also Irish bag pipers there representing NYPD - a tradition within the department. Even though this funeral is - marks such a tragic event, is it reflective of a new level of diversity within the department?
NESSEN: Well, certainly in his remarks, Police Commissioner Bill Bratton acknowledged that the police officer has gone through many changes over the years. And it's much more inclusive and is a broader family now. At this funeral, you did see a lot of the traditional Chinese calligraphy over the casket around where Officer Liu was laying. And all of the speakers - Mayor de Blasio, Commissioner Bratton, even the monsieur who delivered the opening remarks - peppered their speeches with Buddhist phrases, which would be familiar to many of the Asian-Americans out here today.
MARTIN: Reporter Stephen Nessen speaking to us from Brooklyn. Thank you so much, Stephen.
NESSEN: Thank you.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Today in Your Health, changing behavior to keep your New Year's resolutions. This story by Alix Spiegel was so illuminating the first time we played it, we made a New Year's resolution to play it for you again.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
ALIX SPIEGEL, BYLINE: This story of New Year's resolutions and behavior change begins on June 17, 1971, at a press conference held by President Richard Nixon.
(SOUNDBITE OF PRESS CONFERENCE)
PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: Won't you be seated, please, ladies and gentlemen?
SPIEGEL: Now, the subject of this press conference was a particularly ugly behavior; Nixon was there to talk about drug addiction. You see, several months earlier, two U.S. congressmen had gone to Vietnam for a visit and come back with some extremely disturbing news. Fifteen percent of the servicemen in Vietnam, they said, were actively addicted to heroin. This idea horrified the public, which is why on that June day, Nixon was standing in front of a lectern declaring drugs public enemy...
(SOUNDBITE OF PRESS CONFERENCE)
NIXON: Public enemy number one.
SPIEGEL: And so to coordinate his fight against this enemy, Nixon created a whole new office, headed by a man named Jerome Jaffe.
(SOUNDBITE OF PRESS CONFERENCE)
NIXON: Dr. Jaffe will be the man directly responsible. He will report directly to me
SPIEGEL: I recently went to visit Dr. Jaffe, and he explained that part of the reason the public was so wigged out about the idea of thousands of servicemen addicted to heroin was because of heroin's reputation at the time.
JEROME JAFFE: Once you get addicted, you know, you almost inevitably relapse.
SPIEGEL: In other words, the soldiers were condemned to a life of heroin addiction. Still, Nixon laid out a program of rehabilitation and prevention. And there was something else he wanted. He wanted Jaffe to research what happened to the addicted servicemen once they came home.
JAFFE: The president wanted it studied; I would get it studied.
SPIEGEL: So Jaffe gave this psychiatric researcher named Lee Robins unprecedented access to the regular enlisted men in the Army. Every enlisted man was tested for heroin before he was allowed to return to the U.S. And this is what she found.
JAFFE: Forty percent had tried heroin. Somewhere around half had become addicted.
SPIEGEL: Now, those who were addicted were actually kept in Vietnam until they dried out. Then Robins tracked them when they returned to the States.
JAFFE: Well, that was the surprising thing. She looked at the number of people who returned to heroin use when she interviewed them one year after returning.
SPIEGEL: And that number? Shockingly low.
JAFFE: Ninety-five percent of the people who were addicted in Vietnam did not become re-addicted when they returned to the United States.
SPIEGEL: Now, this flew in the face of everything everyone knew about both heroin and drug addiction, generally.
JAFFE: Everybody thought there was - somehow, she was lying; she was politically influenced. She spent months, if not years, trying to defend the integrity of the study.
SPIEGEL: But 40 years later, the findings of this study are widely accepted. And to explain this, I need to turn back to the subject of behavior change - and not just drug addiction, mind you - all kinds of resolution-worthy behaviors like diet and exercise and smoking. And to help me explain, let me introduce to you to two people.
WENDY WOOD: My name is Wendy Wood.
DAVID NEAL: My name is David Neal.
SPIEGEL: Wendy Wood and David Neal are psychologists who research how to change behavior. Wood is at the University of Southern California. Neal works for companies like Procter & Gamble. And when I called them, they explained that for many years, scientists believed that if you wanted to change behavior, you really had to change people's goals and intentions. Here's Wood.
WOOD: The research was very much focused on trying to understand how to change people's attitudes, with the assumption that behavior change would just follow.
SPIEGEL: And so researchers studied stuff like how to organize public health campaigns, or how to use social pressure to change attitudes. And Neal says they found that those interventions did work - mostly.
NEAL: They work for behaviors that people don't perform too frequently.
SPIEGEL: Wood and Neal say that if you want, for example, to increase the number of people who donate blood, a public campaign can work well. But if you want them to quit smoking, campaigns intended to change attitudes are less effective.
NEAL: Once a behavior's been repeated a lot, especially if a person does it in the same setting, you can successfully kind of change what people want to do. But if they've done it enough, their behavior doesn't follow their intentions.
SPIEGEL: OK, so why would this be? Neal says it has to do with the way that over time, our physical environments come to shape our behavior.
NEAL: People might, when they perform a behavior a lot - especially in the same environment, same kind of physical setting - outsource the control of the behavior to the environment.
SPIEGEL: So outsourcing control over your behavior to the environment might sound a little funny. To help you understand, let's look really closely at a very basic, everyday behavior, getting into a car.
NEAL: If you break it down, there's really a myriad set of complex actions performed in sequence, that are required to do that.
WOOD: You use a certain motion to stick your key in the lock.
SPIEGEL: All right, there we go.
WOOD: You stick the key in the ignition.
SPIEGEL: I'll put the key in.
(SOUNDBITE OF BEEPING)
NEAL: All of this is actually very complicated, and someone who had never driven a car before would have no capacity, obviously, to do that. But it becomes second nature to us and so automatic that we can do it while we're conducting complex other tasks, like having conversations.
WOOD: About 45 percent of what people do every day is in the same environment and is repeated.
SPIEGEL: In this way, David Neal says, our environments come to unconsciously direct our behavior - even the behaviors that we don't want, like smoking.
NEAL: For a smoker, the view of the entrance to their office building - which is a place that they smoke all the time - becomes a powerful mental cue to go and perform that behavior.
SPIEGEL: And, Wood says, over time those cues become so deeply ingrained that they are very, very hard to resist. And so we smoke at the entrance of work when we don't want to, sit on the couch with a tub of ice cream when we don't need to.
WOOD: We don't feel sort of pushed by the environment. But in fact, we are very integrated with it.
SPIEGEL: To battle a bad behavior, then, one answer is to disrupt the environment in some way. Even a small change can help, like eating the ice cream with your non-dominant hand.
NEAL: Doing things like altering the action sequence in some way to disrupt the kind of learned body sequence that is driving the behavior.
SPIEGEL: Of course, larger disruptions can also be helpful, which brings us back to heroin use in Vietnam. Now, I don't want to overstate this because a variety of factors are probably at play. But one big theory about why the rates of heroin relapse were so low on return to the U.S. has to do with the fact that the soldiers, after being treated for their physical addiction in Vietnam, returned to a radically different place. Here's Nixon appointee Jerome Jaffe again.
JAFFE: A change in the environment, you know, makes it plausible that the addiction rate would be that much lower.
SPIEGEL: We think of ourselves as controlling our own behaviors, as directing the actions we take. But it's not that simple. It's like over time, we deposit parts of ourselves in the world all around us, and in turn, those parts come to shape who we are. Alix Spiegel, NPR News, Washington.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Losing your driver's license is a serious penalty, but often drivers lose it for things that have nothing to do with unsafe driving, like the failure to pay court fines. That is a penalty that hurts poor people the most and can even keep them stuck in poverty. NPR's Joseph Shapiro explains.
JOSEPH SHAPIRO, BYLINE: Here are the penalties for serious driving offenses in Wisconsin - if you get caught drunk driving, it's your first offense, you lose your license for nine months. For hit-and-run driving -
JOHN PAWASARAT: Well, you get one-year revocation for that.
SHAPIRO: That's researcher John Pawasarat.
PAWASARAT: Even though they've left an accident causing bodily harm, they get a revocation for one year.
JOSEPH SHAPIRO, BYLINE: But, get this - if you don't pay the ticket for a minor driving offense, you lose your license for two years. Like, if you get stopped for driving with a broken tail light, but then you don't pay.
PAWASARAT: It's well beyond any other penalty.
SHAPIRO: So hit-and-run driver - 12 months, broken tail light, don't pay the ticket - 24 months. Does this make sense?
PAWASARAT: It's an incredible policy, a policy of punishing people who can't pay their fines.
SHAPIRO: It's a policy we found repeated in states across the country. People who don't pay their court fines, for nonviolent offenses - mostly for driving violations - get their driver's license suspended. It's a twist on an NPR investigation that we called "Guilty And Charged." That showed the rise of court fines and fees and how the costs - that can reach hundreds or even thousands of dollars per person - most hurt poor people, like the people who live in this neighborhood.
PAWASARAT: We're pretty much in the heart of Milwaukee's poorest neighborhoods.
SHAPIRO: Pawasarat runs the Employment and Training Institute at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. He studies these neighborhoods, block by block, to understand the barriers to getting a job, like having your driver's license suspended and how losing it can set off a spiral of bad consequences for the poorest people.
PAWASARAT: Two out of three African-American men in this neighborhood of working age don't have a driver's license and are consequently unable to access the jobs that are beyond the bus line.
MCARTHUR EDWARDS: If you have a suspended license, man, it hinders you because most jobs are not in the inner city nowadays. So the inner-city jobs that we have are not able to provide for our families.
SHAPIRO: That's McArthur Edwards. He was stopped by police and ticketed for driving with a broken light over his back license plate. When he didn't pay the $64 fine, his driver's license was suspended for two years. He kept driving and got more tickets. He's 29 now. From time to time, he gets hired to work in warehouses around the city, but those are temporary jobs, often at around minimum wage. This month he doesn't have enough money to pay both the landlord and the light bill. He wants to be a good father to his four children.
EDWARDS: And I want my kids to look up to me. I want my kids to be like, man, my father did that, you know, or I need these or I want these or the school said I needed this and I can't afford to buy it or I can't provide for my children, you know? I don't want that to be that way.
SHAPIRO: Recently, he responded to ads for long-distance truck drivers. Two companies promised to train him, but not until he's got a valid driver's license. So he came to the Center for Driver's License Recovery and Employability, where lawyers and caseworkers helped him get his license. They arranged for him to pay off $600 on the $1,800 he owed then cleared the rest with community service at the food pantry.
ANGELA CATANIA: All right, so you had your road test last week, correct?
SHAPIRO: Case manager Angela Catania helps him with the last step - to set up the road test he needs to pass.
CATANIA: OK, and how did that go?
EDWARDS: It went fine from my point of view.
CATANIA: OK.
EDWARDS: But I failed it.
CATANIA: Do you have another one rescheduled?
EDWARDS: Yes.
CATANIA: OK.
SHAPIRO: Statistics from Wisconsin's Department of Transportation show that the most common reason people lose their license is because they don't pay the fine on a ticket for a non-moving traffic offense. Those make up 56 percent of all suspensions in Wisconsin. Nationwide, one study found similar numbers - about 40 percent of suspensions are for unpaid traffic tickets and for things like not paying child support or getting caught with drugs - things that have nothing to do with unsafe driving. People with money pay off their tickets and are done with the courts. When people don't pay, a minor ticket can set off a chain of problems, like for Angel Hinton, who also came to the center for help.
ANGEL HINTON: I always parked in that same place for two years. They never ticketed my car.
SHAPIRO: Hinton had a small janitorial business. Money was tight so she challenged the parking ticket she got outside of a suburban office building she cleaned on Sunday mornings. But the unpaid ticket meant she couldn't renew her car registration. She then got more tickets for expired tags. She missed a court date. She says she wasn't notified. That triggered an arrest warrant. And one day, she got stopped by police, pulled out of her car and handcuffed in front of her young daughter. Without a license, she could no longer drive to the places she cleaned.
HINTON: This basically ruined my life. I mean, I was to the point that I'm building my business, I'm growing, and now I'm back to depending on public assistance.
JIM GRAMLING: People should pay their tickets, no doubt about it. They should be held accountable for what they've done that violated the traffic laws.
SHAPIRO: Jim Gramling is a former municipal court judge. He helped start the Center for Driver's License Recovery - retired on a Friday, started working as a volunteer lawyer on Monday.
GRAMLING: But, at some point, a balance has to be introduced into this. And the balance is if people don't pay because they're low-income and can't budget that expense, what's an appropriate penalty?
SHAPIRO: He says most judges never ask people if they have the money to pay traffic tickets. So he argues for alternate penalties, to let people pay in small monthly amounts or arrange for community service instead. And the retired judge lobbies state lawmakers to end the two-year suspension on failure to pay a ticket, a penalty longer than the suspension for drunk driving or hit-and-run driving.
GRAMLING: Don't let those suspensions sit on low-income people and prevent them from getting the license they need to get to and from work, get a job or just live like everybody else.
SHAPIRO: Municipal court officials declined to speak about the policy of two-year suspensions, but the threat of losing a license does push people who can pay to pay. Still, a new analysis of city records by the nonprofit Justice Initiatives Institute, says there's no evidence that the long suspensions stop people from driving and getting more tickets. Mostly, the report says, the two-year suspensions just put poor people more in debt. Joseph Shapiro, NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
A play with a dark message about technology makes its point with the innovative use of technology. The performance comes from a British theater company called 1927. Part of its act is like nothing you could have seen in 1927 and, for that matter, like nothing else you'd see on stage today. Their shows have traveled the world. NPR's Ari Shapiro reports on their newest play in London called "Golem."
ARI SHAPIRO, BYLINE: Lots of theater companies use animation. None of them uses it quite like this.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SHAPIRO: Any play by 1927 will have just a few actors on stage standing in front of a big, white screen. On that screen, the animator Paul Barrett creates eerie, stylized worlds.
PAUL BARRETT: The animation is both the sets and the environment which the performers are performing in. But it also acts as a character in the play as well.
SHAPIRO: The company's new play, "Golem," is a parable about technology taking over our lives. The title character is a giant, clay man who starts as a servant and ends up the master.
(SOUNDBITE OF PLAY, "GOLEM")
ROSE ROBINSON: (As Golem) Golem can talk. Golem can rhyme. Golem was playing up before bedtime.
SHAPIRO: The character comes from ancient Jewish folklore - a lump of clay magically brought to life to protect the inhabitants of a city. This story puts the character in a different context. Barrett used stop-motion animation to create his Golem out of actual clay. He filmed that, then projected it on top of crazy, animated collages of run-down cityscapes.
BARRETT: These are kind of loosely based on all these photos that I took in downtown LA actually, quite a lot of it - sort of neon lights and all of this, like, run-down, knackered city.
SHAPIRO: The show's production manager is Helen Mugridge. With a click of the computer, she turns Golem's head and makes streetlights go from red to green.
HELEN MUGRIDGE: There are 480 video cues in the show.
SHAPIRO: In a typical scene, a live actor walks down the street with Golem, while musicians perform the soundtrack on stage.
MUGRIDGE: He's on his way to work, and now there's a street clown coming up behind them. And Golem thumps the street clown in the face, and he falls to the floor. And they start walking again, and now they're sliding down the hill and into the office.
SHAPIRO: Through all of that, one actor is walking in place at the center of the stage. And everything else, from the clown to the hill to the office, is on the screen behind him. It's a unique challenge for a performer.
LILIAN HENLEY: You have to use your imagination so much more than I think I realized.
SHAPIRO: Lilian Henley acts, plays the piano and wrote the music for the show. One of her costars is Will Close, who also plays drums in this production.
WILL CLOSE: And the margins for error are so small.
SHAPIRO: He says if an actor stands an inch in the wrong direction, it can ruin the illusion of interacting with the characters on the screen.
CLOSE: And it's always constantly trying to avoid those little infringements as much as possible because it's - that's what creates the seamless feel of the whole show.
SHAPIRO: "Golem" is a cautionary tale about technology, even though the play itself depends on incredibly sophisticated technology. Creator Paul Barrett embraces that contradiction. He says technology itself is not the problem, the problem is the way technology can take over. The play runs through the end of January. Then "Golem" takes off for China, Russia, France and the world. Ari Shapiro, NPR News, London.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
All this week, we're talking about drums and drummers. We're calling it Beat Week. And today, our colleague David Greene brings us a duo that's had a huge effect on music.
DAVID GREENE, BYLINE: From the mid-'60s through the early '70s, Clyde Stubblefield and John "Jabo" Starks shared drumming duties for the hardest-working man in show business.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GET UP")
JAMES BROWN: (Singing) One, two, three, four. Get up. Get on up. Get up.
GREENE: Clyde and Jabo, as they like to be called, are both now in their 70s, and they created the grooves on many of James Brown's biggest hits. Their work really laid the foundation for modern funk drumming. Can you tell me when the two of you met?
CLYDE STUBBLEFIELD: In '65 at a James Brown concert in Augusta, Georgia.
GREENE: And tell me exactly what happened.
STUBBLEFIELD: Well, I went down to audition for James Brown. And I went on stage, and there was five drum sets up there. And I'm going, wow, what do you need me for?
GREENE: That's Clyde. He was hired just two weeks after Jabo, bringing the total number of drummers in the group up to seven. Why did James Brown need so many drummers?
JOHN 'JABO' STARKS: The saying was when Clayton Fillyau was a drummer with James, he had just one drummer, one guitar player, one bass player. They was about to not play. They were rebelling against James for something.
GREENE: Oh.
STARKS: And they said they weren't going to play, and he just couldn't stand that. So he had to agree with them, and they said he made a statement after then, I'll never be caught without two of everything. So I guess that's where it started. But when Clyde and I joined the group, it was like we gelled together, and then he started letting the other drummers go.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BROWN: At this time, we want to feature our latest recording. It's called "Cold Sweat." You ready, Clyde?
STUBBLEFIELD: Yeah.
BROWN: That's our drummer. One of them. Hit it, Clyde.
GREENE: Well how did you guys gel so well? Because you could've been competitive.
STUBBLEFIELD: No. We love each other.
STARKS: You have to understand this. We're two different drummers. Clyde plays the way that Clyde play, which nobody's going to play like Clyde.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "COLD SWEAT")
BROWN: (Singing) I break out in a cold sweat. Huh.
STARKS: I play like I play. We can play the same tune but different ways.
STUBBLEFIELD: Nobody play like Jabo.
STARKS: You never play together on James' show.
STUBBLEFIELD: No.
STARKS: But then he would change. When he wanted to hear something different from Clyde, he'd point to me.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE PAYBACK")
BROWN: (Singing) Hey. Got to got to payback. Revenge.
STARKS: I know how to groove, sit in a pocket and groove.
STUBBLEFIELD: Correct. Correct.
STARKS: And if you can't pat your feet and clap your hand to what I'm doing, then I'm not doing anything worthwhile.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE PAYBACK")
BROWN: (Singing) I'm mad. I get down with my girlfriend. That ain't right.
GREENE: Well, what was it like working with James Brown?
STUBBLEFIELD: Well it was a trip, number one.
(LAUGHTER)
GREENE: OK.
STUBBLEFIELD: And Jabo and I took it. And most of the time, it was fun 'cause we were traveling. And most of the time when Brown was there, it wasn't that much fun because he didn't associate with us.
GREENE: He didn't?
STUBBLEFIELD: No. He rode on a plane. We rode on a bus together.
GREENE: Clyde and Jabo do say working with James Brown could be tough. Musicians were pretty much at his beck and call. They even got fined for mistakes, though never Jabo.
STARKS: Oh, I didn't pay fines.
GREENE: You didn't pay fines?
STUBBLEFIELD: No, he didn't. I paid fines.
GREENE: You paid fines. Clyde, what were you paying fines for?
STUBBLEFIELD: For him thinking I made a mistake.
GREENE: I love you saying thinking that you made a mistake, not making a mistake. That sounds like an important distinction.
STUBBLEFIELD: Right. Sometimes you don't have to make a mistake. You just do a little something a little differently, and he called that a fine. He'd fine you.
GREENE: Now amazingly, these two guys who helped invent funk drumming never took drum lessons.
STUBBLEFIELD: We just done our own thing.
STARKS: You play from the feelings that you have...
GREENE: Right.
STARKS: ...The music that you have been endowed with.
GREENE: And it wasn't always music. Clyde Stubblefield, who grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee, heard rhythms all around him.
STUBBLEFIELD: They had factories down there that would put off like a smokestack. Pa-poom (ph). Pa-poom. Pa-poom. I just made up my own soul feeling.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I GOT THE FEELING")
BROWN: (Singing) I got the feeling. Baby, baby, I got the feeling.
GREENE: John "Jabo" Starks was raised in Mobile, Alabama. His influence was music like this from the Church of God.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHOIR MUSIC)
GREENE: Picture handclapping, singing, tambourines and other instruments.
STARKS: It was a feeling and a groove that you just couldn't even sit down to. You couldn't stop. You had to get up and do something with it.
STUBBLEFIELD: And Jabo is a groover.
GREENE: And the grooves these guys created have inspired so many artists. This is a song from the group Public Enemy. They used Clyde Stubblefield's famous drum pattern from the song, "Funky Drummer."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FIGHT THE POWER")
PUBLIC ENEMY: (Singing) Fight the power. We've got to fight the powers that be.
GREENE: But artists rarely give Clyde or Jabo credit when they use their beats. That on top of the bad times with James Brown have left them feeling a little bitter. Still, they give Brown thanks for showcasing their talents around the world. And sometimes, it was the hardest working man in show business who couldn't keep up with them.
STARKS: I never will forget. We played a gig with James in Olympic Theatre in Paris. We struck a groove that you just couldn't turn aloof. James came on. He did his part and when he walked off stage, the groove was still going. We could not stop it. He came back. He said, that's enough, and he took off again, and we were still playing. He came back a second time. Third time, he just threw his hands up and said, I can't go any further.
GREENE: Can I just say I get the feeling that you guys really admire one another?
STUBBLEFIELD: We do.
STARKS: We're brothers. That's the way that I look at it. It's a brotherly love. That's what it is.
STUBBLEFIELD: It is. You're right.
STARKS: Now, so far is the music world eventually, possibly, it's going to be said that OK, Clyde and Jabo did this or they did that. To tell you the truth, it doesn't really matter with me because I get respect from people that really mean what they're saying. It's not just talking or saying something.
STUBBLEFIELD: Jabo and I has never fell out. Actually, we have never had an argument actually.
GREENE: Well, you guys have been on quite a journey together, and it has been an honor talking to you. And thank you guys so much.
STARKS: Thank you.
STUBBLEFIELD: OK Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FUNKY DRUMMER")
BROWN: (Singing) One more time. I want to give the drummer some of this funky soul we got here.
INSKEEP: David Greene on the line with the original funky drummers, Clyde Stubblefield and John "Jabo" Starks.
STUBBLEFIELD: Love you, Bo.
STARKS: Love you, C.
STUBBLEFIELD: OK, brother.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FUNKY DRUMMER")
BROWN: (Singing) One, two, three, four. Get it.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Warming ties with the United States have stirred hope among Cubans for improved telecommunications. The government has promised citizens better Internet access. The few Cubans who now manage to get online find it expensive and slow. But as NPR's Carrie Kahn found, Cubans have devised an ingenious work-around - or walk-around - to stay connected.
CARRIE KAHN, BYLINE: On Havana's Malecon, roaming guitarists play for the crowds resting against the iconic sea wall. In this nightly gathering spot, it's old-fashioned interacting - no one is on a cell phone, no eyes glued to smart phones.
UNIDENTIFIED GUITARIST: (Singing in Spanish).
KAHN: While Cuban's tout their revolution's free health care and education, they've missed out on the digital one. Fewer than a fifth of the population owns a mobile device. Internet access is even lower, and cable and satellite TV is banned in private homes. But surprisingly, Cubans are plugged in. During a lull in the nightly music, the conversation turns to this week's latest installment of some of the U.S.'s most popular TV shows.
JULIO RODRIGUEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
KAHN: Julio Rodriguez and his wife, Kadiuska Lara, rattle off their favorites - "Person Of Interest," "The Mentalist." Another couple shouts they love "Caso Cerando," the Telemundo courtroom drama, and, oh, the Discovery Channel. Without high-tech offerings, Cubans have found an ingenious way to get nearly real-time entertainment, as well as the latest magazines, apps and even video games. It's called the Weekly Package, and it's passed, bought and sold hand-to-hand on external hard drives and memory sticks throughout the island.
RODRIGUEZ: (Through interpreter) Rodriguez says 80 percent of the country watches the Package.
KAHN: That's his unscientific opinion, of course. But it couldn't be simpler. All you need is a DVD player, which is legal on the island.
IYAWO: (Speaking Spanish).
KAHN: In the living room of his small apartment outside Havana, Iyawo sits in front of a computer screen. He won't tell me his full name since what he's doing is illegal in Cuba. He says on Saturdays he goes to his distributor, who has downloaded the entire Package - about one terabyte - from a satellite. By the time he's back to his house, there's already a line outside. That day he charges 5 CUC, about $5.75, for the whole thing. By Monday the price drops in half. Smaller memory sticks full of preselected shows are even cheaper.
(SOUNDBITE OF UNIDENTIFIED TV SHOW)
KAHN: On the week I saw the Package, the offerings included everything from the latest episode of Showtime's "Homeland," Univision's "Sabado Gigante" and even anti-virus software updates. There were also advertisements for Havana restaurants and a local kids' party decorator. Looks like capitalism to me.
IYAWO: (Through interpreter) Capitalism with the face of socialism, snaps back Iyawo, because what I'm doing is making things better, not worse. I'm providing a service, says Iyawo.
KAHN: And he insists it's pure entertainment. The Package doesn't include anything political or pornographic. That's why he speculates the government permits it. And the government says it will permit more access to the Internet in 2015. In a state newspaper last week, officials announced improved services, including Internet access and mobile devices, although no timetable was given. For now, Cubans continue to line up and pay up. On this busy street in Old Havana in front of the state-owned telecommunications company, Danier Lopez waits in a long line to get inside on one of a dozen computers.
DANIER LOPEZ: (Through interpreter) The connection is expensive, says Lopez, about $5 an hour.
KAHN: That's about a quarter of a monthly minimum salary. And it's slow. Lopez says he spends most of his time waiting for pages to load. Cuban censors also routinely block some websites. Lopez says he has a Facebook page but hardly ever sees it. Reinaldo Escobar, an independent journalist for the prominent website 14ymedio.com, eagerly awaits better service too. Sympathetic Western embassies allow him to use the Internet free, but he says he pays a political price for the service. The government publishes photos of him entering the embassies using them to argue his work is subversive, but he says change is coming.
REINALDO ESCOBAR: (Through interpreter) The changes are moving in the right direction, says Escobar. Unfortunately, he adds, they're not moving at the speed or the depth we need.
KAHN: Just last week Escobar and several other activists were detained by state security forces hours before they planned to attend a free speech protest. Carrie Kahn, NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Today, a Boston court begins jury selection for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. He is the surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing. The trial goes forward after a federal appeals court rejected an emergency bid to have it delayed or moved. Now a suspect, who was under 20 at the time of the bombing, could face the death penalty for 30 counts of murder and terrorism. NPR's Tovia Smith reports.
TOVIA SMITH, BYLINE: It was the deadliest act of terrorism in the U.S. since 9/11, and the trial is one that many have been waiting for.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: Back up a little bit. Give him a little space.
SMITH: Police could barely contain the horde of reporters who descended on court for a pre-trial hearing last month, swarming the marathon survivors who came to watch.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: You want to step to the microphone?
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: You have to make room for people to pass through.
SMITH: A couple dozen survivors are expected in court for at least part of the trial, including Heather Abbott who lost a leg in the attack. She's hoping for answers to both why and how.
HEATHER ABBOTT: Things like, how did the bomb arrive? Was it on the T? Was it - did they drive it in a car? That may not mean a lot to other people, but my leg is gone. And I think a lot about all of the details.
SMITH: Three bystanders and one police officer were killed in the blast in the aftermath, and hundreds were injured. Prosecutors have said the city of Boston itself was a victim of the bombing. That's why the defense wanted the trial moved somewhere else. Former federal judge Nancy Gertner says it is going to be extremely difficult to find impartial jurors given how many people were personally affected by the blast.
NANCY GERTNER: Anyone on the finish line, anyone who had anybody running in the race, anyone who was locked down, while Tsarnaev was being apprehended, who was told to stay in their house because a dangerous criminal was outside - all people in that category are people who felt vulnerable to the crime. They're categories that we would never, in an ordinary case, say should sit on a jury.
SMITH: Jury selection is expected to take several weeks. After that, the trial itself may well feel like the easy part. Prosecutors have amassed reams of evidence against Tsarnaev, from bomb-making materials and online instructions he allegedly used, to the note he allegedly scribbled in the boat where he was hiding, suggesting the attack was meant as retaliation for Muslims killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. There's also video from the scene that U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz says further corroborates the case against Tsarnaev
CARMEN ORTIZ: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev placed a backpack containing a kind of IED among a crowd of marathon spectators including dozens of men, women and children.
DANIEL MEDWED: This case is not about guilt. In my mind, this case is really about whether or not he's going to get the death penalty.
SMITH: Northeastern University law professor Daniel Medwed says defense attorneys appear to be building a case that Tsarnaev's life should be spared because he was acting, in a way, under duress, terrified of his older brother and alleged co-conspirator, Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Medwed says the sentencing phase may be the longer and newsier part of the trial.
MEDWED: We're going to learn a lot about Dzhokhar's background, about his beliefs, about his upbringing, about his relationship with his brother. We're going to learn more about Tamerlan than we've ever learned before.
SMITH: But that focus on the suspects is one reason some are still holding out hope for a plea bargain. Former judge Nancy Gertner says an 11th-hour deal could still spare everyone the expense and trauma of trial. Prosecutors could present their evidence more quickly, and the sentencing phase would be focused primarily on victims. Gertner points to 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, shoebomber Richard Reid and Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, who all pleaded guilty in exchange for life in prison. A death sentence brings years of appeals, but a plea deal, she says, would offer more closure.
GERTNER: The case is over. Tsarnaev is no longer in the press. The newspapers are not recounting, you know, countless appeals. It's over, and we don't hear of them anymore.
SMITH: It's unknown if either prosecutors or Tsarnaev might be open to the idea - most we've heard from the defendant so far is that he thinks his lawyers are doing a very good job on his behalf. Tovia Smith, NPR News, Boston. [POST-BROADCAST CORRECTION: The radio version and earlier text versions of this story said Zacarias Moussaoui pleaded guilty in exchange for life in prison. He did plead guilty, but the sentencing jury decided to give him life in prison rather than the death penalty.]
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
When Congress opens tomorrow, Republicans who were taking control of the Senate have many things they want to do. We're going to drill down this morning on one agenda item, one that says a lot about the direction of this 114th Congress. NPR's Ailsa Chang is in our studios. Hi, Ailsa.
AILSA CHANG, BYLINE: Hi, there.
INSKEEP: So what is that item?
CHANG: The first item of business will be the Keystone XL oil pipeline. This is the 1,600 mile-long pipeline that would stretch from western Canada all the way down to the Gulf. It's been a cause Republicans have adopted. But there are a lot of Democrats and environmentalists who are vehemently against this project for various reasons.
INSKEEP: And of course it's been fought about for years, but why would it be the first major item that the new Republican majority would bring up?
CHANG: Well, there are probably a variety of reasons, but one reason is because it very likely will pass. The pipeline came up just one vote short in the previous Senate. Now with a new Republican majority in the Senate, it's probably going to pass.
Another reason is because Republican leaders are going to be able to force the first awkward decision for the president. President Obama has made his concerns about the pipeline very, very clear, and now if Congress puts this legislation onto his desk and says sign it, President Obama will have to decide whether or not he's actually going to veto this pipeline.
INSKEEP: So what is this battle likely to tell us about the new Senate majority leader, Republican Mitch McConnell of Kentucky?
CHANG: Well, it'll be the first test for McConnell in terms of how he's going to run the Senate. One of the first things that he said after the election was that as the new Senate majority leader, he would make the Senate work the way it used to, meaning robust floor debates and open amendments, which would mean both sides - senators on both sides actively helping shape bills. And McConnell has said with respect to Keystone that he would invite amendments on either side of the aisle. He would not micromanage the process even if some amendments are ones that he doesn't agree with.
INSKEEP: Well, that's interesting because Democrats, of course, even though they're in the minority, will still have a lot of power because of the Senate rules. You just laid out a scenario where Democrats might even have more influence. What approach do Democrats intend to take now that they're in the minority?
CHANG: Well, Harry Reid, the Democratic leader, has said that he will not lead the Democratic caucus in the Senate with vindictiveness, that he will not act the way he says Republicans have acted by obstructing and blocking everything that Democrats have tried to do, that he will look for room for bipartisan legislation during these next two years. But, of course, I guess we'll have to wait and see if that really happens.
INSKEEP: Well, let me ask one other thing, Ailsa Chang. We had Senator Marco Rubio, a member of the new Republican majority, on the program last week on New Year's Day. And we had a question for him about what kind of Congress he wants to see.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
INSKEEP: What is a label that you would like the new Congress to have?
SENATOR MARCO RUBIO: Well, I would hope it would be a Congress that would be seen as one whose work is relevant to people's daily lives, and right now across America, that is people that are reading all this news about how great the economy's doing. But they're not feeling it.
INSKEEP: Work that's relevant to people's daily lives. Does anything on the Republican agenda fit that description?
CHANG: Some of it arguably does. Republicans are talking about reworking education. But some of it arguably does not. Republicans claim that the Keystone XL oil pipeline, which we've just been talking about, will lead to tens of thousands of new jobs. But a lot of Democrats say that's absolutely not true. It will not become the job-creating machine Republican say it will be. But no matter who's right on that issue, it's very unlikely the pipeline will have a major affect overall on the U.S. economy.
Then there's the category of stuff that's already been the center of battles that have already been fought but that will come up again, like the Affordable Care Act. Republicans say that in order to help millions of Americans, they are going to try to repeal this law again. Now, Mitch McConnell has been frank about how that may not be likely, that may not be successful...
INSKEEP: Because President Obama's going to veto it.
CHANG: Exactly. But they say that they can chip away at the Affordable Care Act in smaller ways. Now, a lot of this could still be political theater because the White House could still veto those smaller tweaks to the law. But there also could be some room for negotiation with the White House on smaller ways to change the law.
INSKEEP: NPR's Ailsa Chang. Thanks very much.
CHANG: You're welcome.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
And let's take a moment now to remember a senator who made history. Edward Brooke has died at age 95. In all the years of this republic, Edward Brooke was the first African-American elected to the Senate by popular vote. He did that in 1966. The very few African-Americans who were chosen in earlier generations had been chosen by state legislatures.
Brooke was born in Washington, D.C. During World War II, he earned a Bronze Star while serving as an officer in a black regiment of the segregated U.S. Army. After the war, Brooke settled in Boston. He became a lawyer. He was elected to the Senate as a Republican. He served two terms, and he cosponsored the Fair Housing Act of 1968 with a Democrat, Walter Mondale of Minnesota. That law banned discrimination based on race, religion or ethnicity.
Now, Senator Brooke did not consider himself a civil rights leader, but in 2009 he was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, Congress's highest honor, in part for his example to later generations of African-American elected officials.
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On the first Monday of 2015, it's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep. This is the year when the world's nations say they're going to sign a new treaty to curb climate change. They say so anyway - they failed for years to agree on how to do that. Here in the United States, plenty of entrepreneurs are not waiting for the diplomats. They are finding ways to cut carbon emissions and make money from doing it. NPR's Christopher Joyce reports on the growth of cash for carbon.
CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: Too much carbon in the atmosphere is warming the planet. One way to get rid of it is to dig a pit in the middle of an Oregon dairy farm and fill it with manure.
JASON MITCHELL: This is where it comes in - in the pipelines right there.
JOYCE: The liquid manure comes into the pit.
MITCHELL: The liquid manure comes into the pit, yep.
JOYCE: The manure pit that Jason Mitchell points out is hard to miss. It's the size of a swimming pool. Every day, 80,000 gallons of manure get piped into the pit. Eventually, the slurry goes to a tank - a digester, Mitchell calls it.
MITCHELL: That's where the methane is created.
JOYCE: Methane is a combination of carbon and hydrogen. It's a potent greenhouse gas that warms the atmosphere - cow manure is ripe with it - but here, the methane is captured and funneled into a red generator the size of a mini-bus. The generator burns it to make electricity. That electricity is sold back to the local power company. The farmers get paid.
MITCHELL: There are a lot of farms around that are very interested in doing - putting something like this on their facility. We're using the manure and we're creating energy.
JOYCE: And this is good for the climate as well. Daryl Maas is Mitchell's boss and head of FarmPower, which runs this and several other manure operations in the Northwest.
DARYL MAAS: That methane would normally be emitted gradually, sitting out in the field or in a pond, up into the air, but because of what we do, it's extracted in an airtight environment so we can capture it, use it for fuel and it never enters the atmosphere.
JOYCE: That could be the end of the story, but there's more here. FarmPower makes additional money just for taking that methane out of circulation. For every ton of that methane they capture they earn a credit worth about five to $10. FarmPower then sells those credits to anyone who has to lower their own carbon emissions, say, a coal-fired power plant. If the power plant buys a credit it can claim a one-ton reduction in its omissions, no matter where it is. So a polluter in California can claim a reduction from decanting cow manure in Oregon.
The U.S. carbon market is worth a few hundred million dollars a year now. Maas points out that people who profit from it, like those Oregon dairy farmers, for example, don't necessarily care about climate change.
MAAS: They're not interested in the political debates over climate change. They're very happy to sell the carbon credits. You know, that's a good business proposition right now. The market is getting more dependable and it's getting stronger and if there's a market there people will supply to it.
JOYCE: That market also pays people who come up with new ideas for cutting carbon. The Climate Trust in Portland, Oregon, is one of the oldest brokers in this carbon market. Its director is Sean Penrith.
SEAN PENRITH: We see innovation every single day from ranchers, farmlands, dairy people, foresters - these people are really creative.
JOYCE: For example, rice farmers in California can now get credits for growing rice with less water - that lowers carbon emissions. The carbon market is still small in the U.S., but it's growing and Penrith says there's a lot of potential. There's close to a hundred trillion dollars in the hands of private investors around the world who are looking to make money off their money.
PENRITH: Tell me where the most power, economically, lives in the world. It's in the markets. It's in these corporations, Wall Street, however you want to frame it.
JOYCE: Some environmentalists argue that carbon trading lets big energy companies off the hook by allowing them to pay someone else to reduce emissions. Penrith acknowledges that these credits do allow big polluters extra time to postpone cutting their own emissions, but regulations keep companies from buying more than 8 percent of their reductions from the carbon market. They have to do the rest themselves. And he says that 8 percent is all entrepreneurs need to turn cow manure into cash. Christopher Joyce, NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Some other news - not quite everybody knew the name of Stuart Scott, but sports fans who did felt the joy he brought to his job. The ESPN sportscaster died yesterday after fighting cancer. His style changed the way many people talk about sports. Here's NPR's Sam Sanders.
SAM SANDERS, BYLINE: Stuart Scott might be best known, really, for one word.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
STUART SCOTT: Boo-yah.
SANDERS: Boo-yah - he sprinkled it throughout his sportscasts for years, kind of like a really cool exclamation point, but it was more than just boo-yah. On ESPN, Stuart spoke the language of young people, of hip-hop.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
SCOTT: Twitter was blowin' up after the game.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
SCOTT: Got to drop some knowledge.
SANDERS: And there were his signature catchphrases. Like when a player had done something really great, Scott would say just call him butter 'cause he's on a roll.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
SCOTT: Call him butter 'cause he is on a roll.
SANDERS: ESPN colleagues, like Jay Harris, loved this.
JAY HARRIS: We were like hey, that guy just said what we said five minutes ago and he's getting paid for it and we're not.
SANDERS: Harris hosts ESPN's "SportsCenter." He says before he got to ESPN he looked up to Scott, a black man and not just because he sounded and looked like him, but because he was just really good.
HARRIS: He did his homework. He was a consummate journalist and a lot of that gets lost in the - yo, what's up? I'm Stuart Scott, boo-yah, which to me is a bit of a shame.
SANDERS: Stuart Scott was born in Chicago in 1965. He played club football at the University of North Carolina and then covered local news at TV stations throughout the South. Scott joined ESPN2 in 1993. He quickly rose up the ranks, hosting ESPN's flagship shows and interviewing two U.S. presidents. James Andrew Miller is the author of a biography of ESPN, and, he says, when Scott arrived at the cable channel in '93, it was not that diverse.
ANDREW MILLER: It was pretty much a big loaf of Wonder white bread.
SANDERS: But Stuart's success helped make the ESPN of today one of the most diverse newsrooms in the country.
MILLER: Part of that, obviously, was fueled by Stuart's prominence and his excellent and I think that they're not going to give up on that.
SANDERS: In a 2002 interview with NPR's "On The Media," Stuart Scott acknowledged that some people had problems with his style.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
SCOTT: I had a black guy call me one time and he said, you know, he didn't appreciate, you know, all you tryin' to do is drag our race down and talk in street slang. You know, we're better than that. All right man, we're better than that. That's not going to make me change what I do and how I do it.
SANDERS: Since 2007, Scott dealt with recurring bouts of cancer. He was known to go to chemotherapy sessions and mixed martial arts classes all in the same week. He even managed to give a speech at the 2014 ESPY Awards this year, not long after a surgery. Scott said dying didn't mean he'd lost to cancer, and then he said this -
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
SCOTT: Live, fight like hell and when you get too tired to fight then lay down and rest and let somebody else fight for you.
SANDERS: If the outpouring of love for Stuart Scott since his death - from millions of fans and athletes and even President Obama himself - if that's any measure, Stuart Scott will have someone else to fight for him for quite a long time. Sam Sanders, NPR News.
INSKEEP: Boo-yah, it's MORNING EDITION from NPR News.
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Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep. You know the saying - not in my backyard. People in Granite Bay, California, do not want something in their neighbor's backyard - a 500-square-foot tree house, complete with plumbing. The tree house is owned by the perfectly named Mike and Pat Splinter. Their creation was featured on TV. The county says the kitchen added for the TV show should've been temporary, and it must go even though it was built by a, quote, "noted national tree house designer." It's MORNING EDITION.
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Fighters from the Islamist group Boko Haram in Nigeria seized yet another strategic town over the weekend. They also took a military base. This group has been launching attacks in the remote northeast of Nigeria almost every day. The Council on Foreign Relations estimated up to 10,000 people were killed in 2014 alone. NPR's Ofeibea Quist-Arcton has been following this story. She's on the line. Hi, Ofeibea.
OFEIBEA QUIST-ARCTON, BYLINE: Greetings.
INSKEEP: What happened?
QUIST-ARCTON: We're told that hundreds of insurgents on pickup trucks and on motorbikes, firing rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles captured the town of Baga in the far northeast of Nigeria in predawn raids on Saturday. Now, the senator who covers this northern area of Borno State in Nigeria described Baga as the last town standing. He said that the insurgents have taken so many towns and villages.
But this is a strategic one because it had this base next door, meant to be a base for a multinational force of Nigerian, Chadian and Cameroonian troops to counter the insurgency and terrorism. But we're told that notionally, the foreign troops aren't there anymore, and it was Nigerian forces who put up a defense and then ran out of any ammunition. And apparently the soldiers abandoned their post and fled, and the civilians took off after them because they knew they couldn't be protected.
INSKEEP: So the base that was meant to be used against Boko Haram was taken by Boko Haram. But how significant is it, their spread through this particular area of Nigeria?
QUIST-ARCTON: Because this is the northern corner that borders Chad, it is strategic because this insurgency is spilling over Nigeria's borders into Cameroon and now Chad - we're told, that civilians had to literally take flight across Lake Chad to escape. And, Steve, the question comes back again. What is the government? What are Nigeria's military doing about these constant, relentless attacks which target civilians?
INSKEEP: Wasn't that Nigerian military supposed to be receiving aid from the United States?
QUIST-ARCTON: Indeed, Steve. That's when 300 - almost 300 school girls were abducted from their boarding school dorms. And you'll remember the high-profile Bring Back Our Girls campaign that the first lady Michelle Obama and Angelina Jolie lent their support to. The Americans then said they were sending in military advisers and drones. But it seems there's some frustration, we believe, on the Americans' part with the Nigerian governments and the military's handling of the insurgency.
INSKEEP: Is this situation complicated at all by the fact that it's an election year?
QUIST-ARCTON: Absolutely. President Goodluck Jonathan seeking re-election for his second term next month, Steve. The oppositions say that he is using this insurgency, that he is not providing the military with the hardware that it needs to counter the insurgency because tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of civilians have left that northeastern area of Nigeria, and they were registered there. So they may not be allowed to vote in areas to which they have been displaced. That is what the opposition is saying. Ordinary Nigerians are saying, what is happening? We want these girls released. We want this insurgency ended now.
INSKEEP: NPR's Ofeibea Quist-Arcton, who's tracking this story from Accra, Ghana. Thanks very much.
QUIST-ARCTON: Always a pleasure. Thank you.
INSKEEP: This is NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
We have the story of a funeral next, the funeral of a New York City police officer. And the story has two parts. One is the politics - the officer was 1 of 2 cops whose murders became part of a divisive debate about police and community relations. The other part is the story of the man who was buried. Wenjian Liu was born in China and grew up in the U.S. He was one of many, many immigrants who found their place among the police. The Irish-American cop you might imagine from 1915, may well be Asian-American in 2015. And yesterday's funeral reflected that change. Here's Stephen Nessen of member station WNYC.
STEPHEN NESSEN, BYLINE: In stoic silence under gray skies, thousands of police officers stood shoulder to shoulder, lining the residential streets of this working-class neighborhood in Brooklyn. Two buglers belted out "Taps," while inside the Italian-American funeral home, Buddhist monks performed a ceremony in a private room, and Chinese calligraphy hung from the walls. Outside, Curtis Liu, a lieutenant with the San Francisco Police Department, stood among other Asian-American police officers from around the country.
LIEUTENANT CURTIS LIU: We are a big family in the United States of officers, and officers felt compelled to come out here.
NESSEN: Mayor Bill de Blasio delivered a eulogy.
MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO: Detective Liu was deeply devoted to his mother and father, a devotion that Confucius said powerfully was, quote, "the root of a man's character."
NESSEN: While the mayor spoke, many police officers outside turned their backs to protest what the union says is a lack of support from city hall. The police commissioner had asked officers not to use funerals for protests after officers did the same thing at the funeral of Liu's partner Rafael Ramos.
Across the street, hundreds of civilians stood behind metal barricades on the sidewalk watching the funeral on a big screen. Yingchao Zhang came from central New Jersey. He says while Liu is leaving behind a young wife and parents, he's a role model for young Asian-Americans.
YINHCHAO ZHANG: I think it's going to inspire a lot of the Asian-American young generation to actually follow his footsteps.
NESSEN: The ceremony closed with a procession led by a kilt-wearing pipe-and-drum band. Liu's family car followed. A large incense stick was poking out of the window, burning in honor of a son, husband and officer. For NPR News, I'm Stephen Nessen in New York.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
In Washington this week, Republicans in Congress have a chance to start showing what they stand for. They will take control of both the House and Senate. So while Democrats still have considerable power, the most interesting debates may be among Republicans. Party leaders want to prove they can get things done. And some even talk of raising money for infrastructure through tax hikes. More conservative members would rather not. And that's where we start our regular Monday conversation with Cokie Roberts. Hi, Cokie.
COKIE ROBERTS, BYLINE: Hi, Steve.
INSKEEP: First issue here, electing a speaker. Is John Boehner in any trouble at all?
ROBERTS: No, but there are a couple of guys who are talking about challenging him. Over the weekend we heard from representatives Ted Yoho of Florida and Louis Gohmert of Texas, that they think that Boehner is - you know, compromised too much on things like the big spending bill in the lame-duck session, on immigration reform, that he's too much for it. And it could be awkward on opening day, which is usually a very ceremonial day and a love fest really. All the members' children come on the floor, and they're dressed in their Christmas velvets. And so whether they're, you know - a challenge, that could be quite awkward. And it more seriously gets in the question of whether this is a significant group who will object to any compromise and get in the way of the Republicans' pledge to get things done, which of course requires compromise.
INSKEEP: OK. You just used the word awkward. Let me invoke it again for a member of Boehner's leadership, who - Boehner is still supporting Steve Scalise from your state of Louisiana, which is where he now admits he spoke to a white supremacist group years ago.
ROBERTS: Yes, but he seems to have support anyway, even though, again, some conservatives are objecting, saying that it gets in the way of Republican outreach to African-Americans. But Steve Scalise apparently spoke to a group backed by David Duke, the Ku Klux Klanner. Duke says that Scalise didn't know who the group was. And yesterday Mia Love, the first African-American Republican woman ever in the House, voiced her support for Scalise.
But, you know, much more important, Steve, the only remaining Democrat in the House from Louisiana, who is also an African-American, Cedric Richmond, has offered his support. He says that he and Scalise have worked together in the House of Representatives just like they did in the state legislature and that they can get things done together.
INSKEEP: Getting things done, there's that phrase. Let me ask about that because we mentioned infrastructure, which could be paid for with a higher gas tax. What are the odds of Republicans allowing that?
ROBERTS: Well, it's going to be very tough, obviously. But Bob Corker, a Republican from Tennessee, has proposed a 12-cents-a-gallon increase in the gas tax. And of course this is a good time for that since gas is low, is cheap. And he says it's revenue-neutral, that other taxes would be cut to pay for it.
But look, there's a big highway bill expiring at the end of May, and there's a huge shortfall in the Highway Trust Fund that pays for infrastructure. So the Republicans now have to deal with that. They are in the majority, and they understand that. And highways are something that affect everybody.
So they spent yesterday all over the airwaves saying, look, we're going - we're not going to have any drama like government shutdown. We're going to get things done. And, you know, it's a time when they really could get things done. The presidential approval rating has gone up, Steve, as a result of the economy getting better. After the election, this is happening. So they're going to have some challenges against the president, certainly.
INSKEEP: That's Cokie Roberts on this Monday morning.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep. People are getting Chris Christie all wrong. New Jersey's governor attended yesterday's playoff game between Dallas and Detroit and hugged owner Jerry Jones when the Cowboys won. Many asked why he doesn't follow the Giants in New Jersey. Well, come on - first, he is allowed to like America's team. Second, the Cowboys are America's favorite team to hate. People were furious about the Cowboys's victory, so think of Christie's on camera hug as a profile in courage. It's MORNING EDITION.
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When it comes time to select a new pope the choice is made by the Roman Catholic College of Cardinals. Yesterday, Pope Francis named a number of new cardinals, including 15 who will be eligible to vote for his successor. So it was an important choice and much has been read into the names that the pope chose. Boston Globe associate editor John Allen has covered the Vatican for many years. He joins us from Rome. Hi, John.
JOHN ALLEN: Hello there, Steve.
INSKEEP: Do these cardinals break with tradition in some way?
ALLEN: In almost every way, Steve, the answer to that question is yes. The thing that smacks you in the face about the line-up that Pope Francis announced yesterday is the geographical diversity of these 15, what we call, cardinal electors, meaning men who have the right to vote for the Pope. Only one of them is a Vatican official, only five come from Europe, there's no one from the United States.
Meanwhile, you've got new cardinals for three countries that have never, ever had one before - MyanMar, Cape Verde and the island of Tonga. There are also cardinals from Panama, from Thailand, from New Zealand, I mean, literally, all over the map. And even within countries that are accustomed to having cardinals, such as Italy, Francis bypassed the traditional centers of power, such as Venice and Turin, and gave cardinals to places, like Agrigento on the island of Sicily, that don't usually have them. So it really is a revolutionary crop of cardinals in almost every sense of the word.
INSKEEP: So does that geographic choice reflect the direction the Catholic Church seems to be evolving?
ALLEN: Yes, I mean, Francis is, of course, the first pope from the developing world. I think he believes that he was elected on a mandate, in part, to make sure that the global reality of Catholicism today - I mean, 1.2 billion Catholics in the world, two-thirds of them live outside Europe and North America. He wants to make sure that that global reality is more thoroughly heard at the senior level of the church, meaning inside the College of Cardinals and also inside the Vatican bureaucracy.
INSKEEP: Now, you mentioned the Vatican bureaucracy, you also said that there was only one of these 15 new Cardinals with voting power for a new pope who come from inside that bureaucracy. I can't help but recall that it was only a few weeks ago that the pope was talking about problems in that bureaucracy and accusing it of spiritual Alzheimer's. What's he upset about?
ALLEN: Well - and you left out the terrorism of gossip and 13 other spiritual diseases, which Pope Francis charged that the mandarins at the Vatican are sometimes infected. I think what it's about, Steve, is that there's a perception at times that the conversation in Catholicism is a little one way - that is that Rome speaks and the rest of the world listens.
I think what Pope Francis is doing is trying to make sure that it's a two-way dialogue so that the voices of the rest of the world are also heard in Rome. I think that speech to the upper echelons of the Vatican - known as the Roman curia - which happened just before Christmas, was intended to be a wake-up call in that direction, and the appointments of new cardinals that Pope Francis announced on Sunday clearly moves in the same direction.
INSKEEP: Some people will be wondering if you look at these 15 cardinals, though, and they do express this voice from other parts of the world, are they likely to push the church to the left, to the right, in terms of key issues - any sense?
ALLEN: Well, I think in many ways it is difficult to draw ideological conclusions from this line-up. I mean, on the one hand, you've got a couple of well-known moderates. The new cardinal from New Zealand, for example, is on record favoring allowing divorced and civilly remarried Catholics to receive communion, which is a very hot-button issue in Catholicism today. On the other hand, the new cardinal from Ethiopia supported a constitutional measure in that country that would ban homosexuality as a matter of constitutional law.
So I think in terms of the politics of left-right, it's difficult to draw conclusions. I think this is much more about north-south than left-right in trying to make sure that the voices of the global church, particularly, the two-thirds majority of the church today that lives in the global South, are more thoroughly heard in Rome. What those voices are going to say will not always break predictably, according to the terms of American politics.
INSKEEP: We've been talking once again with John Allen. He's an associate editor of the Boston Globe and also of Crux, a website covering Catholic affairs. Thanks very much.
ALLEN: Always a pleasure, Steve.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Now, in a changing world, it's reassuring to hear one thing that has not changed much at all. It's the sound of a musical instrument in the Middle East. Amid war and political turmoil, you can still hear the pear-shaped string instrument called the oud. And we're about to meet an oud-maker in the ancient Medina district of Tunis in Tunisia. He told NPR's Leila Fadel, he's trying to keep the craft alive.
LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: Maher Cherif, who's 53, rides up to his workshop in the afternoon on a bike. He carries a baguette in his hand for lunch. He unlocks the door of his shop, and inside the walls are covered with beautiful, handmade, wooden string instruments called the oud. They're basically a Middle Eastern lute.
MAHER CHERIF: (Playing oud).
FADEL: He plays for us. He loves the full and deep sound it brings to Middle Eastern music.
CHERIF: (Foreign language spoken).
FADEL: But he says he worries that his generation may be the last of oud-makers in Tunisia. He's the only one left in the Medina in central Tunis, where tourists and Tunisians search for traditional crafts through winding cobblestone streets. And he says he's only 1 of 12 left in the country.
CHERIF: (Through interpreter) I had somebody I was teaching, but he left because the youth nowadays do not have patience, and this work require a lot of patience. I require a lot of work and a lot of sacrifices.
FADEL: They can't even wait for a real sandwich, he jokes, they eat fast food. His ouds are crafted from different types of wood, decorated with mother of pearl, wood panels or shards of seashells. They take two weeks make, and he sells them from anywhere between $200 and $600.
CHERIF: (Foreign language spoken).
FADEL: He learned his craft at a vocational school in the Medina, where great Tunisian artists studied.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
FADEL: Like Ali Riahi. The oud is used in music throughout the Middle East, but the Tunisian version of the instrument is smaller and made for the country's own musical style. Now the school that Cherif went to is gone. The owner passed away, but Cherif says the oud is important for Tunisia's future.
CHERIF: (Through interpreter) If we want to look forward for cultural progress, then we need to preserve things that created our culture.
FADEL: Business isn't great, he says. But he didn't become an instrument-maker to get rich. He says he wants young people to grow to love their ouds again. Leila Fadel, NPR News.
LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:
Next, we're going to meet the man who says he is responsible for starting the war in Ukraine. The conflict has stretched into a new year despite talks aimed at stopping it. Russian-backed separatists are still contending against the Ukrainian government. The fight has killed almost 5,000 people and transformed an eastern region once known for mines and metal works. NPR's Corey Flintoff reports on the man who says he's proud to have touched off the conflict.
COREY FLINTOFF, BYLINE: Igor Girkin has a knack for turning up in tumultuous times. Last spring, Ukraine was in the midst of a revolution that drove pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych from office. In early April, Girkin arrived in the eastern city of Slovyansk, where protesters were demonstrating against what they saw as coup in Kiev. It wasn't long before Russian news channels were reporting on an armed insurrection.
(SOUNDBITE OF NEWS REPORT)
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: (Speaking Russian).
FLINTOFF: And according to Girkin, he led those armed volunteers as they seized key government buildings.
(SOUNDBITE OF UNIDENTIFIED TV SHOW)
IGOR GIRKIN: (Through interpreter) There was no other order to seize the town, except for my order.
FLINTOFF: That's Girkin, speaking on Russian TV last month. He's a 44-year-old Russian citizen and a former colonel in the Federal Security Service, or FSB. He prefers being called by a nickname he chose for himself, Strelkov, or shooter. According to Boris Kagarlitksy, Kremlin planners didn't have a strategy for eastern Ukraine, but just wanted to control the situation.
BORIS KAGARLITSKY: Especially when I dealt with people who were part of their own team, like Girkin, who definitely was sent to Ukraine by Russian intelligence. And he doesn't deny that fact. And then, because of the lack of very clear vision, a very clear plan, he started making decisions on his own.
FLINTOFF: Kagarlitsky is head of the Institute for Globalization Studies and Social Movements in Moscow. He says Girkin's aim was to create a separatist region that would quickly be annexed by Russia, as Crimea had been just a few weeks earlier. But Kagarlitsky believes Moscow just wanted to keep the region in turmoil as a form of leverage against the Ukrainian government. For his part, Girkin wanted to add the territory to Russia because he's devoted to the idea of restoring the czarist Russian Empire.
(SOUNDBITE OF UNIDENTIFIED TV SHOW)
GIRKIN: (Through interpreter) I certainly consider myself a monarchist. Above all, I'm a patriot of the empire, though naturally I consider myself a patriot of the Russian people.
FLINTOFF: Girkin was named minister of defense in the self-declared Donetsk People's Republic, but he didn't last long in that job. Ukraine accused him of ordering the abduction, torture and murder of political opponents, and he was among the first separatist leaders to be sanctioned by the West.
After a series of advances by the Ukrainian army, Girkin and his men were forced to retreat to Donetsk, and by mid-August he had been mysteriously dismissed. For the past couple of months, Girkin has been back in Moscow, where he's given a few interviews to nationalist news media. Despite his popularity with nationalists, Boris Kagarlitsky thinks he's not a threat to President Vladimir Putin.
KAGARLITSKY: I think he's really looking for the role of a hero, but not of a politician. He's not looking for power.
FLINTOFF: Girkin just married his personal assistant, and he posed with his bride in an orange-and-black striped suit, mimicking the colors of the order of St. George, a decoration that's become a symbol of Russian patriotism. Corey Flintoff, NPR News, Moscow. POST-BROADCAST CORRECTION: The original on-air and online versions referred to a photo of Igor Girkin wearing an orange-and-black striped suit, colors that symbolize Russian patriotism. While the photo was genuine, the suit was added digitally to Girkin.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
This next story explores the health of fish. Recreational fishermen catch and release - part of the sport. You bring up a fish but then let many of them go. That is supposed to be good for the fish, but fish brought up from far below the surface often die, even if they're handled gently and released quickly. NPR's Jon Hamilton reports on a discovery that is allowing those fish to survive.
JON HAMILTON, BYLINE: Here's the problem - even fish get the bends. Chris Lowe, a marine scientist at Cal State, Long Beach, says the reason has to do with something called the swim bladder. It's like a balloon that helps fish control their buoyancy.
CHRIS LOWE: When you catch that fish and you rapidly bring him to the surface, that gas in that balloon rapidly begins to expand as the pressure from the water decreases. So when a fisher brings them up, they're looking at the fish. Its eyes could be popped out of its head. Its stomach is pushed out of its mouth, and it looks absolutely horrific.
HAMILTON: Lowe explains this as we head out into the Pacific on a boat named the City of Long Beach. About a dozen recreational fishermen are also on the trip. Lowe says when fish experience what's called barotrauma, they look like they're dead. But they're not. He discovered this about 10 years ago while trying to implant tracking devices in California rockfish. These rockfish often live hundreds of feet down, which is a tricky place to perform minor surgery. So Lowe's team brought the fish to the surface and then quickly sent them back down in cages.
LOWE: I thought for sure - two days later, we bring the cage back up, the fish would be dead. We brought the cages back up. All the fish were alive - open the cage doors, let the fish swim out.
HAMILTON: So deep-water fish could survive a trip to the surface if fishermen had a way to send them back down in a hurry. The question was how. Lowe says scientists didn't know.
LOWE: So it was really fishermen that came up with many of the ideas on how to get these fish back down. And they've actually come up with some ingenious ways of doing it.
HAMILTON: They're called descending devices. Some are just upside-down milk crates, while others are commercial products with a pressure-sensitive clamp that releases at a certain depth. What Lowe is trying to do now is make sure people who fish learn how to use these devices. We drop anchor and a dozen fishermen bait their hooks for rockfish. Nick Mackshanoff says he's been fishing a lot since he retired.
NICK MACKSHANOFF: If there's water, I fish. Fresh or salt, bathtubs, oceans, you name it, I fish.
HAMILTON: Like a lot of sport fishermen, Mackshanoff is concerned about overfishing and bycatch - fish that are caught unintentionally and die.
MACKSHANOFF: Something has to be done or 10, 20, 30 years from now there's not going to be any fish, period.
HAMILTON: So Mackshanoff has learned to gently release fish he's not going to eat. He's never used a descending device, but says he keeps hearing about them. And he's seen one on YouTube.
MACKSHANOFF: They were using this for Calico Bass. And it was minimal harm on fish and quick release back in the ocean again. I think it's kind of neat.
HAMILTON: As we're talking, another angler reels in a Bocaccio rockfish that's too small to keep. He hands the fish to Chris Lowe, who places it next to a small underwater camera and a descending device the size of a pocketknife.
LOWE: So what I'm doing now is I've clipped the fish on to the release device, turned on the camera, and now this fish, which clearly is showing signs of barotrauma, we're going to help it out by getting it down.
HAMILTON: Lowe uses a fishing rod to lower the fish, device and camera into the water. Later, he shows me the video.
LOWE: Here you can see the fish. Its eyes are going back into its head. You can see it kicking. It's trying to swim away, and then it releases.
HAMILTON: Of course, that's just one fish. So Tom Raftican of The Sportfishing Conservancy is working with Lowe to spread the word about the descending devices.
TOM RAFTICAN: There are well over 10 million marine recreational fishermen, and according to the National Marine Fisheries Service, each year we catch about 345 million fish.
HAMILTON: Raftican says sport fishermen release nearly two-thirds of the fish they reel in.
RAFTICAN: We've run workshops all around the country this past year, from Stellwagen Bank off Massachusetts down through the Carolinas, Florida and a couple in California, and actually one out in Lahaina, Hawaii, trying to get this information out.
HAMILTON: Raftican says it's an easy sell. Fishermen don't like to see a good fish wasted.
RAFTICAN: I love to fish, and I'd like to see my kids and grandkids out there fishing, too. And in order to do that, we've got to make sure that the resources are very healthy.
HAMILTON: Chris Lowe says that today's trip was a small step in that direction. Jon Hamilton, NPR News.
LOWE: There we go, a successful release - exactly what we want.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The average person in the United States uses about 100 gallons of water per day. That's according to the EPA. In much of the Navajo Nation, a person uses much less - 7 gallons per day to drink and cook and bath. Many tribal members have to haul that water in barrels from miles away. Laurel Morales of member station KJZZ reports on one person trying to help them. She's known as the water lady.
LAUREL MORALES, BYLINE: The people who live in the northwest corner of New Mexico consider Darlene Arviso to be a living saint.
DARLENE ARVISO: Everybody knows me around here. They'll be waving at me
MORALES: Are you famous?
ARVISO: Yeah.
(LAUGHTER)
MORALES: Are you the water lady? What do they call you?
ARVISO: Yes, they call me the water lady - konayehe.
MORALES: Arviso, with her long silver braid, sits behind the wheel of the Saint Bonaventure Indian Mission water truck, dodging large boulders and gullies. Most of the roads are unpaved on the Navajo Nation, the country's largest reservation. Arviso drives to 250 homes a month, filling their plastic barrels, buckets, jars and whatever containers the families have. When people see the giant yellow truck coming down the road, Navajo member Georgianna Johnson says it's like they've seen Santa coming down the chimney.
GEORGIANNA JOHNSON: You know what we do? - the water truck's coming, get the buckets ready. (Laughter). We get all happy. Today is the day I'm going to take a bath.
MORALES: Johnson helps her 76-year-old grandmother pull her freshly washed hair back in a bun and put on her beaded jewelry. Grandma Lindsay Johnson beams like a young girl because the water lady has just filled her barrels.
LINDSAY JOHNSON: We cook with it and we wash our face with it. We take a bath with it and everything.
GEORGIANNA JOHNSON: Water's got to do with everything. Yeah. Actually, it really does. To wash the dishes, my aunt tells us the rinsing water is still clean. She said use that the next time when you're going to wash dishes. That's how we, like, make the water stretch.
MORALES: About 40 percent of the Navajo Nation has to make their water stretch. The water here in Smith Lake comes from the Saint Bonaventure Indian Mission well about 50 miles away. But the once-a-month water truck deliveries are far from the perfect solution. The roads often become impassable in the winter and barrels run dry. Many resort to melting snow or collecting water from livestock basins. So the mission has sought help from George McGraw, a Los Angeles-based human rights lawyer and the founder of a nonprofit called DIGDEEP. It provides water systems to developing countries.
GEORGE MCGRAW: It really is an incredible injustice if you're born Navajo, you know, you're 67 times more likely not to have a tap or a toilet in your house than if you were born black, white, Asian or Hispanic American.
MORALES: After several surveys, McGraw's team found clean water 1,800 feet below the surface and will begin digging a well this spring. Once DIGDEEP raises enough money, it will pipe the water to people's homes. The water lady herself, Darlene Arviso, laughs when she recalls the day she got running water 15 years ago.
ARVISO: We were all happy seeing the water, and we let our water run for like five minutes, like, in the restroom and then in the kitchen.
MORALES: Arviso is the only one in her whole extended family with running water, so her sisters, her four adult children and grandchildren all come to her house to shower, do laundry and fill their water barrels. For NPR News I'm Laurel Morales in Flagstaff.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
This next story begins with a man listening to this song on the radio.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MY GENERATION")
THE WHO: (Singing) People try to put us down. Talkin' about my generation.
INSKEEP: He heard it in a distinct way. When I listen to this song by The Who, I take in the lyrics, the harmony, the whole thing. Neil Peart's mind focused on a single thing, the drums.
NEIL PEART: I was driving down the length of California the other day with classic rock on. And they played "My Generation." And I just kind of tuned in to Keith Moon's snare sound and his figures and all that. And of course I know every beat of it.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE WHO SONG, "MY GENERATION")
INSKEEP: Of course he would. The Who's Keith Moon was one of the great drummers of his generation. And Neil Peart is among the greatest drummers of his.
(SOUNDBITE OF RUSH SONG, "FREE WILL")
INSKEEP: He gained a massive following as the drummer and songwriter for Rush. Even people who never bought their albums have '70s and '80s Rush hits stored in their heads.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FREE WILL")
RUSH: (Singing). I will choose a path that's clear. I will choose free will.
INSKEEP: We reached out to Neil Peart because this is "Beat Week" on MORNING EDITION. We're profiling some of the people at the back of the stage. At age 62, Neil Peart has lived through and listen to a substantial slice of the history of modern drumming.
Do you remember when, as a kid, your ear started being drawn to what was happening with the drums?
PEART: Yeah, I sure do. I saw "The Gene Krupa Story," an old black and white, much fictionalized but still very musical biography of Gene Krupa. And that's what made me really want to be a drummer.
(SOUNDBITE OF UNIDENTIFIED SONG)
INSKEEP: Why don't you describe for people who don't know who Gene Krupa was?
PEART: He was the first rock drummer in very many ways. Without Gene Krupa, there wouldn't have been a Keith Moon.
INSKEEP: But he was a jazz drummer, right? He was a big band drummer, wasn't he?
PEART: Big band drummer, he was the first drummer to command the spotlight and the first drummer to be celebrated for his solos 'cause they were very flamboyant. He did fundamentally easy things but always made them look spectacular.
(SOUNDBITE OF UNIDENTIFIED SONG)
PEART: People don't realize how young the drum set is as an instrument. It's barely a hundred years old. When Mr. Ludwig invented the bass drum pedal, that's what made the drum set possible. And then silent movies were a really important part of drum set history because, of course, by definition, silent - so typically in a small movie theater, they might have a piano player and maybe a piano player and a drummer. Well, the drummer had to do all the sound effects. And the drum sets they had were enormous.
INSKEEP: Even bigger than the kind of drum set that Neil Peart plays today. He's commonly surrounded by so many instruments that he has to spin around to reach them.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TOM SAWYER")
RUSH: (Singing) A modern day warrior, mean, mean stride. Today's Tom Sawyer, mean, mean pride.
INSKEEP: The drummer who played on this hit started his career in his childhood bedroom, slamming drumsticks on the pillows. It was the early 1960s in Canada. He was a kid who couldn't skate, and his parents signed him up for drum lessons.
PEART: Drumming completely eclipsed my life from age 13, as I started drum lessons. And everything disappeared. I had done well in school up until that time. I was fairly adjusted socially up until that time. And I became completely monomania obsessed all through my teens. And nothing else existed anymore.
(SOUNDBITE OF RUSH SONG, "TOM SAWYER")
INSKEEP: He was growing into the drummer we're hearing on this Rush song. And he had role models in the beginning. Even back then, he was tuned into The Who's Keith Moon and other stars in what's considered a golden age of rock drumming.
PEART: And all of a sudden, the bar for what it took to be a rock drummer kept getting raised higher and higher. So it was challenging and inspiring. And I was fortunate to not be the kind to get discouraged. And I've heard the stories, like Eric Clapton said he wanted to burn his guitar when he heard Jimi Hendrix play. And I never understood that because when I went and saw a great drummer or heard one, all I wanted to do was practice.
(SOUNDBITE OF RUSH SONG, "TOM SAWYER")
INSKEEP: And he practiced obsessively. He says for the first several decades on the drums - decades - he could feel the difference if he took just a few days off. It was that hard. Only recently has he felt that drums are so much a part of him that he could sometimes take a break.
PEART: We've been on sabbatical for a while. And I deliberately stepped away from my normal patterns of life, which consist of riding around on a motorcycle to concert halls and playing drums for three hours a night. So I stepped away from it and then, months later, sat down at the drum set and picked up exactly where I left off. And that wasn't the case in my 20s and 30s at all. But 50 years is a long time to do anything.
INSKEEP: As Rush fans know, he's more than a drummer. He writes lyrics. He writes books. But when he does pick up the sticks today, you can still see the intensity on his face.
(SOUNDBITE OF RUSH SONG, "TOM SAWYER")
INSKEEP: We were watching a documentary about Rush. And of course there are many shots of you. And the benefit of that is seeing you work and seeing your face. To me watching, I thought what I saw was the look of a craftsman. You were not necessarily in your own space. You were in that place. Your eyes are moving around. You're watching what you're doing. You look like a carpenter almost.
PEART: Wow, that's a lovely analogy because - well, I think of my mother's, you know, why don't you smile more when you're playing? Mom, it's hard.
INSKEEP: (Laughter).
PEART: And so I tend to define it as grim determination because it is very physical and painful.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FLY BY NIGHT")
RUSH: (Singing) Fly by night away from here. Change my life again. Fly by night; goodbye, my dear. My ship isn't coming and I just can't pretend, whoa.
PEART: The exertion level is very much of an athlete level. So when I see myself, I just see kind of a stone face. But it is that kind of immersion. I'll be looking out in between the immersion. I might pop my head above the water for a second to be alligator, you know, and see people in the audience reacting or holding up a sign or whatever. And that does delight me because in a larger sense, I'm very much an audience kind of person more than a performer.
INSKEEP: You wanted to watch the show that you were performing in. That's what you're...
PEART: Well, ideally - oh, what a fantasy. How I dream of that and often consciously think of it. Man, I wish I was out in the audience right now. And that has two meanings, of course.
(LAUGHTER)
INSKEEP: What are the two meanings? Lay them out.
PEART: Oh, yeah. I obviously - well, I'd love to observe what we're a part of because our band has been together for 40 years. So I sense sometimes when magic is happening. And also, if I was in the audience, I wouldn't have to be working so hard.
(SOUNDBITE OF RUSH SONG, "FLY BY NIGHT")
INSKEEP: That's Rush drummer Neil Peart during "Beat Week" on MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.
LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:
And I'm Linda Wertheimer.
LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:
Apple's iTunes music service is still the market leader in music downloads, but its use is declining. Last year saw its largest drop, with music sales down nearly 14 percent. Many analysts say the decline is likely to continue this year, as fans move over to streaming services, like Spotify and Pandora or YouTube. As NPR's Laura Sydell reports, users say they're leaving iTunes because it's actually not that easy to use.
LAURA SYDELL, BYLINE: It was nearly 14 years ago to the day, January 9, 2001, that Steve Jobs first introduced iTunes. At the time, the most popular music players for computers were RealJukebox and the Windows Media Player.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
STEVE JOBS: There's something that pops out right away. They are too complex. They're really difficult to learn and use.
SYDELL: Then Jobs unveiled what was to become the most popular music software for over a decade - iTunes.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JOBS: Because instead of having to put up with this, we're going to give you something that looks like this - really clean, really simple, far more powerful.
SYDELL: And iTunes was simple compared to everything else. For a generation of music fans, it was the place to buy music. Alexa Newsom was 13 when she purchased her first song, a few years after iTunes launched.
ALEXA NEWSOM: I downloaded this song by Liz Phair, where it's like - why can't I breathe without you?
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WHY CAN'T I?")
LIZ PHAIR: (Singing) Get a load of me. Get a load of you. Walking down the street, and I hardly know you.
NEWSOM: I thought it was, like, super-cool because it was my first grown-up sounding song that I've gone after myself.
SYDELL: Newsom, now 21, is increasingly frustrated with iTunes. For example, recent upgrades moved the playlist feature around.
NEWSOM: You can still kind of go do things the old way, but you have to go out of your way to do it. And it's clearly not the way that they expect you to do it.
SYDELL: Newsom's not alone in her feelings. Jason Mosley is a web designer who specializes in user experiences. The last update of iTunes he used, version 11, had you hover over a song to bring up a temporary menu before you could take an action.
JASON MOSLEY: And it gives you all your options. You can go start a radio station using their new radio service. You can add it to a playlist. But I was shocked to see that they had this all nested within another link. And, you know, as rule of thumb for user experience, you want less clicks to get to an action.
SYDELL: Mosley says part of Apple's problem is that the basic design is old.
MOSLEY: It was built for older things, and I think it's just kind of been added onto since then. And that's just going to make it heavy and slow. And, you know, Spotify, these new applications, they have the advantage. They are starting fresh.
SYDELL: And, of course, iTunes is more complicated because it sells movies, TV shows, and podcasts and music. Mosley now pays 10 bucks a month to use Spotify. James McQuivey, an analyst at Forrester, thinks Apple should be given credit for breaking open a new model for music with its mix of software and the iPod - the first easy-to-use MP3 player.
JAMES MCQUIVEY: The reason iTunes was adopted so well in the beginning was really not because it was great software. It was because it was connected to this hardware that was unlocking your music access and letting you take it with you on the go. And that was such a novel sensation.
SYDELL: McQuivey thinks Apple got a little overconfident.
MCQUIVEY: They dominated digital music for so long, and maybe they thought, well, this is good enough. Look, it's working for people. It's going to replace the CD. We might as well just sit on it.
SYDELL: Meanwhile, services like Spotify, Pandora, SoundCloud were perfecting a new model - one that's less dependent on hardware and more on increasingly ubiquitous and fast wireless that can access millions of songs - simple.
This past year Apple purchased Beats, which, along with its popular headphones, has a streaming service. Many think that streaming service could become part of iTunes this year. The question is whether Apple can make something that's old new again. Laura Sydell, NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Let's find out what Vermont has done with a year to battle opiates. About a year ago, Governor Peter Shumlin devoted his entire state of the state address to Vermont's opiate addiction problem. More people were seeking drug addiction treatment than getting help for alcoholism.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
GOVERNOR PETER SHUMLIN: Right now, we have hundreds of Vermonters who are addicted and ready to accept help, who are condemned to waiting because we don't have the capacity to treat the demand.
INSKEEP: That was January, 2014. Steve Zind of Vermont Public Radio has the picture in January, 2015.
STEVE ZIND, BYLINE: Shumlin's speech got everyone's attention, including lawmakers. The state's budget for addiction treatment was more than doubled, and the whole system shifted into high gear.
DANA POVERMAN: This has not been an easy year for anybody running any of these programs. It's been strenuous.
ZIND: Dana Poverman is with the Howard Center in Burlington, which provides addiction treatment. In a kind of build-it-and-they-will-come way, the upward trajectory in the number of people seeking treatment got even steeper as more help became available. So at Poverman's center, despite more openings, there are still nearly 300 people waiting.
POVERMAN: There's a lot to congratulate ourselves as a state about. But sadly, it's just still not enough.
ZIND: The state's approach to addiction treatment is called a hub-and-spoke system. Poverman's center is one of five regional hubs providing intensive treatment, including the maintenance drug methadone. Once patients leave the hubs, they're treated by doctors and therapists in local communities. They're the spokes in the system.
Even though waiting lists persist, there's been a significant increase in the number of treatment openings at the hubs. But the state has had limited success getting doctors to agree to provide addiction treatment. Barbara Cimaglio of the Vermont Department of Health says it's not a matter of taking on more patients.
BARBARA CIMAGLIO: What we're asking is that all primary care physicians think about, are these patients possibly in my practice, and can I see them like I would anyone else?
ZIND: Despite paying for nurses and counselors to work with doctors who offer addiction treatment, the state has had a hard time making its case. Only about 1 in 5 primary care physicians treat opiate addiction, which involves prescribing a maintenance drug called buprenorphine. Some doctors are worried about the added work and the complex needs of addicted patients. Will Porter says in years past, that was his concern.
WILL PORTER: When I was engaged in family practice, it was hard to imagine doing it in addition to everything else. It was overwhelming.
ZIND: Porter is now just 1 of 3 doctors providing treatment in one Vermont county. David Pattison has been treating addiction for eight years. He says many doctors have been burned by patients who faked needing drugs for pain. They're leery when the same patients come back for addiction treatment.
DAVID PATTISON: It really feels bad to get tricked like that. They don't want to have anything to do with those people who have been violating their trust.
ZIND: Pattison says there are setbacks and relapses. But once a drug user has sought help, the relationship with a doctor changes.
PATTISON: My buprenorphine days in clinic are my best days. It's fun to see these people who are getting better and thankful to us.
ZIND: Doctors say there's also a shortage of counselors to treat patients with addiction. Vermont's hub-and-spoke system is barely two years old, and it's too early to judge its long-term effectiveness. But Pattison says the system is good. The problem is its capacity to meet the increasing demand for treatment. For NPR News, I'm Steve Zind.
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In in this country, unemployment is dropping, gas is cheaper than it's been in years and GDP is on the rise. But in Europe the financial picture is not so rosy. The euro hit a nine-year low against the dollar yesterday, raising new questions about the long-term prospects for Europe's single currency. Callum Williams covers the European economy for The Economist magazine. We reached him on the line in London.
CALLUM WILLIAMS: Good morning.
WERTHEIMER: So why is the euro dropping?
WILLIAMS: Well, there's two reasons, really. The first is that there have been signs in the last few days that the European Central Bank, the ECB, is kind of on the verge of engaging in what the Fed, and what the Bank of Japan and what the Bank of England have done, which is quantitative easing. Now what that means is buying the debt essentially of countries in the eurozone. And the reason they'll probably do that is in order to basically - to increase finance, to increase an equility (ph) to the financial system.
Now the euro falls because of that because essentially there'll be more euros sort of floating around. So that's the first reason the euro's falling. And then the second reason is because there is now going to be, on January the 25, an election in Greece, which was sparked by various, complicated, political sort of processes. But there will be an election in Greece in the next few weeks. And most likely someone a - someone who used to be considered part of the radical left, but is now kind of moving slightly towards the center, but someone who sort of scares investors is probably going to become the next Greek prime minister. And that means that people who hold euros - investors who hold euros - are kind of thinking maybe this isn't, you know, maybe I don't want to have euros anymore. So they're selling them. So that's also pushing the price of the euro down.
WERTHEIMER: Does it automatically mean, when the euro is weak, that European economies are weak?
WILLIAMS: No. I mean, one of the things that people have been saying for a long time is that especially the weaker eurozone members - so we're looking at Greece, Portugal, Italy, Spain, to a lesser extent France - the way they're going to get out of the economic doldrums that they find themselves in at the moment is through exporting. And of course a weak euro makes those exports cheaper from those countries. And indeed, I mean, as the euro has fallen in value the trade position of the eurozone has improved. So, no, I mean, it's not a bad thing in itself that the euro is falling, but it is a sign that investors are getting worried about the future park of the euro as a whole.
WERTHEIMER: Tomorrow the Consumer Price Index for Europe comes out. We're hearing those numbers will show Europe headed for deflation. What would that mean, and how bad would it be?
WILLIAMS: So deflation is where prices on a sort of yearly basis are falling. And that has a number of bad consequences. One is that the economy tends to slow down because if you're going to buy a car, and you reckon that this time next year the car will be cheaper because prices are falling, then you tend to postpone that purchase of the car. And if everyone does that it, means that the economy sort of grinds to a halt. So deflation really worries economists.
WERTHEIMER: What do you suppose all of this means for people on this side of the Atlantic, which is where we and the United States are just beginning to be confident that our economy is roaring back?
WILLIAMS: Well, that's a very good question. I mean, a lot of people, say in Britain as well, are kind of looking at the eurozone and the sort of thinking thank God we didn't enter. And, you know, feeling rather smug about the whole thing. In practice though, this is actually really, you know, bad news for the rest of the world, particularly America and the U.K. America's a large trading partner with the eurozone. The eurozone is Britain's largest trading partner. And so if, you know, if those economies are weak, if people in those countries are not importing American goods, British goods, then the economic recovery could be kind of disrupted. And so even if you're not in the eurozone, this is still an important story.
WERTHEIMER: Callum Williams is economics correspondent for The Economist magazine. We reached him in London. Thank you very much.
WILLIAMS: Thank you.
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In this country yesterday, the nationwide average price for a gallon of regular gas was just below $2.20; that's according to AAA. Some people have been paying less than $2. NPR's John Ydstie reports the falling prices are likely to continue.
JOHN YDSTIE, BYLINE: Crude oil took another big slide yesterday. The price of U.S. crude fell below $50 a barrel. And with a bit of a lag, the price of gasoline will follow, says Dan Katzenberg.
DAN KATZENBERG: Gasoline prices are a bit stickier, certainly at the pump where it takes a little bit of a time to be reflected in the gas price, but it will follow ultimately.
YDSTIE: Katzenberg, who's a senior energy analyst at Robert W. Baird and Company, says he expects crude oil to fall another 10 percent, to the mid-$40-a-barrel range, during the first quarter and not recover until later in the year. That would push gasoline prices lower, too, and help consumers and the economy.
KATZENBERG: It's effectively a big tax break for U.S. consumers, and really for the globe.
YDSTIE: For U.S. consumers, every one-cent decline in the price of gasoline sustained over a year means an extra billion dollars saved. AAA figures the price decline in 2014 meant Americans spent $14 billion less filling their tanks than in 2013. That's a savings of more than $115 per household. The savings are likely to be even greater this year. John Ydstie, NPR News, Washington.
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Believe it or not, there is a downside to cheap gas, even for consumers. There's a way low prices can end up being very costly. To explain, NPR's Shankar Vedantam talked to our own David Greene.
DAVID GREENE, BYLINE: So when I see gas prices tumbling at gas stations, I usually feel really good about that. You're saying that there's some problems here?
SHANKAR VEDANTAM, BYLINE: Well, I feel really good about it, too, David. But it turns out that cheaper gas does come with a downside. And the downside is more traffic crashes and more traffic fatalities. I came by this analysis of the relationship between gasoline prices and road fatalities in 144 countries. And what it finds is that higher gas prices are associated with fewer fatalities. Lower gas prices are associated with a larger number of traffic deaths.
I spoke with Guangqing Chi. He's a sociologist at South Dakota State University. He's been analyzing the relationship between gas prices and road fatalities in the United States. He told me about one study he conducted that found that a 20-cent decline in gas prices in Minnesota was linked to an additional 15 deaths per year. I asked him what the effect of a $2 drop in gas prices might be across the entire United States. Here he is.
GUANGQING CHI: A $2 drop in gasoline price can translate to about 9,000 road fatalities per year in the U.S.
GREENE: Nine-thousand? Shankar, I mean, I know we haven't seen a $2 drop in gas prices in the country. But he's estimating that a drop like that could cause an additional 9,000 road deaths? That really scary.
VEDANTAM: It is scary, David. My jaw dropped when I heard that number. Now, even if we take a more conservative estimate than Chi - let's say a third of his estimate - that's still 3,000 lives a year. It's an enormous number of people.
GREENE: So, Shankar, why is this happening?
VEDANTAM: Well, the biggest factor of course, David, is that people simply drive a lot less when gas prices are high. Chi told me that he himself started this line of research when gas prices spiked in 2008, and he noticed a change in his own behavior. Instead of taking a lot of separate trips to home and shopping and to pick up his kid, he would start to combine all these trips into one trip. Here he is.
CHI: In the past, when the gasoline price is not that high, I go to office. I go home. I go shopping. I go home. I pick up my kid from day care. Then I go home. But now, with the gasoline price so high, I try to do all the things together - just do it in one trip.
VEDANTAM: And, you know, David, he also noticed that he started to drive differently when gas prices were high. He would accelerate slowly, maintain a steady speed - because those are the things that save gas. But it also turns out those are the things that make you safer driver.
GREENE: That's amazing. So you're not actually doing things to be a safer driver. But the things you're doing to save gas are actually making you a safer driver without you even realizing it.
VEDANTAM: You know, the ironic thing, David, is that if you really want to get people to slow down, you don't scare them about losing their lives. You scare them by telling them they're going to spend more money at the pump. And that's what gets them to slow down.
GREENE: Wow. And when you're talking about who to send a message like that to - I can imagine this is a problem that affects different people differently. I mean, if you're a younger driver, you have maybe less disposable income. You might actually change your behavior more.
VEDANTAM: That's exactly right. Chi actually finds that the risk for teenagers goes up very sharply when gas prices fall, presumably because these drivers in their teens and early 20s are likely to drive a lot less when gas costs more. Now of course, these are also drivers who are often higher-risk drivers to begin with, so when you get them off the road, that lowers the risk for everyone else as well.
GREENE: Shankar, this strikes me as a big deal. I mean, is there something that government officials should be thinking about doing to raise awareness of this problem?
VEDANTAM: Well, David, the obvious answer is that higher gas prices are probably going to save lives. Chi himself thinks that we should maybe impose gasoline taxes, raise the price of gasoline - and that would not make consumers happy - but it probably would save lives.
The complicated thing, of course, David, is that higher gas prices are also a break on the economy. And they disproportionately affect poorer people because wealthier people are likely to drive regardless of whether gas prices are high or low. As far as individual drivers go, David, I think the thing to do is that if you see a sign showing low gas, the thing to do is to check your seatbelt and make sure you're staying alert on the roads.
GREENE: Something you should always be doing anyway.
VEDANTAM: Exactly.
GREENE: Shankar, thanks as always.
VEDANTAM: Thank you, David.
GREENE: We've been speaking to our colleague Shankar Vedantam, who regularly joins us on this program to talk about social science research. And you can follow him on Twitter @hiddenbrain. You can also follow this program @NPRGreene, @NPRInskeep and @MorningEdition.
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Wedding bells were ringing overnight in Florida. Courts there for the first time began allowing same-sex couples to marry. In Ft. Lauderdale, Key West and other cities, gay and lesbian couples began to get married shortly after midnight, when a ban on same-sex unions was officially lifted. NPR's Greg Allen reports Florida's first gay marriages were held yesterday in Miami.
GREG ALLEN, BYLINE: Over the last year, five state judges and a federal judge heard cases challenging Florida's ban on same-sex marriages. In every case, the ban was struck down. U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle ruled that it violated constitutional protections to due process and equal protection but placed a stay on his order until today to allow county clerks time to get ready. But in Miami yesterday, the county clerk's office was already busy.
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ALLEN: Gay couples followed by reporters and camera crews packed into the county clerk's office after a judge in Miami-Dade County lifted a stay and allowed gay lesbian couples to receive marriage licenses. The first couple in line was Deborah Shure and her partner, Aymarah Robles.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: And when are you getting married?
DEBORAH SHURE: Tomorrow.
ALLEN: Both women are in their 60s and have been together 15 years. Robles had always expected that one day she and Shure would be able to legally marry. But still, she said, it was an emotional day.
AYMARAH ROBLES: Right. And I'm still crying, and I don't think it's going to stop today, until tomorrow and until everyone has equal rights in this country.
ALLEN: With the court rulings, Florida now becomes the 36th state to recognize same-sex unions. It's a remarkable turnabout for a state where former beauty queen Anita Bryant once led a crusade opposing gay rights. Robles said the decision meant the state of Florida was, after many years, finally recognizing their relationship and the right to love whom you choose. Sure says a legally recognized marriage also carries important practical benefits.
SHURE: You know, every time we move from state to state, we have to have many legal documents drawn up to protect ourselves. We travel a lot for business. We carry them all with us every time just to have the safety that everybody else has without them.
ALLEN: Not all counties in Florida are as welcoming as Miami. In more than a dozen counties in the northern part of the state, county clerks say they will issue licenses, but have stopped conducting any marriages at the courthouse. Greg Allen, NPR News, Miami.
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Good morning. I'm Linda Wertheimer. The Word Warriors of Detroit's Wayne State University have released their annual list of words in line for a comeback. There's caterwaul, a howling or wailing noise; rapscallion, a mischievous person; and flapdoodle, nonsense. Lake Superior State University suggests terms to be banished, including bae and polar vortex. Are they now reduced to flapdoodle? It's MORNING EDITION.
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When you think of oil and gas boomtowns, you probably picture cramped man camps, a lot of transient workers and the bare-bones needed to survive. Maybe not the most family-oriented places, but plenty of oil field workers do come to town with their families in tow. Wyoming Public Radio's Melodie Edwards reports the challenge is finding these families adequate housing.
MELODIE EDWARDS, BYLINE: For the last month, the Foshee family - mom, dad, three kids, a dog and a cat - have all been living in a 24-foot camper at the High Plains RV Park on the outskirts of Gillette in northeast Wyoming. But the family has just moved into a roomier 31-foot camper. Here's what 9-year-old Clay loves about the move.
CLAY: The special features.
EDWARDS: The special features?
CLAY: Yeah.
EDWARDS: What are the special features?
CLAY: It has a radio.
EDWARDS: He also likes the indoor toilet since it means he doesn't have to run to the campground bathroom in the middle of the night. His dad, Ronnie, got laid off his welding job in Texas two years ago when the oil fields went bust there. For a while, he got odd jobs and came home every few weeks. But he says he refused to do the man camp thing - bunking with a bunch of guys.
RONNIE FOSHEE: It just don't seem comfortable, I guess. And to be that far away from your family, you should be comfortable.
EDWARDS: So when Ronnie landed a good paying welding job in Wyoming, his wife Rachel was relieved.
RACHEL FOSHEE: I had a week to pack up the house and take what we needed and left the rest behind.
EDWARDS: As a trained welder, Ronnie makes good money - $25 an hour plus benefits and overtime. But even so, keeping a family together is hard and expensive. Between the camper and the lot, the Foshees are playing a thousand dollars a month. It cost that much because Gillette has very few places to rent. Chris Estes is the director of the National Housing Conference.
CHRIS ESTES: There's a health impact if people aren't well-housed, the educational impact on kids when they're in unstable housing.
EDWARDS: And Estes says leaving it up to private enterprise to fill the need doesn't work.
ESTES: The market's usually going to respond in a pretty short-term way. And I think if you want your communities to be attractive places to live long-term, it takes some coordination and partnership.
EDWARDS: For instant, partnerships with the energy companies themselves. Reliant Asset Management is one that made its name running man camps. Now they've been hired by Key Energy in Williston, North Dakota to build and manage family camps for employees. These have three-bedroom cabins, complete with school bus pickup and playgrounds. Property manager Danny Heisler says as the epicenter of the nation's energy surge, Williston has been a sort of boomtown case study.
DANNY HEISLER: It was a scarier place to be. It wasn't a friendly, family environment.
EDWARDS: But for people who have come back to Williston more recently, it's a happier and safer place. Key Energy pays for half the cost of these cabins. And Heisler says it's this kind of company-supported family housing that's helping to change the city's vibe.
HEISLER: With the amount of money that rent costs in Williston, there's no better option. You just can't beat it when your company's paying for, if not all, half of your housing.
EDWARDS: It's an option Foshee wishes she had. She takes me out to see the tiny trailer the family just moved out of. The sun is setting over the winter prairie.
RACHEL FOSHEE: It's so pretty here 'cause I'm used to pine trees. And here, you can see the sky here.
EDWARDS: But with the price of oil falling rapidly, it might not be long before Ronnie is looking for work again and they're making the decision one more time about how to keep the family together. For NPR News, I'm Melodie Edwards.
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Of all the days to visit the United States Capitol, the first day of Congress may be the best. Nearly all the members are on hand, some bring their families to that vast, ornate building with its murals on the ceilings and statues in the halls.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
On today's first day of Congress, the House will go through the formal ritual of electing a speaker. It is mostly just a formality. Republicans have already chosen John Boehner in a private meeting.
WERTHEIMER: But beneath the ritual lies some tension. The vote reveals a regional split in the GOP. NPR's Juana Summers reports.
JUANA SUMMERS, BYLINE: The modern Republican Party is rooted in the South. But if you look at Congress, or at least its leaders, there's little evidence of that. When the new Congress begins its session, Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell will lead Senate Republicans. But across the Capitol, it's not a Southerner that wields the gavel. It's Ohio Republican John Boehner whose brand of conservatism is in many ways different from the bulk of House Republicans. Jack Pitney, a professor at Claremont McKenna College in California, explains why that matters.
JACK PITNEY: Republicans had their base of support in the Midwest and the West. Now the center of gravity of the party has shifted to the South. I think in the future, you're going to see more and more members of the extended leadership coming from the South.
SUMMERS: But for the moment the party grounded in the South isn't led by members from culturally Southern states, where sweet tea is the drink of choice, social conservatives rule the roost and Democratic presidential nominees don't stand a chance. Here's Pitney again.
PITNEY: Rank-and-file includes a large number of members from the South who had very socially conservative constituencies. Speaker Boehner, on the other hand, is much more of a traditional Republican. He comes from the old-fashioned, Republican heartland of Ohio. He's broadly conservative, but I don't think anybody would characterize him as ideological.
SUMMERS: House Republicans now have the biggest majority in more than 80 years. Boehner's expanded rank-and-file now includes members from some of the bluest states in the country. But lawmakers from the South are still a sizable voting bloc. Members from four states alone - Texas, Florida, North Carolina and Georgia - make up a quarter of the Republican majority. But for all of the southern GOP members, there is just one in leadership. And that's what makes the recent controversy surrounding Steve Scalise, the third-ranking Republican, all the more awkward.
His candidacy to become majority whip got a boost from southern lawmakers who seemed to want one of their own in the leadership ranks. But in six months on the job he found himself having to apologize for a speech he made more than a decade ago to a white supremacist group with ties to former KKK leader David Duke. Boehner came out in full support of Scalise. Two conservative Southerners, Congressman Ted Yoho of Florida and Congressman Louie Gohmert of Texas, each have said they'll challenge Boehner. Here's why Gohmert told Fox News he decided to run.
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REPRESENTATIVE LOUIE GOHMERT: The numbers are 25 to 33 percent already to abandon the Republican Party. They're so fed up that we're not fighting for what we said. And if we don't show them that, it's going to devastate this country. We could have another Democratic president in 2016.
SUMMERS: Neither is likely to win. Boehner has a firmer grip on the job, and he's coming in on the heels of a historic election-win. But no one knows more about the ebb and flow of politics than Boehner. In his early years, Boehner was a conservative reformer himself. He won a spot in leadership in 1994, but then fell out of favor. Then he made an unlikely comeback. David Cohen is a political scientist at the University of Akron.
DAVID COHEN: John Boehner's very much a political survivor. You might recall that he was in leadership once, and then he was kicked out. And then he was able to wrangle his way back into leadership and then eventually become speaker of the House. He does what he needs to do to gain power and keep it. And he'll do what he needs to do to remain as speaker of the House.
SUMMERS: And after he secures his reelection as speaker, then he can get down to the business of governing. Juana Summers, NPR News, Washington.
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Now of all of the items on the Senate's agenda, few could be more telling than this - confirmation hearings are coming for attorney general nominee Loretta Lynch. She's a federal prosecutor and would be promoted to replace Eric Holder. Her confirmation is not a sure thing. And that has less to do with her qualifications than with larger Republican concerns about President Obama's acts on immigration and other controversial issues. We're going to talk this through with NPR justice correspondent Carrie Johnson. Hi, Carrie.
CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: Good morning, Steve.
INSKEEP: So is anything at all known to be controversial in Lynch's background?
JOHNSON: Steve, she's been confirmed twice to be U.S. attorney in Brooklyn with no Senate opposition by voice vote. So this is going to be less about who Loretta Lynch is as a person and as an attorney than about President Obama's agenda for the next two years in office. There are a few things she's going to get raked over the coals about, including perhaps allegedly insufficient enforcement of criminal laws against Wall Street. But by and large she doesn't ruffle many feathers.
INSKEEP: She was nominated some weeks ago, so I guess lawmakers have had some time for a wind up here.
JOHNSON: Well, Senate Republican Chairman of the Judiciary Committee Charles Grassley from Iowa has been exhaustively digging through her background. I'm told that his investigators have even asked to see her performance evaluations, which is not part of the normal process. They're still digging through all that material now, not clear that they've found anything major. But Democrats had hoped, Steve, that they'd be to hold the hearings for Loretta Lynch the second or third week of January. I'm now told that's extremely unlikely - late January, the last week in January, at the earliest.
INSKEEP: OK. So they're looking very closely at this nominee. On the surface you can't complain about that. But what is really going on here?
JOHNSON: What's really going on here is that her nomination is going to be a referendum in part on President Obama's action last year on immigration. His decision to offer temporary reprieve to about 4 million immigrants from deportation - something that Republican David Vitter, a senator from Louisiana and a new member now of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has tweeted about. He said that's amnesty, and he wants to block Loretta Lynch's nomination on that basis alone. She's going to have to answer challenging questions, Steve, in her hearings about whether she approves of the legality of President Obama's decision, and whether she'd do the same thing if she were in office at the time he made it.
INSKEEP: And so this is - are Republicans thinking they might be able to sink this nomination and somehow get leverage over the president?
JOHNSON: I think they're going to drag it out and make it as painful as possible, but it's hard to see at least now, Steve, any real basis for tanking the nomination. However, they may use it to extract some concessions from the Obama administration and bring some pain in terms of national security. Remember, Steve, that later this year, provisions of the Patriot Act are expiring. So national security's going to table all over again, including some of those bulk, metadata programs exposed by NSA leaker Edwards Snowden.
INSKEEP: And so very briefly who's in charge at the Justice Department while we wait for these confirmation hearings to conclude?
JOHNSON: A guy you may know named Eric Holder who's been in office for six years now.
INSKEEP: (Laughter).
JOHNSON: And here's the rub - Republicans on Capitol Hill do not like Eric Holder. He famously was held in contempt by the House a few years ago, and the feeling is very much mutual. So long as Republicans delay the nomination of Loretta Lynch, they're stuck with Eric Holder in charge at DOJ.
INSKEEP: Carrie, thanks for coming by as always.
JOHNSON: You're welcome.
INSKEEP: That's NPR justice correspondent Carrie Johnson.
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The Justice Department has charged two U.S. citizens with attempting to overthrow the government of the tiny West African nation of The Gambia. The charges stem from a December 30 coup attempt. As NPR's Jackie Northam reports, the two men charged are of Gambian descent but have not lived there for decades.
JACKIE NORTHAM, BYLINE: The criminal complaint against Papa Faal and Cherno Njie reveals a coup plot that ripples of naivete, brazen moves and last-minute changes. The 46-year-old Faal is a resident of Minnesota. The 57-year-old Njie lives in Austin, Texas. The Justice Department says the two were among about a dozen men who not only hatched plans to overthrow The Gambia's government, but they discussed it over conference calls and through email.
The alleged plan was to ambush President Yayha Jammeh as he drove around The Gambia. What they didn't plan on was the president being out of the country at the time. The alleged coup plotters then switched plans and tried to attack the president's office instead, believing that Gambian armed forces guarding the building would drop their weapons and flee. Instead, they came under heavy fire. Several were killed, and others ran away. Jeffrey Smith, an Africa specialist at the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, says he's not surprised those trying to overthrow Jammeh were willing to take the risk.
JEFFREY SMITH: I think it speaks to the desperation of people both outside the country and those people inside the country. And I think this attempt is really born out of two decades of frustration and really people yearning for any sort of change that would displace the world's most ruthless dictator that most people probably have not heard of.
NORTHAM: Smith says The Gambia has of the worst human rights records in Africa. And yet the criminal complaint says the U.S. considers The Gambia a friendly nation. Jen Psaki is a State Department spokesperson.
JEN PSAKI: Of course with any country, including The Gambia, we - when we have concerns about human rights issues, we express them.
NORTHAM: After the foiled coup attempt, Faal gave himself up in neighboring Senegal. Njie was arrested as he returned to the U.S. Jackie Northam, NPR News, Washington.
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Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep. The Oregon Ducks defy one of the rules of life. Don't mess with success. They made it to the college football national championship, and now they are changing uniforms. They will not be green and yellow. They'll play in new, white jerseys with grey numbers and silver accents. This team does this a lot. It is not an organization for some player with a lucky shirt. Maybe it gives them an edge. Ohio State players might not recognize opponents they saw in game films. You are listening to MORNING EDITION.
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Lebanon says it's had enough of the unrestricted flow of refugees from Syria. That tiny country on the Mediterranean has taken in more than a million refugees from its war-torn neighbor. It wasn't hard to get there. The Lebanese border is a short drive from Damascus, and no visa was required. Now the Lebanese government has imposed new rules. Let's go now to Ron Redmond. He's a spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. He's based in Beirut. Welcome to the program, sir.
RON REDMOND: Thank you.
INSKEEP: What exactly is Lebanon now requiring of people fleeing the war?
REDMOND: The regulations that they've so far announced call for Syrians fleeing their country to provide documentation showing that they're, for example, students that have a university place here or they've got a business here. In other words, they've got to have documentation showing a reason for coming here and only in a few classifications. We're worried that these requirements make no mention whatsoever of people seeking asylum, and that's what we're trying to get clarification on.
INSKEEP: And so you now have to get a visa stamp from a Lebanese border guard in order to get into the country, and it's going to be hard for people to get. That's what you're saying?
REDMOND: Yes. They arrive at the border, and they've got to be able to show documentation that they fit into one of these categories. It doesn't provide any information about what sort of requirement people need if they want to claim asylum. There are still many, many Syrians trying to get out and who are in need of protection.
INSKEEP: Do you have a sense that this is going to take a refugee flow that has, as we said, added up to something like a million people and crank it down to something closer to zero?
REDMOND: Well, it's certainly going to reduce it. We've already seen a series of measures since last October that have already had the effect of reducing the number of people coming to UNHCR to be registered by more than 50 percent. So there has already been a sizeable reduction from previous measures.
INSKEEP: I do wonder, can you blame the Lebanese?
REDMOND: No, you cannot blame the Lebanese. We are concerned about what happened in Lebanon and been voicing our opinion for months that the international community has got to provide more support to Lebanon and its neighbor, Jordan, which is facing the same problem. They are totally overwhelmed. I mean, you imagine what it would be like if one-quarter of the U.S. population were refugees? It's put an enormous strain on the infrastructure, education, health care, sewer, water, sanitation. Everything is being overstretched. They need a lot more help than they've been getting because Lebanon simply is buckling under the pressure of 1.1 million refugees.
INSKEEP: And you said a quarter of the population. We're talking about a country with a population of about 4 million with, as you said, more than 1 million refugees now. Where, generally speaking, are the refugees? Are they in camps or just among the population?
REDMOND: Well, that's another difficulty here. They are not in camps. Lebanon was opposed, from the beginning, to establishing camps. So right now you've got 1.1 million people scattered across some 1,700 different localities all over Lebanon. They're placing huge pressures not only on the national government, but also on small towns. They're really causing a lot of problems.
INSKEEP: Is there any place else for refugees to go?
REDMOND: In this region, the restrictions are getting tighter and tighter. Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon - it's extremely difficult and getting worse. If they aren't able to get into these surrounding countries, they're going to go elsewhere. And we're already seeing happening with Syrians going across the Mediterranean and including in the two ships last week that were rescued at sea.
INSKEEP: That's Ron Redmond. He's with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, speaking from Beirut.
LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:
Two promising, young American skiers were killed in an avalanche yesterday in the Austrian Alps, where they were training with the U.S. ski team. Four other team members skiing with them survived. Twenty-year-old Ronnie Berlack of Franconia, New Hampshire, had been named to the development team. Nineteen-year-old Bryce Astle of Sandy, Utah, was still in the running. On the phone from Austria is Sasha Rearick, head coach of the U.S. ski team. Thank you very much for talking to us this morning. We're very sorry for your loss.
SASHA REARICK: Thank you. Thank you.
WERTHEIMER: Could you talk for a moment about Ronnie and Bryce? These were two very young men. I don't know how well you knew them by this time.
REARICK: Yeah. I mean, Bryce was - always a smile on his face and absolutely loved everything he was doing at any moment. And Ronnie Berlack was an unbelievably hard worker who loved ski racing, loved his teammates. He was a passionate person for his teammates. And we have a very tight family, and Ronnie was a big glue to that family.
WERTHEIMER: I assume this must be very tough for the rest of the kids on the team.
REARICK: Yeah. I arrived here in Solden from Zagreb at the World Cup last night. And I was absolutely astounded at how strong this group is together. Individually, each member is strong and holding together, supporting each other. But the strength here uplifted me - unbelievable last night after an eight-hour drive. I cannot be so impressed with how strong they are together. But, for sure, we are, you know, going through some cycles right now this morning. And it's going to be some tough times, but we will get through it.
WERTHEIMER: Could you tell us how this happened? These two young men were off the prepared trails with avalanche warnings already issued?
REARICK: Skiing here in Europe, in Solden it's a big, big mountain. There's a tremendous amount of terrain. They were - took a lift up and skied down like many tourist skiers do in this area. Unfortunately, a bad accident occurred and their - fortunately we have four athletes who survived and were able to help in the process of trying to dig Ronnie and Bryce out. And they did everything they could possible.
WERTHEIMER: What about those four guys? Where do they go next? Does this change your decisions about competitions in the near future?
REARICK: I mean, right now we're going to meet with each athlete to figure out what's the best plan for them to move forward and to move forward with the rest of their lives. And this group of guys that are here, their next competition would be in Wengen - Europa cup this come coming week. And we'll see how - who goes there and who does not.
WERTHEIMER: Sasha Rearick is head coach of the U.S. ski team which is mourning the deaths of Ronnie Berlack and Bryce Astle, two promising, young skiers who were killed in an avalanche yesterday. He joined us from Austria. Mr. Rearick, thank you very much.
REARICK: Thank you.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Researchers are asking if a drug designed for one purpose might be used for another. The drug is used worldwide to treat malaria. The researchers want to know if it works as a treatment for cervical cancer. A new lab technique may help them find out, as NPR's Richard Harris reports.
RICHARD HARRIS, BYLINE: The story starts with Richard Schlegel, the doctor who invented the Gardasil vaccine to protect women from cervical cancer. Schlegel wished he could take cancer cells from every woman who came into the hospital and grow them in the lab to learn more about this disease.
RICHARD SCHLEGEL: People have tried growing the cells in culture before. But they've been very crude experiments, essentially.
HARRIS: Most of the time, these cells die off pretty quickly. But Schlegel had an idea for a radically new method to grow all sorts of human cells in his lab at Georgetown University. And these days, it's a finely honed system starting in the operating room and then going through the pathology department and up to his lab.
SCHLEGEL: The tissue comes in here, and it's processed over here on two different tissue culture hoods.
HARRIS: These carefully ventilated workspaces reduce the risk of contamination. The cells are gently moved into a flask where they can grow indefinitely. The trick is that these flasks have a layer of mouse cells that feed the human tissue.
SCHLEGEL: Yeah, you can see some of these spindly cells over here.
HARRIS: And so what exactly are the mouse cells providing?
SCHLEGEL: We don't know. There are probably several growth factors that they secrete that are important for the growth of these. And we have experiments ongoing to identify what those factors are.
HARRIS: If he can figure that out, eventually he can dispense with the mouse cells. But for now, the layer of mouse cells is key.
SCHLEGEL: So if you have the cells growing like this they'll grow forever.
HARRIS: And how many different kinds of cancer cells have you been able to grow up in this manner?
SCHLEGEL: We've probably got about 30 different types.
HARRIS: All told, Schlegel says he has grown up cells from 700 different samples of human tissue - some healthy, some diseased, all available for study. Recently, he took some cervical cancer cells and started dosing them with drugs to see what would kill them.
SCHLEGEL: And not just anticancer drugs. For example, we discovered and what we're working on right now is an antimalarial that kills cervical cancer cells.
HARRIS: It's a derivative of artemisinin, a common drug used around the world.
SCHLEGEL: We're starting a trial at Johns Hopkins. We're going to treat with the antimalarial and determine if it reverses the disease and eliminates it.
CONNIE TRIMBLE: It's formulated into a suppository.
HARRIS: Dr. Connie Trimble is running the drug trial at Johns Hopkins. Her main project is gearing up the human immune system to fight off cervical cancer.
TRIMBLE: This particular approach is completely different, and that's one reason I'm excited about it.
HARRIS: They're hoping this antimalarial drug will kill off precancerous cervical cells in women, sparing them from surgery.
TRIMBLE: If it works, this is a game-changer because it puts control of the treatment in the hands of the woman. In low-resource settings or settings where women don't have access to health care, they can do it themselves.
HARRIS: Doctors already know this malarial drug is safe, so it could be a front-line treatment in parts of the world where surgery simply isn't available. It would require an easy diagnostic test, but Trimble says that's also in the works. And cervical cancer is just the start. Dr. David Rimm learned about the Georgetown cell growing method when it was first published two years ago. And now, he's using it to generate cell lines.
DAVID RIMM: Well, it's pretty cool. We have over a hundred in our facility.
HARRIS: His lab is at the Yale University School of Medicine. Rimm says this is a huge step for research labs. It used to be he could only study a few different perpetually growing cell lines, and those were biologically pretty messed up.
RIMM: We can now have 40 or 50 cell lines from 40 or 50 different tumors from a population, and they all grow. And we can now do cell line type studies, but on populations of cell lines as opposed to two or three.
HARRIS: That gives him the same advantages as scientists get when they test new drugs on dozens of people instead of just a few. Dozens of labs around the world are now using this technique which is called conditional reprogramming of cells. And at the moment, everyone is hopeful that it will be the next big thing for studying diseases in the lab. But it is just a bit too soon to make that claim. Richard Harris, NPR News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
It's Beat Week on MORNING EDITION. Over the last few days, we've heard from some of the world's most influential rock and funk drummers. Today, the beat goes on with rhythms you might have heard from Latin jazz and Cuban music.
(SOUNDBITE OF UNIDENTIFIED LA LUPE SONG)
MONTAGNE: Heard in this song by La Lupe, those beats have their roots in Afro-Cuban Santeria ceremonies. They are rhythms that began in West Africa centuries ago and still inspire musicians around the globe. Our guide is NPR's Felix Contreras, host of the NPR podcast Alt.Latino and an Afro-Cuban drummer himself.
FELIX CONTRERAS, BYLINE: First, some background in the most simple form, Santeria could be considered a mashup of West and Central African mythology and Christianity. It's obviously much more complicated than that, but it gets us started. Santeria ceremonies are for calling out to the spiritual world, and that spiritual connection is made through music.
JOHN SANTOS: All right, this drum is pretty - pretty close.
CONTRERAS: Percussionist and bandleader John Santos is in his home studio in Oakland, California, setting up a trio of bata drums, the hourglass-shaped drums traditionally used in Santeria ceremonies.
SANTOS: So I'm going to mount them on the stand now. And we'll see what they sound like together - all three.
(SOUNDBITE OF DRUMS)
SANTOS: The Yoruba language is a tonal language. So (speaking Yoruba) means something different than (speaking Yoruba) because of the inflection. And so the drums are made to imitate the range of sounds, traditionally, of the voice of the person who commissions the drums to be made.
CONTRERAS: And as an example, he sings the toque de bata or the bata rhythm for the orisha Ibeji or the deity Ibeji.
SANTOS: (Singing in Yoruba).
The drums play (imitates drum beats).
(SOUNDBITE OF DRUMS)
CONTRERAS: According to Santos, Santeria rhythms came out of clandestine spiritual ceremonies into open Cuban society in the 1930s, when Cuban musicologists could no longer ignore the country's African heritage. The sacred and the secular have shared a place in Cuban music. In fact, Santos says the sacred music crossed over and gave birth to most of the popular forms of Cuban music. And for a couple of Latin jazz examples, let's start with some music from John Santos.
(SOUNDBITE OF UNIDENTIFIED JOHN SANTOS SONG)
CONTRERAS: And for something a little different, there was an album released last year with a rhythmic heartbeat that was supplied by what was not there. Cuban-born pianist David Virelles crafted music that imagines the rhythms, while playing just a subtle hint of what they sound and feel like.
(SOUNDBITE OF UNIDENTIFIED DAVID VIRELLES SONG)
CONTRERAS: John Santos says that for many practitioners of Santeria, as well as the musicians who draw on those traditions for inspiration, the intricate and subtle interlocking rhythms of the ceremonial music reflect an emotional and musical power that reminds us that there is something greater than ourselves.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SANTOS: When you put them together, they will create a wave of rhythm that is absolutely magical and then irresistible, and you cannot listen to that music and stay still. It's music that just moves you from the inside out.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
CONTRERAS: Felix Contreras, NPR News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
A U.S. appeals court today hears arguments on whether a hotly contested abortion law in Texas is constitutional. That law mandates extremely strict building codes for clinics that perform abortions. Now Fifth Circuit judges in New Orleans will decide whether that poses an undue burden. NPR's Jennifer Ludden reports.
JENNIFER LUDDEN, BYLINE: Texas HB2 requires clinics that perform abortions to operate like ambulatory surgical centers - wider hallways, hospital-style equipment - upgrades that could cost millions. Emily Horne of Texas Right to Life says it's needed for women's safety. Just look at Philadelphia doctor Kermit Gosnell, she says, convicted of murder and botched abortions two years ago. Horne points out he ran a filthy clinic with untrained staff and was found guilty in the death of a woman from an overdose of sedatives.
EMILY HORNE: And when they did the research, the grand jury report said had they been able to get to her sooner, had the hallways been wider, she may not have died. But it was a small facility. It wasn't emergency-equipped. And so that was one of the factors that contributed to her death.
NANCY NORTHUP: These laws pretend they're about health and safety. They're meant to confuse the public about that.
LUDDEN: Nancy Northup is with the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is challenging the Texas law and others like it. Gosnell, she says, was an outlier. Studies find far less than 1 percent of abortions involve major complications and that the procedure is much safer than, say, delivering a baby. Northup says these laws are really about taking away access to abortion.
NORTHUP: They are designed to have the effect - in fact, if this law was to go into effect, it would have - which is close 80 percent of the clinics in the state of Texas.
LUDDEN: In fact, another part of the abortion law requiring doctors to have hospital-admitting privileges has shut down more than half of Texas's 41 clinics. The provisions it issued today could shutter a dozen more, forcing many who seek an abortion to drive hundreds of miles to the closest clinic. Texas Governor-Elect Greg Abbott has been clear about his position. He's defended the abortion law as state attorney general. Here he is in a campaign debate last fall.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
GOVERNOR-ELECT GREG ABBOTT: I'm Catholic, and I want to promote a culture of life that supports both the health and safety of both the mother and child, both before and after birth.
LUDDEN: Abbott suggests women could go to neighboring New Mexico for an abortion. And state officials say only about 1 in 6 would have to drive more than 150 miles for one. Though abortion rights groups say that would still have a devastating impact.
AMY HAGSTROM MILLER: We're talking about a huge amount of women of reproductive age that are being disenfranchised.
LUDDEN: Amy Hagstrom Miller heads Whole Women's Health, an abortion provider among the plaintiffs in the case. She says many women simply can't afford the time off work, child care and hotel needed to travel long distances. She says her providers are hearing from women taking matters into their own hands, even inflicting violence on themselves.
MILLER: So they've asked their partner to try to help induce a miscarriage. We've seen women who are drinking herbal teas and douching with various substances or trying to order medications on the Internet that they've heard may induce a miscarriage.
LUDDEN: Nearly two dozen states have passed laws similar to the one in Texas. No matter the outcome of today's hearing, many believe an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court is likely. Jennifer Ludden, NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Drum this into your head - the first college football playoffs are a commercial success. Two semifinal games on New Year's Day were the most-watched programs ever on cable TV. Next week's final may set another record, which has our commentator Frank Deford wondering, why?
FRANK DEFORD, BYLINE: So we finally have our first official college football championship, and something like 50 million-or-so fans will be watching to see whether Oregon or Ohio State is the 33rd-best team in the country. Now, this makes me, I admit, both perfectly accurate and infuriatingly facetious.
Certainly, no one would dispute that even the most miserable of the 32 NFL teams is far superior to any collegiate squad, but at the same time, a great segment of America will be deeply invested in watching what is, essentially, the equivalent of Triple-A baseball. Why? It's absolutely intriguing to me and somehow revealing that the United States alone places such an emphasis - yea devotion - upon college sport.
Off of the record, here and there, other nations possess an abiding interest in some school game. But we're the odd fellows who've made school football almost as popular as the finest professional leagues. Now, our sport of football evolved, its prime antecedent being English rugby. But during the latter part of the 19th century, as that other British game of soccer began to become popular around the world, our own schoolboys favored the rugby lineage. Now, why Americans preferred to run and then throw the ball rather than kick it like most everybody else remains the American mystery as distinct as our singular American dream, but so it was.
And curiously for such a brutal game, it was precisely the fanciest schools - Harvard, Yale, Princeton - that not only advanced the sport but ordained football as a proper social occasion. As American colleges were often located in out-of-the-way places, a school's football team became something of a marker for that American educational system that we were so proud of. In a way, football became the outward and visible sign of the classroom. Yes, there are great rivalries in our professional sport. But we're a transient society, and our deepest loyalties seem to remain more with the colleges that we left behind.
I've always felt that the emotions that we alumni bestow upon our beloved college football teams are more analogous to the passions that citizens in other smaller countries show their national soccer teams But somehow, even if you don't personally give a hoot about Ohio State or Oregon, the sport carries cultural weight. And which team will be the 33rd-best in the land is a touchstone of America.
INSKEEP: You can hear commentator Frank Deford every Wednesday on MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
And I'm Renee Montagne. Go Ducks.
INSKEEP: Buckeyes.
MONTAGNE: Ducks.
INSKEEP: Buckeyes.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
This next story marks an anniversary. It was 60 years ago today that the Metropolitan Opera had its first African-American soloist. That's the occasion for this story, but really any excuse will do to play the voice of Marian Anderson.
(SOUNDBITE OF OPERA, "UN BALLO EN MASCHERA")
MARIAN ANDERSON: (As Ulrica) (Singing in foreign language).
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
That is a recording from one of Anderson's performances in 1955 as the fortuneteller Ulrica. She played the role in an opera by Verdi.
INSKEEP: F. Paul Driscoll, the editor-in-chief of Opera News, says Marian Anderson was made for that role.
F. PAUL DRISCOLL: The role of the sorceress, Ulrica, in "Un Ballo En Maschera," is something which depends a lot on the charisma of the performer, the presence of the performer and the ability to suggest a world beyond what you're seeing in front of you. And that's what Marian Anderson did every time she walked on stage, not to indicate that she was a sorceress. She had magic of a very different kind. But I think if you're going to have the first African-American artist at the Met be Marion Anderson, let her appear at her best.
INSKEEP: She did her best, though, even as an accomplished performer in her 50s, Marian Anderson was nervous.
MONTAGNE: She said afterward that she trembled. And when the audience applauded her appearance on stage, quote, "my stomach tightened into a knot." Nevertheless, a New York Times reviewer reported that her performance made men and women cry.
INSKEEP: The Opera News's F. Paul Driscoll says that moment 60 years ago opened the doors for performers who came after Marian Anderson.
DRISCOLL: The country didn't change overnight. There were still problems with taking African-American artists on tour for the Met throughout the '50s and the '60s. You know, in other words, it's not as if everything became completely rosy in 1955. But I think that seeing this is an important symbol, that this was the beginning of the integration in the deepest sense of classical music in the United States - that's why its important.
MONTAGNE: Marian Anderson's mere appearance at the Met 60 years ago was as dramatic as the story she acted out on stage.
(SOUNDBITE OF OPERA, "UN BALLO EN MASCHERA")
ANDERSON: (As Ulrica) (Singing in foreign language).
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
And California has finally embarked on constructing the first high-speed rail line in America. Ground was broken in Fresno for a line connecting L.A. and San Francisco - in theory, a trip that would take less than three hours at speeds of over 200 miles an hour. NPR's Sam Sanders reports.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Ladies and gentlemen, the governor of California, Jerry Brown.
(APPLAUSE)
SAM SANDERS, BYLINE: In Fresno Monday, California Governor Jerry Brown, arguably high-speed rails' biggest supporter, had to make a confession.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
GOVERNOR JERRY BROWN: I do want to say, you know, when at least I first was elected governor, I had some doubts about this project.
SANDERS: And in some regards, those doubts are warranted. Since a 2008 bond measure approved about $10 billion for the project, construction's been delayed about two years, mostly due to lots of lawsuits. So far, the project has survived. But with that bond measure and about $3 billion in federal funding, the rail line still isn't even a quarter funded. The total cost is projected to be $68 billion. Governor Brown thinks it'll all work out.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
BROWN: I wasn't quite sure. Where the hell are we going to get the rest of the money? But don't worry about it. We're going to get it.
SANDERS: Right now, the plan is to get the rest of that money through private investment and other means. But some California lawmakers say even if Brown finds the funds, they won't be enough.
SENATOR ANDY VIDAK: This thing could probably cost over $300 billion.
SANDERS: California Republican State Senator Andy Vidak says the project voters approved in '08 - that's not the project he sees now. It's gotten more expensive. Vidak says the train won't even go as fast as voters were promised. And he thinks the line won't benefit poor Californians.
VIDAK: I've called this a pinata. You know, there's a lot of folks that are going to get down there and grab all the candy. But most of us here in the state are going to get whacked by the stick.
SANDERS: If the high-speed rail line overcomes that kind of opposition and gets all the money it needs, there's still another question. Will people actually use it?
GENEVIEVE GIULIANO: The United States is not a place for which there is a strong market for high-speed rail.
SANDERS: Genevieve Giuliano studies transportation at the University of Southern California. And she says high-speed rail works best when it connects places that are about 100 to 200 miles apart.
GIULIANO: At 400 or 500 miles, it's more difficult to compete with air travel.
SANDERS: Because a flight from L.A. to San Francisco would still be quicker than using California's high-speed rail. But should it work, California's high-speed rail line could greatly reduce carbon emissions and congestion. But it'll take a while. Under a best-case scenario, California's high-speed rail line would be done in 2030. Sam Sanders, NPR News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Years ago, Mitch McConnell told this program he liked being in the minority in the Senate. He knew the rules of the institution, and he could use them.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Now the Republican leader is in charge and is trying to make the Senate work. The man who has always wanted to be Senate majority leader took the reins of his chamber for the first time.
MONTAGNE: Mitch McConnell says he wants to see the new Senate return to its old ways, when both sides could work together to craft legislation. As NPR's Ailsa Chang reports, he'll have to win over skeptics in both parties.
AILSA CHANG, BYLINE: Republican Mitch McConnell is one of the most powerful men in Washington, and he has never wanted to be president. It's such a counterintuitive thing in this city. Nearly every McConnell biographer points it out. Even his wife, former Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, searches for a way to explain it.
ELAINE CHAO: Well, there's a real difference between being a legislative person and a - an executive person. So he has always been a creature of the Senate. He has incredible respect and understanding of the Senate.
CHANG: Chao was gliding down the hallway past the old Senate chamber, where Senators were getting sworn in. Her husband had just started his dream job. So how excited was he on his first day?
CHAO: He's very calm. He's always very cool. You know, he's very steady- very, very steady.
CHANG: So steady, McConnell wasted little time with sentimentality during his opening remarks as the new majority leader.
SENATOR MITCH MCCONNELL: I'm really optimistic about what we can accomplish. But I'll have much more to say about that tomorrow.
CHANG: It was almost as if McConnell knew there was little time to revel. Barely half an hour after he spoke, the White House announced it would veto the first piece of legislation McConnell had wanted Congress to pass, the Keystone XL oil pipeline. Conservative Democrats who were pushing the bill, like Joe Manchin of West Virginia, said if people wonder why so little gets done in Washington, they should blame the White House not Congress.
SENATOR JOE MANCHIN: I mean, basically, if it all goes and legislation passes and it has bipartisan support and the president still vetoes, it'll be on his back. It will be laid at the feet of the president.
CHANG: Despite McConnell's pledge that he would preside over a more harmonious, more productive Senate, it was clear on Tuesday that this was a chamber used to fighting. Democratic leader Harry Reid was at home recovering from injuries he suffered after falling off an exercise machine. But he managed to tape a first-day video message, complete with a bandaged eye and bruised face, looking kind of like the middleweight boxer he once was.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
SENATOR HARRY REID: We're going to continue to fight for good things for this country. We understand the rich are getting richer; the poor are getting poorer. The middle class is being squeezed literally out of existence.
CHANG: McConnell says Democrats will have a chance in the new Senate to push their agenda. He's promised to let senators on both sides introduce amendments to bills, even ones distasteful to Republicans. Though, Republican Orrin Hatch of Utah says there may be a limit to that generosity.
SENATOR ORRIN HATCH: There'll be times when he'll have to, you know, make it so that there won't be amendments. But - there will be some times like that, but that's part of the Senate too.
CHANG: But the new senators who haven't yet experienced the gridlock firsthand said the Republican majority deserves the benefit of the doubt for now. It will serve both sides. Here is lone freshman Democrat Gary Peters of Michigan.
REPRESENTATIVE GARY PETERS: I think it was a clear message in the campaign that the people across this country, certainly in Michigan, want to see a Congress that functions. And that means Democrats and Republicans coming together to find common ground.
CHANG: Common ground may not be easy to find. Republicans are trying to figure out how to push back on the president's executive action on deportations in the next couple months. Then there's the debt ceiling deadline a few months after that. Republicans say they understand with control comes responsibility for getting things done. But Lindsey Graham of South Carolina says Democrats are not off the hook.
SENATOR LINDSEY GRAHAM: I hope we understand that, you know, our fates are tied together.
CHANG: And Republicans are likely to find that when they pass bills like Keystone, their fates will be tied to the one Democrat with the veto pen. Ailsa Chang, NPR News, the Capitol.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
As Congress started in Washington, Florida held a swearing-in for the second term of Governor Rick Scott. He was a Tea Party favorite when first elected four years ago. He won re-election by shifting to a more moderate tone, as NPR's Greg Allen reports.
(SOUNDBITE OF MILITARY BAND)
GREG ALLEN, BYLINE: It was a beautiful day outside Florida's old, historic Capitol building. A military band played. There were sunny skies - the temperature in the mid-50s. Rick Scott appeared more relaxed and confident than when he first took office as a political newcomer four years ago. After a first term marred by a chronically low approval rate, Scott won re-election by edging out former governor Democrat Charlie Crist. Yesterday, Scott took a conciliatory tone, saying the election is over.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
GOVERNOR RICK SCOTT: Now we need to turn to governing. We need to turn to doing exactly the right thing for all the families of Florida. That's all the families - Republicans, Democrats, Independents and the nearly 20 million people that live in our great state.
ALLEN: Also on stage yesterday were two Republican governors from other states - New Jersey's Chris Christie and former Texas Governor Rick Perry - a reminder of the role Scott and Florida may play in the upcoming presidential election. Scott made no mention of another big story in Florida this week - court decisions that, for the first time, allow gay couples to legally marry in the state. But even so, it was a tone markedly different from four years ago when Scott pledged to shake up Tallahassee and transform state government. Democrat Mark Pafford is minority leader in the Florida House.
REPRESENTATIVE MARK PAFFORD: He said he was going to slash and burn. And he did that. And it hasn't, in my opinion, been very helpful to this state.
ALLEN: Scott balanced Florida's budget by making big cuts in spending on education and the environment. And he turned away billions of dollars in federal money for a high-speed rail system. As the economy improved and the election approached, though, Scott restored some education spending. And even said he'd support Medicaid expansion under Obamacare, a program he once railed against. Republican Andy Gardiner, majority leader in the Senate, says like all governors, Scott has grown in office.
REPRESENTATIVE ANDY GARDINER: You know, there is a learning process as you move forward - what you think you're going to come into and what you're ultimately given. You understand the role of government, and you do your best to balance all those as you move forward.
ALLEN: When he first ran for office, Scott promised to help Florida businesses create 700,000 jobs over seven years. He told reporters the new jobs would be in addition to the million positions economists said Florida would already get from its expected growth. But counting jobs can be controversial and messy. As of now, Florida hasn't added anything close to 1.7 million jobs. Yesterday, Scott disregarded the controversy. To loud applause, he said in just four years, he'd already made good on his pledge.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
SCOTT: Florida's economy was losing jobs. Housing prices were dropping. Many predicted it'd take way more than seven years to get out of the downward spiral of job loss and increased debt, but we proved them wrong.
ALLEN: There is little question that over the last four years, Florida's economy has made a remarkable comeback. Its economy is now growing faster than that of the nation as a whole. At yesterday's inauguration, though, there was still a glimpse of the ideas that made Scott a favorite with the Tea Party. He said Florida would continue to fight against, quote, "the silent growth of government."
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
SCOTT: In fact, this national battle against growing governments so intensely affects Florida that we recently surpassed New York as the third-largest state.
ALLEN: Scott attributes the state growth to its low taxes and business-friendly climate. Others point to Florida's mild weather. Greg Allen, NPR News, Miami.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Think of this as an end run - ESPN has the ball, it's sprinting towards the sidelines trying to turn the corner upfield. It's going around the cable companies that carry its signal to millions of homes. The giant sports network says it will offer a live streaming service separate from cable. This will happen in partnership with the Dish Network. To understand why ESPN is doing this, our colleague Linda Wertheimer talked with John Ourand with the Sports Business Journal.
LINDA WERTHEIMER, BYLINE: So ESPN just broadcast the college football championships. It was a huge cable audience - a big success. Why would they make a move that sounds like it would bust up a successful model?
JOHN OURAND: I don't think that they're viewing this as a move that would bust up that model. There is no company that has more at stake relative to the success of the cable bundle than the Disney company and ESPN, in particular. For ESPN, this is a move to attract the 12.5 million broadband-only homes who are right now on the Internet watching video via Hulu. They're watching broadcast networks and they're just not subscribing to cable.
WERTHEIMER: How big an audience would they need to make it work?
OURAND: That's a great question. I don't know. I know that if this gets too big, ESPN has the option to potentially pull the kill switch and pull out of it because they really do want to make sure that that bundle works. They get paid more than $6 per subscriber per month from cable and satellite operators. They want to do whatever they can to preserve it. What I think is interesting about this, Linda, is about who they ended up doing this with - Dish Network - which already has a satellite service that's out there. They didn't go to Apple and they didn't go to Google. They went to somebody who also has a stake in preserving that bundle - of pay TV bundle.
WERTHEIMER: You don't think then that is has something to do with a serious competition on cable - like Fox Sports 1 and NBC Sports Network that are sort of creeping up on ESPN?
OURAND: I don't think they're looking over their shoulder at Fox Sports 1 or NBC Sports Network. I do think that they are looking over their shoulder at people that aren't subscribing to cable. And they want to make sure that they can get their brand in front of those people as much as they possibly can.
WERTHEIMER: So do you think something like this would work for the true sports fanatic - I mean, the kind of person who's signed up for a cable bundle, but is also hand paying for extras, like the whole Major League Baseball season or the whole NBA season?
OURAND: That's the other point of this. If you're a baseball fan, the playoffs are on Turner and the playoffs are on Fox Sports 1. They're not a part of this. If you're a soccer fan, NBC's channels aren't a part of this. If you're a local sports fan, the regional sports networks - they're not a part of this. While ESPN has a lot of sports, they hardly have a monopoly on all sports. So if you just sign up for ESPN's streaming service through Dish, sports fans are going to be sorely disappointed by the number of big events that aren't going to be on it.
WERTHEIMER: It's just so tempting to look at this is as something that, you know, could possibly spell the death knell of cable. And you just - you really don't think that's it.
OURAND: I think that there's a logical way of looking at that and suggesting that it is. And, in a sense, it does mean ESPN is dipping its toe in the water of seeing what happens should the cable bundle disappear, but I believe that the cable bundle is strong. I believe that ESPN wouldn't do anything to hurt the cable bundle since that's where they make most of their money. So I think that this is a very early test to see how many broadband-only homes would subscribe to this sort of service. I think that it's an early test to see what the sort of price points are that people would pay for sports or pay for channels like ESPN - maybe a first a la carte test of sorts. But I don't think that this is - this means that the cable bundle's going to collapse anytime soon.
WERTHEIMER: John Ourand is a media reporter with the Sports Business Journal. Thank you very much.
OURAND: Thank you.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Tonight, the Fox network debuts "Empire," a drama about a wealthy family in the music business that feels a little like Jay-Z meets "Dynasty." NPR TV critic Eric Deggans says the show is at its best when it sidesteps the music business and focuses on the black family at its core.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "EMPIRE")
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Singing) Empire state of mind. Let's go.
ERIC DEGGANS, BYLINE: It's easy to shrug off Fox's new hip-hop centered family drama "Empire" as "Glee" with a beat, especially after watching scenes like this one, featuring an improvised jam by two siblings at a house party that sounds more like it was recorded over a couple of weeks in an LA studio.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "EMPIRE")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS: (As characters) (Singing) We're doin' all right now, can't nobody tie me down. If you want it, I got it. Tomorrow's not promised. Live inside the moment.
DEGGANS: You can thank "Empire's" music director - hip-hop producer Timbaland - for spicing the show with cuts that feel like they could actually be radio hits. Unfortunately, the show's plot is a little less original. Terrence Howard plays Lucious Lyon, a rapper-turned-music mogul with three sons; secretly stricken with a serious disease, he wants to groom an heir as the company goes public.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "EMPIRE")
TERRENCE HOWARD: (As Lucious Lyon) And it can only be one of you.
JUSSIE SMOLLETT: (As Jamal Lyon) What is this - we "King Lear" now?
HOWARD: (As Lucious Lyon) Call it what you want, smart ass, but over the next several months I will make a decision...
TRAI BYERS: (As Andre Lyon) Wait, wait, wait, what are you saying - we're all in competition to be the future head of the company?
HOWARD: (As Lucious Lyon) In order for it to survive, I need one of you Negroes to man up and lead it.
DEGGANS: Less "King Lear" than "The Godfather," this succession fight feature three sons who seem little more than stereotypes - the good son, the gay son and the volatile hip-hop star. Fortunately, this show has an ace in the hole.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "EMPIRE")
TARAJI P. HENSON: (As Cookie Lyon) For a queen, you sure do keep a messy place. What you need is a good maid up in here.
DEGGANS: That's Oscar nominee Taraji P. Henson as Lucious's ex-wife, Cookie, speaking to her gay son, Jamal. Cookie went to jail for 17 years. She took the fall so Lucious could use drug money to start their company.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "EMPIRE")
HENSON: (As Cookie Lyon) I been livin' like a dog for 17 years and now I want what's mine.
DEGGANS: It's safe to say network TV has never built a show around a black family quite like this. And that challenge inspired co-creator Lee Daniels, speaking in a behind-the-scenes program about the series.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
LEE DANIELS: There just hadn't been any African-American television that I respected - or hadn't been for a long time, and I thought, what a way to come and give you a provocative sort of look at a family in the hip-hop world.
DEGGANS: "Empire" really clicks when showcasing this wealthy black family that started out poor. Lucious rides his sons hard. When Jamal was 10, his father spotted him wearing women's shoes and tried to dump him in a trash can, but Cookie stops the attack, which resembles a story Daniels told about his own childhood during an interview a few years ago with Out magazine. Just like the films Daniels directed, "The Butler" and "Precious," "Empire" sores highest when probing the conflicts and contradictions of the black family, making high drama out of dysfunction lying just beneath the surface. I'm Eric Deggans.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "EMPIRE STATE OF MIND")
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep with congratulations to Kirby Delauter, who got his name in the paper. Mr. Delauter is an official in Frederick County, Maryland. He says the local paper is biased and must not use his name without permission. Thanks to the First Amendment, the paper did, publishing an editorial headline - "Kirby Delauter, Kirby Delauter, Kirby Delauter." Look at the 13 paragraphs of that editorial, and you notice the first letters of each spell Kirby Delauter. It's MORNING EDITION.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
For decades, Western oil companies have been drilling in oil-rich Nigeria and, in the process, polluting both the water and the land. This morning, word comes of what is thought to be the biggest settlement ever with the community in Africa - Royal Dutch Shell offering compensation over oil spills that devastated fishing and agriculture in the Niger Delta. NPR's Africa correspondent Ofeibea Quist-Arcton joined us for more. Good morning.
OFEIBEA QUIST-ARCTON, BYLINE: Morning, Renee.
MONTAGNE: And, Ofeibea, give us firstly a thumbnail of what actually happened, the oil spill disaster that actually happened there.
QUIST-ARCTON: We are told that it's the worst oil spill ever suffered in Nigeria, and that was in 2008 in the Bodo community in the Niger Delta, Nigeria's oil-producing area. And we are told that these two oil spills destroyed thousands of acres, hectares of mangroves, of course the fish - fishing is the livelihood of the community. And Shell, we are told, first offered them a paltry, as they say, $10,000 - not even. Of course, the lawyers said no. The community said no because the environmental damage was so huge.
MONTAGNE: And that was $10,000 for the entire community. But what are they now settling on - quite a bit more money - right? - ad also to individuals affected by the spills?
QUIST-ARCTON: Considerably more, $83.5 million once they brought in lawyers from Britain, and this case has taken place in London. Up to $53 million is being given to 15,000 fishermen and farmers from the Bodo community, but they say that much more needs to be done to clean up. That is a priority. As well as the community in the Niger Delta, they feel that they have never benefited from oil. They need schools; they need hospitals; they need development.
MONTAGNE: So that cleanup you speak of that would affect, you know, the whole region, is that part of the settlement?
QUIST-ARCTON: Well, this is an ongoing battle with Shell. This one is for these two oil spills. But, Renee, this case in London may open the gates to other communities in Nigeria's Niger Delta also saying to Shell, you have devastated our environment. We want you to compensate us and in a meaningful way.
MONTAGNE: NPR's Africa correspondent Ofeibea Quist-Arcton. Thanks very much.
QUIST-ARCTON: Always a pleasure. Thank you, Renee.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Throughout this morning, we're tracking the attack in Paris. Two gunmen today walked into the offices of a satirical magazine. Our colleague Eleanor Beardsley reports they killed the police officer guarding the door, then went on to kill a dozen people, including cartoonists. Video captured the men saying something about avenging the prophet. The magazine had run material that offended Muslims and also Jews, Catholics and others. The gunmen are still at large, and we'll bring you more as we learn it.
It is a bitter irony that the day of this attack is a day that we planned to bring you a story about bridging two worlds. We recently stood at a door in New York. We walked through that door and faced a person inside Iran. That was the concept of an art installation which started in New York and whose creators hope to take it elsewhere. They invited us to try. Walk into a common steel shipping container painted gold.
So we have this shipping container. And it's - wow - like, carpeted on the inside. The walls are carpeted.
The creators called this a portal - a chance to talk with people on the other side of a great divide.
Someone's going to shut the door here I guess.
The far wall of this quiet chamber was covered by screen. And on that screen, almost life-size, was a video feed of a man in Tehran.
Hello. Salaam alaikum. Hi.
YOSHAR: Hello.
INSKEEP: The man asked if I could adjust where I was standing because there was a camera focused on me.
YOSHAR: A little on your right.
INSKEEP: A little bit on my right. There we go. How's that?
YOSHAR: Yeah.
INSKEEP: He, too, was standing in a dark room. The artists' concept was to have a conversation with a random person - a conversation we would never ordinarily have.
INSKEEP: Can you tell me something about yourself?
YOSHAR: My name is Yoshar. I'm an English and Spanish teacher.
INSKEEP: The Skype connection was fuzzy sometimes. But we learned the language teacher was in his mid-20s. He was clean-shaven. He wore a white shirt with the sleeves pushed up. Early in our talk, he put his hand on his neck and bounced around, showing the natural discomfort of anyone meeting a stranger. Yet our talk swiftly grew comfortable and revealing. We did not talk politics - the strategic competition between two nations now trying to negotiate a nuclear deal. We talked about one man's daily life in Iran.
YOSHAR: Before I started teaching, I was a really, really shy guy.
INSKEEP: A shy teacher who now aspires to see the world.
YOSHAR: I'm wanting to study at NYU or MIT - modern languages or linguistics.
INSKEEP: Yes, he wants to study at NYU - New York University - here in this city he's never seen. He knows New York only from sitcoms like "Friends," where it appears more free than his country.
YOSHAR: I never thought I was doing bad with the freedom I have in Iran. I love dancing. And I dance on the streets.
INSKEEP: In Iran, dancing in public is forbidden.
YOSHAR: People do stare at me. But if a policeman comes and says something, I just start speaking one of the languages I know. So nothing bad really happens to me in that way...
INSKEEP: You'll start speaking to the policeman in Spanish, for example?
YOSHAR: Yeah, I speak Spanish, Italian, French.
INSKEEP: Is the policeman then just confused and leaves you alone?
YOSHAR: Yeah. Yeah.
INSKEEP: He related a common joke in Iran - whatever makes you happy is illegal. As we spoke, the shipping container grew warm and the air close. When our time together ended, Yoshar walked out of sight, leaving only the dark screen.
INSKEEP: All right, I guess we're going to reemerge back in New York City.
We stepped out of the shipping container and back into the art gallery where it sat. The creator of this portal to another world was standing outside. Amar Bakshi used to write stories overseas for The Washington Post.
AMAR BAKSHI: I always thought, like, you know, it would be great if my grandmother met this person I've met on the road.
INSKEEP: So he created this shipping container, where a stream of people took turns having brief encounters. Organizers scheduled people in New York and Tehran to talk for about 10 minutes at a time
(SOUNDBITE OF KNOCKING)
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Time's up when you're done.
INSKEEP: It was provocative to choose Iran and the U.S. as the first countries to connect. Much more than the ocean lies between these two nations that have contended on the world stage for more than 35 years. The organizers proclaim no political agenda. But there was a message of sorts implied when American Christine Finley spent her 10 minutes in the portal and fell into conversation with an Iranian man.
CHRISTINE FINLEY: He was a composer. We just talked about art for 10 minutes.
INSKEEP: Gazing through the portal to the world on the other side, she simply found another person. A human being like herself.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #1: Waking up to a fresh coating of snowfall. More impressive accumulation...
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #2: And on the West Coast, heavy rains and mudslides in Washington.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #3: Any holiday break is over for people who clear snow from roads in the city and the suburbs.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
On this week of weather news around the country, let's talk about the one thing we most want to know about the weather, what to expect next. The federal government says it is starting, at last, to spend money to upgrade its computer-driven forecasts. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, fears it's fallen behind on its technology. We're going to talk this through with Jason Samenow, who is the weather editor at The Washington Post. Welcome to the program.
JASON SAMENOW: Thank you for having me.
INSKEEP: How did NOAA discover it had a problem?
SAMENOW: So over the years, the National Weather Service has fallen behind its European counterparts in the accuracy of its forecasts. So the National Weather Service has a computer model known as the GFS. It's actually not as skillful as two computer models in Europe known as the U.K. Met Office model and a model run from the European center for medium-range forecasts. So those are the two world-class models. So there's some real push to close that gap.
INSKEEP: You know, this subject may be familiar to people who closely listen to weather forecasts. I'm thinking of the time of hurricane Sandy a couple of years ago. Let's listen to NBC's Al Roker at that time talking about Sandy. And he actually referred to the European model.
(SOUNDBITE OF NBC NEWS BROADCAST)
AL ROKER: By Monday morning, the European model is much closer to the shore and comes in on land somewhere just south of the Delmarva Peninsula, while the American model comes in closer up to New York. And that's going to make a big difference.
INSKEEP: And that's a life-saving difference, of course. Where exactly is a storm going hit land, especially a deadly storm like that? Whose model was closer to the truth as it turned out?
SAMENOW: The European model was the first to accurately predict that Sandy, rather than hooking out to see, would actually strike the U.S. So the European model provided the most lead time for Sandy. Now, once we got within about three to five days, the American model joined the European model in providing a more or less accurate forecast.
INSKEEP: And if I'm not mistaken, the money the government wants to spend grew out of - grew out of Sandy, right? This was, like, essentially trying to deal with a lesson learned?
SAMENOW: Right. Lawmakers decided after Sandy that the National Weather Service needed more computing resources to improve its hurricane forecasts as well as its forecasts overall.
INSKEEP: So can you give us a layman's sense of what makes the difference between a pretty good computer forecasting model, which the National Weather Service seems to have now, and a much better one, which the Europeans seem to have?
SAMENOW: So I mean, basically, the European model has a lot more computing power, which means it can pick up on smaller-scale weather features. And it also means that it can better bring in data to the model, which helps improve how well the model can forecast features further out in time. Frankly, forecasters both in the private sector and within the National Weather Service tend to have more trust in the European model forecasts than they do the American forecasts.
INSKEEP: So why isn't the National Weather Service just using the European model if it already seems to be working for them?
SAMENOW: Oh, they absolutely do. And I think all forecasters and meteorologist share data and look at each other's models and learn from the strengths and weaknesses from the different models. So the National Weather Service is absolutely looking at what the European model is doing. But at the same time, in the spirit of advancing the science and having the best possible model, at the National Weather Service, they've determined that they need to make these upgrades in their computers so that they can keep pace and kind of lead the way in global weather forecasting.
INSKEEP: Jason Samenow of The Washington Post, thanks very much.
SAMENOW: You bet.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
President Obama is hitting the road to preview his upcoming State of the Union address and perhaps steal a bit of the spotlight away from Republicans in their first week leading both houses of Congress. Today, the president will be in Michigan for an event on jobs. Joining us for more is NPR's national political correspondent, Mara Liasson. Good morning.
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Good morning, Renee.
MONTAGNE: How unusual is this, Mara, to travel before the State of the Union address rather than after it?
LIASSON: Well, it is unusual. He still might travel after the union address as well. But usually, presidents lay out their proposals in the State of the Union address, and then they go on the road to talk about them. The president is turning this tradition on its head a little bit by making a preview trip. He'll be talking about proposals this week that he plans to present to Congress two weeks from now, when he does give that big speech.
MONTAGNE: Now today in Michigan, presumably, he'll be talking about jobs. Where else is he going, and what else is he talking about?
LIASSON: Well, in Michigan he'll be talking about manufacturing, jobs and the auto bailout, which the administration considers a big success. Then on Thursday, he'll be in Phoenix talking about housing, how to make housing more affordable for the middle class. On Friday, he'll be in Tennessee talking about how to bring down the high cost of higher education. All these things, the White House says, will help the middle class and most of them are things he can do on his own.
MONTAGNE: Well, right. But, Mara, if they're all things he can do on his own without Congress, how does this help him get a legislative agenda enacted with the new Republican Congress, which has very different ideas?
LIASSON: It doesn't. And what's interesting is even though the president has laid out a few areas where he has said that a compromise might be possible with a Republican Congress - trade, infrastructure, maybe some corporate tax reform - this is really going to be a year of contrast and confrontation. You know, yesterday, right off the bat, just as the new Congress was getting sworn in on Capitol Hill, the White House sent out its first veto threat of the year to veto legislation approving the Keystone XL pipeline. This is going to be the very first piece of legislation that Congress passes, and already it has a veto threat. The White House is very confident they'll have the 67 votes in the Senate to uphold the president's veto. But it sets the tone. This is not the tone of cooperation and compromise that both sides had been talking about right after the election.
MONTAGNE: Well, it's certainly something the Republicans will be saying, that it sets a tone if the very first piece of legislation is vetoed by the president. But the backdrop for all of this is an improving economy, which is positive for the White House. We'll have new December job numbers coming out in a couple of days. How does that affect what the president is doing this week?
LIASSON: Well, I think it has a big effect because if the job numbers and the economic growth numbers stay strong, it makes it easier, number one, for the president to talk about an improving economy. He can take credit for this. He's had a very hard time talking about the economy. Democrats have too because people weren't feeling the economic improvements. In the last jobs reports and economic reports we got, people are feeling a little more confident. Wages are even up a little bit. It's still tricky for the president. Income inequality has - is a very strong trend. And people don't feel great, but they do feel a little better. And that is one of the reasons why the president's approval ratings are going up. And when you have tax revenues up and the deficit coming down, it makes it a little bit easier to get things done in Washington in the budget area, easier to compromise when you're not facing a terrible economy.
MONTAGNE: Mara, thanks very much.
LIASSON: Thank you.
MONTAGNE: Mara Liasson is national political correspondent for NPR.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Europe's economy is a mess again. New figures show consumer prices dropping. Deflation makes it harder for people to pay their debts. Adding to this trouble is new anxiety over Greece. Greek politicians, some of them, want to renegotiate terms under which Greece accepted a bailout a few years ago. Economist Platon Tinios says Greece's economy was finally growing.
PLATON TINIOS: It was not exactly a takeoff, but I mean, it was showing signs of starting to work again. In 2014, well, the last quarter actually - we actually had the first rise in GDP for seven years. Tourism helped a lot - had a very good tourist season last summer. And some of these reforms had started to pay off.
INSKEEP: Sounds good, but Greeks have tired of austerity measures and opposition politicians are denouncing them as an election approaches.
TINIOS: Reform was always seen as something which was imposed from outside by the creditors who have given Greece the largest loan ever given to a country.
INSKEEP: Greece, of course, is preparing for an election in a few weeks, which seems to have come about for reasons not directly related to the economy, but is that intensifying the anxiety here?
TINIOS: It is intensifying the anxiety because there is an insecurity about what the policy stance will be after the election. The government itself did not complete the negotiations with our creditors. And the current support program actually ends on the 28 of February. The new government will probably have two weeks' time to negotiate a new support package, which is very, very hard for - especially for the current opposition party. They're on record saying that they'll try to renegotiate everything, more or less, starting from scratch.
And the loan that was given to Greece, in addition to the money, had a number conditions about structural reforms to the Greek economy. And these structural reforms have meant austerity in the public sector, changes in labor relations - for example, making things much more flexible and privatizations and so on. So what the left-wing opposition is opposing is the conditions that have - that come with the loan.
INSKEEP: You mentioned that some of the reforms that were put in place a few years ago have just begun to work. What's an example of a reform that's beginning to work?
TINIOS: Well, some of the reforms about competitiveness - for example, making sure that the Greek costs are lower relative to competitors in the hope that this might kick-start some exports. There's been spectacular improvement in public sector finances. The thing that actually led us into the crisis was the state was spending far more than it was taking in. Now we're actually collecting more than we were spending.
But those improvements were secured at the cost of social policy, which has been severely cut back. Poverty has increased and average incomes have fallen by a quarter. So, I mean, this is the largest deterioration in any Western country since the Second World War.
INSKEEP: I want to repeat that you said average incomes have fallen by a quarter - 25 percent - and that is an average that's across the country.
TINIOS: That's right, and unemployment is up to 30 percent. Unemployment among young people under 25 is over 50 percent. So the opposition, they point to this and they say that this is a humanitarian disaster.
INSKEEP: Is there some level on which this crisis is just going to have to resolve itself? Germany and the other European powers have the money. Greece needs the money. Greek voters can demand whatever they want, but in the end, Greece is going to have to pay the bill.
TINIOS: The problem about the Greeks' crisis - and this is how it feeds into Europe - is that if we can't pay our bills, the one thing that we could possibly do is try to print money, and if we tried to print money, we would have to exit the euro. So we'll have to essentially give up our currency. This was the situation Greece found itself in 2012, and our European partners then decided that, you know, a Greek exit - what is known as a grexit - was just too painful to countenance. Now we are essentially back to where we were in 2012. Grexit is being talked about the last couple of weeks. The real danger people here are worried about is that we might sort of overplay our hands. We might bluff our way out of the eurozone.
INSKEEP: Platon Tinios is an economist who teaches at the University of Piraeus in Athens. Thanks very much.
TINIOS: Thank you, Steve.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
In this country, we now know the contents of a time capsule that is nearly as old as the country itself. Here's Bruce Gellerman of WBUR in Boston.
BRUCE GELLERMAN, BYLINE: Patriots Paul Revere and Sam Adams were there on July 4, 1795, when a time capsule was placed under the cornerstone of Massachusetts's new state House. Sixty years later in 1855, the capsule was discovered during repairs, its contents documented and new items added, placed in a small, brass box and buried again under the cornerstone. Last year, the time capsule was rediscovered and taken to Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. Last night, 220 years after it was first sealed, the box was reopened, slowly.
PAM HATCHFIELD: Conservation happens at a glacial pace.
GELLERMAN: Museum conservationist Pam Hatchfield used a porcupine quill and her grandfather's dental pick to carefully remove the contents.
HATCHFIELD: OK, now...
MICHAEL COMEAU: We're down another layer.
HATCHFIELD: This is going to be interesting.
GELLERMAN: Hatchfield and state archivist Michael Comeau began removing newspapers from 1855 from the box - The Boston B and Evening Traveler - then a colonial treasure trove.
HATCHFIELD: Oh, my gosh. These look like these 1795 coins. There's a pine tree shilling...
COMEAU: The pine tree shilling from 1652 is right there. Wow.
HATCHFIELD: Spectacular.
COMEAU: How cool is that?
GELLERMAN: At the bottom of the box was an engraved silver plate the size and shape of a smartphone, inscribed with the names Revere and Adams. State archivist Michael Comeau.
COMEAU: This is that bridge to people, like, you know, Sam Adams and Paul Revere, and then you look at the individuals and say, well, maybe it's something more than that. Maybe it's the bridge back to their principles and the purpose of their ideals. It's really kind of exciting.
GELLERMAN: The contents of the time capsule will go on display at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and later, resealed perhaps with items from today and then again, hidden under the state House cornerstone for future historians to discover. For NPR News, I'm Bruce Gellerman in Boston.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne. Yesterday we told you how the Oregon Ducks have changed their yellow and green uniforms to gray, white and silver for the college football championship game against Ohio State. Today we bring you a story of Oregon, Ohio, temporarily changing its name. In response to a citizen petition, the mayor of this Toledo suburb is making sure people know where their loyalties lie. Starting Monday, the city will be known as Oregon, Ohio, Buckeyes on the Bay, City of Duck Hunters. It's MORNING EDITION.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
During many years in the United States Senate, Joe Biden went through a ritual. Again and again, he had to be sworn in as a senator. The oath was administered by the vice president of the United States, who under the Constitution, is the Senate's presiding officer. These days, Vice President Biden administers the oath. He did it one more time as Congress started yesterday. And he spent nearly two hours relishing the ritual, as NPR's Don Gonyea reports.
DON GONYEA, BYLINE: Every two years, a third of the U.S. Senate is elected. And the mix of old and new faces needs to be sworn in. There's a formal oath-taking on the Senate floor. But then, right afterward, each senator takes their turn in a ceremonial swearing-in. This one is for photos and for family. But the essence of Vice President Joe Biden being Joe Biden, a politician who truly loves his work, has turned this tradition into must-see TV, C-SPAN style.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: And do you take this oath freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion - that you will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office upon which you are about to enter, So help you God?
GONYEA: That's Biden with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has been a leading White House nemesis. You wouldn't know it. The two men share a warm greeting. Biden hugs McConnell's wife and then welcomes the Senator's family.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
SENATOR MITCH MCCONNELL: My daughter, Ellie.
BIDEN: Ellie, how are you?
GONYEA: Biden spots an infant - McConnell's grandchild.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: I don't know.
BIDEN: Can you say, grandpa, can I talk to a Democrat?
(LAUGHTER)
GONYEA: And he's just getting warmed up. Biden greets Senator Thad Cochran, re-elected to a seventh term after surviving a Tea Party challenge in the primary.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BIDEN: Thaddeus.
GONYEA: Republican Cochran and Democrat Biden are old friends.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BIDEN: The best guy in the United States Senate right here. I can say that now because it won't hurt him. Great to see you, Thad. I'm not generous. It happens to be true.
GONYEA: During his photo-op, Democratic Senator Dick Durbin introduced a family member as the mother of 10 children. Biden's reaction...
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BIDEN: Lorraine, how are you?
LORRAINE: I'm a mother of 10.
BIDEN: My mother would say, no purgatory for you - straight to heaven.
GONYEA: And it goes and goes and goes like that - Biden smiling, senators' daughters and granddaughters blushing - no dating until you're 30, he tells them.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BIDEN: Hi, Emily, how are you? Hope you have a big fence around the house.
GONYEA: Occasionally, a baby cries.
(SOUNDBITE OF BABY CRYING)
GONYEA: Sympathy is offered.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BIDEN: Oh, man. This is boring, boring, boring. How are you doing? Can I borrow your hat?
GONYEA: Senators and their families keep coming. The cameras keep clicking. At one point, Biden turns to a TV crew and asks if any of them want to be sworn in. Selfies are snapped. And if you're a teenager with a certain name...
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BIDEN: Hey, Joey. Great name, man.
(LAUGHTER)
GONYEA: At one point, Biden makes a cell phone call to the grandmother of Republican Senator Cory Gardner of Colorado. She told him she couldn't talk because she was watching her grandson get sworn in on TV. For Biden, this is about fulfilling a constitutional duty as vice president. But it's also clearly about his deep love for the United States Senate. He served there 36 years. Yesterday, he left each new senator with these words.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BIDEN: I hope you love the Senate as much as I did. I think it's the greatest institution in the world. Thank you.
GONYEA: Don Gonyea, NPR News, Washington.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BIDEN: Come on, let's do a picture. Why don't you get next to me so I can see that beautiful baby?
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
The U.S. is generally broken up into four geographical regions - the Northeast, the South, the West and the Midwest. That last region could end up shrinking if some folks in Minnesota get their way. They want Minnesota and a handful of other states to break away from the Midwest. As Mike Moen reports, it's about establishing a more promising economic future.
MIKE MOEN, BYLINE: On a morning when the temperature is struggling to reach 20 degrees, Mike Walz is working with a crew to install a new cell phone tower in downtown St. Paul. The weather is less than ideal for this type of work, but that doesn't seem to bother Walz.
MIKE WALZ: That's pretty much all we do is work out in the cold - dress warm, it's fine.
MOEN: Walz, who lives north of the Twin Cities, says while Minnesota is known for its cold climate, it's the variety of weather that keeps him in these parts year-round.
WALZ: The season change and spring and fall, it's a good time of year. You're not roasting, and you're not freezing. But the winter is good, too, because you go out in the icehouse and peace and quiet.
MOEN: Walz's enthusiasm for living here is what some academics, artists and business leaders here want to showcase as they push to have this state no longer recognized as part of the Midwest. They want the U.S. Census Bureau and other mapmakers to adopt a new region called the North, which would include Minnesota, sections of Wisconsin, North and South Dakota and even Iowa. The Twin Cities would serve as the metropolitan anchor. Supporters say it's not intended as a slight to the rest of the region; they just want to stand out.
THOMAS FISHER: I think that there are characteristics that differentiate the eastern part of the Midwest from the western part of the Midwest, and the southern Midwest from the North.
MOEN: That's Thomas Fisher, dean of the College of Design at the University of Minnesota. He's one of those leading this initiative. He says this slice of the country is more diverse, culturally and economically, than others might think and that it goes beyond ubiquitous corn and soy fields and ice-fishing huts.
But that's not enough to convince some people here, who consider the idea a bit ridiculous. Local newspaper editorials have questioned dropping the Midwest label, saying the area should focus on branding issues that have little to do with geography. Fisher says he understands that on the surface this does smack a good, old-fashioned Minnesota insecurity.
FISHER: Certainly there's been a sense of humor with all of this, and I think that's fine. I think that it's a way to engage conversations to help people think about what their place is like and what distinguishes their place - again, something I think every place should be doing.
MOEN: But Fisher says there's a little more to this than just highlighting quality-of-life issues. He says in a global economy, the Twin Cities really need to differentiate themselves from other Midwestern towns.
FISHER: Chicago is clearly the dominant city in the middle part of the country, but that doesn't mean that then the entire middle part of the country is one large, amorphous mass.
MOEN: According to U.S. Commerce Department data, Minneapolis-Saint Paul has the second-largest economy in the region. Chicago is number one, and it more than doubles the Twin Cities output. Economist Chris Thornberg doesn't think a name change will really help. While Minnesota's home to many well-known corporations, including 3M, Best Buy and Target, Thornberg says one thing companies pay close attention to is population trends. And right now the South and the West are attracting plenty of young and talented Midwestern residents. Meanwhile, Thornberg agrees with others who say this discussion should have a greater emphasis on marketing.
CHRIS THORNBERG: That is their best bet as opposed to trying to go the census and create some new, quote, unquote, "economic-named zone."
MOEN: For now, organizers say this is at the grassroots level. And no matter how they plan to re-brand this region, one thing is almost certain; you'll likely be hard-pressed to hear the word Midwest being thrown around. For NPR News, I'm Mike Moen in Minneapolis.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Let's get the latest now on the shooting in Paris. Cell phone video shows gunmen entering the office of a satirical magazine called Charlie Hebdo today. The gunmen, we are told, killed 12 people, according to the latest count, and that includes one person who was brutally shot on the street and then shot again as a video camera captured the moment. NPR's Eleanor Beardsley is on the scene in Paris, and she joins us once again. Eleanor, we're going to be doing this all day. Let's work through what happened in what order as best you know right now.
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: OK, right. Steve, it's starting to become a little bit clearer. Around 11:30 a.m. Paris time, masked men walked into the offices of the satirical weekly newsmagazine Charlie Hebdo. First, they shot the police officer that was permanently there to guard the offices. Then they went up to the second floor and began shooting wildly in the newsroom.
They've killed four of the founder cartoonists of this magazine, and then they came down and got into their cars. And there's a video from someone from one of the buildings - the floors above them, filmed them. They shot a police officer right then, and that's when they yelled - and I heard it - we've avenged the prophet. Then they got back in their car calmly and sped away.
They went to the eastern edge of Paris where the beltway is, abandoned their car, took another car, and that's where police have lost trace of them. There's a massive manhunt going on in the Paris region, and it is under the highest alert possible for terrorism. It's called eminent attack. School trips have been canceled, and some metro is closed. And there's going to be security everywhere.
INSKEEP: OK.
BEARDSLEY: That's where we are right now.
INSKEEP: Lot of facts to follow up on there, Eleanor Beardsley. First, you said they killed four of what you described as the founder cartoonists of this magazine, which had published cartoons that offended people, actually, of quite a few religions. The fact that they killed the cartoonists, does that suggest that they knew who they were looking for in there?
BEARDSLEY: Absolutely, they knew. This magazine - yes, this magazine was funny, but it was also irreverent - for some, gross - and it offended everybody. It attacked Jews, Christians, Muslims. And in 2007, it reprinted some Danish cartoons of the prophet and that - I think it got a fatwa of threats after that. And then in 2011, the offices of this magazine were firebombed because they called themselves Charia Hebdo instead of Charlie Hebdo and said that they had the Prophet Muhammad as their weekly editor.
So these people were - this was the pinnacle of the freedom of the press. These people refuse to bow. They said no one should be outside. We can tease anyone we want. We can't say everyone but Muslims are extremists. They did not think they were threatened by Muslims. They knew they were threatened by crazy extremists. So these are the people who are dead today, the pinnacles of freedom of expression.
INSKEEP: Another fact to follow up on, you said that they shot - the first person, it seems, that was shot here was a police officer permanently stationed at the front door. It seems that people were aware that they might be a target particularly having been targeted before.
BEARDSLEY: Absolutely. This police officer has been on duty there since 2011 when the offices were firebombed. Somebody threw, you know - it didn't blow the whole office up. They did some damage. So the policeman has been there, and I just heard on the news media that the police who actually guarded the offices of this magazine have been threatened themselves and were themselves being offered some protection. So, yeah, people knew it, but France was on high alert. But no one was expecting this, and this kind of carnage in the center of Paris is just unheard of.
INSKEEP: OK, Eleanor, thanks very much. We'll be checking back with you again. That's NPR's Eleanor Beardsley on the streets of Paris outside the offices of a newspaper which was attacked today, a dozen people reported killed.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Now we turn to an organization designed to protect free speech for writers and journalists, PEN. Suzanne Nossel - she's the executive director for PEN American Center; she's also a former U.S. diplomat who worked on issues of free speech around the globe - to talk about some of this and put it in perspective, good morning.
SUZANNE NOSSEL: Good morning.
MONTAGNE: Obviously a terrible tragedy, but you would have known of this magazine. Would you have thought it to be vulnerable to this?
NOSSEL: Well, they were vulnerable. They were firebombed a couple of years ago. It's being reported this morning that they were threatened. You know, they were provocative. They pushed the boundaries. They were fearless. And that's what put them into the crosshairs here. And this is a pattern that we've seen escalating over time. It began with the Danish cartoons. Years ago, we saw it again with the "Innocence Of Muslims," that provocative video that sparked violence. But this is kind of a new level of explosiveness and deadliness, you know, right in the heart of Paris.
MONTAGNE: Well, you speak of a new level. But put this in some perspective for us, a little history. You mentioned the Danish cartoons. Now you're talking there of images - satirical images - of the Prophet Muhammad.
NOSSEL: That's right, and those images are seen as deeply offensive to many people of the Muslim faith. And they do regard making images of Muhammad or satirizing Muhammad, you know, as a level of offense that I think is kind of hard to understand as a Westerner. You know, you speak to them, it's clear that this does strike the heart very deeply in a religious sense. And so that's something that I think is fairly widely understood among Muslims.
You know, the idea, though, that it justifies violence I think is limited to a small group. But it's not something that's new. We have seen, before, threats of violence, acts of violence in response to what they see as provocation and incitement that these images are sort of so incendiary that, you know, in the minds of some violence is a warranted response.
MONTAGNE: Although again - I'm just talking perspective here - blasphemy is actually illegal, a crime, in some Muslim countries in theory punishable, you know, by the worst punishment. In no way to put this at that level, but it is a very deep-seeded negative.
NOSSEL: Well, that's true, and blasphemy remains a crime on the books in some European countries. So that idea, you know, is something that's pretty widely accepted, that the offense to religion, you know, in some cases can be criminalized, has historically been criminalized. But in the West, you know, those crimes typically now aren't prosecuted, aren't punished. And you know, this is also a matter, not of a state bringing up prosecution for blasphemy, but individuals taking it into their own hands to commit an act of terror and an act of murder. And I think the overwhelming majority of Muslims, even those who might be deeply offended by these images, you know, realize that that crosses a huge line.
MONTAGNE: Well, finally and just briefly, what does this mean, though, for the future of things like, you know, freewheeling satirical magazines and free speech?
NOSSEL: Well, it's a great question. It comes on the heels of the whole controversy over "The Interview" and the threats that may have emanated from North Korea. And it's really hard to imagine movie studios aren't - now we know they're think twice about provocative movies that insult certain figures. And you know magazines around the world that publish, you know, these kinds of cartoons are going to, you know, perhaps hesitate for a moment, think about security considerations. And that has a chilling effect on free speech and is - you know, really has the potential to undermine some of our fundamental values. So it's a pretty terrifying attack on free speech that, you know, the whole world really has endured this morning.
MONTAGNE: And actually, just stay with us. I want to bring in my colleague, Steve Inskeep.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Yeah, I have a question for you, Ms. Nossel. You've have given us a bit of a review of some of these attacks up to now. We heard from our colleague Eleanor Beardsley, who is on the streets of Paris, that there was a policeman posted permanently outside the offices of this satirical magazine. Do you have a sense of how well authorities in various countries have responded to the continuing threat of this kind of attack?
NOSSEL: Well, this is something that has seized diplomats and government officials at the U.N. and in places like the Organization of the Islamic Conference, which is a Muslim umbrella organization. They are well aware that these questions of so-called defamation of religion can be explosive, incendiary and deadly. They've been working on trying to find more kind of compromised solutions, peaceful solutions.
But I think this is going to elevate all of that to a new level. It's really, you know, made it so clear how truly deadly, violent and threatening these attacks can be and kind of going straight at the heart of speech. You know, we don't even know who's been killed, but we have to assume it's probably journalists, cartoonists, editors. So that's going to, I think, focus the minds in capitals around the world and on police forces around the world about the need for added security, the need for more kinds of alternative approaches like dialogue - responding to speech with more speech, speech that rebuts - you know, more promotion of understanding of where the offense lines and the trigger lines are so that we can deal with these religious differences more constructively.
INSKEEP: OK. Ms. Nossel, thanks very much.
NOSSEL: Thanks very much.
INSKEEP: That's Suzanne Nossel. She is executive director of the PEN American Center talking with us on this day when we are tracking news of an attack in Paris - a dozen people reported killed after at least three gunmen attacked a French satirical magazine. Video shows the men rather calmly moving about, even shooting an additional person on the street on their way away from the scene. We're told that the dead include four cartoonists at this magazine, which it published cartoons which were viewed as offensive by many Muslims, also cartoons that offended Jews, offended Catholics. It was a satirical humor magazine, and it has been attacked today. The gunmen drove away and are still believed to be at large in Paris. We'll bring you more as we learn it right here on MORNING EDITION from NPR News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
This morning we've been covering the killings of a dozen people in Paris by shooters at the satiric French weekly Charlie Hebdo. Eyewitnesses have told French media that one of the shooters shouted that he was avenging the prophet Mohammed. NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik says the magazine, Charlie Hebdo, has repeatedly run provocative cartoons about Islam. He joins us now from our studios in New York. Good morning.
DAVID FOLKENFLIK, BYLINE: Good morning, Renee.
MONTAGNE: Now, tell us more about this magazine - a satirical magazine - and also its editor.
FOLKENFLIK: Yes, the magazine was founded in 1970. It's satiric, provocative, left of center magazine, but one of the key facets of it, and its editor, Stephane Charbonnier, who was killed today, was that there were no sacred cows - that they were going to attack institutions and figures that were major in French society, particularly those that they despised, but not simply those. They criticized the Catholic Church frequently, but, particularly, as you've seen tensions grow up in Europe and elsewhere about the clash between fundamentalist Muslims and the Western world - as we might think of it in terms of Christian societies - you've seen them go after Muslim figures.
They republished Danish cartoons that sparked protests among many Muslims around the world, but in about 2006 that came under a lot of condemnation. In 2011, they made the prophet Mohammed the guest editor of an addition. One of the phrases was there's a hundred lashes if you don't die laughing and French politicians said, you know, this is too provocative. You don't want to be doing things like this. They were firebombed in November 2011 for that issue and Charbonnier said, you know, look, we think there should be nothing that is off-limits to us. As another colleague told The New Yorker at that time in 2012, he said we want to laugh at the extremists.
MONTAGNE: Well, they certainly have paid dearly for this position, an honorable one, but I'm wondering how these cartoons have been presented in terms of context. Is it really clear that they're satirical?
FOLKENFLIK: I think that they are satiric, but it's with a very, very sharp edge. It's at a time when French politicians, public figures, leaders of faith, have been struggling to reconcile an influx of, particularly, people of Muslim faith and, particularly, those who want to practice their faith and their religions in a way that seems to clash with the more secular French establishment and society.
There have been a number of clashes, also, where you've seen folks of Jewish institutions in the suburbs of Paris be attacked by some Muslim youths who are spouting certain kinds of seemingly extremist rhetoric. And there are real tensions there. This is also happening at a time where there are tensions, of course, across the world about this very issue. And we're seeing this being played out in Paris, a place that we think of as, you know, the capital of one of our allies and a leading Western nation.
MONTAGNE: Well, the head of the Committee to Protect Journalists, which is a group that follows attacks of all kinds - both terrorist and state-sponsored attack - says this particular - these killings in Paris prove that journalists are not safe anywhere. What do you think about that?
FOLKENFLIK: Well, the CPJ is making the case that journalists are being killed with impunity. You know, this is the biggest, single most deadly incident since a case in 2009 where, basically, people wielding machetes massacred a group of journalists trying to monitor elections there.
You've seen the beheadings of journalists by people with Isis, the so-called Islamic State, you know, captured on video, sent around the world. Journalists are not only not protected anymore, they are targeted and they are seen as a face of, at times, an unfriendly Western or unfriendly presence. This is a part of that.
MONTAGNE: NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik, thanks very much.
FOLKENFLIK: You bet.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Some doctors are recommending a big change in a key part of women's health care. Two medical groups say a new test should replace the traditional Pap smear, used for generations to screen for cervical cancer. And as NPR's Rob Stein reports, that recommendation is controversial.
ROB STEIN, BYLINE: For years, doctors have recommended women routinely get Pap smears to catch any signs of cervical cancer early, and it's worked. The number of women getting cervical cancer and dying from the disease has plummeted. But Warner Huh of the University of Alabama says the Pap test's far from perfect.
WARNER HUH: Pap smears are probably missing a fair amount of pre-cancer and cancer in women.
STEIN: He chaired a committee put together by two medical groups, the Society of Gynecological Oncology, and the American Society for Colposcopy and Cervical Pathology, to decide whether a new test is better. And Huh says the committee concluded - it is. It's a test for the human papilloma virus, HPV, which causes most of the cervical cancers.
HUH: The HPV test really outperforms Pap smears when it comes to cancer detection as well as precancerous detection.
STEIN: So the groups are recommending that doctors could start using the HPV test by itself to screen women for cervical cancer beginning at age 25.
HUH: We're going to pick up disease in women that could be treated earlier so they don't go on to develop cervical cancers.
STEIN: But not everyone agrees. Many experts, including those at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, say it's just too soon to make a big change in cervical cancer screening. And there are some big worries. One is that it will end up just scaring a lot of women for no reason. Diana Zuckerman heads the National Center for Health Research, a research and advocacy group.
DIANA ZUCKERMAN: The main concern that we have about these guidelines is that so many women get HPV who will never, ever, get cancer.
STEIN: The virus often just goes away by itself and never causes any problems. But if lots of women start getting tested for HPV, Zuckerman says, lots of women will end up getting expensive, painful and possibly harmful follow-up tests they don't really need.
ZUCKERMAN: We think it's confusing to patients, it's confusing to physicians and the testing involved and the anxiety involved may have a lot of risks, both physical and mental, that are much higher than any benefits those patients are likely to have.
STEIN: Another worry is that while most cervical cancers are caused by HPV, not all of them are, so there's a risk of relying on the HPV test alone to screen women.
ZUCKERMAN: You could definitely miss out on some women who will in fact develop cervical cancer.
STEIN: So Zuckerman and others say, for now, the best bet is to keep using the Pap test along with the HPV test to screen women for cervical cancer.
Rob Stein, NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
This morning, our colleague David Greene introduces us to a master of an ancient tradition. He's played with some of the world's most famous musicians.
(SOUNDBITE OF TABLA)
DAVID GREENE, BYLINE: His name is Zakir Hussain, and he's playing the tabla. It's a centuries-old hand drum from India. But to really understand Zakir's story, listen here to his voice.
(SOUNDBITE OF UNIDENTIFIED SONG)
ZAKIR HUSSAIN: (Singing drum rhythm).
GREENE: Because it was a voice of that gave him the gift of drumming when he was two days old in India in 1951.
HUSSAIN: I was brought home from the hospital. The tradition is that the son is handed to the father. And then father has to recite a prayer, putting him on his way. So, my father, when he took me in his arm, instead of reciting prayer, he sang rhythms in my ear.
(SOUNDBITE OF UNIDENTIFIED SONG)
HUSSAIN: (Singing drum rhythm).
And my mother was very upset and said, why are you doing this? And he said, because this is my prayer.
(SOUNDBITE OF SITAR AND TABLA)
GREENE: The prayer was that his son would carry on his legacy as a classical Indian musician. Allah Rakha, the father, is considered one of the world's greatest tabla performers. And his son, Zakir, has carried on his late father's tradition, not only as one of the world's foremost Indian percussionists but also one of the architects of modern world music. Zakir remembers being 7 years old when his father first approached him and asked if he was ready to learn the tabla for real. The lessons were to begin in the middle of the night.
HUSSAIN: I was woken up at 2:30 in the morning, and that's when we sat and talk rhythm. And he told me about the history of our tradition and the great masters of the past and what it all is.
(SOUNDBITE OF TABLA MUSIC)
HUSSAIN: Just kind of developing inside me the whole idea of existing in this world.
GREENE: Was this every night?
HUSSAIN: Every night for four years.
GREENE: How did you go to school? I mean, how did you have the energy to...
HUSSAIN: It didn't matter to me. I was so happy to be in his presence - was great. So from about 2:30 on until about 5:00, 5:30, he talked to me. And then at 6:30, I would go to the local Islamic school, the madrasa, and learn to recite the Koran. And then, when that was over, go across the street into my school which was a Catholic school. Doing all that in the space of, like, five and a half or six hours, I was a very confused child.
(SOUNDBITE OF TABLA MUSIC)
GREENE: But he was being exposed to so much. And his mind was open to new things, including the music his dad would bring home from his world tours.
HUSSAIN: I was the only kid on the block who was walking down the street with a boombox on my shoulder, playing as loud as I could "Light My Fire."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LIGHT MY FIRE")
THE DOORS: (Singing) Try to set the night on fire.
GREENE: Zakir even considered swapping his tablas for a drum set at one point. He wanted to be a rock star until an actual rock star set him straight. Western musicians were becoming interested in Indian music, and Zakir found himself working on a sitar record with the Beatle George Harrison.
(SOUNDBITE OF SITAR)
GREENE: Zakir told Harrison about his dream to get into rock.
HUSSAIN: And he said, well, look, you know, you want to play drums and all. But the reason why you're sitting next to me is because you represent a culture that I really adore. And that's what you bring to this table. I have 500 drummers at my beck and call. And if you want to be just one of the thousand and be somebody that you are not, that's entirely up to you. But if you want to take all this incredible Elvin Jones or Tony Williams or Ringo and everybody, and you make that part of your music, just imagine how unique your music would be. And it made total sense.
(SOUNDBITE OF TABLA MUSIC)
GREENE: Zakir Hussein stuck with the tabla and built a career playing classical music but also experimenting with the instrument. He landed in San Francisco at the height of the hippie era. Here was this classical Indian musician at jam sessions with the Grateful Dead.
(SOUNDBITE OF TABLA MUSIC)
GREENE: Well, how crazy did some of these jam sessions get? I mean, I assume there were some drugs. There was some all-night stuff going on?
HUSSAIN: The shortest one was probably about two and a half days long.
GREENE: (Laughter).
HUSSAIN: I'm not kidding.
GREENE: I'm not going to ask what kept people going through all those hours and hours.
HUSSAIN: Please don't. Please don't. But I do remember in the barn, which was a studio, waking up sleeping on the floor and looking up and just...
GREENE: The Grateful Dead studio, right? I mean, this is the famous place where...
HUSSAIN: And looking up and seeing Jerry Garcia and David Crosby playing. And I just kind of rubbed my eyes and pick up a drum which was just lying on the floor and start playing. This was a constant thing. It was a never-ending musical conversation.
(SOUNDBITE OF ZAKIR HUSSAIN AND GRATEFUL DEAD RECORDING)
GREENE: So I'm sure deadheads recognize Jerry Garcia's playing there.
HUSSAIN: Absolument, absolument.
GREENE: And this is a track that would actually evolve into a really famous Grateful Dead song, "Fire On The Mountain," right?
HUSSAIN: Exactly. It started with that bass part. (Singing) Boom boo boop boop boo boom boop boo dah dee boo doo boo boop boop.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FIRE ON THE MOUNTAIN")
GRATEFUL DEAD: (Singing) Fire. Fire on the mountain.
GREENE: Zakir and Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart have now been collaborating for four decades, and they still perform together. Zakir's also been working with American banjo legend Bela Fleck. This is what the tabla and the banjo sound like together.
(SOUNDBITE OF ZAKIR HUSSAIN PLAYING WITH BELA FLECK)
GREENE: Zakir says all of these collaborations over the years have been humbling.
HUSSAIN: You know, when you come from India, and you say, OK, I'm representing a 3,000-year-old history. And so you think that you're the one who are the teacher of the world. And you're going to teach the world about rhythms and drums and so on. And then you arrive here. You suddenly realize that you know nothing. You're just one little dot in the painting that is the music of the universe.
(SOUNDBITE OF TABLA MUSIC)
GREENE: Were there ever any moments when you thought back to those nights with your father at 2:30 in the morning and then sort of thought about what you were playing now and all this experimental stuff, and there was a contradiction? You were, like, what am I doing? What about the traditional stuff that I learned as a kid?
HUSSAIN: Having learned from my father the way of life as a rhythmist and seeing that same way of life being practiced all over the globe by other rhythm players and knowing that we were all on the same wavelength, the same quest, looking for perfection, which we will never find. But that didn't matter because it's all about the journey - not the goal.
GREENE: Zakir Hussain, it has been a real pleasure. Thanks so much for talking to us.
HUSSAIN: It is my pleasure, David.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Let's hear now about a life-and-death decision that may or may not be left to the teenage girl at the heart of it. Her name is Cassandra. She lives in Connecticut and has been diagnosed with cancer. After she refused to undergo chemotherapy, Cassandra was removed from her home by child welfare authorities and is now being forced to undergo care. Connecticut Supreme Court is taking up her case to weigh whether she's mature enough to make her own medical decisions. Here's Lucy Nalpathanchil from member station WNPR.
LUCY NALPATHANCHIL, BYLINE: Cassandra is Jackie Fortin's only child. She's been a single mother for more than 17 years. She says this is the first time they have been separated.
JACKIE FORTIN: Nobody, whether it's her age or an adult, should ever have to go through this by herself.
NALPATHANCHIL: Cassandra was diagnosed with advanced stage Hodgkin's lymphoma in September. After her mother argued with doctors about the diagnosis and missed appointments, Fortin was reported to the Department of Children and Families for neglect. A court gave the state temporary custody of Cassandra last month. And she's been held at a local hospital for the past four weeks. Fortin says it's her daughter's right to refuse chemotherapy, saying she doesn't want to poison her body.
FORTIN: This is not about death. My daughter is not going to die. This is about this is my body, my choice; let me decide.
NALPATHANCHIL: But Cassandra's doctors say she will die without treatment. They say with chemotherapy, she has an 85 percent chance of survival. Kristina Stevens, with the state Department of Children and Families, says Connecticut considered the doctor's medical opinion before getting involved.
KRISTINA STEVENS: We had the benefit of experts who could tell us with great clarity if, in fact, we don't do something, if the system doesn't react and respond, this child will die.
NALPATHANCHIL: There's another complicated layer to this case, and it has to do with Cassandra's age. Joshua Michtom is one of her attorneys.
JOSHUA MICHTOM: The general rule for adults is that you can say no to treatment no matter how lifesaving it may be. You can say no even to helpful treatment. If she were 18, no matter what anyone said, it would be her choice to make.
NALPATHANCHIL: Her attorneys say maturity doesn't just develop at a certain age. They'll argue Connecticut should follow the mature minor doctrine. That's a common law principle that allows courts to consider evidence on whether a minor is mature enough to make health care decisions. It's the first time a case like this has come up in Connecticut. Courts in Illinois, Maine and other states have followed the doctrine, allowing minors to refuse treatment because they demonstrated that they were mature enough to make health decisions. That's Fortin's hope for her daughter. She says the state has ripped apart a normal family and turned their lives into a nightmare.
FORTIN: I've never been in the system, never had a problem - nothing. And all of a sudden, we've got a medical situation, and now I'm being deemed as a bad mother.
NALPATHANCHIL: The Connecticut Supreme Court has promised to rule quickly. But that doesn't mean the justices will decide whether Cassandra can refuse treatment. Instead, it could send her case back to a lower court, allowing her attorneys to use mental health experts to prove she's mature. Otherwise, Cassandra will remain in state custody and continue to be treated for stage three Hodgkin's lymphoma, at least until September. That's when she turns 18 and can make her own decisions. For NPR News, I'm Lucy Nalpathanchil in Hartford.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Let's talk now about the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo. It's been compared to Private Eye in the U.K. and The Onion in the U.S. As NPR's Elizabeth Blair reports, the weekly was very much a part of French culture.
ELIZABETH BLAIR, BYLINE: In 2011, the offices of Charlie Hebdo were firebombed after it published a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad. No one was hurt, but the cartoonists and editors had to move to another location. The attack didn't subdue their pens.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
STEPHANE CHARBONNIER: Nobody ask, what we do now?
BLAIR: That's the voice of Stephane Charbonnier, editor-in-chief of Charlie Hebdo. He was killed in yesterday's attack. He said there was no question they would continue. In fact, the cover of the very next issue showed two men kissing. One's a Muslim; the other is a Charlie Hebdo editor.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
CHARBONNIER: It's a good French kiss.
BLAIR: Charbonnier was talking to Drew Rougier-Chapman of the Cartoonists Rights Network. Just six months after the 2011 firebombing, Rougier-Chapman says Charlie Hebdo is a racy, crude and audacious.
DREW ROUGIER-CHAPMAN: I would describe it as a cross between Mad magazine, Playboy cartoons and "The Daily Show."
BLAIR: Charlie Hebdo was founded in the 1960s by cartoonists and journalists who wanted to use humor - one of them put it - as a smack in the face to celebrities, politicians and definitely religion. In his interview with the Cartoonist Rights Network, Charbonnier said if you can't laugh at your God...
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
CHARBONNIER: Your God is very, very small. Your prophet, it's a midget. So you insult your own God saying that.
BLAIR: Among the 12 people who were killed was 76-year-old Jean Cabut, one of France's best-known cartoonists. One of his drawings depicted a weeping Muhammad saying, it's tough to be loved by idiots.
But the massacre at Charlie Hebdo is not just targeting political satirists, says James Poniewozik, a senior writer at Time magazine. He says nor was the hacking of Sony, allegedly by terrorists, just about the movie "The Interview."
JAMES PONIEWOZIK: This is really an attack against everybody.
BLAIR: Poniewozik says attacks and threats are having an impact on satire - take "South Park" on Comedy Central, which has included depictions of many different religious figures, including Muhammad. Poniewozik says when threats were made, episodes were censored by the network.
PONIEWOZIK: It didn't require anybody physically attacking the Comedy Central offices for somebody to get nervous and decide that, oh, you know, this isn't worth it.
BLAIR: Poniewozik points out that one episode that was censored even made fun of suppressing free speech with violence.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "SOUTH PARK")
MATT STONE: (As Kyle) Throughout this whole ordeal, we've all wanted to show things that we weren't allowed to show. But it wasn't because of some magic goo. It was because of the magical power of threatening people with violence.
BLAIR: Satire, says Salman Rushdie, has always been a force for liberty and against tyranny, dishonesty and stupidity. The author released a statement yesterday urging people to defend the art of satire. Jean-Luc Hess, a journalist and former head of Radio France, says despite continuing threats and heightened security around their offices, the staff of the weekly never slowed down. He says editor-in-chief Stephane Charbonnier was fearless.
JEAN-LUC HESS: He used to say, well, you know, I don't have a car, I don't have a wife, I don't have children, so what can they do to me? You know, I'm not scared. But I guess he got it wrong because we have to take this very, very seriously.
BLAIR: In his 2012 interview after the firebombing, Charbonnier said he was part of a team that wouldn't consider stopping.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
CHARBONNIER: We have no choice. If we stop to publish, we're dead.
BLAIR: Charlie Hebdo was a place where satirists had a lot of freedom. Elizabeth Blair, NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The story of the pair of shootings is far from over. Gunmen killed a dozen people at the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical magazine yesterday. And despite some false reports, even the news that a man turned himself into authorities, two suspected gunmen are still at large. NPR's Eleanor Beardsley is covering this story in Paris. Eleanor, where are you, and what are you seeing?
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: Steve, right now, I'm in front of Notre Dame Cathedral in downtown Paris. And I've just been there at noon where all of France joined in a minute of silence for the 12 victims yesterday. And the bells of Notre Dame rung, and hundreds of people stood under umbrellas in the falling rain with solemn faces. And many were holding the sign which is now the phrase, Je Suis Charlie - I am Charlie - in solidarity with this magazine, Charlie Hebdo. And one woman told me, she said, we had to be out here, we will have the last word. And she also told me that she's seen support in New York and South America and different countries, and she said that is very important. It makes people here feel stronger.
Steve, at the same time, this is a city in contrast. Police - French media is reporting that the police have had witnesses say that the suspects are in a car somewhere on the highways around Paris. They have closed all of the exits off of the beltway that goes around Paris into the city. So you can't get in and out of the city right now. It is barricaded. The news is showing policemen with their guns trained on traffic at these exits. So it's like the city's barricaded, you have a moment of silence and the prime minister spoke about an hour ago and he said clearly, now our fear is of a new attack.
INSKEEP: This must add a lot of power to the protests that you're watching, knowing that somewhere out on the streets of Paris - authorities believe anyway - are the suspects still.
BEARDSLEY: Absolutely, this city is under the highest terrorist alert ever which is imminent attack. They have brought in 800 security, riot police and soldiers to guard transport and schools and monuments. The school - kids are being kept inside. I got a note from my son's school that said they will not be having recess outside today. So people do feel fearful, but there is a determination and sort of a solidarity. People are angry that their, like, fundamental values of Western society have been attacked, and they are standing firm.
INSKEEP: Eleanor, I want to ask, though, you say that the beltway around the city with a limited number of exits going underneath or over and out of the city, that everything has been closed off. And here we are 24 hours or so after the actual shootings that this is known to have been done. Is there specific information that is leading the authorities to do that at this time?
BEARDSLEY: Well, everything is still a bit hazy. The information - there's a hotline open, they're calling witnesses and witnesses apparently allegedly have seen these two men in their car somewhere on the outskirts. So the police are fearful they will try to get in the city or get out. And no, nothing is very clear right now. It's very confused, but Paris is almost a city under siege. It feels like that. There are police everywhere, and everyone is just holding their breath. Everyone seems to be holding their breath waiting for this to end, for these men to be caught, but nothing is clear right now.
INSKEEP: Eleanor, thanks very much.
BEARDSLEY: Thank you, Steve.
INSKEEP: That's NPR's Eleanor Beardsley at the Cathedral of Notre Dame today, where a moment of silence was observed after yesterday's shooting at a satirical magazine that left a dozen people dead.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
And speaking of freedom and freedom of speech, an organization that tracks attacks on journalists and threats to free speech is the Committee to Protect Journalists. Joel Simon is executive director and he joins us now.
Good morning.
JOEL SIMON: Good morning.
MONTAGNE: Now, you've come out pretty strongly, saying this is a huge blow to free speech. I mean, terrible though as this event is, how so? How so a blow to free speech?
SIMON: I think you have to look at what happened in Paris in the context of the unprecedented levels of violence against journalists all over the world. The last three years have been the most dangerous and deadly years ever documented by the Committee to Protect Journalists. More journalists killed, more journalists in prison, so there's a global struggle for freedom of expression. This is the latest front.
MONTAGNE: Well, of course some of that is state-sponsored. In fact, quite a bit of it is state-sponsored, not terrorist.
SIMON: Absolutely.
MONTAGNE: So how do these connect?
SIMON: Yeah. There are myriad threats to journalists and free expression around the world. I think they connect in the sense that journalists and speech itself is vulnerable and it's under attack from a variety of fronts. And we see this in places like Syria and we see it in places like China. There's a systematic effort to suppress the work of journalists and journalists are under threat around the world.
MONTAGNE: OK. I just should point out though that this magazine was extremely provocative - which in no way, in no way, mitigates these terrible killings. But, does that apply to mainstream media, especially in terms of these sorts of really serious threats, death threats?
SIMON: I think what we need to do in this context - there's no question that this was a very provocative media outlet. But when I think of what happened in Paris, my thought is this is the moment when we need to rally in the defense of free speech. We have to recognize that it is these kinds of provocative voices around the world that are most threatened and most under threat. So I think that's really what's at stake. And I think what really shocks me is the kind of attack that took place in Paris and what we see every day in places like Mexico and Pakistan, in places where journalists are under threat from violent forces within the society. But I never expected to see this happen in a major Western capital, in Paris.
MONTAGNE: Joel Simon is with the Committee to Protect Journalists. He's also the author of "The New Censorship: Inside The Global Battle For Media Freedom."
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MONTAGNE: You're listening to MORNING EDITION from NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Here is an underlying fact about the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. Congress is preparing for a battle with the president over completing that pipeline intended to bring oil from Canada across the U.S. The oil is extracted from Canadian tar sands. An analyst says that no matter what happens with that debate, the oil is likely to flow for years. That's the underlying fact.
Oil prices have dropped dramatically in recent months but analyst Sandy Fielden told us that does not matter. Even at current low prices, Canadian producers will keep running the equipment they spent a lot of money to install.
SANDY FIELDEN: Once you've made the upfront investment, you're going to just keep on pulling the oil out. There's no incentive to stop unless the price gets really low - down to, you know, $30 a barrel or something like that.
INSKEEP: The only real change that's likely is that oil producers may not expand their operations in future years. A vital political question of course is what happens to oil production if the Keystone pipeline is finished? Fielden says, once again, the answer is not so much. Sending oil through the new pipeline would save producers money, but without it they will still move the oil through other pipelines or on trains.
FIELDEN: So far, they've delayed Keystone by three or four years from when it was originally supposed to be online. And yet, the industry has continued to find a way to get the oil to the market. So it's not just about the pipeline, in other words, I think it's already become clear that the fact that Keystone's been delayed does not seem to have had a significant impact on production.
INSKEEP: Because producers have developed pipeline alternatives.
FIELDEN: Many of those alternatives are building rail loading terminals to use rail to get their oil to market. Some of them involve moving crude by rail to barge locations on the Mississippi River to complete the journey by barge. And in addition to that, some of the existing pipelines have actually been expanded to accommodate increased flow.
INSKEEP: Let's look at another argument over Keystone, that Canadian production helps U.S. energy security. Canada of course is more stable than the Middle East. Fielden says that claim is out of date though, since the U.S. is actually getting more oil from an even more secure source - the United States.
FIELDEN: Effectively. Because we're less overall dependent in the last four years, we've reduced our dependence on imported oil by about 4 million barrels a day. It's halved our dependence on foreign oil. So it's not such a big issue anymore to feel more secure that we're getting some of our oil from Canada.
INSKEEP: That is Sandy Fielden, the director of energy analytics at RBN Energy in Texas.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
And as that analysis suggests, the facts in the Keystone pipeline debate are not always what they seem. To clarify the picture let's go to the scene of construction, if it ever happens. Here's Grant Gerlock of NET News in Nebraska.
GRANT GERLOCK: I'm standing in front of the pumping station at Steele City, Nebraska, population 61. This is where the proposed Keystone XL pipeline would end. I'm about a mile out of town where it's all snowy fields and pastures. Just across the chain-link fence, there are eight great big pipes looping up out of the ground and back down again. From here, oil can flow to the Gulf Coast across the Midwest to ports and refineries. So while the political fight goes on in Washington, people here are thinking about what it means for Nebraska.
MAYOR BILL SCHEELE: I'd like to see it come through. I really would.
GERLOCK: Bill Scheele is the postmaster and mayor of Steele City. He likes that Congress is getting involved because he supports the new expanded pipeline and looks forward to its potential economic impact here. TransCanada built the first smaller pipeline through here a few years ago. It heads east. The southern portion of Keystone XL is already done, so oil can run from Steele City to the Gulf Coast. Scheele says when those other pipelines were built they brought a much-needed financial jolt.
SCHEELE: The cafe or bar across the street catered 30 to 45 meals every day.
GERLOCK: Workers rented homes. The company bought water from the city.
SCHEELE: It brings some activity to town. It keeps us on the map.
GERLOCK: Tammy Katz also lives in Steele City and wants another pipeline to come through.
TAMMY KATZ: We've lived with the pipelines. We have four pipelines coming right through - well, it will be four - coming right through here. And we've had absolutely no problems with them, ever.
GERLOCK: Terry Moore is head of the Omaha AFL-CIO. His union and others support the pipeline because of potential construction jobs for their members.
TERRY MOORE: You could say Canada - it's North America. Canada is producing the oil, we are refining it.
GERLOCK: Of course, Nebraska is also home to some staunch pipeline opponents. They've joined protests in Washington and even staged an anti-pipeline concert in Nebraska in September, with Neil Young and Willie Nelson.
Ken Winston is with the Nebraska Sierra Club.
KEN WINSTON: Well, we intend to continue to have our say, as we have all along. The people who are going to be most impacted by the pipeline should have their voices heard in this process.
GERLOCK: Many landowners still refuse to sign construction contracts with TransCanada, saying they're concerned about their land and groundwater. Winston says if Congress pushes through approval for the pipeline, landowners opposed to the project could be forced to go along with it because of eminent domain.
WINSTON: The federal government has the right to override state decisions. The idea that Congress is going to intervene in a matter and allow a private company, a foreign private company, imminent domain rights, is just ludicrous.
GERLOCK: President Obama says he'll veto the Congressional move on Keystone XL. That pleases Ken Winston, but he wishes the president would take the next step.
WINSTON: We think it's good news. But we think the final decision, the rational decision, is denial of the permit.
GERLOCK: The pipeline is also on the minds of state lawmakers here, not only because of what's happening in Congress, but because of an expected ruling from the Nebraska Supreme Court that could come as soon as tomorrow. Last year, a lower court struck down a state law that let the governor approve the pipeline route through Nebraska. If the state supreme court upholds that the decision, it wouldn't block the pipeline out right, but it would be another big delay for TransCanada.
Keystone XL would cut through State Senator Kate Sullivan's district in central Nebraska. She says, more than six years after it was proposed, she's tired of the Keystone debate.
SENATOR KATE SULLIVAN: There's a part of me that says we really need a decision, and however it might go, it would just be nice to know.
GERLOCK: That's a sentiment shared by many here as they wait to see just who will have the final word on Keystone.
For NPR News I'm Grant Gerlock.
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MONTAGNE: You're listening to MORNING EDITION from NPR News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne. It was unusual collateral that allowed a man in Massachusetts to walk away from a few nights in jail. Jason Duvall, facing drug charges, posted bail with a brand-new pair of Nike trainers. The defendant claimed he could not pay court fees after going through a costly divorce. The district judge agreed to work with him, giving him a chance to be creative. Duvall can recoup the shoes with 100 bucks or 10 hours of community service. It's MORNING EDITION.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Let's get a French journalist's perspective on yesterday's shooting in Paris. The target was the magazine Charlie Hebdo. One of the news organizations covering the story is Le Monde, where Sylvie Kauffman is editorial director. Welcome to the program.
SYLVIE KAUFFMANN: Hello. Good morning.
INSKEEP: How have your colleagues in France's news media been responding to this?
KAUFFMANN: Well, obviously this has been a tremendous shock for everybody, for the public at large, certainly, and particularly for the journalists because Charlie Hebdo was not - is not just any other magazine. It's a very special magazine to the French. It's a satirical magazine. And it's really read across the board in France by people who can be on the left, on the right wing of the political spectrum - I mean, from working class, from intellectuals, from the establishment. It's a traditional irreverence and wit. It's very French, in a way. So striking at Charlie Hebdo, we have this feeling that it's also striking at the heart of the French national identity. And also...
INSKEEP: You're making a valuable point here because I think Americans get the impression that this might have been almost a marginal magazine because its attacks were so strong. But you're saying they mocked everyone, and they were enjoyed by all kinds of people.
KAUFFMANN: Yes. I mean, it was not a big circulation magazine, but its image was very, very well known. The cartoonists who were killed yesterday were very famous in France. You could see them on TV regularly. They were very, very popular figures in France. So this target has a lot of meaning for us, and of course it's also the wider target of freedom of expression. And we are all fully aware of this, particularly in the media of course.
INSKEEP: Do you feel that this attack was an attack on you, even though you edit a very famous and more conventional newspaper?
KAUFFMANN: Of course. The security measures which have been taken in front of all the media in France today shows that we all feel threatened in a way. And the government is certainly taking this seriously. But I think Charlie Hebdo was probably more of a target because of the way they handled radical Islam. You know, of course they published those caricatures almost 10 years ago, as the same time as the Danish newspaper.
But even after that, when they were threatened, they decided that they wouldn't bow; they wouldn't back down. Their editor had this now-famous sentence in an interview with Le Monde, actually. He said, I prefer to die standing than to leave on my knees. And unfortunately that's what he did. But they never stopped drawing and writing in this very dark, humorous way that they had chosen, including about Islam.
INSKEEP: You know, there has been some commentary in the media that's been critical of Charlie Hebdo for its editorial approach. I'm thinking particularly of an editorial in The Financial Times, which said that...
KAUFFMANN: Yes.
INSKEEP: ...Of course the attacks cannot be excused, but - I believe they used the word stupid. They said that this magazine was stupid to approach an issue like Islam the way it did.
KAUFFMANN: Well, that's their opinion. I disagree with this. I think Charlie Hebdo epitomizes the freedom of expression. I mean, you're the country of the First Amendment. You understand that. We don't have the First Amendment in France, but we have a very old history and very strong culture of freedom of expression. You know, wit and humor is a way of expression and that Charlie Hebdo pushed it to the limit probably, but that was OK with us.
INSKEEP: Is your newspaper doing anything in particular to assert that point, to assert the right to expression in the face of all of this?
KAUFFMANN: Well, we of course are carrying various editorials. We have, you know - we have this - you've heard about this slogan - Je suis Charlie, I am Charlie. We - actually the moment after September 11 published an editorial headlined "We Are All American," "Nous Sommes Tous Americains." And so we attempted today to say we are all French, nous sommes tous Francais, because this is really what it is about.
INSKEEP: If I'm not mistaken, you reported from New York and Washington after 9/11 in the United States.
KAUFFMANN: I did, yes.
INSKEEP: How does the feeling in Paris today compare with what you remember from that time?
KAUFFMANN: It is different because unfortunately it was not our first attack. I mean, even a few months ago - last year, we had these terrible, also from radical Islamist terrorists, attacks on a Jewish school in the south of France, and against members of the French Armed Forces who were killed. And so we live with this in the background.
I mean, France is at war abroad, so this threat is not something which is foreign to us. So we're in a state of shock because this attack was targeted. It's not blind terrorism. It's targeted terrorism, as was this attack against the Jewish school in Toulouse.
So what may remind me of the reaction to September 11 is the reaction of the people. Yesterday these rallies in Paris and all over France were really quite impressive, the determination shown by the people spontaneously to defend freedom of expression and freedom of the press. It seems that people suddenly are aware that this is not a given. It shouldn't be taken for granted. We have to fight for it, and we have to support. The media has been very much attacked as anywhere else and very much criticized over the past few years. And, you know, people this morning are waking up to see that the press and the media are a fundamental part of their democratic lives.
INSKEEP: Sylvie Kauffmann is editorial director and a columnist with the newspaper Le Monde in Paris. Thanks very much.
KAUFFMANN: Thank you.
INSKEEP: So many people who've responded to this tragedy include cartoonists. This may be their finest hour. The Internet is filled with drawings about the murders. And one of the simplest came from Australian David Pope. It shows a masked gunman who's just shot a cartoonist and who explains, he drew first. Countless other people around the world have shown support. They marched in London's Trafalgar Square, at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, and in San Francisco. As with the cartoons, the most powerful expressions were the simplest. In the twilight in Paris last night, many gathered on the streets and held up pens.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
State and local governments could soon be losing tens of millions of dollars that some of them spend on roads, schools and other needs. That's according to a new study by a national labor union which blames that possible loss on a recent change in federal rules on aviation fuel taxes. The Federal Aviation Administration says state and local taxes on jet fuel can only be spent on airports or aviation-related purposes. NPR's David Schaper has more.
DAVID SCHAPER, BYLINE: Many states charge a sales tax on the jet fuel that airlines buy at airports. And some cities and counties add on their own taxes, too, especially those that have major hub airports such as California, Illinois, Georgia and New York. Some of those cities and states then spend that revenue on the airports. But some also spread the money around to help pay for other transportation needs, to better fund education or just to augment the general budget. But the FAA recently clarified its rule governing such aviation fuel taxes, saying that the money raised can only be spent on aviation. So it can no longer go to roads and schools.
ADAM YALOWITZ: It hurts local taxpayers.
SCHAPER: Adam Yalowitz is a tax policy research analyst for the labor group UNITE HERE, which represents airport and airline industry employees. His recent study suggests that state and local governments will lose about $190 million a year under the FAA rule change.
YALOWITZ: Either the local schools are going to take a hit and other local budgets, or taxpayers are going to foot the bill.
SCHAPER: In California, for example, the 1.75 percent sales tax on jet fuel raises $76 million a year. Illinois has a one-and-a-quarter percent sales tax, to which the city of Chicago adds another quarter percent, raising a combined $22 million. Michigan, New York, Clayton County, Georgia and other state and local governments could lose significant amounts of revenue, too. In an era of multibillion-dollar city and state budgets, Yalowitz admits it may not sound like a ton of money, but...
YALOWITZ: This is at a time when state and local governments are still struggling to make ends meet. And the airlines are making record profits.
SCHAPER: Yalowitz says this is part of the recent pattern in which the airlines have been given a billion dollars a year in state and local tax breaks. He accuses them of not paying their fair share. The airlines' response?
JEAN MEDINA: Not at all. We completely disagree with that.
SCHAPER: Jean Medina is a spokesperson for the industry group Airlines for America.
MEDINA: Airlines and airline customers in particular pay far more than their fair share. On a federal tax rate, airline customers pay more in taxes for airfare than they do on alcohol or tobacco or firearms - products that are taxed to discourage their use.
SCHAPER: Medina points to the September 11 security fee, which just went up last summer, the passenger facility charge, which some in Congress would like to raise, among other taxes. Plus, she says, the rule clarification by the FAA doesn't reduce the state and local jet fuel taxes at all.
MEDINA: What this action does is it really stops revenue diversion so that taxes that are being paid can benefit the customers and the flying public and the communities by putting those monies back into the local airports as Congress intended.
SCHAPER: The FAA is giving state and local governments three years to change their own laws to comply with the rule. Critics of the rule hope to use that time to convince Congress to change it. David Schaper, NPR News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
At this hour, the two brothers suspected of being the killers in the attack on a Paris satirical magazine are still at large. And on the web, a new slogan has joined I am Charlie. People are posting, I am Ahmed, in honor of one of the policeman who was shot dead and who was a Muslim, as were the suspects. To find out more about them, NPR's Dina Temple-Raston is joining us. She's following the investigation. Good morning.
DINA TEMPLE-RASTON, BYLINE: Good morning.
MONTAGNE: Well, tell us the latest news.
TEMPLE-RASTON: Well, the story is moving very quickly. I mean, late last night, French police released the names and photographs of those two brothers you mentioned. They identified them as Said and Cherif Ouachi. Both were born in Paris. They're thought to be of Algerian descent and, as you said, they're Muslim.
A third man, an 18-year-old named Hamyd Mourad, was also implicated in the attack. He walked into a police station about 145 miles northeast of Paris early this morning Paris time, and he surrendered. So police are questioning him, and we've been told that there have been several other people brought in for questioning. But it's unclear if they're just family members or if they're part of the attack itself. There's also been some police activity around Reims and around apartment buildings in Paris this morning but so far, no new arrests.
MONTAGNE: Well, just quickly, the one who turned himself in, there was some talk of saying that he turned himself in, but he didn't do it.
TEMPLE-RASTON: Yes, it's unclear. This has not been confirmed by officials that, in fact, he had nothing to do with this at all. We do know that there was a video that was released, an amateur video that showed only two gunmen, not a third person. But again, it's very sketchy right now.
MONTAGNE: OK and lots of talk swirling around about their links - possible links to other groups. Al-Qaida at one point seemed to come up. What do we know about that?
TEMPLE-RASTON: Well, one of them, Cherif Ouachi, was known to both French and U.S. officials. He was convicted in 2008 on terrorism charges in France. And what he was doing is he was helping funnel fighters to Iraq. He was sentenced to three years. He served 18 months. But this was back in 2008, this was before the so-called Islamic State. So it's unclear what terrorist connections he has now.
U.S. officials are trying to track phone calls and emails related to him, but they haven't released any information yet. And I was talking about this amateur video - the amateur video shows that these men were very familiar with weapons. They appear to have had some military training. But we don't know if that means that they've traveled to Syria or Iraq and fought or whether they were just good with weapons for some other reason.
MONTAGNE: Well, not knowing any of this yet, there's no, obviously, knowledge about what - whether they were directed by a group or simply inspired by a group. I mean, any sense of that though?
TEMPLE-RASTON: Well, counterterrorism officials have been really careful not to link them to any particular group, and no group has taken credible responsibility. That said, there've been literally thousands of Europeans who have traveled in the past couple of years to fight in the Syrian civil war. Literally, hundreds of Frenchmen have gone there as well. So the concern for some time has been that they would return to Europe and launch a terrorist attack there. But officials haven't necessarily said they think that happened here. Cherif Ouachi has connections to al-Qaida in the past, but it's unclear if he still does.
MONTAGNE: And, just briefly, the New York Police Department has raised its terror alert level. Is that related to these killings?
TEMPLE-RASTON: It is. They are concerned about copycat attacks. They have raised the level of terrorism alert here. They have put extra police on the street, and they've also got police in front of the French consulate here.
MONTAGNE: NPR's Dina Temple-Raston covers national security. Thanks very much.
TEMPLE-RASTON: You're welcome.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
We're also tracking a big story in Washington. We're going to drill down now on the battle over the Keystone XL pipeline. President Obama's administration is still deciding whether to approve the final link of that pipeline in Nebraska. Leaders of the new Republican Congress have vowed to pass a bill requiring its approval as their first order of business -Senate Bill 1. Some Democrats will join them, though President Obama has promised a veto. And all of this raises a question - it's whether Keystone is such a big deal. NPR's Scott Horsley is the perfect man to talk us through this. He's an economics reporter-turned-White House correspondent. Hi, Scott.
SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Good morning, Steve.
INSKEEP: What's the basic debate here?
HORSLEY: This is a debate about greenhouse gases that, unfortunately, is taking place in a political hothouse with wildly hyped claims on either side. Casual observers could be forgiven for thinking that either the fate of the U.S. job market or the fate of the planet is riding on this pipeline. That's a big load for even a big pipeline to carry.
INSKEEP: OK, so it's jobs versus the environment. That's at least how the debate has been cast - that the pipeline will create jobs, but proponents say it will destroy the environment. So let's go through these claims. How many jobs are we talking about?
HORSLEY: The State Department estimates building the pipeline would require about 4,000 construction workers. Now, that's a significant project. But just to put it in context, the U.S. added five times that many construction jobs in November alone. Now the Keystone pipeline would provide that work for one to two years. After that, employment would drop off pretty sharply. It'd only take about 50 people to operate the pipeline.
INSKEEP: Wait, wait, wait - 50 permanent jobs? That's what this debate is about?
HORSLEY: That's right, well, that's direct employment. If you count all the people whose jobs would indirectly be supported by the pipeline, the numbers get bigger. The State Department estimated it would pump $3.5 billion into the U.S. economy or, in other words, it would boost GDP by about two-one-hundredths of 1 percent.
INSKEEP: OK, so not that it would be nothing to the people who would get those jobs, but not a lot of jobs, not a lot of economic activity here. What about on the environmental side? How damaging would this pipeline be?
HORSLEY: Well, it's not so much the pipeline itself as the source of the crude oil it would carry. It's the Canadian tar sands; that's a relatively dirty form of oil, generates above-average carbon pollution, and that's why critics have been so adamant about stopping this pipeline. But when the State Department issued its final environmental report a year ago, it suggested the pipeline really wouldn't make that much difference to the climate because it said the tar sands would be developed with or without Keystone.
Now, there is an important caveat to that conclusion though. When the State Department wrote that, oil was trading for nearly $100 a barrel, and that's more than enough to justify using more costly railcars, trucks, even carrier pigeons to get the oil to market if the pipeline were not built. Today, of course, oil is selling for about $50 a barrel, and the State Department said at that price, producers are much more sensitive to transportation costs. So it could make the pipeline more of a make-or-break deal.
INSKEEP: Although we were hearing from an analyst elsewhere in the program that they're already pumping, they've already invested, and so they're going to be pumping for while no matter what the price it seems.
HORSLEY: In a way, you could say, pipeline critics have gotten a break from falling oil prices. But the flipside of that is cheap gasoline has revived consumer interest in carbon-spewing pickup trucks and SUVs. So what the carbon gods give with one hand, they take away with the other.
INSKEEP: OK, Scott, thanks for putting things in perspective.
HORSLEY: My pleasure, Steve.
INSKEEP: That's NPR's Scott Horsley.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
The Keystone XL pipeline is a symbol as much as an infrastructure project. It's symbolic because producing oil from Alberta's tar sands emits more pollution than traditional oil drilling. Many environmentalists want that crude oil left in the ground. NPR's Jeff Brady reports their campaigns have met with some success.
JEFF BRADY, BYLINE: There are people with environmental groups who work full-time to keep crude oil from Canada's tar sands in the ground. They want the world to turn away from climate-changing fossil fuels toward cleaner forms of energy like wind and solar.
MIKE HUDEMA: My name is Mike Hudema. I work with Greenpeace Canada as a climate and energy campaigner.
BRADY: Hudema says he has family members who work in Alberta's oil fields, so he sympathizes with people who need jobs. Still he considers it a victory when big oil companies announce delays in new oil sands projects. Last September, Norway's Statoil postponed one project for at least three years, and before that, Hudema says, there was another big announcement from a French oil giant.
HUDEMA: Total canceled its multibillion-dollar tar sands project and they stated, fairly openly, that part of the reason for the cancellation is because of lack of pipeline capacity.
BRADY: The Keystone XL is one project that would boost capacity and it's true. Companies say the ability to transport crude out of Canada is one reason they delay projects. But there are other reasons that are just as important. Greg Stringham is vice president of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.
GREG STRINGHAM: It hasn't been one single pipeline that has been the cause of that reevaluation. It has been labor; it has been competitiveness; it has been the corporate decisions.
BRADY: Decisions like where a global company will choose to invest its money. And today, especially with low oil prices, it's not hard to find other more lucrative investments. The Keystone XL approval delay is just one setback for an industry Stringham says has a bright future. Canada's oil sands produced more than 2 million barrels of crude a day last year. Stringham says new projects are in the works and that output will grow.
STRINGHAM: It is to the point where it has gone from just a Canadian industry to a North American industry. And we're on the verge of moving it to a global industry.
BRADY: So, Stringham says, companies aren't waiting for the Keystone XL pipeline. There are other ways to move oil - trains, barges and alternate pipelines. He says as long as the U.S. and the world wants oil, Alberta will find a way to supply it. For opponents who want to keep that oil in the ground, like Mike Hudema at Greenpeace, that means more battles ahead.
HUDEMA: When we talk about tar sands development, you're talking about going against the biggest carbon bullies on the planet, and every major multinational oil company is involved in this development.
BRADY: Comparing their resources to his, Hudema says he thinks environmental groups are doing a pretty good job. And every day that Alberta's tar sands oil stays in the ground is another victory. Jeff Brady, NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Here's one more early priority for Republican leaders in Congress. They plan another vote on the Affordable Care Act. Today the House will debate and likely pass a bill that would change Obamacare. It would alter the law's definition of full-time work. Right now, 30 hours per week counts as full-time. That would become 40 hours per week, and that would reduce the number of workers to whom employers must offer health insurance. NPR's John Ydstie reports.
JOHN YDSTIE, BYLINE: The bill before the House today was already passed there during the last Congress. Republicans touted it as a way to prevent employers from capping workers' hours.
Here's Susan Brooks, an Indiana representative, arguing for the change in Obamacare last year.
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REPRESENTATIVE SUSAN BROOKS: By redefining a full-time employee as someone who works 30 or more hours a week, the Affordable Care Act has caused workers' hours to be reduced in vital industries across the nation.
YDSTIE: The argument is that by requiring companies to offer health insurance coverage to employees working 30 hours or more, Obamacare creates an incentive for managers to reduce the workers' hours below 30. That way, employers could avoid providing coverage or paying a fine. The change to 40 hours a week has been supported by businesses, most prominently in the restaurant sector, says Joe Antos, a health policy expert at the American Enterprise Institute.
JOE ANTOS: Moving from to 30 hours to 40 hours is something that businesses have supported. They'd like to see less intrusion and the way they handle their workforces.
YDSTIE: Antos says moving the threshold to 40 hours a week is a minor change in the ACA that will affect only a small number of people. But Sherry Glied, dean of the School of Public Policy at New York University, says the current 30-hour-a-week threshold was a good idea.
SHERRY GLIED: The good thing about the 30 hour threshold is that hardly anybody works about 30 hours. Only about 2.5 percent of all workers in large firms work schedules that are between 30 and 34 hours.
YDSTIE: By contrast, Glied says, if the threshold requiring employer-sponsored coverage were raised to 40 hours a week, many more workers would be at risk of losing hours.
GLIED: 40 hours a week is kind of the standard amount of hours that people work. That's where the bulk of American employees are already working. But if you stick the threshold at 40 hours, it's much easier for employers by just reducing hours by one to move a lot of people below the threshold.
YDSTIE: Joe Antos counters that most 40-hour a week workers already are offered health insurance by their employers.
ANTOS: And are going to continue to offer employee health benefits. In other words, the rule doesn't really affect them.
YDSTIE: But Glied's research finds that even if you count only workers who don't currently get health insurance through their employers, there would still be twice as many at risk of losing hours if the threshold were moved to 40 hours a week. Glied says the facts suggest that describing this legislation as an effort to protect workers is a smokescreen.
GLIED: Employers don't like the employer mandate because some of them are going to wind up spending more money. That doesn't sell very well, politically. So instead, people have latched onto this idea that it's going to cause big changes in hours. And that's probably just not going to happen.
YDSTIE: Joe Antos says he agrees with many Republicans that it would be much better to do away completely with the ACA requirement that businesses provide health care coverage for their workers. But he says politics require the Republican leadership to satisfy their base quickly by pushing this change in the threshold for coverage. It is likely to pass the House and go to the Senate, but the White House said on Tuesday that if the bill reaches President Obama's desk, he will veto it.
John Ydstie, NPR News, Washington.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep with thanks to Jacob Gale. The Sterling, Illinois, man saw that people were charging $20 to shovel driveways. And he decided to undercut the market by shoveling snow for free. Mr. Gale is 22 years old and apparently in good shape. He spent 12 hours shoveling on Tuesday. The Sterling Daily Gazette reports that by the end, this good Samaritan had shoveled 26 driveways. Here's hoping he at least got a cup of hot chocolate along the way. It's MORNING EDITION.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
The manhunt for the suspects in yesterday's attack in Paris continues. Twelve people were killed by gunmen who targeted the editorial offices of Charlie Hebdo, a French satirical magazine. Let's go now to Paris for more from the Reuters Paris Bureau and reporter John Irish. Good morning.
JOHN IRISH: Good morning.
MONTAGNE: Now we've been hearing a lot about how Parisians have reacted to this attack, and you were out reporting last night. Tell us what you saw.
IRISH: Well, across the city there's obviously a lot of confusion and concern. People flooded to the streets across Paris and across France to show their solidarity in what happened. The streets were packed with police officers at key sites - tourism sites, media offices - and about 800 soldiers were brought into the capital to ensure security. So there's a climate of concern because, as you said, two men are still loose and are trying to be located. And there was also another shooting this morning that, at this point, it's not clear if it's related or not.
MONTAGNE: People flowing, as you say, out into the street spontaneously, that came in spite, as you say, of the fact that the two main suspects are still at large, were still at large. And I'm thinking here of the Boston bombing, where people were told and did in fact stay off the street. Is there a comparison there?
IRISH: I don't know. I mean, all I can say is that I don't think - I mean, I think people are scared naturally. But these guys did flee into some of the eastern suburbs of Paris. And they were pretty planned - their attacks yesterday. They knew what they're doing, they knew where they were going, and they knew what they were hitting. So I guess there's an element of people - well, if they were worried they didn't feel that these guys would go on to a sort of a mass rally and let their guns off. I don't think it's quite the same as what happened in Boston. I think there's generally a feeling of people - the French - saying we need to go on the streets here and show that democracy and freedom won't be defeated by this.
MONTAGNE: Could you take a moment to help us understand how famous these satirical cartoonists were in France? I mean, I've heard they were featured on TV; some wrote children's books. People talk about growing up with them.
IRISH: Yeah, no, that's exactly right. I mean, it was a shock to France because a lot of these guys have been doing the same cartoons, working for this magazine for decades even. And, you know, they didn't just focus on radical Islam or satirical cartoons on the Prophet Mohammed. It was other religions that were targeted, other - politicians. You know, it was a true satirical magazine which people knew, which people liked and which people related to. And, you know, it is a shock to them because, as you said, in France there's a culture of journalists going on TV shows or speaking quite a lot. And these guys were, and they were extremely well-known. And it was definitely - you know, the core of French society was hit by this.
MONTAGNE: Reuters' reporter John Irish is based at Reuters' Paris Bureau. Thank you very much.
IRISH: Thank you.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
We are also tracking a development in China, which involves the safety of Chinese women. The government last month released a draft law directed at domestic violence. And that's a big change for a country where a woman's traditional duty was simply to obey her husband. And what the husband did was nobody's business. Women's groups want the new law to go even farther. NPR's Anthony Kuhn reports from Beijing.
ANTHONY KUHN, BYLINE: Women's rights activist Feng Yuan has been campaigning for more than a decade for a law against domestic violence. She has surveyed citizens who didn't know what the term meant. And she has lobbied lawmakers who told her...
FENG YUAN: (Through interpreter) Chinese women's status is already high enough. What are you women's groups trying to do? What do you want?
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "DON'T SPEAK TO STRANGERS")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTRESS: (As character, singing in Chinese).
KUHN: In this Chinese TV drama called, "Don't Speak To Strangers," a husband does just that. He forbids his wife from speaking with strangers. When it came out in 2001, the drama opened the eyes of many viewers to a problem that is often hidden but all too common in China. A 2013 survey by the All-China Women's Federation found a quarter of married women have suffered domestic violence at the hands of their spouses. Activist Feng calls the current draft law a milestone, a change that came from the grassroots up. But she and others say the nation's new draft law has serious flaws.
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UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: (Speaking in Chinese).
KUHN: In Beijing, women's groups hold a meeting to lobby the government to fix the draft law and include people that the law doesn't protect. A young lesbian named Sarah Xu tells her story and describes how her former partner inflicted mental suffering on her.
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SARAH XU: (Through interpreter) When I tried to communicate with her and resolve the problem, she would appear very hurt, then cry and cry and even try to harm herself by hitting her head with her hands, slamming into walls or clawing at them with her fingernails.
KUHN: The draft antiviolence law does not help Xu or any couples that are unwed, divorced or simply living together. China does not permit gay marriages. It also doesn't help Luo Min and her sister, Luo Mei, two migrants working in factories in southern China's Pearl River Delta. Luo Min remembers getting a phone call from a hospital last fall. They told her that her sister had been seriously injured in a fight with her boyfriend.
LUO MIN: (Through interpreter, crying) When I got to the hospital, my sister was lying on the bed. She couldn't move her hands or feet, and she couldn't speak. Her whole head was swollen, and her neck was bruised as though she had been strangled.
KUHN: Luo Min says her sister remains unconscious. Her family has run out of money to pay the hospital. The draft law would not protect Luo Mei because she and her boyfriend were not married. The injuries were serious enough for the police to arrest the boyfriend. He could be charged with assault or other crimes. A positive feature of the draft law is that it allows courts to issue restraining orders against perpetrators of domestic violence. The problem, activist Feng Yuan says, is that applicants for the restraining orders need to apply for divorce first.
FENG: (Through interpreter) Many of those affected by domestic violence don't necessarily want a divorce. They just want to stop the violence.
KUHN: Feng Yuan says she doesn't know whether the government will adopt her suggested changes to the draft law. But she sees some reasons for optimism.
FENG: (Through interpreter) I'm not sure whether to feel relieved or grieved about it. But in China, defending women's rights appears less politically sensitive. This is because equality of the sexes is an important slogan and basic policy of the Communist Party.
KUHN: Chairman Mao famously summed up the policy by saying, women hold up half the sky. The anti-domestic violence law comes about half a century after he made that remark. Anthony Kuhn, NPR News, Beijing.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
One year ago, the GED got a makeover. That famous high school equivalency test was rewritten to line up with the Common Core State Standards. The new test has to be taken on computer, and the price jumped. This time last year, critics worried that lots of Americans would give up on the new GED test because they couldn't afford it or pass it. As Cory Turner of the NPR Ed Team reports, they were right.
CORY TURNER, BYLINE: To understand the new GED, you have to understand what it used to be - an American institution born of patriotism and pragmatism.
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UNIDENTIFIED MAN: These are the guys who helped win it for us against the Nazis, and the entire nation welcomes them home.
TURNER: The GED began during World War II to help returning U.S. troops into the work force. It quickly became an important alternative for veterans and nonveterans alike looking for work without a diploma. The GED became a household name - the go-to test, no matter where you lived. It's been updated, but not often, just five times. And no one seemed to make much of the first four. It's the last update for 2014 that's kicked up a storm.
ELIZABETH HANSON: Right now, all it's doing is destroying lives.
TURNER: Elizabeth Hanson teaches at a community college in Shoreline, Washington and spent several years teaching GED courses. She made up her mind about the new test after she took a practice version.
HANSON: Lo and behold, master's degree teacher of 30 years, I couldn't pass the test.
TURNER: Hanson's also angry because in many states, the price has roughly doubled, and the GED is no longer run solely by the nonprofit American Council on Education. For the first time, the ACE teamed up with for-profit testing giant Pearson and created the GED Testing Service, all of which raises the question, why?
NICOLE CHESTANG: The education system has heaped a lot on the GED test.
TURNER: That's Nicole Chestang, a vice president at ACE. She says the big reason behind their update was that too many people who had passed the old test were approaching employers and saying...
CHESTANG: I've got a credential here that says I'm prepared, and for those same employers to say no you're not.
TURNER: In short, she says, their old test just wasn't an accurate measure of what today's high school graduates know or need to know. But that argument, along with the price hike, has been a tough sell. The GED Testing Service admits it saw a sizable decrease in 2014 in both test-takers and graduates. Miles Newman helps coordinate GED prep for one school district in Lexington County, South Carolina.
MILES NEWMAN: Our number of graduates for this last calendar year has dropped about 85 percent.
TURNER: Eighty-five percent, and it's a similar story in many other places. Newman and the folks behind the GED say part of that drop was to be expected because lots of people afraid of the new test rushed to take the old one. But Newman believes the drop is mostly because this new test is harder. He supports the idea of raising standards, but worries about the people who won't pass this new test or, worse yet, won't even bother trying.
NEWMAN: Are we going to, like, drop back now and say, OK, we made a big mistake and the GED is too tough, so we're going to make it easier, now? (Laughter).
TURNER: That's probably not going to happen. But what is happening is that states, including South Carolina, are turning to new competitor tests that have popped up, giving test-takers a choice. Ten other states have replaced the GED entirely. And that means for the first time, someone in, say, Boston or Baton Rouge hoping for a second chance on a high school equivalency diploma won't have to pass the GED. Cory Turner, NPR News, Washington.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
It is Friday morning, which means it's time for StoryCorps, where everyday people tell the stories that have shaped their lives. Twenty years ago, Darlene Lewis' son was released from prison. But as a convicted felon, he couldn't find work. So Darlene decided to do something. She runs an organization dedicated to helping former inmates find jobs. Darlene prepares them for interviews, places them with local businesses and advocates for them in court. She has helped thousands of men and women, including James Taylor. He served seven years for weapons possession and drug charges. Today, James works as a videographer and youth mentor. Darlene and James sat down for StoryCorps in Little Rock, Arkansas.
JAMES TAYLOR: I got out in '99 - December, right in time to catch a new year.
DARLENE LEWIS: How hard was it for you to find a job?
TAYLOR: Almost impossible. Even though there was a now hiring sticker on the window, they still would find a way to tell me no.
LEWIS: You know, when you first met me, you was almost in tears.
TAYLOR: You sat me down. You'd found out what it was I was trying to do. And if I couldn't get what I was trying to do, what would I like to do then? And the first job that you sent me to was to McDonald's. I became a manager. And then I lost the job, but you were right there waiting to pick me up and send me somewhere else because I know where quick money is. And that's part of what leads you back into the streets. But you continued to help me and push me when I'd fall.
LEWIS: You know, you was going to fall off the wagon 'cause we all do. But I knew you'd come back. I always knew that 'cause of your heart and because of your sincerity. I knew eventually that you was going to make it. Let me ask you - what is the biggest misconception peoples have of you?
TAYLOR: That I haven't changed. They're still waiting for that guy to come back. They don't think that what I'm doing now is real. Even though I have faults, I look in the mirror, and I like what I see.
LEWIS: Do you ever feel like I've been too hard on you?
TAYLOR: Yeah. But during those times that I feel like that, I remember prison. When you're hard on us, it's love in it. You care. They didn't. You have been a mother to me. You took me in. And, I mean, I couldn't replace you in my life. If I tried, I mean, I'd be searching forever.
LEWIS: We make a good team.
TAYLOR: Yes, ma'am, we do.
INSKEEP: James Taylor and Darlene Lewis at StoryCorps in Little Rock. James volunteers at Darlene's organization, helping place other convicted felons in jobs. Their conversation will be archived with all the others at the Library of Congress. And you can get the StoryCorps podcast on iTunes as well as at npr.org.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
At the end of a dramatic week of news, not only have French authorities surrounded the two suspects in this week's massacre in Paris, but there's also a story here in Washington of a political nature. A new Congress started work. And President Obama started working to seize the initiative. Last night, he posted a short video announcing a goal.
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PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Put simply, what I'd like to do is to see the first two years of community college free for everybody who's willing to work for it.
MONTAGNE: The president will talk more about that today in a visit to Tennessee. The idea of free community college has been gaining support, as NPR's Claudio Sanchez reports.
CLAUDIO SANCHEZ, BYLINE: In the emerging debate over this idea, there are skeptics, and the are true believers.
SARA GOLDRICK-RAB: This is a fundamental, systematic change. It's bold. And I think that it's exactly what we need right now.
SANCHEZ: Sara Goldrick-Rab is a professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Last year, she co-authored a study titled "Securing America's Future With A Free Two-Year College Option." It outlines precisely what President Obama is talking about today at Pellissippi State Community College in Knoxville, Tennessee.
GOLDRICK-RAB: Tennessee is the leader in this. Mississippi has looked at it. Oregon is considering looking at it. But I believe that Tennessee is the only one that's accomplished it.
SANCHEZ: Tennessee residents, regardless of income, can attend community college and not have to pay tuition. The program is funded with state lottery funds to the tune of $1,000 per year per student. And President Obama wants to see more states do the same. But some have their doubts.
SANDY BAUM: For the president to say we're going to make it free all over the country - it's not clear how the federal government would do that.
SANCHEZ: Sandy Baum is a skeptic. She has spent much of her career studying trends in college cost. First of all, says Baum, the federal government has no say in how much tuition community colleges charge. Second, community colleges in most states are pretty affordable and already free for low-income students.
BAUM: But making it free for people who can afford to go - it's not that there's something wrong with it being free. It's that it's wrong to allocate our scarce funds when you have a lot of low-income students who are struggling to pay their living costs.
SANCHEZ: True, says Sara Goldrick-Rab. But the $8,000 a year that full-time community college students pay on average for tuition and costs is out of reach for lots of middle-income students as well.
GOLDRICK-RAB: And the middle class feels this all the time. They can't get the Pell grant despite the fact that they have no money of their own.
SANCHEZ: Goldrick-Rab says offering the middle class tuition-free community college would get broad political support. She says the $50 to $60 billion the federal government is already spending on Pell grants and other need-based aid every year would help subsidize tuition-free plans throughout the country.
BAUM: But that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about reallocating funds.
SANCHEZ: Again, Sandy Baum.
BAUM: Proposals that just push the money around and give more of it to more affluent students going to community colleges are really not going to solve our problems, even if they sound good.
SANCHEZ: In some ways, the debate over tuition-free committee college that President Obama is trying to kick-start is not unlike the debate he started by proposing universal preschool. People recognize the benefits but disagree on the details and the money. Claudio Sanchez, NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The world's attention is focused on a white, industrial building outside Paris. That's where two suspects in this week's Paris massacre are believed to be hiding. NPR's Eleanor Beardsley has been covering this story throughout the morning. She is in Paris, and we're going to work through this scene around that industrial building from outside the building to the inside, working fact by fact, and, Eleanor, let's start outside the building. Where is this structure, and who's surrounding it right now?
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: This structure is in a little village called Dammartin-en-Goele, about 25 miles northeast of Paris, in rural - it's in countryside, surrounded by fields. The building is in a little industrial zone outside of the village and surrounding this building right now is a massive agglomeration of law - of police forces. Helicopters are flying overhead, SWAT teams, police vans, ambulances, firetrucks, they are ready for anything to happen right now. And they're surrounding this building where the two brothers are holed up.
INSKEEP: OK, and we're looking at television images of this. Other than the industrial building, which is not so attractive, it's almost a bucolic setting. You see lovely green fields, you see slope-roofed houses. How were the suspects first discovered in that small town outside of Paris?
BEARDSLEY: Well, between 8 and 8:30 this morning they stole a woman's car in that village. And she recognized them because they didn't have masks on because their photo's been plastered all over television screens for the last two days. She recognized them and she saw guns - many guns - she said, in their car and she notified police. That's when the police started moving in. Remember, this whole area they were searching yesterday, so they had a massive amount of forces up there.
They moved in and they began descending on this village; helicopters and police SWAT teams and everyone started coming in. There was a police chase along the road, the national road there. Shots were fired - people heard that. And that's when the men apparently took refuge in this printer - it's a printing company in this little industrial zone. All the people in the village are being told to stay put, even to move away from their windows. Nobody can move. The town is under siege. It's under lockdown. It's a small town in a rural place of only 8,000 people live there and they're all virtually locked down, waiting for this situation to unfold.
INSKEEP: OK, and we're told by the authorities that professional negotiators have arrived on the scene and they have made some kind of phone contact with the suspects who are believed to be inside. So let's now move, fact by fact, inside the building. Cherif and Said Kouachi, the two brothers who are believed to be the suspects, believed to be in that building - what more are you learning about these two men as the days have gone on?
BEARDSLEY: Right, well, the first thing that we learned was that Cherif Kouachi, who's the youngest brother - 32 years old - in 2008, he spent 18 months in prison because he was involved - convicted of being involved - in a jihadi-run network out of the north of Paris that was sending fighters to Iraq. So he spent time in jail for that. And what's interesting is that a French news crew made a documentary about young French people who wanted to fight Jihad back then in 2005, and he was featured in it.
And I watched part of this, Steve, and in that Cherif Kouachi says that the scriptures, or the text, tell us because he was trained by this - he met a preacher who - he said the preacher has told us that texts prove that dying as a martyr attacks is a good thing. So we can actually, from that, infer that this situation could end in any way. It could end as negotiations. It could end in firefight. These men might be ready to die. They've already killed 12 people themselves. So law enforcement - they know about this, they know what that man has said and anything could happen now.
INSKEEP: Anything could happen, you're saying - might end that way - and we want to underline that. You know a statement - we seem to know a statement that was made about a decade ago by one of these young men. I believe you have also reported to us that one of these young men seems to have been in Yemen in more recent years, perhaps receiving some kind of training. Is that correct?
BEARDSLEY: That's correct. That has just recently come to light, actually. The U.S. officials have confirmed that both men were on a no-flight list in the U.S. for years and that the older brother, Said Kouachi, actually went to Yemen. And from analysts here, who are saying from the way they carried themselves the, you know, it was methodical. They were trained shooters. They obviously had training and so we can - they are saying we can infer by that, that this man, Said Kouachi, may have had training in Yemen.
INSKEEP: OK, let's continue going fact by fact. Very briefly, one more assertion that is out there this morning - that there is possibly a hostage with these young men inside the building. Eleanor Beardsley, very briefly, what evidence, if any, tells us that there would be a hostage or that there would not be?
BEARDSLEY: French news is reporting there's a hostage. One reporter said he had spoken with someone inside police forces, but we have not been able to independently confirm that, Steve. And the Minister of Interior said we cannot confirm with - a presence of a hostage or not, so we don't know. It's just being reported by French television right now.
INSKEEP: You know, that's very helpful to know what we don't know. That's NPR's Eleanor Beardsley taking us from outside the building to inside.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Here in the U.S., we learned today that the economy created more than a quarter of a million new jobs in December, capping off the strongest year of job growth in 15 years. The unemployment rate also fell, but as NPR's John Ydstie reports, the data for December also included some disappointments on wages and workforce participation.
JOHN YDSTIE, BYLINE: First, the good news - according to the government's data, U.S. employers added 252,000 jobs last month. That exceeded the forecast of many economists, including Carl Tannenbaum of Northern Trust in Chicago.
CARL TANNENBAUM: This morning's readings on payroll creation were undoubtedly very strong, both with the reading for December, which was very good, and the upward revisions to the prior two months.
YDSTIE: The upward revisions put the average job growth in the past three months close to 300,000. The strong employment growth helped push the unemployment rate down two-tenths to 5.6 percent. Unfortunately, the forces behind that fall weren't all positive.
TANNENBAUM: Part of the reason for that, unfortunately, was a decline in labor force participation, which is a trend that we have been hoping will stabilize as those discouraged by poor labor market conditions eventually return to the labor market.
YDSTIE: But instead, more workers quit looking for a job and left the labor force. Part of that is due to older baby boom workers retiring, says Tannenbaum, but it also suggests the economy isn't creating enough opportunities to draw many people back into the labor force.
TANNENBAUM: And they are clearly people who are outside the labor force looking in who would like to rejoin it.
YDSTIE: Another disappointment in the December data was a fall in wages. November's report showed an uptick that created some confidence that sluggish wage growth was picking up. Instead, wages fell two-tenths of a percent. Tannenbaum suggests that could ease concerns about inflation at the Federal Reserve and keep the focus on jobs.
TANNENBAUM: With wages falling off a little bit, it certainly doesn't seem imminent that the Federal Reserve would be increasing interest rates.
YDSTIE: Overall, says Tannenbaum, the positives jobs picture is one of several factors lifting the U.S. economy as the new year begins.
TANNENBAUM: The jobs created and the incomes that come with them will be good for consumer spending. We're likely to have less of a fiscal drag from government austerity. Sectors like housing and investment, which have been a little slower than usual, should also kick in.
YDSTIE: Add to that the benefits of falling energy prices, and Tannenbaum says it suggests 2015 will be a very positive year for the U.S. economy. John Ydstie, NPR News, Washington.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
We are spending this morning tracking the hunt for Cherif and Said Kouachi. Those are the two men suspected of the shooting at the offices of a French satirical magazine this week.
Today, outside Paris, two men stole a car. The victim thought she recognized the two suspects, who've now been chased to a building. Television channels around the world are showing footage of that standoff near Charles de Gaulle Airport.
News agencies had a tougher time deciding whether to air the cartoons that apparently set the shooters off. They are unquestionably offensive to some people, so we asked NPR's David Folkenflik about the decision-making process news outlets faced.
So what is the case for picking up these cartoons and other material that many people find offensive and republishing them?
DAVID FOLKENFLIK, BYLINE: Right, and this is a conscious choice. You're talking about a lot of offensive images of the Prophet Muhammad, someone who many Muslims believe should not be depicted or represented in imagery at all. The case being made is one of standing up for freedom of expression, even if that expression does offend people. The entire guiding principles since 1970, the establishment of Charlie Hebdo, is one that there's no ox that cannot be gored, no faith that cannot be satirized, no political figure or political party that cannot be made fun of, that every institution in French society should be subject to scrutiny and therefore, subject to satire as well. Republishing those covers, even ones that offended a lot of people, is a way of expressing that in the days since these deaths.
INSKEEP: And what are some news organizations that have made that choice? They're going to republish these cartoons.
FOLKENFLIK: Well, you've seen that in, perhaps a specific and defined way, The Washington Post and USA Today on Thursday published cartoons that were among the most offensive ones, just single cartoons, not an enormous number of them. You saw greater galleries from online sites like The Daily Beast and Slate.
But, you know, news organizations that have significant presences around the world have been much more cautious. You've seen the BBC, The New York Times, NPR, CNN and others make clear that they are very unlikely to show those images themselves, limiting themselves much more to describing what offended people, describing what Charlie Hebdo has done over the years.
INSKEEP: OK, those organizations you described as sometimes being a little more international in character - what explanation did they give? What argument do they make for restraining themselves?
FOLKENFLIK: Well, the argument that you hear - a place like New York Times will say, you know, we don't air things that are deliberately intended to offend religious sensibilities. The Associated Press made the same argument. Places like CNN and NPR, officials have told me that they're in constant discussion about how best to do this. But there is also the recognition that you have reporters on staff and producers and stringers as well who are around the world in places where there's significant Muslim populations, often places of conflict, where journalists are exposed to danger. And they don't want to be a part of a renewed episode that focuses attention on their news organization and the safety of their journalists, who are trying to bring news from often complicated and dangerous places around the world by simply cavalierly reposting or republishing somebody else's incendiary cartoon, as satisfying as it might be as a statement of the principle of free speech.
INSKEEP: One other thing, David Folkenflik. Are there news organizations that have sort of published the cartoons without publishing them? Putting up, for example, archival photos of slain cartoonists who happened to be holding one of their cartoons at the time they were photographed?
FOLKENFLIK: Well, and I think that would be, you know, seen as, in a sense, a declaration of defiance by republishing the cartoon. What has interested me is that you have seen Stephane Charbonnier, the slain editor, holding up the cover of his magazine after the firebombing in 2011, and the copy he's holding includes the offending cartoon on it. And that photograph has been republished many times in publications now that are cropping out the actual image, the offending image itself. It's an understandable approach. If you made a decision that that's not an image you're going to broadcast or reprint, you're not going to do it in a photograph either.
But at the same time, it's sort of cutting out part of his political point that he was making, bravely and quite sadly in retrospect, after the firebombing that didn't damage any lives. Now, of course, his life and those of many of his colleagues were taken this week.
INSKEEP: NPR's David Folkenflik is in New York. David, thanks very much.
FOLKENFLIK: You bet.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
We're going to take a breath now from the dark, breaking news this morning to consider a film that offers a world of charm. Six years ago an Irish director named Tomm Moore delighted the animation world with "The Secret Of Kells." Los Angeles Times and MORNING EDITION film critic Kenneth Turan has this look at his new film.
KENNETH TURAN, BYLINE: "Song Of The Sea" is a wonder to behold. It's a stunning example of hand-drawn animation, steeped in Irish myth, folklore and legend. Its gorgeous watercolor backgrounds so adroitly mix the magical and the everyday that to watch it is to be wholly immersed in an enchanted world. The story begins with a lighthouse keeper who lives on a remote island with his expectant wife and their young son, Ben. Without warning the wife dies in childbirth, but not before giving her son a special present.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "SONG OF THE SEA")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) This is an ancient shell that my mother gave me a long time ago. Hold it to your ear and listen carefully. You will hear the song of the sea.
TURAN: Then it's six years later and Ben takes his loneliness out on his young sister, Saoirse, who reacts to this sibling teasing by refusing to speak a single word. But Saoirse, as it turns out, has a connection to the spirit world that exists parallel to our own. That world has a great need for her. It has a mission that she and only she can complete. In the meantime, a whole flotilla of lively and colorful supernatural folk appear in "Song Of The Sea," including energetic fairies, unpleasant elves, even a disconcerting witch called Macha, who has a confrontation with Ben.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "SONG OF THE SEA")
FIONNULA FLANAGAN: (As Macha) You look wet and tired, human child.
DAVID RAWLE: (As Ben) Macha.
FLANAGAN: (As Macha) I am she.
RAWLE: (As Ben) Really - the old witch from the stories.
FLANAGAN: (As Macha) (Laughter) Well, no, those stories always paint me as the bad one, but I'm not so terrible. You know, I'm just trying to help everyone.
TURAN: One of the messages of this emotional film is the power of song to change worlds. So it's appropriate that "Song Of The Sea's" music is as pure a pleasure to listen to as this film is to watch. The day you choose to see "Song Of The Sea" is one you won't forget.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "SONG OF THE SEA")
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: (Singing) Between the (inaudible) between....
MONTAGNE: Kenneth Turan reviews films for the Los Angeles Times and MORNING EDITION.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep. On a day of dramatic news, here's a story less dramatic than expected. Police in Portland, Oregon, responded to a call about a firebomb. The caller said it was smoking, ready to explode. Police arrived and found something different - a TV remote control. A dog had chewed the remote, damaging a battery which started to smoke. Nobody was hurt, and the family doesn't even know which dog to blame. They have four dogs, so four suspects. It's MORNING EDITION.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
More now on that standoff in a village outside of Paris. The two men suspected of attacking a satirical newspaper and killing 12 people have been apparently cornered by police. They are presumably in a building not far from the Charles de Gaulle Airport, France's major airport. Lauren Frayer is in Paris and she has more details for us now. Good morning.
LAUREN FRAYER, BYLINE: Good morning.
MONTAGNE: What is...
FRAYER: Right now - Right now, French president Hollande is speaking on live TV surrounded by his cabinet. And he's speaking to the French nation. He says he couldn't give much detail, but he says many terror attacks like this one have been thwarted already. He says threats that the French people are feeling are sadly not new and that authorities are doing absolutely everything they can to guarantee the protection of French citizens.Now, all of this going on in the backdrop of this ongoing manhunt. There's an intense police operation underway in a rural area about 25 miles northeast of Paris. There are helicopters overhead SWAT teams, what look like hundreds of police and French military. And that's where the suspects are believed to be holed up. The French interior ministry says the government is almost certainly they've cornered them there. This all began around 830 this morning. French people woke up to reports of a stolen car in that area.And the owner of the car, a local woman, said she saw the suspects steal her car, recognized them from TV footage. They were unmasked. She saw them do it. She also saw guns and possibly a rocket launcher with them. And now the suspects are believed to be holed up in this construction company office in this little village. Police are setting up a perimeter. They say they will go in at some point. And French media are just reporting now that the police have made contact with the suspects. It's unclear whether any negotiations with them are underway.
MONTAGNE: When you say made contact - any way of knowing what that means? And also of course, as you pointed out, they appear to be armed. And certainly, if they are, they are dangerous.
FRAYER: That's right. I mean, French police have told citizens in the area to stay indoors, that the men are armed and dangerous, as we saw this terror attack in Paris on Wednesday. They're not believed to be likely to surrender. We have no confirmation that any negotiations are underway or the nature of the contact that they've made with them.
MONTAGNE: Now, the Charles de Gaulle Airport, tell us more about that. Is it easy - is it obvious to possibly see who might be there? Exactly what's happening?
FRAYER: Right, so this is within view of Charles de Gaulle Airport. And I can tell you, I flew into that airport yesterday morning. It's a beautiful bucolic green countryside well outside the city. It looks peaceful. You cannot imagine something like the SWAT teams and military operation taking place there. And the airport has closed two of its runways. The idea presumably is that with so much police and military presence, the suspects armed and dangerous, authorities just don't want any extra bystanders in the area. Imagine, huge passenger jets with civilians landing in the area, so they've closed those runways altogether.
MONTAGNE: So we will of course be following this story throughout the morning. We are following this story. Lauren Frayer is in Paris. She's covering the manhunt there for the suspects in the Charlie Hebdo shooting. They are believed to be holed up in the Charles de Gaulle Airport at this moment. And of course, Lauren, we'll be talking to you later. Thanks very much.
FRAYER: Thank you.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Among the millions of French people following this drama, included are many Muslims. Almost 10 percent of France's population is counted as Muslim. They're mostly immigrants from former French colonies or their children. Some are practicing Muslims. For others, like our next guest, they have a Muslim identity by heritage. His name is Madjid Messaoudene. He's a councilmember in the predominantly Muslim suburb of - Paris suburb of Saint-Denis.
Good morning, and thank you for joining us.
MADJID MESSAOUDENE: Good morning.
MONTAGNE: Let me begin by asking you about your neighbors in Saint-Denis and how they've responded to the murders. What are you hearing?
MESSAOUDENE: Well, yesterday there was a huge gathering in front of La Tutelaire de Saint-Denis (ph). Muslims are not - are of course upset and sad about what happened. This doesn't deal with religion. This has nothing to do with Islam. This is a crime.
The problem is that many people are doing are making a link between these two pillars and the Muslim population. We faced yesterday at least three attacks against mosques or shops that are owned by Muslim people. So we are afraid of what could happen in the next days. Some are saying that Islam is a threat, is not suitable with democracy. And the huge majority of the Muslim people in France are just asking to live their life freely.
MONTAGNE: Well, clearly Muslims are not monolithic in general, not monolithic in France. But these alleged killers and other attacks suggest that there is a strain of extreme Islam in the population, albeit in small numbers. What has been said among the Muslim community in terms of condemning these attacks?
MESSAOUDENE: I'm not comfortable with the idea that we have to ask the Muslim people to prove that they are condemning what happened, to prove that they are against violence, to prove that they are for democracy. We don't - I don't have to apologize for what happened two days ago. For me, the two killers that killed 12 people two days ago are not Muslim. They...
MONTAGNE: They are not Muslim in your view.
MESSAOUDENE: No, for me, they are not Muslim. You can't kill someone in the name of Islam or in the name of any other religion. So they are not Muslims. These are fanatics. And we don't have to put all the Muslims in the same bag.
MONTAGNE: I understand that the massacre at Charlie Hebdo would seem to have special resonance for you because I understand you knew two members of the staff. What was your relationship?
MESSAOUDENE: Yeah, yeah. I knew particularly Bernard Maris, who was called Uncle Bernard in the newspaper. He taught me economy at the university. He was a very good man. He was very clever, very smart, and I also knew Charb, who was the leader of the newspaper now.
MONTAGNE: Charbonnier, the...
MESSAOUDENE: Yes. Yes, Stephane Charbonnier. I met him several times, and we have debates with him about the way Charlie Hebdo dealt with Islam. I did not agree.
MONTAGNE: Did you think that the cartoons were insulting to Islam?
MESSAOUDENE: Yeah. I think that you can't draw the prophet knowing that, for the Muslims, the huge insult this can do, without thinking in the context you are living in. I mean that if he drew the same cartoon 15 or 20 years ago, maybe the things would have been different. As for Charlie Hebdo, it became a huge weapon of religion destruction. They...
MONTAGNE: Did you say this, though? Did you say to your friend Stephane Charbonnier who ran...
MESSAOUDENE: Yeah. Yeah, I told him...
(CROSSTALK)
MONTAGNE: Did you think it was OK for him to do it, though - freedom of speech?
MESSAOUDENE: He continued, yeah.
MONTAGNE: Did you think that he had a right to do it, regardless of your opinion?
MESSAOUDENE: Yeah, of course. I never asked for the censorship of Charlie Hebdo. But what I told him is that he could not do whatever he wanted to do without taking into account what were facing the Muslim community in France. Islam cannot justify what happened two days ago. Muslim people that I know, they are afraid. They are afraid to live in such a violent world and such a difficult world for the Muslim people.
MONTAGNE: That's Madjid Messaoudene. He's councilmember in the predominantly Muslim Paris suburb of Saint-Denis. We will be following events in and around Paris throughout the day.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
And we are picking this up fact by fact as we go along, just to review what we know happened this morning. At about 8:30 this morning - that's Paris time - a woman had her car stolen by her from two gunmen, who she said were the two known suspects in the shooting - the massacre in Paris earlier this week. Those two men are now believed to be holed up inside an industrial building well outside of Paris. It's a possible hostage situation. Prosecutors have described with more certainty a hostage situation in a different area in eastern Paris where a gunman moved into a kosher market and is believed to have taken several hostages there. Authorities are pointing to some evidence that the two situations are connected. We'll bring you more as we learn it right here on MORNING EDITION from NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
As we watch the manhunt in France today, we're also tracking a political crisis a bit closer to home. Lawmakers in Haiti face a deadline. They have until midnight Monday to reach agreement on calling elections or else the parliament will be dissolved. That would leave the president ruling by decree, which would be an unfortunate echo of Haiti's past. In Port-au-Prince, NPR's Carrie Kahn reports that Monday's deadline day was already going to be a grim anniversary.
CARRIE KAHN, BYLINE: It's bad enough that this Monday, January 12, Haiti will once again mourn of the hundreds of thousands of people who lost their lives in the earthquake five years ago. But now, it must also deal with the prospect of unrest and widespread protest if a political agreement can't be reached in time. The two dates just happen to coincide. Tom Adams, the State Department's special coordinator, says that the U.S. is urging Haiti to avoid a crisis. He says it's time for all parties to compromise.
TOM ADAMS: So that this story on the 12 is not that Haiti is in permanent political gridlock, but more that Haiti has made progress.
KAHN: Adams says the U.S.'s position is pretty simple.
ADAMS: We want to see elections happen - agreement on elections - and we also want to avoid rule by decree.
KAHN: Those elections were supposed to have happened nearly three years ago. But instead the opposition and the president have spent that time blaming each other for the delay. That brings us to Monday when the terms of two-thirds of Haiti's senators expires, leaving the body without a functional quorum and only the president left with legal standing. That's a particularly troubling scenario given Haiti's young, struggling democracy and its dictatorial history.
CARL ALEXANDRE: That time has gone and passed.
KAHN: Carl Alexandre is the U.N. secretary general's deputy special representative in Haiti. He says President Michel Martelly has promised if he does rule a loan, he will not take advantage of that power.
ALEXANDRE: The president has said that his focus is on the electoral process. That's what he said, and we hope that he's going to stay to his word.
KAHN: At this point, it's unclear what will break the impasse as the opposition's demand seemed to keep growing. A compromise was reached last month after the prime minister, a close ally of the president, was forced to step down. But opponents say they don't like the replacement pick and now have even begun calling for the president to resign. Hundreds took to the streets yesterday in the capital shouting, down with Martelly. Adeline Pierre, who sells children's clothes in a large downtown market, says she doesn't trust Martelly.
ADELINE PIERRE: (Through interpreter) I want him out because he has been a big liar. He has lied to us so much.
KAHN: President Martelly hasn't made any public comments. He's tweeted pictures of himself and a group of Senate leaders meeting at a luxury hotel high in the hills above Port-au-Prince. Late last night, they emerged but refused to talk to reporters gathered outside. Forty-seven-year-old Belicher Luis, who sells men's jeans downtown, says he hopes there's a compromise before Monday or he fears rioting will begin.
BELICHER LUIS: (Through interpreter) We need the country to be stable. We need the people, the politicians, to put their heads together and make the country stable.
KAHN: He said the worst thing that could happen would be for the president to not finish his term. He says that would be bad for Haiti and bad for his business, which he says gets worse every day the political crisis drags on. Carrie Kahn, NPR News, Port-au-Prince.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
And I'm Renee Montagne, with our last beat of Beat Week.
(SOUNDBITE OF BOB DYLAN SONG, "WHERE ARE YOU TONIGHT?")
MONTAGNE: We've been talking with drummers this week, all men. Today let's hear from the woman playing the congas goes on this Bob Dylan track.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WHERE ARE YOU TONIGHT?")
BOB DYLAN: (Singing) There's a long-distance train rolling through the rain. Tears on the letter I write.
MONTAGNE: Ms. Bobbye Hall also plays congas, bongos, triangles, tambourines - you name it - to give other people's music shimmer and life. She's a liner note legend. Since becoming a studio musician as a kid in the 1960s, she's played on a string of hits from Motown...
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LET'S GET IT ON")
MARVIN GAYE: (Singing) Let's get it on...
MONTAGNE: To LA.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SWEET SEASONS")
CAROLE KING: (Singing) I'm talking 'bout sweet seasons on my mind.
MONTAGNE: Bobbye Hall's earliest memories are of creating rhythms any way she could.
BOBBYE HALL: Beating on my mom's pot and pans. (Laughter). And I don't know why. And when I sat at the kitchen table to eat, I would rock my feet back and forth, and my mother would go, baby, baby, baby, stop, stop rocking. Be still. Hold still. And I had a little pair of bongos from the downtown music store in Detroit. And that's how I started. Once I got the bongos, the drums were my voice.
MONTAGNE: You would have been about 11 years old when you were playing professionally. A Motown producer discovered you at a sock hop.
HALL: Yes. That's correct. And he said, Bobbye, would you like to make a session? And I said, sure, what's a session?
MONTAGNE: That's what I was thinking, that it would be like, I'll be there but...
HALL: What is it?
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GOING TO A GO GO")
SMOKEY ROBINSON AND THE MIRACLES: (Singing) Well, there's a brand-new place I've found where people go from miles around.
MONTAGNE: Those sessions that you played on, I mean, you would have - I would have thought really stuck out in the sense that they would've probably been mostly or all guys...
HALL: Yes.
MONTAGNE: ...And you'd be an 11-, 12-year-old girl.
HALL: Yes, all guys, except for the lady at the front desk where I had to sign in every day. But it was all guys, and older guys, at that.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GOING TO A GO GO")
SMOKEY ROBINSON AND THE MIRACLES: (Singing) I'm going to a go go. Going to a go go. Baby...
MONTAGNE: Did they sort of adopt you? I mean...
HALL: Yes. They became - every one of them were my dad. I said nothing. I sat there, very proper and all ears and very quiet. I had nothing to say. And I would listen to them talk. And they would talk about how the music was going down. And they would pop their fingers, clap their hands. Some of them would do it with their feet, you know, just - one, (snaps fingers) two - you know. The first time that I heard that - I can remember it right now today - I felt so much at home.
(SOUNDBITE OF MARVIN GAYE SONG, "INNER CITY BLUES")
MONTAGNE: This is "Inner City Blues" by Marvin Gaye - pretty classic song.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "INNER CITY BLUES")
GAYE: (Singing) Oh, make you want to holler the way they do my life.
MONTAGNE: You may or may not remember that particular session.
HALL: I remember it.
MONTAGNE: Do you?
HALL: Yes, and I remember the first time that I was asked to go with the studio band, my first time being on stage outside of the studio with Marvin. And I was so scared. (Laughter). On the first break, I ran to the telephone and called my mom, and I said, mom, you're not going to believe this. They're dancing to the music that we're making on stage. And they're wearing, like, heels and mink coats, and, mom, it's so great. And she said, just play pretty for mom, baby.
(SOUNDBITE OF STEVIE WONDER SONG, "BIRD OF BEAUTY")
MONTAGNE: There was one person I thought you - might be close to your age group, Stevie Wonder, I was thinking.
HALL: Stevie, yes. Yes.
MONTAGNE: 'Cause he was a child star.
HALL: Yes.
MONTAGNE: Little Stevie Wonder.
HALL: Yes, he was Little Stevie Wonder, and we were very close.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BIRD OF BEAUTY")
STEVIE WONDER: (Singing) ...Says that now your mind desires a vacation.
MONTAGNE: You're playing a Brazilian instrument.
HALL: Yeah, and that's called a Cuica.
MONTAGNE: Cuica. And it's - you're hearing it in the back.
HALL: Yes.
MONTAGNE: It's this (imitating Cuica)
HALL: Yes, it's carrying a constant repeating rhythm that's infectious, that's sensual.
MONTAGNE: Did you study it, or...
HALL: No, I didn't. And actually it was a very difficult piece for me to play because it had a Brazilian instrument, and I'm not Brazilian. So when I pick up ethnic instruments, I really kind of shy away from that instrument because I want that instrument to like me. I want it to embrace me and take me where it needs to go. It's a relationship, yes.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ME AND BOBBY MCGEE")
JANIS JOPLIN: (Singing) Busted flat in Baton Rouge, waiting for a train.
MONTAGNE: Janis Joplin is someone else with whom you played.
HALL: Yes. Janis, I met her on a weekend. And we were at Sunset Sound Studios. And she was very vibrant - alive woman, and she wore costume jewelry like a gypsy.
MONTAGNE: Bobbye Hall says she was supposed to come back the next day to play percussion on the album "Pearl," an album that came out posthumously because Janis Joplin died that night.
HALL: Yes.
MONTAGNE: So you played your part later.
HALL: I played it later, and I asked the producer if he would dim the lights. And I did it alone.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ME AND BOBBY MCGEE")
JOPLIN: (Singing) Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose. Nothing, that's all that Bobby left me, yeah.
MONTAGNE: Over the years, Bobbye Hall played too many sessions with big-name artists to remember. One of them gave her the professional name she's gone by for decades, MBH, or Ms. Bobbye Hall. Ms. Bobbye Hall, I love that.
HALL: That's right. Carole King gave me that because they would introduce me as Little Bobbye from Detroit. And I said to her, I said, Carole, do me a favor, would you please? Just don't introduce me as Little Bobbye from Motown. And so she would introduce me, and she said, Ms. Bobbye Hall. And I just loved her for it, and I still wear it very happily.
MONTAGNE: That's percussionist Ms. Bobbye Hall, our last guest on Beat Week. It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.
INSKEEP: And I'm Steve Inskeep.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
We are learning the story right along with you. We're all working it out together. Two situations in the Paris area today, both involving gunmen, hostage situations possibly, both of them -apparently both of them. And the one in which we're going to discuss first - there's a kosher supermarket in the eastern part of Paris. Our colleague Lauren Frayer watched on video as people were hustled out of that building immediately after we heard live on the air here descriptions of explosions and other sounds in the area. We're going now to the area of that market, back to NPR's Eleanor Beardsley, who is there. And, Eleanor, what have you been hearing the last few minutes and what are you able to learn where you are?
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: Yes, well, we heard like five - boom - big explosions. And we of course were kept back, the police, the riot police and there's police tape - the crowds - we're standing at the periphery of it. And I was just told by a French reporter who covers this, a cameraman, he said they've given the assault. They have started the assault on the supermarket. I think it's done now, and that those they were grenades, deafening grenades - I don't know (speaking French) in French and so - and now I see police - there's police cars coming out from the area. So I think it's unfolding now. I think it's been done.
INSKEEP: You'll help us with the translation there. When you say grenades, you probably don't mean hand grenades that would cause a deadly explosion...
BEARDSLEY: No.
INSKEEP: ...But some kind of stun grenade or flash grenade, right?
BEARDSLEY: Yes. Here they come. OK, the (inaudible) the ambulance has come and passed, lights flashing, coming-out of the cordoned off, (inaudible) blocked area. Yes, the sound grenades that would deafen the hostage takers amid chaos. Another ambulance is coming out.
(CROSSTALK)
INSKEEP: So our early sense is that an assault was made on the building, an attempt was made to rescue the hostages. There has been that video that appeared to show people being hustled out of the building, which raises the hope that some or all of the hostages were rescued alive, although we're going to have to wait for that information. Is there anything else you can add right now, Eleanor Beardsley?
BEARDSLEY: The same reporter - there seems to be information in the French media that the two brothers have been killed in the north, in the other assault. My colleague Lauren is watching that unfolding live on TV, so maybe this is a coordinated attack on the two.
INSKEEP: We must emphasize that is a thoroughly unconfirmed bit of information there. But we do know, we do know from our colleague Lauren Frayer that there had been signs of an assault in the other location. That, for those who were just joining us, is in a town outside of Paris where two suspects in this week's Paris massacre were hold up, reportedly with a hostage. And there were signs of an assault earlier today. In the next few minutes, we're going to learn more about that. And we are continuing to cover this story.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
We continue to follow events in France this morning. There are now two standoffs involving gunmen. In Paris, police have descended on a kosher grocery store where two attackers are said to have taken several hostages this morning. Authorities say the suspects in the grocery store may be linked to the two brothers thought to have launched a deadly attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Those two brothers are now cornered in an industrial building in a village just outside Paris. The 12 victims of the attack on Charlie Hebdo included two police officers. They were killed while trying to protect the French magazine. Lauren Frayer has profiles from Paris.
LAUREN FRAYER, BYLINE: It's a slogan now familiar throughout the world, Je suis Charlie - I am Charlie. Thousands of Parisians have been gathering here daily, holding up placards with those words. But a variation has popped up on Twitter - #JeSuisAhmed, for Ahmed Merabet, a police officer killed in the same rampage Wednesday.
(SOUNDBITE OF GUNSHOTS)
FRAYER: Amateur video captured his brutal death on a Paris sidewalk outside offices of the Charlie Hebdo magazine. The video has aired around the world, inspiring expressions of sympathy who didn't even know Merabet and from this fellow police officer who did.
ALEXANDRA SOLER: I knew he was walking into 11th District in Paris. I knew very well his captain. So when I knew it was him, I was really upset. And I just can't imagine the pain, you know - the pain for his family.
FRAYER: Alexandra Soler is a Paris policewoman who was on maternity leave visiting the U.K. when she heard about her colleague's death. She told the BBC it makes her want to return to work immediately.
SOLER: I miss my job so bad, and when I see something that has happened in Paris, in my country, I just want to go back and fight terrorism and these kind of things.
FRAYER: Merabet, age 40, had been a policeman for eight years and had just qualified to become a detective. His heritage is believed to be Muslim, and the fact that he was murdered by suspected Muslim radicals has inspired an outpouring outline. One popular tweet says, (reading) I am not Charlie, I am Ahmed, the dead cop, Charlie ridiculed my faith and culture, and I died defending his right to do so.
Merebet was one of two police officers killed in Wednesday's attack. The other was 48-year-old Franck Brisolaro. He had a twin brother, Philippe.
PHILIPPE BRISOLARO: (Speaking French).
FRAYER: "Nobody can just snuff out freedom of expression and the authority of the state," says Philippe Brisolaro, who, like his slain brother, is also a Paris policeman. "I want to pay homage to all my colleagues who get up every day and take risks," he says. "Enjoy your families while you can. You never know when they'll be taken away."
Franck Brisolaro was assigned to protect Stephane Charbonnier, the editor of Charlie Hebdo magazine, who was also killed. Charbonnier's partner, Jeannette Bougrab, describes the man many people knew simply as Charb.
JEANNETTE BOUGRAB: (Speaking French).
FRAYER: "He never took vacation," she says. "He always worked. We need people that tenacious."
The attackers are said to have singled out Charb by name.
BOUGRAB: (Speaking French).
FRAYER: "What's going on in France," Bougrab exclaims. "I'm worried some staffers won't continue working for Charlie because they're terrorized. Today when you take a pen to paper in France, you can be killed."
Media organizations around the world have offered donations and office space to keep Charlie alive. The magazine has said it will publish on time next week, printing a record 1 million copies. For NPR News, I'm Lauren Frayer in Paris.
MONTAGNE: And this is MORNING EDITION from NPR News with Steve Inskeep. I'm Renee Montagne.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne. Former Miami Dolphins football player Rob Conrad was fishing alone off the coast of South Florida when he fell from his boat. The Coast Guard sent a plane to find him after his friends were concerned when Conrad didn't meet them for dinner. But he made it on his own, according to ESPN, by swimming nine miles to shore. Conrad was found on the beach by the Palm Beach County Sheriff's office, the mark, you might say of, well, a real dolphin. It's MORNING EDITION.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The Associated Press is now reporting that the assailants in the Charlie Hebdo shooting have been killed after an assault, and that hostage has been freed. That is according to The Associate Press. We have not been able to independently confirm that at this time.We're going to work through what we know so far about the dramatic assaults, nearly simultaneous assaults on two different locations inside and outside Paris where gunmen were holed up and surrounded by authorities. Reporter Lauren Frayer has been with us all morning on the story. And she's on the line once again. And, Lauren, what is it that you are able to tell us, first, about the situation in the small town outside Paris where the suspects in the Charlie Hebdo shooting have been holed up?
LAUREN FRAYER, BYLINE: So they were held up there for nearly eight hours all day. This was at a printing factory northeast of Paris. It started early this morning. They stole a local woman's car. She recognized them immediately and called police. And then they took refuge in this factory. They were believed to be heavily armed and dangerous. Residents in the area were told to stay in lockdown. Schoolchildren were kept in their high school nearby all day. It took all day. And finally, about 20 minutes ago, we saw explosions and smoke rising from that building.It was really a dramatic scene because just as dusk was falling over Paris and its suburbs, we saw black cloud figures scaling the walls of that building where the suspects were believed to be holed up. And we assumed that those were security troops. Officials have not confirmed that operation. But French media are reporting now that those two suspects have been killed. That they came out of the building firing on security officials. That's according to French media. We can't independently reconfirm that.
INSKEEP: OK. So that's one more fact. We need to make it a provisional fact for now that that operation is over. We do feel confident that there has been some kind of an operation because of the images that we're able to see of the assault on that building, the appearance of smoke and other things. And this is of course one of two incidents. Bring us up to date on the other incident, the other hostage situation - much more clear hostage situation - at a kosher market where at least one gunman was holding several people. What have you been able to learn there Lauren Frayer?
FRAYER: So there have been really dramatic pictures coming out of that other hostage situation. French television cameras have been set up outside of that situation all day. And we're getting sort of aerial pictures of what is going on right there. Huge swarm of dozens of ambulances, police, white vans people, people in SWAT team gear swarming that area, lots of sirens, lots of lights. But just about 10 minutes ago, we saw security officials surrounding three or four people in civilian dress. We don't know who they are, but it looked like it could have been hostages being escorted quickly out of that building. I watched them cross the street under heavy guard, running, struggling to get over behind the sort of cordon of ambulances.
INSKEEP: Right.
FRAYER: And French media right now are reporting that those were the hostages and that they have been freed. But again, security officials are not coming out and announcing that just yet.
INSKEEP: OK. Lauren, thanks for your clarity. That's Lauren Frayer today in Paris.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
It would be hard to make life even tougher for the millions of refugees who fled the wars in Iraq and Syria. But Syrian refugees say this is their coldest winter in the camps, and they're getting less help than ever. NPR's Alice Fordham has more.
ALICE FORDHAM, BYLINE: In Lebanon, they called the storm Xena, and in this muddy cluster of tents and huts close to the city of Saida, Syrian refugees say she showed no mercy.
GAMRA AL KHALIL: (Foreign language spoken).
FORDHAM: "The wind, the wind, God Almighty, it was a storm," says Gamra al Khalil. A tree fell on her corrugated metal shack, crushing half of it, just missing her family.
AL KHALIL: (Foreign language spoken).
FORDHAM: "It's this year that's the worst," she says. "We're dying of cold." Stomping through the mud and a rain-swelled stream is one Lebanese aid worker who doesn't give his name because he's not authorized to speak for his NGO.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Actually, as you see in the situation here, it's really awful. Of course the humanitarian agencies - the UNHCR is working, intervening, but it's not enough.
FORDHAM: More than 3 million Syrians, more than 1 in 10, have fled their country. About a million of them are believed to be in Lebanon, a tiny place where there are no formal camps for Syrian refugees, so hundreds of thousands live in tents, shacks or abandoned buildings - not good protection against this week's snow, rain and high winds.
MARIAM AL SAYYAM: (Foreign language spoken).
FORDHAM: And there's another thing. Mariam Al Sayyam says this winter's not just colder than last year; there's less help than last year. The United Nations, which supports the vast bulk of these refugees, issued extra ration cards and oil for heaters last winter. This year, there's none of that. I reached the U.N.'s Lisa Abou Khaled in the snowy Beqaa Valley on the border with Syria, who says they just don't have the resources to help everyone.
LISA ABOU KHALED: Well, we've had to prioritize the bigger amount of assistance to the most vulnerable, which is only a very - I mean, if you will, a very small percentage of our whole target population.
FORDHAM: The U.N. is the largest of many organizations to say as the war drags on, their funding is drying up. Late last year, the World Food Program said it would have to halt much of its work feeding refugees. That prompted a rush of cash, and the program continued. But shortfalls are likely to reappear.
A surge in the number of people that need help has also put pressure on aid agencies. In Iraq last year, more than 2 million people were displaced after fighting spilled over from Syria. Hundreds of thousands of them are in the frigid mountains in the North of the country. And as Syria and Iraq continue to fragment and see vicious internal conflict, the refugees and displaced will not soon go home. Alice Fordham, NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
We're just going to keep tracking what we know and do not know about the developing situation outside Paris where authorities have cornered two men believed to be the suspects in this week's Paris massacre. They're inside an industrial building. We know, according to the authorities, that police have made phone contact with the suspects. We do not know for certain if they have a hostage, although there are reports to that effect. We do not know if they're willing to negotiate, if they will, in time, be willing to surrender. We will continue tracking this story throughout the morning as we learn more, fact by fact, minute by minute, on MORNING EDITION from NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
French police are now surrounding two buildings. One is far in the countryside in a town outside of Paris. One is in the eastern part of the city itself. Both, according to the authorities, have gunmen inside. At least one - possibly both - are hostage situations. The people that have been living through this week in Paris include Vivienne Walt. She is a reporter for Time magazine based in Paris, and she came to the phone a short time ago.
Let's work through those two incidents, if we can. First, with the kosher market. What is it you feel you know at this point for sure?
VIVIENNE WALT: Well, basically, the police (inaudible) incident have one, we believe, shooter hold up in this kosher supermarket on the easternmost edge of Paris, a neighborhood called Porte de Vincennes. And we believe that he has at least five hostages inside, including women and children. The situation is particularly hazardous in the sense that he's believed to be armed and he is believed to be the gunman who shot two police officers at a traffic control in southern Paris yesterday morning. One of those traffic officers is now dead.
INSKEEP: And we should probably add a note of caution - certainly add a note of caution here as we connect these incidents. We may learn that the facts are a little different as we go along. But you're saying that right now police are drawing a line between this other shooting and the ongoing hostage situation. And then of course there is the additional situation, well outside of Paris, beyond Charles de Gaulle Airport in this small French town where, in a large industrial building, the two suspected Charlie Hebdo shooters are holed up, Cherif and Said Kouachi. What are you learning about that situation?
WALT: Well, they fled to this building from a wooded area further outside Paris early this morning. They took what we believe is one hostage, a woman in a small catering company. And it's a very, very small town, actually just the other side of Charles de Gaulle Airport, which is this huge airport. And the police, crack SWAT teams, helicopters overhead, have them surrounded and encircled. The interior minister told reporters - fairly confident earlier this morning - that he believed that they had the two men that they were looking for. And it appeared to be the (speaking French), if you'd like, the final last, desperate act of these men. And this was before the second hostage situation unfolded. Everything seemed to be moving towards one final climax.
INSKEEP: And now we have an ever-widening situation. Now, you mentioned the belief that there may be a hostage out there in the industrial building. How certain are you of that fact? It's been described as a possible hostage, as if perhaps they've claimed to have a hostage and it's not certain.
WALT: We do not quite know. And one has to say that many of the details, if not all of the details, are emerging as fairly speculative - unnamed police sources and so on. However, both the prime minister and the spokesman of the interior minister in the last couple of hours have come out with firm statements saying that they're almost sure that the intelligence points to links between these two incidents. And that is, I think, the most solid, credible statement we've heard on this issue so far.
INSKEEP: The next question that I suppose has to be raised is whether there might be still more people associated with these suspects who are out there, authorities must be looking.
WALT: Absolutely. And these suspects, most of them, are really no mystery to law enforcement agencies, intelligence officials in France. Cherif Kouachi, for example, the younger of the two brothers who are believed to have pulled off the Charlie Hebdo attack has been known to police for nearly a decade. He tried to go fight in Iraq. He is part of a fairly wide network of young French who come from the 19th district of Paris of the north - the northeastern edge of the city, a fairly kind of downtrodden immigrant-heavy area. And they have been tracked by intelligence agents for many years. They're known as a fairly well-connected group of young jihadists who were involved in the conflict in Iraq, and I believe, more recently, involved in the conflict in Syria.
INSKEEP: OK. Vivienne Walt of Time magazine, thanks very much.
WALT: You're welcome.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
As we've been hearing all morning, there are two hostage situations now in Paris - or we should say two confrontations. In one of them, according into a French prosecutor, hostages have been taking at a kosher supermarket in Paris. Outside the city at warehouse, two suspects in this week's Charlie Hebdo shooting are holed up, and there is a possible hostage, we're told, there.
We're going to talk through this situation now with Robert McFadden. He's with The Soufan Group and has a long career in federal law enforcement. And we asked him a short time ago what it is that a hostage negotiator does in this situation.
ROBERT MCFADDEN: The situation is all about safety - paramount - getting the number of hostages and establishing some kind of communication where there's a degree of rapport and accord in getting to know what situation is, what the other end wants and trying to get as many facts as possible.
INSKEEP: Now, you said establishing the number of hostages. T hat seems vital here because we have had media reports of possible hostages. French authorities have specifically not confirmed that. They say they are not able to confirm that. This must be a difficult thing to determine, even if the gunman claimed to have hostages, whether they do and how many.
MCFADDEN: Exactly. There are two words here that are operative. The one is safety, and the other is patience because at the end of this - and it will end here, no doubt about it with the capability of the French - it's getting one or both into custody live.
INSKEEP: These men have had statements attributed to them, actually over a number of years, talking about martyrdom. One of them was seen in a documentary a decade ago talking in a positive way about becoming a martyr and some kind of attack. There are unconfirmed reports that they made statements about martyrdom in this situation in the last several hours. Based on your experience, how does that affect the way that negotiators and other authorities would approach them?
MCFADDEN: Typically they're either want to go down in a hail of bullets or to blow themselves up. So with the French service, I'm sure that's key right now, trying to get a bead on what capabilities, what weapons they have, what conditions they're in at this time.
INSKEEP: Well, you used that other word, patience. Have there been occasions, in your experience, where someone has seemed to be suicidal at the beginning of a negotiation, but in the end, they walk out of there after a while?
MCFADDEN: Absolutely. I mean, there is a whole range of different scenarios, and that's the key here, is the amount of information the French may have at their disposal, like the United States A-level capabilities, such as the FBI had; they usually have a lot of technical means at their disposal as well just depending on what the physical environment is like to get those technical mans in place.
INSKEEP: What questions would you be asking if you were part of the investigation of this incident?
MCFADDEN: Well, when we talk about the presumption that they come into the custody of the French authorities, I mean, first and foremost, it's about finding out and then thwarting - slowing down and stopping the momentum of any other conspiracies or acts that might be in place. That's paramount. And then it's the other details about, you know, how they were able to organize, what nodes of communication they might have with outside elements and then a whole range of other intelligence requirements to follow that.
INSKEEP: Robert McFadden is senior vice president for The Soufan Group. Thanks very much.
MCFADDEN: Thanks for having me.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Let's zero in on one of the two standoffs we're tracking in France today. It's the one at the industrial building in a small town outside Paris. Two suspects allegedly responsible for this week's Paris massacre are believed to be inside there, and Chris O'Brien of the Los Angeles Times is outside in that small town. Welcome to the program.
CHRIS O'BRIEN: Thank you, Steve.
INSKEEP: What have you been able to learn?
O'BRIEN: Well, the standoff began early this morning and brought quite a substantial police presence to what is a pretty midsize French village about 25 minutes northeast of Paris. The details they're releasing are very scant at the moment. We're still trying to get actual confirmation about whether there is in fact a hostage in the building.
We've heard conflicting reports that an employee of the print shop was taken hostage this morning. And a French lawmaker has confirmed that the police are in contact with the suspects inside the facility. And there have been discussions over the phone and the little bit of details they released about that was the lawmaker saying basically that the suspects had said that they were wanting to end the episode as martyrs.
INSKEEP: Wanting to the episode as martyrs, which would seem to rule out negotiations necessarily, at least according to the reports you're hearing at this moment.
O'BRIEN: Correct. We're not - there isn't a widespread sense of optimism, of course, based on that statement. And so, you know, we're all kind of in a waiting pattern now waiting to see what will happen. We know also they brought in about at least eight to 10 fairly large public buses to evacuate the schools in the area. They're keeping a pretty tight perimeter around the village with the police presence here in terms of who they are letting in and out, and we've seen, of course, helicopters flying over. There's a pretty substantial media presence here as you can imagine as well.
But for the moment, things seem to have really come to a standstill in terms of whether there's any sense that there will be a resolution, either a negotiated one or something more forceful.
INSKEEP: And you have said something that underlines for us how scanty the facts are. You have given us the first indication of who the hostage might be. You said there's some feeling that there may be an employee of the print shop in there with these two men. And yet, we do not know for certain that they're really holding a hostage, if this is simply something they're saying or if something else is happening. That is not a fact at this point.
O'BRIEN: That is correct. That is entirely unconfirmed and again, it seems to have gone back and forth throughout the day in terms of the wisdom that there is someone, who that person would be, that they don't have someone. I think again the feeling - and again I want to caution that it is a sense rather than a fact - is that they're likely is. Otherwise, the thinking is they might not have held off quite so long in terms of taking more forceful action.
INSKEEP: Oh, the authorities might not have held off otherwise. Chris O'Brien at the Los Angeles Times, thanks very much for your insights. Appreciate it.
O'BRIEN: Absolutely. Thanks, Steve.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
We are getting more details as the minutes and hours go by this morning about two hostage standoffs in Paris and the people French police say are behind those standoffs. The first involves the two brothers that we have been talking about since the shooting at the Charlie Hebdo magazine on Wednesday. The second involves two new suspects that French police have identified. NPR's counterterrorism correspondent Dina Temple-Raston has been working this story with her sources here in the United States, and she joins us now. Good morning.
DINA TEMPLE-RASTON, BYLINE: Good morning.
MONTAGNE: Tell us the latest about now - let's talk about the first hostage situation that involves the two suspects in the killings at that satirical magazine which is now unfolding near Paris's international airport, France's biggest airport.
TEMPLE-RASTON: Right. Well, U.S. officials familiar with what's happening on the ground say French police and SWAT teams have surrounded a building in an industrial park where Cherif and Said Kouachi are said to be holding a hostage.
We've confirmed with U.S. officials that there does appear to be one hostage. There's been some back and forth about that all morning. She's possibly an employee of a printing business which is in the business they're in now. We understand there's been contact between police and the Kouachi brothers and that the brothers say that they are prepared to martyr themselves.
MONTAGNE: Prepared to martyr themselves. Well, there is a second situation unfolding in eastern Paris at a kosher supermarket, which is - and this is rather an amazing turn of events - linked to the Kouachi brothers.
TEMPLE-RASTON: They believe so, yes. This is a market in northeast Paris near Porte de Vincennes. And the French police have released photographs and names of the suspects who they believe are involved. There's a 32-year-old man named Amedy Coulibaly and a 26-year-old woman named Hayat Boumeddiene.
French police say they believe that the two are wanted in connection with the shooting of a policewoman that happened shortly after the magazine attack. And Coulibaly and possibly Boumeddiene are thought to be holding hostages in this supermarket. It's unclear exactly because this unfolding so quickly, but that's what French authorities have said publicly, that they think these two are involved with these unfolding terrorist attacks.
MONTAGNE: Well, so the link is not absolutely confirmed. Is that what you're trying to say? Or are they saying there is a link - not quite sure they know the Kouachi brothers - and if so, does that suggest a Paris terrorist cell?
TEMPLE-RASTON: Well, they do think that there's a link. Now, they're calling it - they're not calling it - U.S. officials aren't calling it a cell, per se. What they've been telling us privately for days is that they thought the shooting of the policewoman in Paris was a related terrorist event. They didn't think that the two brothers were working alone, and now that appears to be borne out.
I mean, U.S. officials say that Coulibaly was linked to Cherif Kouachi, who's the younger brother, because both were implicated in a plot to break out a jihadi of a French jail in 2010. Coulibaly was actually charged in that case. That's what U.S. officials are telling us. And he went to jail. And Cherif Kouachi was implicated, but was never really - but was never charged. Interestingly in that 2010 case, Said Kouachi, that's the first time he started appearing in police reports linked to jihadi ties.
MONTAGNE: OK, this is all very complicated and the names themselves are actually hard to sort of hold onto, but let's break it down to something simple about the Kouachi brothers. Those are the suspects in the magazine attack. We've only got just a couple of seconds - few seconds here, but what can you tell us quickly about them?
TEMPLE-RASTON: Well, quickly, I'll tell you that Cherif Kouachi, the younger of the two brothers, was thought to be the force behind this attack because he'd gone to jail for terrorism officials - terrorism offenses. Increasingly, U.S. officials are telling us that they believe the older brother, Said, who appears to have gone and trained with al-Qaida, was driving this attack.
MONTAGNE: Dina, thanks very much for joining us.
TEMPLE-RASTON: You're welcome.
MONTAGNE: That NPR's counterterrorism correspondent Dina Temple-Raston. And of course, we'll be following this story, not just here on MORNING EDITION, although through our show, but also throughout the day here at NPR News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
And for French perspective on the events going on now in and near Paris, we turn to Sylvie Rottman. She's the senior producer and the head of planning for the French television channel France 24. Good morning.
SYLVIE ROTTMAN: Good morning.
MONTAGNE: Now, Sylvie, it has been two days since the shooting at the Charlie Hebdo offices. And as you and I speak, there is a second standoff at a grocery - a kosher grocery in Paris, yet another, also, link to the killing of a policewoman yesterday. What is the mood? What are people in Paris saying today?
ROTTMAN: Well, they're still probably very sad, first of all because this - from the events that took place a couple of days ago, the initial shooting at the Charlie Hebdo magazine. And I do think that sadness remains a prevailing feeling.
But other than that, this is all quite surreal for everyone. I don't think anyone has seen - anyone who's an adult - most people who are adults have never seen anything like that happen. And things are proceeding at such breakneck speed that it's hard to keep up. And people are watching this unfold, I think, in slight shock and disbelief. I don't think at this stage that people have disrupted their daily life because of it, and it's hard to tell if they will or would. People are mostly calm, I think, and going about their daily lives. But it's unbelievable, and I think people are in shock and people are also - some people might also be, I think, angry over what's happening. The degree of the violence that's taking place...
MONTAGNE: Well, and just briefly, that anger - people are concerned perhaps that that anger might turn into a backlash against Muslims. We just have a few seconds here, sorry. But do you think - do see that happening? Is there germ of that change?
ROTTMAN: It's hard to tell because right now I think things are quite up in the air. It feels a little bit like we're in the fog of war. But it does feel like the fog of war a little bit. And I think there's a lot of fear in some communities that it is going backfire, and that's why we're witnessing appeals for unity and appeals to not castigate anyone and to not confuse communities for certain individuals.
MONTAGNE: Some of those appeals coming from President Francois Hollande earlier today. Sylvie, thank you very much for joining us.
ROTTMAN: My pleasure.
MONTAGNE: Sylvie Rottman is with French television channel France 24. And we are following events in France throughout the morning and will be throughout the day, so stay with us. You're listening to MORNING EDITION from NPR News, covering the latest events.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Once again, resetting the situation now in the area of Paris. We're tracking two stand offs today - one at a kosher market where at least one man has taken hostages. The other at an industrial building in a small town outside of Paris where two suspects in this week's Paris massacre have been confronting police. And that is what we're going to discuss first.
Reporter Lauren Frayer has been covering this story. And, Lauren, what are you learning right now?
LAUREN FRAYER, BYLINE: Well, gunshots and explosions have been heard at that building northeast of Paris where the suspects are believed to have been holed up for some eight hours now, really all day. Dusk is falling over Paris. And French TV is showing live video of smoke rising from that building where the suspects have - are believed to have been holed up all day.
You can see several figures in black clothes and ski masks on the roof of a nearby building. There's one man scaling the wall of the building. Now we assume those are security forces. But police are not releasing any information about what's going on right now there.
INSKEEP: And let's remember the situation. We have these two men. They stole a vehicle. They were then tracked to this building. There was some concern or fear that they may or may not have had a hostage in there. And that may have caused authorities to move very carefully. And now what we have is signs of activity, which we're trying to interpret from a distance. Is that correct?
FRAYER: That's right. The whole village is on lockdown. Journalists are being kept far away on the edge of the village. Residents are being told to stay indoors. We're hearing parents of children calling into television - French television saying their children are trapped in a local high school. There are believed to be 900 people in that high school. They're safe. Children are being kept in the classrooms. Parents are being told not to come up and pick their children, to wait for word from authorities. And the situation is changing minute by minute in this village northeast of Paris.
INSKEEP: That's quite a few hours in that school since people went to school early on in the morning thinking it was an ordinary day. And here they are eight hours later and still inside that building and now awaiting the results of whatever may be happening inside that warehouse.
FRAYER: That's right. The principal of the school has been speaking to French media, telling parents not to be alarmed. There's a chance that they might bring in buses to transport those children to a safe area. But for now, they're safe in the school. The whole village has been on lock down. As you can imagine, people are terrified. We're just seeing live pictures now of more explosions, some debris flying up into the air over this building, some gray and white smoke and now flashes of light. It's unclear whether those are controlled explosions, whether there's a gunfight going on. It's unclear. But these are the pictures I'm watching live right now.
INSKEEP: OK, that's NPR's - that's reporter Lauren Frayer, who is in Paris. And remarkably, that is just one of the events in Paris that require our urgent attention this morning.
We're going to turn to NPR's Eleanor Beardsley, who is tracking the other one, this one in the eastern part of Paris itself at a kosher market where a hostage situation has been unfolding all morning. Eleanor, what is happening now?
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: Yeah, Steve, that's right. I'm at the second hostage drama situation. It's a big boulevard. The police have cordoned it off. There's dozens of riot trucks here, riot police, police tape. And there's a hostage situation in that market right now. All of the residents have come out. Dusk is falling. It's the end of the day. Kids are coming out of school. Parents are out. The whole neighborhood is out. The day has been punctuated by sirens, ambulances going back and forth. And it's just incredible that this is happening in the center of Paris.
INSKEEP: What do you know about the - I guess we should say at least one gunman, it's not known if there are more - inside that market?
BEARDSLEY: Well, media reports are saying that this is the same gunman who shot the police officer in the south of Paris yesterday and that this man has links to the two brothers who were holed up in the town - in village in the north of France and that they knew each other from the jihadist ring in 2008 in Paris.
And there are reports that the two hostage situations are connected because the hostage taker here is threatening that if the police storm his friends in the north, he will kill the hostages here. And he's reportedly French media is saying holding five hostages.
INSKEEP: Now this is remarkable because we had the question still not fully answered as to whether there was a hostage in the small town in the north. You're telling us that effectively there is a hostage covering that situation because the two suspects have this ally who has grabbed people in this kosher market.
BEARDSLEY: Absolutely, and he's playing them off. And I can - you can only imagine what's going on back - the police are stretched thin. They've got riot police here and in the north.
I just heard a huge explosion, Steve - a bang. I don't know what it was. I'm not going to get excited. But everyone's on edge. I've been talking to people all day. And there's a - the feeling right now in Paris that anything - a second explosion, a bang, people are starting to run, heard. There's shooting. I think it's shooting, Steve. Staying here, Steve.
INSKEEP: Eleanor, make sure...
BEARDSLEY: I'm not going to go...
INSKEEP: Make sure you're undercover, Eleanor.
BEARDSLEY: I'm - yes. People - it's hard to tell what's going on. But there's this feeling -people were out earlier angry. They said this is our town. What is going on? Who are these - I talked to Jews. I talked to Muslims. This is a very mixed neighborhood - black, white. People were angry and...
INSKEEP: Eleanor, as best you can, we did not - the explosions you heard did not quite carry on the phone line. Of course there are many kinds of loud noises you can hear in an urban area. Can you describe at all the sounds you heard?
BEARDSLEY: Right. Well, they were like - boom, boom. They sounded like the shell fire that I've heard in the Ukraine, actually. They were just boom. They were something that sounded like - not sporadic - but boom. So I don't know. And people started to run. But now it's calm. There's no telling what it was.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Eleanor, now you're in a safe place. We're presuming you're taking care of yourself. But what...
BEARDSLEY: Well, I'm surrounded - I'm sitting on a bench, yeah. And there's people out.
INSKEEP: It's Paris.
MONTAGNE: So, yeah - well, sort of.
BEARDSLEY: Yeah. Exactly.
MONTAGNE: So why don't we use this time then, for a moment, as much as there's...
BEARDSLEY: OK.
MONTAGNE: ...All this activity going on to back up a little bit and remind people.
BEARDSLEY: I heard another one. Go ahead.
INSKEEP: Keep describing.
MONTAGNE: No, it's fine. If there's more that you can tell us, tell us.
BEARDSLEY: There's sirens, just heard another one so that was like five times. Now sirens. Go ahead.
MONTAGNE: Yeah, well, and what does that indicate, do you think? Sirens of police cars?
BEARDSLEY: I don't know. They're coming out of the blocked off - well, the police...
MONTAGNE: Emergency vehicles?
BEARDSLEY: ...Police emergency vehicle. And it's coming out of the blocked-off block. So there's no telling what's going on there. People aren't allowed to go in. The police have cordoned off.
MONTAGNE: OK, so the police...
BEARDSLEY: Yeah.
MONTAGNE: Why don't you take us back a little bit again? People are waking up to this story. Some will - this is so dramatic. But why don't you back us up and give us a thumbnail of what exactly has transpired where you are today?
BEARDSLEY: OK, this - while everyone was following the village under siege in the north of France, all of a sudden we started getting reports of a shootout in the east of Paris. And we thought, this can't be. And then, yes - and then hostage takers. And then - it's apparently the gunmen. So what happened is that a gunman stormed a kosher store, a kosher supermarket here, and took hostages. And there was a shootout, and there were - and that was the second drama. And I was confirmed then by the Paris prosecutors that a hostage drama was unfolding here.
And it was almost too much to believe that these two situations were happening simultaneously. And then we heard that the two could very much be connected. And it seems that they would have to be connected. How could this happen two times? I mean, people are in a state of shock.
INSKEEP: Eleanor Beardsley, stay with us. Give us a shout if you learn more information...
BEARDSLEY: OK.
INSKEEP: ...From where you are because we're going to go back to reporter Lauren Frayer, who is monitoring the other unfolding situation today.
Lauren, you described smoke, people climbing up the sides of that building, people on rooftops when you last were talking with us just a few minutes ago. Can you describe what's been happening in the few minutes as we've been listening to the dramatic events in eastern Paris?
FRAYER: That's right. In the past few minutes, dusk has fallen over Paris. We're still seeing gray smoke rise from that factory building in a small village, green countryside area northeast of Paris. But right now, French TV has just turned to a view of that kosher supermarket. So I'm looking at live pictures of that supermarket where Eleanor is a few blocks away. And I'm seeing masses of security official swarming around that supermarket. And I'm also seeing what look like civilians being rushed out of that building. Now we can't confirm who those people are. But there is definitely activity right there at the supermarket, at the kosher supermarket where a gunman has been holding hostages.
INSKEEP: Describe that - describe very briefly, Lauren, that what you say civilians being rushed out. You mean it appears that there are armed men who look like authorities bringing out other people who do not appear to be armed in the same way?
FRAYER: Yes. There are dozens of ambulances and police vans, security forces in riot gear. And literally 15 seconds ago, there were people in civilian clothes surrounded by what looked like security forces running across the street out of that building. And I see one ambulance moving now. I can't confirm who those people are, if they were the hostages inside that have come out. But there's certainly major activity going on there after several hours of a standoff.
MONTAGNE: Well, Lauren, just briefly we just have seconds left here. But from what you've described and what we just heard from Eleanor, it sounds like there's a coordinated effort here on the part of French security forces to move in at the same time in both of these situations.
FRAYER: It appears to be so. I mean, the police and military have managed a very delicate balancing act here - two major security operations, two standoffs, possibly civilian lives in danger in two different places. And it does look like there's activity in both of those places simultaneously...
INSKEEP: And we will...
FRAYER: ...In the past 30 seconds.
INSKEEP: And we will continue following that throughout this hour on MORNING EDITION. We're going to go away for a moment or two to your local station. But our reporters remain on the scene. And we're going to continue to bring you the latest. Again, we have signs of smoke, explosions and other sounds and signs of activity at both locations in Paris. It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
We are going to break away now for a few moments from those fast-moving events in the Paris area to get a wider view from one of France's leading journalist. Sylvie Kauffmann is editorial director of the publication Le Monde. And, as you've heard, Sylvie - she's joining us right now - as you've heard, the two hostage situations that are changing rapidly, coming to some sort of - it sounds like - a head here. Let me begin with you. Even though we're in the middle of an ongoing drama, what is the mood there in Paris today with all this happening?
SYLVIE KAUFFMANN: Well, as you can imagine, it's very tense. It's a very tense day in Paris, you know, in that area of Paris. In Porte de Vincennes the police have now stormed the place where hostages were being held. It's a very populated area. Schools - there are schools around. Kids are kept in the schools after class, you know, because the area is sealed off. So parents are worried, children are scared. It's - traffic has stopped. I mean, obviously, it's - there's quite a lot of tension. It's - you know, it's difficult.
MONTAGNE: I expect everyone around you, I mean, even - it would be in your own office - is, at the moment, glued to the television.
KAUFFMANN: Yes. People are glued on TV or radios. People are listening to radios in offices everywhere or are on their computer screens or - yes, people are very - you know, I mean, we've been living with this drama for the past - I don't know - three days now. And it's - you know, it's the only thing people are talking about in France at the moment and I would say in most of Europe because we hear a lot of - we hear a lot of support and questions and iterations around Europe. I mean, everybody feels very, very concerned about this. The other thing which we are looking at is on Sunday - the day after tomorrow - we have a big rally planned in Paris and in several other cities in France. You know, it's another rally of solidarity, and so people are very much preparing this and also political organizations and...
MONTAGNE: Right. Well, I wonder - so many people came out after the attack on Charles Hebdo, the magazine - the satirical magazine - people poured out into the streets. It was a stunning, stunning sight. Do you think the events of not just Wednesday, but today and even yesterday when a policewoman was killed - and now that appears to be linked to these events - do think that people will come out again?
KAUFFMANN: I think so, yes. I think so. You know, last night people did come out again. No, I don't think there's fear to that degree - to that level. I think the mood is more - I mean, today it's tense. People are around these areas where people are - where the police are in action. Of course people are scared, especially those who are close to those places because there is action going on, and the attackers are there. Actually, I understand that the two main attackers have been killed.
But - although, I think people are still very much mobilized about what has been going on and they want to react, and they want to show that France, as a nation, is not going to be cowed and to back down. I think people want to show and to come out in trains on Sunday.
MONTAGNE: Thank you very much for joining us.
KAUFFMANN: You're welcome.
MONTAGNE: Sylvie Kauffmann is editorial director of Le Monde.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
We're going to get an update now on one of the two unfolding situations in France. In Paris, there is a standoff at a kosher grocery store. This involves at least one gunman who is holding hostages. Andrew Higgins, of The New York Times, is on the scene. Good morning.
ANDREW HIGGINS: Good morning.
MONTAGNE: Tell us where you are and what you're seeing.
HIGGINS: Well, of the actual hostage - not seeing very much. I'm on the Avenue du Paris which is one of the main streets out of Paris to the east, which runs right by this kosher market where a gunman is holding at least five people hostage. Police have sealed off the streets towards the market, so you can't actually see it and that's all you can basically do is listen to the sirens.
MONTAGNE: Lots of police though, I gather, 'cause I too am seeing on television the images of this and, of course, we're reading about it.
HIGGINS: Yeah, there are scores of police down here and a lot of them deployed are just blocking off the entry to the main - the place where the kosher market is. And we don't know how many police are actually in the building or around the building, presumably on the roof, and anti-terrorist forces have been called in. Two different units are down there.
MONTAGNE: And what have you found out about the gunman or anyone who might be with him?
HIGGINS: Well, he's been identified as Amedy Coulibaly, who's 32 years old, and knows the two main suspects of the massacre on Wednesday at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. And he seems to belong to the same group of sort of young jihadists that used to gather in northern Paris about a decade ago and recruited people to go to Iraq. And he's a good friend of Cherif, who is also 32 years old. He's the younger brother of the two who are now in their own hostage-taking situation in the north of Paris near Charles de Gaulle airport.
MONTAGNE: And this idea that this gunman is linked to the two suspects in the Charlie Hebdo attacks - where is that coming from?
HIGGINS: Well, police are just saying that he was part of the group that used to gather in the 19th arrondissement of Paris about a decade ago. And that's when Cherif Kouachi, the younger brother, was arrested and sent to jail for terrorist-related crimes, namely sending people to Iraq to fight there. And this group at the time seemed this sort of keystone terrorists and they weren't taken terribly seriously. And we see the consequences of that now because not only the Kouachi brothers, but this other guy who seems to belong to the gang have now taken a number of people hostage in Paris.
MONTAGNE: And what do you know about those hostages? I know you said a moment ago that you couldn't see them, but has there been any sort of sense of them being harmed?
HIGGINS: Well, it's confusing on that point. The police officials said two people had been killed and there were certainly a few - a lot of gunfire sort of around noon. But then the Interior Ministry denied that, saying no one had been killed, so I'm not actually sure what the death toll is or even if there is a death toll.
MONTAGNE: Right, but all, of course, fast-moving and, you know, fog of, probably, events at the moment, but - right?
HIGGINS: Certainly. I mean, it's the fog of (laughter) fog of war - a spastic war at the moment - but I imagine at some point the police will move in if negotiations don't yield any results.
MONTAGNE: Andrew, thank you very much.
HIGGINS: You're welcome.
MONTAGNE: Andrew Higgins, of The New York Times, speaking to us from Paris.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
It's the end of a stunning day in Paris. Two standoffs involving armed men began and apparently have just ended. One involved two suspects in this week's massacre at a Paris magazine. Their lives ended in warehouse outside the city. The other situation involved at least one man who'd been associated with the suspects in the past. He was believed to be the gunman who took control of a kosher market and held several hostages until this hour when police moved in. Lauren Frayer is going to join us right now to talk more about this. She is in Paris. And, Lauren, can we start there at the warehouse with the two men who are suspects in the massacre at Charles Hebdo?
LAUREN FRAYER, BYLINE: That's right, the two men, they're brothers - both in their early 30s, both French citizens - were holed up in that factory for almost eight hours all day. This whole standoff there began early this morning, about 830, when they stole a local woman's car. She recognized them immediately - their pictures have been plastered all over French media for the past two days - and called police immediately. She saw them unmasked. She says she saw them armed with heavy weapons. And then they took up positions at this building. It's a printing factory on the outskirts of this village. And I have to say, it's a really bucolic area - about 25 miles outside of Paris. It's right next to Charles de Gaulle Airport.It's the green farm fields that you see when you land at that airport. So the juxtaposition of this major security operation with hundreds of police and hundreds of French soldiers and helicopters there, it was just shocking for all of us watching, but certainly for the villagers there as well. All day residents were calling into French TV describing how they were under lockdown in their homes terrified. One man said his elderly neighbor came and joined him because she was so frightened. A nearby school was under lockdown. Some 900 people - students and teachers - were held in that school all day, safe. But parents were told don't even try to come pick up your children, wait for word from authorities. So it was a terrifying situation for so many people in that village and across France. And we're hearing that it has come to an end.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Now let's just go through that if we can. Can you describe what you know about how this standoff did end?
FRAYER: So France has been glued to their televisions for the past day. And you see a split screen with two standoffs, one in Paris and one in this village. And it's really been a static situation, as I said, for eight hours, until about half an hour ago when we heard explosions and gunshots. And just as sort of darkness was falling over the village, clouds of white and gray smoke were emerging from above that little factory building where the suspects were believed to be holed up. You could watch black clad - what we now know to be security officials - scaling the walls of that building in black ski masks and explosions, flashes of light. A really dramatic conclusion.And we weren't sure yet what the conclusion would be, and police have just confirmed that those two suspects inside have been killed. French media adding a little bit more detail saying they actually came out fighting, firing on the security officials and they were killed. Also all day, we've been trying to confirm whether or not they had a hostage. The interior ministry denied up until now that those two suspects had a hostage. Now we're hearing from police that there was a hostage and that hostage has been freed, though, we don't know the person's identity.
MONTAGNE: That gets us to the other standoff of the morning, and that was at the kosher market where they clearly. At least one attacker clearly did have hostages, that was confirmed, not sure how many. That - in this coordinate security assault - that market was also taken back. And that attacker - tell us what happened to him that you know and what you understand happened to the hostages.
FRAYER: Right. That's the other side of the split screen. And once again, it was a static situation for hours and then a dramatic conclusion. We saw - there have been - there's been a wide cordon around that kosher supermarket of ambulances, security officials, SWAT teams. All of that side of Paris has been shut down for hours. And then, just moments ago, we heard explosions and gunfire, and we saw security officials surrounding a few people in civilian dress.And again, those are the security officials dressed in all black in ski masks and riot gear escorting, hurrying out of the building with some civilians. And one security official I saw actually had what we now know to be one of the hostages swung over his shoulder like in a firemen's hold, rushing out of the building, holding this person over his shoulders and helping them flee from the situation. And police have confirmed also there that the hostages have been freed.
MONTAGNE: And the attackers all dead. Steve?
INSKEEP: The attacker or attackers believed to be dead in that situation or what is known?
FRAYER: That's what we're hearing from French media. Now, we haven't not gotten an official word from the interior ministry, but all of this has been taking place while French president Francois Hollande and his cabinet were in crisis meeting - yet another crisis meeting - today. We could possibly have some official word from them as they emerge. And, you know, Parisians are certainly hoping to breathe a sigh of relief and hear officially that this is indeed over after two and a half days of attacks...
INSKEEP: Two things quickly to follow up on. First question would be why now? Why would the authorities move now? Perhaps one clue in what you said - you said there were some indications that the attackers outside Paris came out fighting. That may be part of the answer. We may learn that that is part of the answer as to why the authorities assaulted both locations now, I suppose.
FRAYER: That's right. And we don't know who initiated this standoff that has dramatically reached in a conclusion in both of these situations. We don't know whether police said enough is enough, we're going in, or whether those suspects came out fighting.
INSKEEP: And in another instance, if I can, Lauren Frayer, we heard many reports of other - a metro station closed, other signs of emergencies around Paris. Have all of those come to nothing? Is everything calm at this point as far as you know?
FRAYER: So far, as we know. This has been such a tense situation that police have just not been taking any chances. One of the metro stops close to where I'm sitting right near the Eiffel Tower was a evacuated - imagine, this is a really busy tourist hub - evacuated. We have not heard of any suspicious packages or any reason for that. But police were taking every threat seriously, you know. As you can imagine we have these ongoing security...
INSKEEP: Lauren.
FRAYER: ...Operation. Go ahead.
INSKEEP: Lauren, I got to stop you there, but thank you for your extraordinary work throughout this morning. That's reporter Lauren Frayer in Paris today where two different hostage situations appear to have ended, one inside and outside Paris. You can stay tuned to NPR News at npr.org and All Things Considered this afternoon for the latest reliable information. It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.
MONTAGNE: And I'm Renee Montagne.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The new Congress took their seats this week and immediately picked up a controversy. The Republican-controlled House voted to approve the Keystone XL pipeline. The Senate is considering similar legislation. The White House says President Obama would veto the pipeline. Now, there'd been talk that the new Congress might be less contentious, that there might be more cooperation between the new Republican majority in the Senate and the enlarged Republican majority in the House. But plenty of other rivalries are still strong. Joining us to chat about the old atmosphere in the new Congress is NPR senior editor and correspondent Ron Elving. Ron, thanks for being with us.
RON ELVING, BYLINE: Good to be with you, Scott.
SIMON: So who were these people saying that this new Congress might be different?
ELVING: Leaders of the new Congress by and large - things are different in the new session and from the Republican perspective they are clearly better. The Republicans have promised to show that they can govern. And that means to them that they will pass a bill in the House and at least bring it to a vote in the Senate, if not pass it there as well.
SIMON: The pipeline controversy's been around for years. Battle lines seem to have hardened over the years. How might that have been different in a new Congress that might have been less partisan?
ELVING: When you have the House already voting for it multiple times and you've got 60 cosponsors in the Senate, you're going to feel as though you've got it. So the Keystone sponsors had hoped that they might get the White House to go along or at least to negotiate with them on this. The president had never said definitively where he stood on the project on the merits. So they thought maybe there was a deal in there somewhere.
SIMON: But instead President Obama said he was going to veto it.
ELVING: Exactly, so the White House had taken the view that Congress had no business granting any cross-border pipeline permits. So it becomes a question not only of energy and environment and jobs, but also of jurisdiction and separation of powers.
SIMON: Ron, what kind of message do you read into - what amounts to - a voting rebellion against Speaker Boehner - barely reelected leader of his own party?
ELVING: It is embarrassing for him. More votes were cast against him within his own party than were cast against any speaker since the Civil War. So that does not make him any less the speaker, you understand, but it does remind him that he has a hard core within his own ranks that's openly rebellious and quite capable of causing him problems down the road. So that means he doesn't have as much room to maneuver as he would like in dealing with the Democrats, or with the White House, and he always has to watch his back.
SIMON: What are some of the flash points you see coming up immediately?
ELVING: First, we have the nomination of Loretta Lynch to be the attorney general replacing Eric Holder. She's been confirmed as a U.S. attorney by the Senate with not one dissenting vote. But the Republicans now want to have new confirmation hearings for her because they want to talk about all the other issues that are before the Justice Department, including immigration and Guantanamo, the prison, and just a number of things that have been hanging fire since the Bush administration and throughout the Obama administration.
SIMON: Do the Republicans see a chance to overturn the president's executive action on immigration?
ELVING: They tried to create one. When they funded the entire federal government through September they left out one department, the Department of Homeland Security, which includes custom and immigration service. And the idea there is they would return with specific language that would overturn the president's immigration order that deferred the deportation orders for millions, potentially, of people who are in the country illegally. So they hope to come back and do that before the Department of Homeland Security runs out of money, which would be February 27.
SIMON: And is there an opportunity for them to do that in the spending bill for the Department of Homeland Security?
ELVING: There's disagreement about that in particular. There's an underlying law called an authorization that would need to be changed. Some people think that that can't be done at the same time you change the appropriation and, you know, the whole business gets complicated because customs and immigration is largely funded by fees that it collects. So it's not clear they really depend on Congress to appropriate this money in the usual way. And then, of course, if you threaten to shut down the Department of Homeland Security, people are going to wonder about airport security and lots of other things that we're especially anxious about right now after this past week in Paris.
SIMON: NPR's Ron Elving, thanks very much.
ELVING: Thank you, Scott.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The International Consumer Electronics Show came to close yesterday in Las Vegas. The show is a show, meant to be a happy time - part business, part performance, lots of partying. And it's a time to put on a good show, even if you're not certain about the future of your company. The CEO of Intel, the chipmaker, is in exactly that awkward position. NPR's Aarti Shahani takes a look at why.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "RADIOACTIVE")
IMAGINE DRAGONS: (Singing) Welcome to the new age, to the new age.
AARTI SHAHANI, BYLINE: It's show time. Only at this week-long gadget fest the musicians aren't the rage, the engineers are.
(APPLAUSE)
(SOUNDBITE OF EXPLOSION)
(SOUNDBITE OF EXPLOSION)
SHAHANI: The opening night headliner is the CEO of Intel Corporation.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: So ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming back to the...
SHAHANI: A man named Brian Krzanich. Tens of thousands of people expect to be dazzled and Krzanich steps up to dazzle us with this.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BRIAN KRZANICH: Nixie, the first wearable camera that can fly.
SHAHANI: Meet Nixie, the must-have drone whose legs can fold around your wrist like a watchband. And when you want that selfie from the sky, unclasp it so it can hover around you and shoot.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
KRZANICH: Now, those of you in the audience, get your cameras ready because we're about to witness history here.
SHAHANI: We watched Nixie take the first-ever flying photo on the stage of this electronics show. And it's made possible by an Intel chip.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: OK, let her go.
SHAHANI: For an hour Krzanich uses whiz-bangy technology to make a case - just like Google is the software platform for developers around the world, Intel - the chipmaker - is the hardware platform. From drones to refrigerators to bracelets, if it computes, if it's smart, if it needs to communicate, it should be done with Intel inside. At least, that's the hope.
MICHAEL MALONE: It's a hard slog and it can look like your divorced uncle going out dancing on a Friday night.
SHAHANI: Michael Malone is author of the book "The Intel Trinity."
MALONE: This is a 50-year-old company, or a 45-year-old company, trying to look young again.
SHAHANI: Intel fell behind the smartphone revolution. It's now betting on the wearable device movement, like the drone watch, even though it might flop. And according to research sponsored by Intel, customers are not sold, but Malone says Intel has to show the world that it's trying.
MALONE: And they're not stodgy old Intel. You know, they're making connections with a lot of interesting folks that are doing interesting things.
KRZANICH: The fashion industry works very different than the classic tech industry.
SHAHANI: That's the CEO, Brian Krzanich, talking to me off stage about the companies he's working with in this wearable era.
KRZANICH: They're used to changing product right up until the last moment as fashion and what's desirable shifts, and that's something we've had to adapt to.
SHAHANI: Brands like Oakley sunglasses and Fossil watches are really different from the old PC makers and from each other. Even if Intel could figure out a button-sized superchip to serve every partner's needs, they've still got to get the price right. Back in the PC era, Intel sold chips for as much as a thousand dollars and had nice margins. But when I roam this convention floor and ask device-makers what they'd pay for a quality chip, I get single-digit answers.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #3: Under a dollar.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #4: If it's dollar, two dollars.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #5: A couple dollars, you know, $5-$6 for a good chip on that.
SHAHANI: Intel chips, which are more than good, might be overkill. And so, as CEO Krzanich walks past poker tables to lead Intel demos, he himself is making a gamble. Aarti Shahani, NPR News, Las Vegas.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Peter Carey's new novel opens as the worm turns. In this case, an Internet worm turns the locks on the cells of Australian prisons from Alice Springs to Woomera. Because those computer systems were designed by an American company, the worm worms its way, if you please, into thousands of U.S. prisons, too, from dusty towns in Texas to black site prisons run by Americans in dusty towns of Afghanistan. Security monitors flash with a message, which we will ask the author to read.
PETER CAREY: (Reading) The corporation is under our control. The angel declares you free.
SIMON: Peter Carey has won the Booker Prize twice for the novels "Oscar And Lucinda" and "The True History Of The Kelly Gang." His new novel is called "Amnesia." And Peter Carey joins us from our studios in New York. Thanks so much for being with us.
CAREY: Well, thank you, Scott.
SIMON: And who is this angel, Gabrielle or Gaby?
CAREY: She's a mere child from my perspective, but she's probably about 30. She's a political activist, she's a hacker. She is at war with corporations in the state in all sorts of way. She happens to also be the child of a '60s-era sort of Social Democrat idealist activists. And a lot about this story is just about generational disappointment in one's - the performance of one's elders or her elders.
SIMON: And is any resemblance to Julian Assange coincidental?
CAREY: Julian Assange really was the reason I started writing the book. But I didn't want to write about Assange. And because I am from Australia, I felt I knew his accident. I felt I knew a lot about his history. I read a little bit about his mother, who'd clearly been a supporter of the 1975 Whitlam government, which was later deposed by the CIA. So I had all sorts of feelings about somebody like that.
SIMON: You have a character named Felix Moore - if I might call him an old rummy of a reporter who's enlisted to try and tell Gaby's story - the angel's story. At one point, when Felix is writing, he resorts to using a typewriter.
CAREY: Well, if you use typewriter, you really can't be hacked. And so that's about as offline as you can possibly get. Felix is back using the technology that he started with. And Gaby's friends drive an old model truck that doesn't have an onboard computer because we know an outsider can take control of a motor car and crash it and accelerate it and turn it over if they want to.
SIMON: Do you think it's possible that younger people have a different understanding or maybe even lack of understanding of this hazard or a different idea of privacy?
CAREY: Well, it's without doubt that a lot of younger people are really, you know, happy to carelessly display all the details of their private lives on Facebook and live in this sort of naked, vulnerable - the naked playground. I don't know what you call it, but they're starting to learn that this is not a good idea, so I don't know what's happening in the general world. Certainly, Facebook's doing very well. I don't know what their shares are today, but I'm sure they continue to prosper.
SIMON: Yeah. I have to ask you, Mr. Carey, what reaction you might have to the assassination of people in Paris this week who worked for a satirical magazine?
CAREY: Well, what can one say? I was just as sickened, afraid, really aware of the perilous nature of the conflicts in the modern world in big multinational capitals. What will this trigger from right? What will it trigger from the fanatical religious people? I don't know. It's just terrifying. The first time I felt like this was when the fatwa arrived in the world and Salman Rushdie was sentenced to death for what he could reasonably write in our society. You know, I thought at the time we've been invaded. We were at war with these people and what can we do about it? So this is awful.
SIMON: Do writers, anybody who makes their living through self-expression, have a particular moral obligation to speak out, be counted now?
CAREY: Oh, I think absolutely. I mean, I - yesterday, I signed a letter from Penn, together with, you know, I'm sure every other writer who is asked to do so. And I think it is absolutely important. What have I done apart from that? Not a thing. I'm talking to you today, and that's it.
SIMON: When you sit down to write a novel - when you sat down - well, perhaps maybe stand up.
(LAUGHTER)
SIMON: When you were writing "Amnesia," were you trying to balance current events in the world with something that people will be reading in five years?
CAREY: Oh, a hundred, I think.
SIMON: Two-hundred, why not?
CAREY: Well, you know, it is what we are trying to and probably failing continually, but we are really trying to play the big game. You know, and if you're trying to do that, then you are trying to do something that will last. And you're trying to every second make something that's true and beautiful that never existed on the earth before. I want to make you laugh lot. I think the book's probably quite funny. I'm trying to make characters, I'm trying to make people and I'm trying to make people that you love or hate and maybe this is a funny book.
SIMON: Yeah. Peter Carey - his new novel "Amnesia." Thanks so much for being with us.
CAREY: Thank you, Scott.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The attacks in Paris this week raised a range of questions for news organizations, in a time when images stream across the world unedited, unverified, but instantaneously. And of course, the cartoonists and editors at Charlie Hebdo were apparently killed because of the images they ran in their magazine. Mark Memmott is NPR's standards and practices editor. Normally, we talk to him about words. This week we also want to talk to him about images and the decisions that are made.
Mark, thanks for being back with us.
MARK MEMMOTT, BYLINE: You're welcome.
SIMON: At week's end, there were a number of editorial voices who were calling on news organizations to run copies of the cartoons that were in Charlie Hebdo. Reporters Without Borders - I'll read a quote from Jeffrey Goldberg, who said on The Atlantic website.
(Reading) To publish the cartoons now is a necessary, but only moderately brave act.
What has NPR done?
MEMMOTT: I understand their position. We have not published the most graphic cartoons. We have not published any of the images of the prophet Muhammad, for instance. We just, in the end didn't feel we could do justice to what Charlie Hebdo has done over the years and give people a true picture of the kinds of cartoons it had put out. If we didn't put out a lot, that would really bust our standards, not just bend our standards, but bust them.
SIMON: Is this self-censorship?
MEMMOTT: No. We edit - or, we censor, if you want to use that word - all the time. There are images, videos, sounds that we just don't think people want to hear, that will offend them, that will shock them. And in this case, many of the editorials, many of the cartoons that Charlie Hebdo has done over the years would do just that. And we feel we can stand up for their right to publish them. We believe in their right to publish them. We don't necessarily, though, have to republish them ourselves.
SIMON: Do news organization sometimes have to shock or offend to tell a story?
MEMMOTT: Yes. Yes, there are times. There are times we've put words on the air that we really shouldn't because it was imperative. There've been instances where expletives got on because it was during war and a soldier accidentally slipped, things like that. But in this case, do the people who are shocked and horrified by what happened in Paris need to also be shocked and horrified - as many might - by the cartoons that Charlie Hebdo ran over the years? Probably not. I think you can hold both opinions. You can be offended by what they did and be horrified by what the killers did.
SIMON: There are ways to see the cartoons.
MEMMOTT: There are many ways to see the cartoons. We're not denying anybody anything. They're all over the Web if you want to find them.
SIMON: This is less a decision motivated by concerns about safety than an editorial judgment.
MEMMOTT: Yes. No news organization could seriously say that it doesn't think about the safety of its journalists, when these cartoons might've been the cause for the firebombing of Charlie Hebdo's offices a few years back and the murder of its staff this week. But, we're journalists. We're willing to take risks. We know that sometimes we'll have to. Editorially, we just didn't think that we could post enough of the images to give you a sense of what the magazine was really like. If you only put a few, it might look like it was just little bit edgier than MAD magazine, and that's just not the case.
SIMON: And finally, is this or any standards and practices policy the last word?
MEMMOTT: No. We revisit these things all the time. There may come a moment when we feel we need to show some of these images. I don't know when that will be, but we talk about it all the time.
SIMON: NPR's standards and practices editor, Mark Memmott. You can reach him, by the way, at wordmatters@npr.org.
Thank you, Mark.
MEMMOTT: You're welcome.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon. F. Scott Fitzgerald once famously said that there are no second acts in American lives. But Stewart O'Nan has written a new novel about the last act of an American artist. It's F. Scott Fitzgerald in Hollywood. The glow of "The Great Gatsby" has dimmed and he's trying to punch up scripts - most of which will never be produced - with a few lines of dialogue for $200 a day to support his daughter and the lost love of his life, Zelda Fitzgerald, as she withers away at a North Carolina sanitarium, while F. Scott himself holes up at the Garden of Allah apartments, which is perhaps aptly situated on Sunset Boulevard.
"West Of Sunset" is Stewart O'Nan's new novel. And Stewart O'Nan who's written 14 other novels including the best-selling "Faithful," joins us now from member station WESA in Pittsburgh. Thanks for so much for being with us.
STEWART O'NAN: Of course.
SIMON: This is a period of F. Scott Fitzgerald's life that a lot of good biographers tend to fly over very quickly. You know, just - and then he drank himself to death.
What made you decide to put a novel in it?
O'NAN: Because of those gaps. Because I thought of him being out there at MGM. On the same hallway is Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker, Aldous Huxley and James M. Cain. And I thought, now, as a writer I'd love to sit down with them and hear what they're saying to each other. But the biographies don't have any scenes of them. They just have these, you know, flat statements that - there they were on the same hallway.
SIMON: The novel opens in 1937. And help us understand where life finds him. It doesn't open in Hollywood.
O'NAN: It opens in Tryon, North Carolina. He's there to be closer to Zelda, who's in the asylum at Highland Hospital. And there he's writing short stories and just eking out a living. And he's living at the Grove Park Inn, which he can't even afford there. And he's borrowed money from his agent, Harold Ober, and he's deeply in debt to Ober. But he sees a chance to get out of debt by going to Hollywood and he seizes it.
SIMON: I did not know until reading this book that Fitzgerald had ever worked on the script of "Gone With The Wind."
O'NAN: Yeah, that surprised me when I was going through the biographies. He had actually spent two weeks working with David O. Selznick. And he hired nine different writers to work on it, one of whom was Scott. And with each successive writer he would pull these all-nighters, taking amphetamines. And he would have the writers come in and spend the entire night with him going over these scenes over and over and over again. Just a crazy, crazy scene.
SIMON: Yeah. You suggest in the book that Scott Fitzgerald saw a kind of Scott and Zelda in Rhett and Scarlett.
O'NAN: It's said in the biographies that I've read, or in the letters that I've read, that he actually didn't hate the novel. I think at first because the novel had been such a success - it won the Pulitzer and also it was, you know, paid a fortune for - that he resented it. But as he read the novel, he thought, you know, this is compelling stuff. And I think the reason he felt it compelling is that he saw himself in Rhett as dashing and sometimes little a hardhearted, while Scarlett of course is demanding and flighty.
SIMON: Midway through the novel, you begin to cringe every time F. Scott Fitzgerald meets someone new and the second thing they always say is, I think "Gatsby" is the greatest novel.
O'NAN: (Laughter).
SIMON: It suggests that "Gatsby's" signature success had become a kind of burden to him doing anything else. Is that how it began to feel, do you think?
O'NAN: Oh, certainly. I think - and the reason that he's such a compelling character is his great, great fortune early on with "This Side Of Paradise." He became immediately one of the most recognizable American writers. And that - those high times are gone, the celebrity is gone, his wife is gone. I mean, everything that, you know, he had worked for has been lost. And he doesn't quite understand why this is so. And I think that led to some of the drinking and the self-destructive behavior.
SIMON: Well, and that raises a question that a lot of biographers and now you as a novelist try to deal with it - did F. Scott Fitzgerald drink because he was depressed? Or after a while, was he depressed because he drank so much?
O'NAN: I'm not sure. I mean, he was such a high-functioning alcoholic. I believe he was an alcoholic at the time that he was even writing "Gatsby." But it didn't get sort of out of control until he was struggling with "Tender Is The Night," which took him nine years to write. And then when it finally came out, was a failure there. And after that he probably drank because he was depressed. But, yeah I mean, everything was golden for him early on. And then things started going against him. I think there's a piling-on effect there after a while and it's a spiral there. And by the time that we meet him in '37, he's kind of at the bottom of the spiral. But I think he fights back. I think when he gets to Hollywood he finds himself again. He finds his love of writing. He finds his love of the world. And he's working on films where - people say it was a failure but, Vivien Leigh wins the Oscar using at least some of his dialogue for "Gone With The Wind." I mean, that's not too bad.
SIMON: You admire him so much at this point in his life for getting up at 5 in the morning to work on what was going to be "The Last Tycoon." Do you think if he'd been able to finish the book, how do you think that might've affected his reputation, this man who said there are no second acts?
O'NAN: It's impossible to say because the reviews of "The Last Tycoon" that came out posthumously were kind of trying to make up for how he'd been treated the last 15 years of his life. So they were nicer than they would have been, I think. It's hard to say. It's just amazing to me that, you know, in death he found this huge, huge fame that completely eluded him in life.
SIMON: Stewart O'Nan. His new novel, "West Of Sunset."
Thanks so much for being with us.
O'NAN: Thank you, Scott.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Can't they take a joke? That question came up after the Danish cartoon controversy about 10 years ago and now again after the massacres in Paris. The suspected killers reflect just a minority of extreme religious fanatics but the question made NPR's Neda Ulaby wonder about the role of satire in the Muslim world.
NEDA ULABY, BYLINE: First let's establish that saying the Muslim world is like saying the Christian world, or Africa. We're talking 1.5 billion people all over the globe - different races, ethnicities, languages, who believe different things. That said, I asked a religion professor, Bruce Lawrence at Duke University, about Muslim traditions of satire.
BRUCE LAWRENCE: I've been studying the Muslim world for I guess now almost half a century. And one of my heroes has always been a ninth-century literary figure called al-Jahiz.
ULABY: In a golden era for Islamic music, art and science, al-Jahiz studied everything from zoology to literary theory. He wrote merciless social satires. He was also famously ugly.
LAWRENCE: He could satire himself as somebody who was very unattractive, and yet he could make fun of the rock stars of his generation in Baghdad, which was the capital city of the Muslim world in that time.
ULABY: And al-Jahiz remains, says Lawrence, a beloved figure in Islamic literature.
LAWRENCE: It was not because he recorded the glories of Islam, it was he poked fun at contemporaries, at his coreligionists, at anybody who seemed to him to have too great a sense of self-importance, whatever their station in life.
ULABY: Which feels relevant to a Sunni stand-up comedian working in Chicago today. (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
AZHAR USMAN: What's up with the Arabs these days? They don't say (speaking Arabic), they all say (speaking Arabic). This is not Arabic, by the way - this is Arabonics (ph).
(LAUGHTER)
ULABY: Azhar Usman, who comes from India, says his comedy heroes are Richard Pryor, George Carlin and a 13th-century Sufi saint named Mullah Nasreddin.[POST-BROADCAST CORRECTION: The audio of this story incorrectly states that Azhar Usman is from India. In fact, Usman's family is from India. He was born and raised in the U.S.]
USMAN: He's almost like an Andy Kaufman type of personality.
ULABY: Usman says there's a famous story about a time Mullah Nasreddin led Friday prayers. He asked the congregation, how many of you know what I'm going to say?
USMAN: Nobody raised their hand. So he said, well, what can I say to a bunch of people who have no idea what I'm going to say? (Laughter). And he leaves.
ULABY: The people coax him to come back.
USMAN: So they say, oh, no, no, please, please, please - we promise we'll be more cooperative.
ULABY: So Mullah Nasreddin asks again, how many of you know what I'm going to say? This time everybody raises their hands.
USMAN: And he says, well, what am I supposed to say to group of people that already know what I'm going to say? (Laughter). And he leaves. So finally they coax him back - oh, please don't leave, you know, we want to hear your wisdom - whatever. So he finally gets up a third time and says, OK, how many of you know what I'm going to say?
ULABY: Half the crowd raises their hands. The other half doesn't.
USMAN: So he says, well, the half that know what I'm going to say should tell the half that don't know what I'm going to say. (Laughter).
ULABY: Satirizing yourself in your own community is a tradition in Muslim literature and arts, says scholar Bruce Lawrence. So is mocking people in power.
LAWRENCE: Political satirists are among the boldest people in the Arab and the Muslim world.
ULABY: People like Bassem Youssef. He's known as the Egyptian Jon Stewart.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BASSEM YOUSSEF: (Speaking foreign language).
(LAUGHTER)
YOUSSEF: (Speaking foreign language).
(LAUGHTER)
ULABY: Youssef's satire took aim at politicians and the Muslim Brotherhood. His show lasted two years. Bruce Lawrence says there's also a strong tradition of political cartoonists in the Muslim world, like Syria's Ali Farzat. His hands were broken in retaliation for his cartoons mocking President Bashar al-Assad.
LAWRENCE: And then did a cartoon of himself in a hospital bed, showing that even with his hands bandaged he could still manage to say some things against the regime.
ULABY: Farzat was attacked for his politics, not religion. Lawrence says for devout Muslims, satirizing people is fine, but not religious figures seen as existing on a higher plane - God, Muhammad or anyone else who counts as a saint or prophet.
LAWRENCE: So you have 122,000 prophets.
ULABY: Including Adam, Moses and the Virgin Mary. Muslim comedian Azhar Usman says, sure, maintaining a bright line between what's holy and what's profane runs counter to a comedic credo that holds nothing sacred. I asked if it's also fundamentally oppositional to universal values that Westerners hold dear.
USMAN: I think that that is exactly right. I think that's the honest discourse that I wish we could have in the world.
ULABY: Usman says he greets offensive depictions of saints, prophets and God with forgiveness. And, he notes, if you harshly judge what counts as satire from a rigid cultural perspective, you've learned almost nothing from the Charlie Hebdo tragedy.
Neda Ulaby, NPR News.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Uzbekistan has been a key partner in getting supplies to U.S. forces in neighboring Afghanistan. It also has a dismal record of human rights violations. Now as the Afghan war winds down, human rights groups want Washington to take a tougher stand against Uzbekistan's abuses. NPR's Corey Flintoff reports from Moscow.
COREY FLINTOFF, BYLINE: Amnesty International has called Uzbekistan one of the world's most authoritarian states. Human Rights Watch issued a report last fall detailing what it says are severe human rights violations, especially for political prisoners. Steve Swerdlow is the organization's researcher for Central Asia.
STEVE SWERDLOW: Political prisoners in Uzbekistan are not only suffering torture, but also experiencing solitary confinement and a very cruel policy of extending their sentences for years and years and years on absurd farcical grounds.
FLINTOFF: Uzbekistan is ruled by 76-year-old Islam Karimov. He was the regional Communist Party boss before the collapse of the Soviet Union, and he's been the president for nearly 24 years. Swerdlow says Karimov has used a prison system to crush his opponents. Muhammad Bekjanov is a case in point. Bekjanov edited an opposition newspaper challenging the Karimov government on issues such as child labor and corruption. His family says government threats forced them to flee the country and move to Kiev, of the capital of Ukraine. Bekjanov continued to produce an opposition newspaper that was smuggled back into Uzbekistan until 1999, when he suddenly disappeared. His wife and daughter came home to find their apartment ransacked.
AYGUL BEKJAN: They just came and grabbed him and transported him to Uzbekistan. We didn't know what happened to him.
FLINTOFF: That's Bekjanov's daughter, Aygul Bekjan.
BEKJAN: Just a couple of months later, we learned he was tortured, he was beaten, he was going through all of these horrible, horrible, horrible things.
FLINTOFF: Bekjan and her family now live in Spokane, Washington. Only her mother has been allowed to travel to Uzbekistan and visit her husband in prison. Aygul Bekjan says her mother saw a man who looks much older than his 60 years.
BEKJAN: He contracted tuberculosis, liver disease. Of course, from torture he has broken bones, and his arm was broken in a few places and his leg was broken in a few places.
FLINTOFF: Both the U.S. State Department and the U.N. Human Rights Committee have reported that torture and abuse are common in Uzbek prisons. But for years the United States has provided aid to Karimov's government, largely to secure a critical root for transporting supplies to Afghanistan.
Nisha Biswal, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Central Asia, visited Uzbekistan last month. She says that for the first time the talks on human rights issues included local human rights groups, a development that she calls a breakthrough.
NISHA BISWAL: We absolutely have talked about the specific cases of individuals that Human Rights Watch and other organizations, as well as we, put in our human rights report to urge some sort of amnesty or clemency or something that would allow on humanitarian grounds for these individuals to be released.
FLINTOFF: But Biswal says Uzbekistan is still important to stability in Afghanistan, providing it with electricity and a vital rail link. U.S. troops are scheduled to withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of 2016. In the meantime, Biswal says that despite deep human rights concerns, it's better for the U.S. to remain engaged with Karimov.
BISWAL: It's a combination of the right balance of pressure, partnership and a certain amount of strategic patience in how change can take place.
FLINTOFF: Steve Swerdlow of Human Rights Watch agrees that Uzbekistan is important, but says, a country that's ruled by fear and human rights abuses will be an unstable ally in the future. Corey Flintoff, NPR News, Moscow.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Now a story about a controversy born out of the Holocaust that lingers more than six decades later. The Nazis seized up to 600,000 works of art. Much of it still hasn't been returned to the rightful heirs. Some of it has ended up in Israel. Daniel Estrin reports from Jerusalem that some advocates for Holocaust victims say that more needs to be done to get the art back to the families that owned it.
DANIEL ESTRIN, BYLINE: If you saw "The Monuments Men," the George Clooney movie, you know the story. Toward the end of World War II, American and allied forces sent teams on a treasure hunt through Europe to look for art stolen by the Nazis and to return it to its owners. But many of those owners had been killed in the Holocaust and a lot of art was never claimed, so a couple thousand artworks were distributed to Jewish institutions around the world. A lot of them were sent to Israel.
JAMES SNYDER: We're standing in front of a work by Egon Schiele from 1915.
ESTRIN: James Snyder directs the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. He says this oil painting - a sort of mosaic of rooftops - is one of about a thousand looted works the museum received.
SNYDER: The fact that no one has ever surfaced with a record of its prior ownership sadly suggests that no one from the family that may have owned it before the war survived the war.
ESTRIN: So nothing written on the back of the painting?
SNYDER: Nothing to identify it in any way.
ESTRIN: Today, many museums around the world are scouring their collections for Nazi-confiscated art. Snyder says the Israel Museum has returned about 40 works to heirs. But art experts say it's likely that Israeli museums have more looted paintings hanging on their walls and they don't even know it - works that museums bought in good faith or got as gifts. Stuart Eizenstat, special advisor to Secretary of State John Kerry on Holocaust issues, addressed a conference on art restitution in Israel this summer. He said Israel has been slow to act.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
STUART EIZENSTAT: It's ironic because Israel is the state of the Jewish people. It's ironic because Israel has the greatest number of Holocaust survivors in the world. It's ironic because Israel should be a leader as a Jewish state on Holocaust-related issues.
ESTRIN: The Israeli organization Hashava that the government formed to locate Holocaust victims' assets in Israel - it only started looking into art in 2013. Elinor Kroitoru works at the organization.
ELINOR KROITORU: I believe Israel always had the sense that being the state of the Jewish people, things should belong here if they are heirless.
ESTRIN: Her organization has caused a bit of a stink on this issue. It's publicly accused Israeli museums of not doing enough detective work to weed out suspect art. Kroitoru has singled out on major museum - The Tel Aviv Museum of Art. She says it has a big collection of impressionist and postimpressionist art, the kind European Jewish collectors owned before the war. She thinks statistically it's likely the museum has looted art on its walls without even realizing it.
KROITORU: The Tel Aviv Museum claims that they have done research internally, but nothing has been published yet. We are waiting for the museum to come forward and show us and show the public what they have done. And I hope that they'll publish and work transparently.
ESTRIN: Ruth Feldman is a recently retired curator from the Museum. She says the Museum takes this issue very seriously.
RUTH FELDMAN: We did a lot of work in that field. We did. There's not always the time to do it and the manpower to do it. But things are done at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.
ESTRIN: Kroitoru says Israeli museums are moving forward. This summer, curators attended the first workshop in Israel on how to do this provenance research. And the Hashava organization is working with a Tel Aviv Museum to get funding for the research. But even when the rightful family is found, that's not always the end of the story. In some cases, Kroitoru says, heirs turn around and sell their art to private collectors.
KROITORU: And then it's - we are in a very unusual situation where art that was looted from a Jew in Europe before the war ends up in the beautiful palace of a very rich person in Dubai. And one of the questions is that really what we want to happen to looted art?
ESTRIN: Here's one arrangement. When the Israel Museum in Jerusalem has returned art to heirs, some heirs have just kept their art hanging at the Museum on loan or by selling it back. That way, they don't need to fuss with security cameras and climate-controlled storage for their precious painting and the public of Israel gets to appreciate a great work of art and a piece of Holocaust history. For NPR News I'm Daniel Estrin in Jerusalem.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Satire is a tricky business. The punch lines quickly get stale. The same people who laugh at one joke can get offended by the next. But this week with the targeted killings of the cartoon satirists of Charlie Hebdo in Paris and the murder of people in a kosher grocer, we were reminded how dangerous people with no sense of humor can be. The Onion ran a headline - it is sadly unclear whether this article will put lives at risk. Kelly Leonard of The Second City theater, which lampoons politicians, celebrities and faiths of all kind, told us we have proudly framed our hate mail and put it on display in our lobby for decades. Today, those tiny acts of subversion feel so benign. The atrocities that have occurred in Paris send a collective chill down the spine of anyone speaking truth to power through laughter.
A lot of historians see language or tool use as signs of civilization. I'd like to add a sense of humor, laughing at ourselves. I find it telling that Shakespeare, Socrates, Lincoln, Churchill, Salman Rushdie, could all be funny. Did you ever hear a good joke from a tyrant? Many people look for art and culture when they travel. I like to find the jokes, especially in places so grim people can be punished for laughter.
I remember all the Russians who whispered that a man had been arrested in the Kremlin for shouting the premier is a fool because it revealed a state secret. I remember people in Iraq under Saddam Hussein who used to ask what country's bigger - China or Iraq? China, of course, but an Iraqi would lower his voice to ask ah, but what if you count all the statues of Saddam? And I remember all the people in Sarajevo who told jokes about grisly things because that's what surrounded them and they needed to laugh as much as they needed to eat and breathe.
Simon Schama, the historian and writer, told us this week that heresy is a right. Irreverence is the lifeblood of freedom, he said. We plainly now have an urban war between civil society and its enemies, but how do we protect that civil society without killing off the freedoms we want to sustain. That's the discussion that must now be had. Then he quickly added hate that over-use of the word conversation. It's as though argument, debate, discussion, etcetera, has become too abrasive.
I looked at a dozen of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons about religion, including rabbis, imams, and the pope. I might argue with a few abrasive ones that made me squirm, but satire won't always make us comfortable, or even always make us laugh. Murder is easy. Comedy is hard.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
As Tom just said, Sunday's face-off between the Green Bay Packers and the Dallas Cowboys is being billed as the second Ice Bowl. The first was played in Green Bay nearly 50 years ago. While the temperatures won't be quite as brutal tomorrow, the NFC playoff stakes are certainly just as high. Patty Murray of Wisconsin Public Radio reports.
PATTY MURRAY, BYLINE: These teams have played each other often since that cold December 31 in 1967. But this is the first time they'll meet for this playoff at Lambeau Field since then. The temperature that day was -15. While it'll be cold in Green Bay this Sunday, it won't be that cold.
MARK MURPHY: I feel fine except for my face.
MURRAY: On Wednesday, Packers CEO Mark Murphy kicked-off a campaign to paint the town green and gold. Those are the team colors. He spray-painted slogans on a downtown street. Murphy is hesitant to consider this the second coming of the Ice Bowl.
MURPHY: Our field is heated, so we should never have a frozen tundra. I've always been very impressed with the way our players, and players generally, have been able to perform in all kinds of weather. You think back in '67, you know they didn't have so many of the advantages that we have now, in terms of keeping people warm and being able to play in the conditions.
MURRAY: In that game, with only seconds to go, quarterback Bart Starr ran into the end zone for a game-winning touchdown. It's something John Hess will never forget. He's a long-time season ticketholder, and will be in the same seat this weekend as he was in 1967. He's even embroidered the seat number on his hat.
JOHN HESS: Our seat is in section 116, row seven, seat 23, as I read my hat.
MURRAY: Hess will be sitting next to Mel McCartney, who was also with him that day. McCartney remembers the cold and thinks this weekend's temperatures in the teens will feel downright balmy.
MEL MCCARTNEY: One of the key things is the ball freezes at 15 below. I mean, the ball will be cold here, and hard. But that ball gets like a rock when it's 15 below.
MURRAY: The Ice Bowl is the NFL's equivalent of Woodstock. McCartney says if everyone who says they were there actually was there, Lambeau Field would've had to have been a lot bigger.
MCCARTNEY: Instead of 53,000, it'd have to have been 530,000. I mean, people (laughter) wanted to be there and were there in spirit, but they forgot they really weren't there.
WES HODKIEWICZ: I think there's only always going to be one Ice Bowl.
MURRAY: Wes Hodkiewicz reports on the Packers for the Green Bay Press Gazette.
HODKIEWICZ: I think the conditions that were involved with it, it's not going to be that cold. But at the same time, this is very meaningful for people in Green Bay because there is that history there with Dallas. And in the '90s when the Packers were kind of coming back after two decades of really struggling, Dallas was the team that kept getting in the way of them making that run back to the Super Bowl.
MURRAY: Hodkiewicz says the epic cold and that last-second play against Dallas helped the Green Bay Packers cement a place in history.
HODKIEWICZ: The Dallas defensive line - I think it was the Doomsday Defense - they were known for being able to stop teams in short yardage situations. For it to not only be that scene and that, you know, environment, but to come down to a significant play like that - a last-second play - that just doesn't happen a lot. That's magic.
MURRAY: Packer fans hope to repeat that magic tomorrow.
For NPR News I'm Patty Murray in Green Bay.
SIMON: You can see the frozen faces of fans at that first Ice Bowl in Green Bay nearly 50 years ago - I was there, wasn't I? I'm almost certain I was there - on our Facebook page, NPR's WEEKEND EDITION. And while you're at it, we're on Twitter too, @nprweekend. I'm @nprscottsimon, all one handle.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The U.S. economy saw the strongest job growth since 1999 last year. That's according to the latest statistics out of the U.S. Labor Department yesterday. The country gained another 252,000 jobs in December. That sounds good news, but as NPR's Chris Arnold tells us this latest jobs report also dashed some hopes for bigger paychecks.
CHRIS ARNOLD, BYLINE: If American workers had to pick a song to play for their bosses, a good choice might be this little number from the faux-rock band Spinal Tap.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GIMME SOME MONEY")
SPINAL TAP: (Singing) Do I have to come right flat out and tell you everything. Give me some money. Give me some money.
ARNOLD: Money is the rub with this recovery. Employers are hiring more people. That's good, but overall the real wages that they're paying remain flat, and this jobs report in particular was disappointing. A month ago it looked like wages were starting to pick up, but now those November numbers were revised lower and in December wages actually fell a bit.
HARRY HOLZER: So there is this ongoing puzzle and economists are trying to figure this out.
ARNOLD: Harry Holzer is a former chief economist for the Labor Department. He says the puzzle is that the official unemployment rate has now fallen to 5.6 percent. And, historically, that's meant that there's enough demand for labor to push up wages. So...
HOLZER: How can it be that we haven't seen any growth, adjusted for inflation, so far? Probably the real answer to that is that there's still more slack in the labor market.
ARNOLD: In other words, the unemployment rate just isn't as good a yardstick this time around. Many workers have dropped out of the labor force or are working part time. That's not captured in the unemployment rate figure. Now, just about everybody agrees that if employers keep hiring more workers at some point wages will rise, but the question then is by how much? Holzer says if you look back at the 30-year period after World War II...
HOLZER: The rising tide was lifting all the boats, so you had strong wage growth year-in, year-out, and over a 30-year period, you know, the average worker's earnings were more or less doubled.
ARNOLD: Since the early 1970s, though, it's been a very different story. Holzer says overall wages, adjusted for inflation, have only risen 20 percent since 1973. And when you look at big chunks of what used to be the middle-class - take, working-age men with a high school education - their wages haven't risen at all. In fact, they've fallen.
HOLZER: All less-educated men are earning less than they did 40 years ago. That's just a really new story in American history. You know, people ought to know that that's really different than anything we've experienced in the past.
ARNOLD: And that's troubling to both liberal and conservative economists. Michael Strain is a labor economist with the American Enterprise Institute.
MICHAEL STRAIN: I'm very concerned about it. I think that taking kind of the short-term view, there's a policy response, which is for the Fed to continue its campaign of stimulating the economy.
ARNOLD: Longer-term, most everyone agrees it'll be important to better educate and train the American workforce. Higher skills mean more money and a better future. For his part President Obama yesterday spoke at a community college in Tennessee.
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PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I'm announcing an ambitious new plan to bring down the cost of community college tuition in America. I want to bring it down to zero.
(APPLAUSE)
OBAMA: We're going to - I want to.
ARNOLD: The president called for two free years of community college for all Americans.
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OBAMA: I want to make it free.
(APPLAUSE)
ARNOLD: Betsey Stevensen is a labor economist on the president's Council of Economic Advisers. She says, basically, college is the new high school when it comes to having skills to get a good paying job. And a century ago, of course, we made high school free.
BETSEY STEVENSEN: When we decided to make high school free and universal, the rest of the world laughed us and called us wasteful.
ARNOLD: But Stevensen said it paid off big-time and the administration's hoping free community college would as well. Chris Arnold, NPR News.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon. A woman linked to the attacks in France is still at large today while French authorities meet to review security after three days of carnage in which 17 people were killed in attacks on Charlie Hebdo - a satirical magazine - a police woman and a kosher market in Paris. The attackers apparently worked together, but claimed affiliation to two rival organizations that are based in the Middle East - al-Qaida in Yemen and the Islamic State. Lauren Frayer joins us this morning from Paris. Lauren, thanks for being with us.
LAUREN FRAYER, BYLINE: Thanks for having me.
SIMON: What is Paris like today?
FRAYER: Well, if the French headlines are any indication, the newspapers say the end of horror, resistance, even the sports newspaper L'Equipe says we play on. This morning I went the Place de la Republique. It's one of Paris's main squares. It's - and in the center of the square, around a monument to liberty, equality and fraternity, people have created impromptu memorials. People have laid down pencils and pens. Of course, those are in memory of the slain Charlie Hebdo cartoonists. There are flowers, candles and, of course, posters with a slogan that's now familiar to much of the world - Je Suis Charlie. I am Charlie. I spoke to mourners there and here's what one man, Romain Garcia, told me a few moments ago.
ROMAIN GARCIA: It's a mix of feeling - sadness, hate, determination to defend our liberties. We are full of emotion now, and I don't know what will be the consequences of this reaction.
FRAYER: You can hear he's talking about consequences. And there's a fear of copycat attacks here. The Jewish community is on edge. Jews were of the target of yesterday's attack on a kosher supermarket where four hostages were killed. There's also a fear of backlash against Muslims. France has Western Europe's biggest Muslim community, so Paris is still very skittish. We're hearing reports even this morning of various alerts across the city. None confirmed, but it speaks to the still tense mood of this city. Even local traffic police that I saw this morning looked to have extra gear on them. And there are still heavy patrols of public transport and public places.
SIMON: What are some of the details that authorities are beginning to fill in and release about the suspects - the two brothers, the supermarket gunman, who were all killed, and, of course, the woman who's still at large?
FRAYER: That's right. So she's the one suspect who remains at large. Police describe her as 26 years old. She's the girlfriend or partner of the gunman at that kosher supermarket. This woman is also believed to have been connected to the shooting of a police woman on Thursday morning in a separate incident in Paris. Police say she's armed and dangerous. A huge manhunt is still underway for her, and her photo has been plastered all over French TV. Police have set up a tip line for any witnesses. They're calling for anyone to come forward with any information at all. There has also been a claim of responsibility in the Charlie Hebdo killings. A French television station is airing tape of a phone call that it says it made to one of the suspects, the Kouachi brothers - the younger of those brothers - before he died. And he said that he and his brother were prepared to die, that they killed in defense of the prophet and that they were sent by al-Qaida in Yemen.
SIMON: Lauren, the world will look on tomorrow as there's a massive demonstration, a march, including a number of world leaders. Tell us about that please.
FRAYER: That's right. Tomorrow French President Francois Hollande will receive visitors from all over the world - U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is expected to be here, British Prime Minister David Cameron, among many, many others. They're coming to Paris for security talks, but they're also expected to take part in this giant march across the city. Hollande has called on French citizens to join him in the streets tomorrow in this march of solidarity. Public transport - it's been announced that public transport will be free to anyone who wants to join them. They're expecting hundreds of thousands, if not more, people in the streets of Paris tomorrow.
SIMON: Lauren Frayer joining us today from Paris. Thanks very much for being with us.
FRAYER: You're welcome.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon. Governor Jerry Brown took the oath of office this week for his second term as governor of California - his second term. Twenty-eight years separate the time between when he was the 34th Governor of California and now the 39th. At the age of 76, Jerry Brown is both the oldest governor in the state's history and was its youngest governor of 20th century. In his inaugural address, Mr. Brown told the California state house...
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GOVERNOR JERRY BROWN: The challenge is to build for the future, not to steal from it, to live within our means and to keep California ever golden and creative, as our forebears have shown and as our descendants would expect.
SIMON: And he proposed a series of initiatives. Governor Jerry Brown joins us from Sacramento. Thanks so much for being with us.
BROWN: Well, thank you.
SIMON: Are you a better governor now in your 70s than you were in your 30s?
BROWN: Well, I think practice tends to make more perfect and I've had a lot of practice.
SIMON: Let me ask about some of what you have coming up. The state controllers say that the cost of health care for retired state workers has jumped to $72 billion more than the state has to pay for it. So will you increase revenues or cut back on coverage?
BROWN: Well, we are going to ask the employees to start contributing to the funding of their retiree health care, and of course, the state will match that in some way. These are among a number of liabilities, like our pensions, like the pensions at the university and for the judges. We have lots of liabilities because those are the promises we've made, but we are a state that generates, in our private economy, about $2.2 trillion every year. We expect it to grow. And my job is to make the core investments, make sure our services are up to the task, but at the same time to live within our means and balance the public and the private, the state and the local.
SIMON: Can I fairly take that as the answer is you will increase revenues by trying to get state employees to contribute more instead of cutback on coverage? And, as I don't have to tell you, the state employees and their union might not like that.
BROWN: Well, it's always a combination of both. So yes, we can cut back. We can do things more effectively. That applies to retiree health care. We need contributions and we also need changes in the program of benefits.
SIMON: You have proposed a goal for California to reduce the use of gas by 50 percent by 2030 - that's just 15 years. How would you do that?
BROWN: You do it by more efficient vehicles, by millions of electric cars, by reducing the carbon content of cars. We have a low carbon fuel standard and Californians use about 14 billion gallons of gasoline every year - not even counting diesel - and we're electrifying.
A few years ago we had a very limited amount of renewable energy. Now we're over 22 percent. We'll be a third of renewable electricity by 2020; by 2030 we'll be close to 50. And that renewable energy can then charge the batteries. All those things will contribute to a reduced reliance on petroleum.
SIMON: Governor, have you considered some of the implications of reducing gas in California? I mean, we've seen the stock market fall just in the past few weeks with the lower price of gas. Gas taxes are what pay for road maintenance in California. I'll bet there's unemployment that's occurred in California because of the falling revenues. Are you working on one problem, but creating another?
BROWN: Well, that always happens to some degree, but I would say the jobs - the lower gasoline price will create jobs because that money that is not going out of California to pay foreign oil or out-of-state oil producers. Plus the electric cars - California has 30 percent of the electric cars in America. That in itself is jobs. The Tesla auto company's small, but growing. So we're creating jobs. The world doesn't stay static. California is often on the cutting edge. And there will be disruptions and we try to minimize that and compensate those who are losing. But we are in the forefront of change and it's positive and absolutely necessary.
SIMON: Governor Brown, you're a popular governor of the largest state in the country. Why not run for president?
BROWN: Well, I think we've got a candidate running for president. Her name is Hillary Clinton, and from all I can tell she is very strongly supported. So I think that pretty well takes care of that. Also I just got myself elected and I've got a lot on my plate.
SIMON: That doesn't sound like an endorsement for Hillary Clinton so much as a recognition of the obvious.
BROWN: Well, I'm not in the business of making endorsements, you know, three days after my inauguration. I'm just recognizing that both because of the job that Bill did and his unusual and continuing popularity and her own work quite significantly as senator and secretary of state, you know, she's formidable.
SIMON: What's the most valuable thing you've learned in 45 years of public life?
BROWN: You know, to refrain from making that some clever point 'cause it usually comes back to bite you. I've learned words like transformation or revolutionary almost always overstate. I understand a little better the system that we are embedded inside of and how difficult it is to make changes. In my inauguration I refer back to my father and what he said in his first inauguration. Everything we've talked about today was quite alive and contentious back in 1959. We do make progress, but there's a profound degree of continuity that shapes our lives for the good.
SIMON: The Governor of California, Jerry Brown. Thanks very much for being with us.
BROWN: Well, thank you. I enjoyed it.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Two young athletes on the development squad of the U.S. ski team were killed in an avalanche in Austria this week. Ronnie Berlack was 20 years old. Bryce Astle was 19. They were part of a group of six people who were skiing out of bounds, away from groomed slopes, when the snow gave way. Their deaths contribute to a growing and alarming statistic - the number of expert skiers who are killed each year in avalanches. We're joined now by Grayson Schaffer, senior editor at Outside Magazine, with whom we speak now and then about the world of adventure. Grayson, thanks for being with us.
GRAYSON SCHAFFER: Thanks for having me, Scott.
SIMON: The deaths of Ronnie Berlack and Bryce Astle were terrific tragedies. Were they avoidable?
SCHAFFER: Well, I mean, there're still a lot of unanswered questions surrounding the deaths of these two bright young ski stars. They were in an area that was closed, you know, where the snow wasn't being controlled for avalanches with explosives, but it's still unclear how they got there.
SIMON: And I gather they didn't have avalanche beacons or shovels?
SCHAFFER: Yeah, you know, and most people when they ski in a resort don't carry avalanche equipment. You know, typically when you're riding chair lifts, you're skiing in an area where the ski patrol has done a really thorough job mitigating the avalanche hazard. And so that suggests that they didn't have any plans to ski off-piste that day - or what we would call in the backcountry - so that they, you know, probably either made a spur-of-the-moment decision or just ended up there by mistake.
SIMON: And is there perceptible increase in the number of skiers who are killed in avalanches?
SCHAFFER: What seems to be happening is that the numbers stay about the same, but that the types of people who are killed are actually, you know, have avalanche experience, are expert skiers who have taken avalanche training. There was this case of a woman, Olivia Buchanan, who died on Tuesday around Silverton, Colorado. And she had, you know, avalanche level-two training, was actually studying snow science at Montana State University.
So snow safety experts are now focusing more than ever on what are called human factors rather than trying to, you know, teach people how to analyze the snow to say whether the snow stability is good. So these are questions like, you know, are you being lured into a trap by groupthink? Do you want to impress your friends? And more often than not in an avalanche fatality, several of these factors are going to be present.
SIMON: Are experienced skiers just pushing themselves more?
SCHAFFER: Some of it is just in the numbers. You know, there are more people than ever heading out into the backcountry. But the other piece of this is that skiing on tract powder in the backcountry is just like the most intoxicating form of skiing. You know, the images that we see in ski magazines, people flying down these high-alpine slopes. I mean, there's just nothing else like it.
SIMON: Let's finish up this week with a happier story from the mountains. Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson, a couple of Americans who've captivated a lot of people with their wintertime ascent of El Capitan's Dawn Wall in Yosemite. They're stalled right now, aren't they?
SCHAFFER: Well, you know, as of Thursday, Caldwell had finished off the last of these sort of really difficult pitches. And so he's just waiting for Jorgeson to try to compete his last 5.14-pitch, and then they can basically take a sort of victory lap to the top.
SIMON: What's this pitch look like?
SCHAFFER: They call this the loop pitch. And previously, they had explained this required a sort of 8-foot dynamic move where you would - you know, the climber would sort of like do a Hollywood-style leap from one little set of holds over to another set of holds 8 feet through the air, 1,200 feet off the ground and then catch on to the wall again. They've since figured out that there's a better way to do it, which involves downclimbing to try to get around this thing, so it's incredibly difficult. I mean, for you and I, I think even trying to touch these holds would be difficult.
SIMON: Grayson, thank you for putting you and I in that sentence.
SCHAFFER: (Laughter). We can always aspire.
SIMON: Grayson Schaffer of Outside Magazine, speaking with us from Santa Fe. Thanks very so much.
SCHAFFER: Thanks so much for having me.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
SpaceX's unmanned mission this morning both succeeded and struck out. It launched on schedule from Cape Canaveral at 4:47 a.m. on a mission to send cargo to the International Space Station.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: One, zero, and lift off of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with Dragon, continuing...
SIMON: The cargo capsule separated from the booster rocket. The next part of the plan was unprecedented - to land that used booster rocket safely and softly on a barge floating in the ocean some 200 miles off the coast of Florida. Now, that's not like throwing a softball. SpaceX compared their challenge to trying to balance a rubber broomstick on your hand in the middle of a windstorm. Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, tweeted close, but no cigar this time. Bodes well for the future though. SpaceX wants the first-age rocket to land on the barge safely so they can reuse it in future launches. The cargo-filled capsule, however, is safe and sound and right on target to reach the space station on Monday.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Walter Kuehr was known as the accordion guru of Manhattan's Lower East Side. He was a performer, bandleader and shopkeeper and devoted his life to accordions and accordion music. Mr. Kuehr died last week of lymphoma at the age of 59. Jon Kalish has this appreciation.
JON KALISH, BYLINE: Walter Kuehr grew up in Germany. He started accordion lessons as a child, but earned his degree in piano and bassoon. He turned down a job at a German orchestra to come to the U.S. to be a jazz pianist. Then he started getting gigs accompanying tango acts and playing accordion in the subway. He ended up forming two bands; one of them an all-female accordion orchestra.
(SOUNDBITE OF MAIN SQUEEZE ORCHESTRA MUSIC)
KALISH: Four years ago, he told NPR the idea for that group came to him in a dream.
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WALTER KUEHR: I thought that was like almost a sign from God. The most beautiful thing I've ever dreamt of. And I immediately felt like this is what I have to do.
(SOUNDBITE OF MAIN SQUEEZE ORCHESTRA MUSIC)
KALISH: At one point, there were 18 women in the Main Squeeze Orchestra, which played everything from Madonna to Stravinsky. Leslie Molson played bass accordion in the group. She says Kuehr ignored people who made fun of accordions.
LESLIE MOLSON: Part of what his dream was to spread the gospel of the accordion when he came to this country. He would be surprised at people's reaction to the accordion. He'd be like, what are you talking about? It's great.
KALISH: Walter Kuehr did maintain a sense of humor about his instrument. Main Squeeze was also the name of the accordion store he opened on the Lower East Side. The shop was filled with accordions, ceramic figurines of accordion players and Kuehr's motorcycle. A small cage held in accordion dubbed The Beast of the Week. Here's Kuehr in a YouTube video shot at the store.
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KUEHR: Why do I play the accordion? That is just the most wonderful, most romantic and exciting instrument I can possibly think of - the most intense sounding, the best looking. It's portable. (Playing accordion).
KALISH: Kuehr also formed a nine-piece Latin jazz ensemble called The Last Of The International Playboys, inspired by the sitcom "I Love Lucy." Kuehr decided that Ricky Ricardo was the coolest guy ever.
(SOUNDBITE OF ACCORDION MUSIC)
KALISH: Kuehr relished his role as an accordion teacher and repair man, but last fall learned that his landlord was not going to renew the lease to his storefront.
CLAIRE CONNORS: His lease was up January 1 and he died January 2 - kind of tells it all.
KALISH: Claire Connors is Kuehr's ex-wife.
CONNORS: When they told him that the shop was closing, I don't want to say that that was one of the things that sort of helped him on his way out of this mortal coil, but I do think that he was at peace with the fact it was going to be closing and he would probably not be here to see that.
KALISH: Connors delivered the eulogy at a crowded memorial gathering for Kuehr held at a venue as eclectic as his music career - a restaurant that all features burlesque.
CONNORS: It was his dream to live in New York. It was always his dream to live here - to see if you can make in the big leagues. I think he actually achieved that. At the memorial, it was standing room only. And what more could a musician want than to have that as your send off?
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KUEHR: When I arrived here 20 years ago in America, I had a suitcase and my accordion. I never let go of it. It had some crises, but I always stuck with it.
KALISH: Walter Kuehr had battled cancer for several years. There are no plans to reopen his store. For NPR News, I'm Jon Kalish in New York.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon. France mourns and is on alert. Seventeen people were killed in three days in the worst terror attacks in France for half a century. Cherif and Said Kouachi, the brothers who said they attacked the offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine to avenge what they called insulting cartoons of the prophet, were killed by French forces yesterday after taking a hostage. Their hostage got out alive. A man and a woman who appear to have been affiliated with the Kouachis took more hostages at a kosher grocery in Paris. One suspected terrorist was killed. Another, a woman, apparently slipped out and is still at large. Four hostages were shot to death by the terrorists, say French police. We are joined now by Natalie Nougayrede. She is the former executive editor of Le Monde, now a foreign affairs commentator for The Guardian. She joins us from Paris.
Thank you for being with us.
NATALIE NOUGAYREDE: Thanks for having me, Scott.
SIMON: France has lived with terrorism since the war in Algeria in the '60s. Why do you think these acts have prompted such an outpouring?
NOUGAYREDE: The targeting of Jews in the shop where the kidnapping and the killings happened is an extremely traumatic incident. And I think the initial phase of this terrorist attack, which was the Charlie Hebdo shooting, should not in any way make anybody forget the gravity and really incredible seriousness of this attack against Jewish clients in a Jewish shop in Paris. It was a kosher shop and this was Shabbat, and that is indeed a very serious offense on French territory and will have to be addressed with as much indignation, and is being addressed with huge shock, just as much as the first phase of the terrorist attacks against Charlie Hebdo.
SIMON: France has the largest Muslim population in Europe. Do you see this week's events as affecting French Muslims and maybe French policy on issues like immigration and assimilation?
NOUGAYREDE: This is nothing new. This we know has existed for decades. We know there is a very volatile and fragile social fabric in France because of the economic crisis, because of the way immigration is being perceived in recent times and how immigrants have been scapegoated for a lot of the economic problems in this country. Politically, I fear this trauma and the debates as they unfold will be fueling more far-right extremism in this country because the attackers were from France. They were Muslim. And so a lot of people unfortunately in this country, behind the huge solidarity that you will be seeing tomorrow in Paris - there will be a huge, huge demonstration - but I fear that beyond that there will be a lot of resentment against Muslims because many Muslims will be lumped in with these terrorists. And this is going to be a political challenge. It is going to be a challenge for France's capacity to overcome this and reformulate, redefine, consolidate the values of its democracy. This is a watershed.
SIMON: Natalie Nougayrede, former executive editor of Le Monde who is now a commentator at The Guardian.
Thanks very much for speaking with us.
NOUGAYREDE: Thanks so much.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
A bill to authorize extending the Keystone pipeline passed the House of Representatives yesterday. It goes to the Senate next week. And the bill will be the first test of the Senate Republican majority's plan to make the Senate work the way it used to - fuller floor debates and amendments to bills from both parties. But as NPR's Ailsa Chang reports, that could just mean longer fights.
AILSA CHANG, BYLINE: For people who don't inhabit the weird, alternate universe the Senate can be, it's probably hard to fathom why anyone would get excited about long floor debates. But believe it or not, senators are breathlessly talking about the one they're expecting to have over the Keystone XL oil pipeline. The new majority leader Mitch McConnell promised he'd let both sides offer amendments to the bill and Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia is thrilled.
SENATOR JOE MANCHIN: I'm just so excited. I've been here four years. This might be the only third time I've had a chance at complete open process, no holds barred. Say whatever you want to. Introduce whatever you want to. Let's go at it for two, three, four weeks 24/7. That doesn't happen around here.
CHANG: Manchin is one of the main sponsors of the Keystone bill and after the White House announced this week that it planned to veto the legislation, Manchin says he's just trying to save it.
MANCHIN: They just come out of the box - boom, no. With that being said, now we've got to strive for 67.
CHANG: Sixty-seven votes to override the president's veto. Keystone supporters say they're still a few votes short of that, so they're hoping giving the other side a chance to help shape the bill will change a few minds.
SENATOR JOHN HOEVEN: We'll see, you know, what the bill looks like when we're done. I mean I don't know how the president can say he's going to veto something when he hasn't seen the final product.
CHANG: Republican John Hoeven of North Dakota says the president's veto threat may just be a mind game, and they shouldn't fall for it.
HOEVEN: I think the reason he's issuing that veto threat is because he wants to stop the bill. He doesn't want to have to veto it. But the reality is, we need to work through the process.
CHANG: And that process could mean a slew of amendments. Expect ones from Democrats to promote green energy and require American steel to build the pipeline. And they'll probably offer ones to force votes on unrelated causes of their own. Here's the Number Two Democrat, Dick Durbin of Illinois.
SENATOR DICK DURBIN: And how far afield we can go from the subject matter of the bill will depend on Senator McConnell.
CHANG: Some senators say letting the Senate drag the process out can only help the pipeline's prospects. The Nebraska Supreme Court just approved the pipeline's route yesterday, giving the president one less reason to veto it. And even if he still does, Republican Bill Cassidy of Louisiana says, a veto isn't necessarily the end of the story.
SENATOR BILL CASSIDY: Welfare reform passed twice before Clinton finally signed it. So clearly there's a certain momentum that's created.
CHANG: On Monday the Senate will begin what's sure to be a long series of votes on Keystone. Ailsa Chang, NPR News, the Capitol.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon. Nigerian forces say that they are battling to regain control of a strategic town and military base in the Northeast. It was captured by suspected Boko Haram fighters this past week. NPR's Ofeibea Quist-Arcton reports that Amnesty International describes the latest repeat raids as perhaps the deadliest massacre in the history of Boko Haram.
OFEIBEA QUIST-ARCTON, BYLINE: Amnesty International says hundreds of bodies littering the bush around Baga in northeastern Nigeria were simply too many to count. Witnesses describe the stench of corpses hanging over the town because there's no one to bury them. Insurgents first struck what was meant to be the base of the regional counterterrorism force and the nearby town a week ago, with another attack mid-week, killing remaining residents and looting and burning property. Senator Maina Maaji Lawan says the Nigerian government is not doing enough to help displaced people driven from their homes seeking refuge across the Lake Chad border.
SENATOR MAINA MAAJI LAWAN: About 10,000 refugees are now at a camp provided by Chadian authorities and they're out in the cold. The Nigerian government is not in touch with them. Really, we need humanitarian organizations before this turns into a humanitarian disaster. Because the entire border, up to Cameroon, up to Niger, is now totally in the hands of Boko Haram.
QUIST-ARCTON: Yet, President Goodluck Jonathan is busy campaigning ahead of next month's vote, seeking re-election for a second term. By the end of the working week, he'd made no comment about the deadly Bagar raids, although he condemned the Charlie Hebdo killings in France. Nigeria's leader and army face mounting criticism about failing to contain the relentless insurgency. Very little is said officially these days about nearly 200 missing schoolgirls abducted in April. President Jonathan's political adversaries accuse him of dragging his feet because the affected northeast area is an opposition stronghold.
Ofeibea Quist-Arcton, NPR News, Accra.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Now it really is time for Sports.
In the NFL playoffs today, Cam Newton and the Carolina Panthers take on the Seattle Seahawks. Didn't they win all of it last year? And the New England Patriots will face the Baltimore Ravens. Joe Flacco and the Ravens aren't as glamorous as Tom Brady and the Patriots, but they often turn gold in the playoffs. NPR's Tom Goldman joins us.
Tom, thanks for being with us.
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(MUSIC)
TOM GOLDMAN, BYLINE: Thanks for having me.
SIMON: Before we get into the games, let's start - stay with the Ravens a minute because this week Robert Mueller, the former FBI director, released his report on the Ray Rice scandal. Of course, this is the former Baltimore player who punched the woman who's now his wife in an elevator in Atlantic City. Mr. Mueller concluded there was no evidence that anyone in the NFL had seen the security video before the public saw it. Does that support Commissioner Goodell?
GOLDMAN: It does. Goodell said all along no one at the NFL saw the video of Rice throwing the punch before "TMZ" released the tape on September 8. Now, many doubted that and said, how can an empire like the NFL with top-notch security not get a hold of the tape? But Mueller says his investigation, which included more than 200 interviews, plowing through millions of documents and emails, yielded no evidence that Goodell or anyone at the NFL saw it.
SIMON: On the other hand - isn't there always another hand, I mean, in our business? Are there lingering questions that the report doesn't resolve?
GOLDMAN: Well, you know, there are lingering questions. And the report said the NFL was too passive in its investigation. Also said the Ravens knew what was on the video as early as February and didn't share what they knew with the NFL because, according to the team, the NFL didn't ask. All that gives the impression there wasn't a lot of urgency about this thing from investigation to punishment, and you hope with the reforms promised and revised and tougher personal conduct policy, it won't all happen again when the next case like this comes up.
SIMON: Tom, I can't hold myself back anymore - I thought the kiss cam was going to take a shot of Jerry Jones and Chris Christie. The governor of New Jersey - bless him - a proud lifelong Cowboys fan, he accepted the owner's hospitality to watch the game against the Detroit Lions from his skybox. Now, does this seem to you like the actions of a man who might soon want to win the electoral votes of Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey?
GOLDMAN: (Laughter). No. You know, the Cowboys are hated in Philly and New York and New Jersey because of division rivalries with the Cowboys, and pretty newly hated - I don't know if it's newly hated - in Detroit. Really cloying to watch the Christie-Jones hug-a-thon after the refs botched key calls and really helped Dallas win that game last weekend.
SIMON: Yeah. On the other hand - there we go again - are there real questions raised by the snuggling in the skybox?
GOLDMAN: There are. You know, there are bigger issues going on here. Does the hug represent an unethical confluence of big money, big politics and big sports? How's that?
You know, it's been widely reported about a potential business relationship between Jones and Christie. Jones is part owner of a company that won a big bid for a contract with the Port Authority, overseen by New York and Christie's state of New Jersey. And Jones said he didn't know Christie...
SIMON: There's a concessions contract, right? You know, hot dogs and stuff?
GOLDMAN: Yes. Exactly. Yeah, and Jones says he didn't know Christie during the bidding process from 2011 to 2013, although Christie has said the two became friends over the past five years. This story has made the hug seem a tad suspicious. Maybe they'll tone it down tomorrow in Green Bay, where Christie will be for the big showdown with Cowboys.
SIMON: Just a high-five maybe or something. I thought that's what the governor was trying to get away with. Listen, Dallas plays Green Bay in that ice chest known as Lambeau. We've got about 30 seconds left. They won't get any hometown calls from the refs there, will they?
GOLDMAN: We hope not. You know, two classic rivals with impressive resumes this season. Packers were undefeated at home. The Cowboys undefeated on the road. That will change. And will Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers' injured calf hold up? That's a key question. Should be a great game at classic, chilly Lambeau Field.
SIMON: NPR's Tom Goldman. Thanks so much.
GOLDMAN: You're welcome.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
People in much of the United States might envy people in Florida this week. While temperatures crept well below zero in Bangor, Maine, they've neared 80 in Boca Raton. But warm weather spots have challenges, too. Rob Konrad knows. Mr. Konrad is a former Miami Dolphins fullback who went fishing on Wednesday, alone. He put his big boat on cruise control so he didn't have to steer and reel-in a pompano at the same time. But somehow Mr. Konrad fell off his boat. He couldn't catch up with it, so he swam to shore nine miles away. Concerned friends contacted authorities and the Coast Guard sent out a helicopter, but couldn't find Rob Konrad. He was getting back to dry land stroke by stroke. He made land after 4 a.m. and contacted the Palm Beach County sheriff's office. He was taken to a hospital, treated for hypothermia and released.
Rob Konrad was released by the Dolphins 10 years ago. He's 38 years old and reportedly a member of an investment firm, but it sounds like he could get back into the game right now.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The movie awards season is upon us. Eddie Redmayne may pick up an armful of statuettes for best actor. He plays Stephen Hawking in "The Theory Of Everything." NPR's Linda Wertheimer spoke with Eddie Redmayne who portrays the British scientist during his rise to fame from his college days to the paralyzed genius who speaks through a computer.
LINDA WERTHEIMER, BYLINE: I understand you actually met Stephen Hawking a few times during the course of making the movie. And do you have any idea what he thinks about how the movie came out, about your performance?
EDDIE REDMAYNE: So he did go see the film. And I saw him just before the screening and I said to Stephen look, I'm very nervous. But please, you know, do let...
WERTHEIMER: Yeah.
REDMAYNE: ...Me know what you think. And he now takes them - he just uses these muscles around his eye to communicate. He has censors in his glasses. And he took a wee while to respond. And then he said in his iconic voice, he said I will let you know what I think, good or otherwise. And I was like OK, Stephen. If it's otherwise, perhaps you can just stick to otherwise. We don't need all of the things I got wrong.
But no, he's been incredibly generous about the film. And when we made the film, we had used an approximation, like, of his iconic voice. I mean, Stephen owns the copyright to the actual voice, to his voice. And after seeing the film, he gave us his voice so he's been wonderfully supportive.
WERTHEIMER: I would say that that was an affirmation. Now in the movie, we see Hawking healthy and active, going to college. And while he was still there, he was diagnosed with ALS - Lou Gehrig's disease - with a very grim prognosis, severely crippled within two years. Now, we have a clip from that time of his life. He is trying to face his future alone, and his girlfriend Jane, who is played by Felicity Jones, barges in.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING")
FELICITY JONES: (As Jane Hawking) Are you going to talk about this or not?
REDMAYNE: (As Stephen Hawking) Excuse me, just go.
JONES: (As Jane Hawking) Is that what you want?
REDMAYNE: (As Stephen Hawking) Yes, it is what I want. So please, if you care about me at all, then please just go.
JONES: (As Jane Hawking) I can't.
REDMAYNE: (As Stephen Hawking) I have two years to live. I need to work.
JONES: (As Jane Hawking) I love you.
REDMAYNE: (As Stephen Hawking) You - you - that's a false conclusion.
JONES: (As Jane Hawking) I want us to be together for as long as we've got. And if that's not very long, well, then that's just how it is. It'll have to do.
REDMAYNE: (As Stephen Hawking) You don't know what's coming. It'll affect everything.
WERTHEIMER: Now, these two people married. Jane stayed with Stephen Hawking until 1990. Their relationship is one of the biggest parts of this movie. The film has been criticized, in fact, for sort of skipping over his accomplishments and concentrating on his relationships.
REDMAYNE: Yes, no - I mean, this film is based on Jane's autobiography. And really, this story is - for me - an investigation into love and love in all its guises, whether that is young love and passionate love. But also the love of family and love of a subject matter, but the complications and boundaries of love. There are so many documentaries that have been made that it felt like this was a different story. This was the personal element.
WERTHEIMER: What was the hardest part of this for you? I would think that it would be very difficult to contort your body and your face to resemble Hawking's. And then when you're sort of in that frozen position somehow manage to act.
REDMAYNE: I went to a neurology clinic in London, and they educated me on ALS. And I met maybe 30 or 40 people who suffer from this horrific disease, but also their families. And then I decided to work with a dancer because when you're filming, unfortunately, you don't shoot chronologically. So you're having to jump between different periods in Stephen's life and therefore different physicalities. And what I wanted to make sure was that those his physicalities were so embedded in me that I wasn't going to be playing a physicality, as it were, wasn't going to be playing the disease, but could actually just play the human story at the core of the piece.
WERTHEIMER: What about the speech? We know that Stephen Hawking speaks using a computer, so what did you do, just type up a script for the machine?
REDMAYNE: Well, we had some specialists who created a program pretty much identical to what Stephen had in that period. And quite often we would type it out for real, and that's been condensed in the editing process in the film. But what it creates is that, you know, if that's the only way you can communicate, then all that Stephen has is those muscles that he can use on his face; he's lost gesture, so where he's looking, what specific words he chooses to say and when he presses play, so you can't use tone of voice.
And so I remember when I met Stephen the first time, I was talking to him for a while ,and I was calling him Professor Hawking. And then the first thing he said to me is call me Stephen. And because it was in that voice, I couldn't work out whether he was saying oh, you know, call me Stephen or whether he was going, stop being so sycophantic; stop calling me professor. Call me Stephen. You know, it's very - it's really interesting because you can't really judge.
WERTHEIMER: Hawking himself is strongly atheist, he's rationalist, quite an unsentimental person in his public appearances. But in this film, you seem to be reaching for a way to demonstrate that he is an inspiring person. Did you talk about that, the difference between the man and the way you made the movie?
REDMAYNE: No. I mean, I think that for me, in my mind, there's no question that Stephen is an inspirational figure. This man was given two years to live. And rather than going to a sort of deep melancholy, which he did for a moment or two, he's chosen to - he says everyday beyond those two years has been a great gift.
SIMON: Eddie Redmayne in conversation with NPR's Linda Wertheimer about his role as Stephen Hawking in the film "The Theory Of Everything."
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
When CNN signed on in 1980, its founder Ted Turner famously declared, we'll be on and we will cover the end of the world live. And when the end of the world comes, we'll play "Nearer My God To Thee" before we sign off. Well, this week, Michael Ballaban, a former intern at CNN, posted a copy of a video acquired from a source that he says demonstrates that Ted Turner wasn't just being colorful. Mr. Ballaban says the video comes from CNN's archives, filed under the title "Turner's Doomsday Video." It shows an unnamed band in front of an identified building with a pool and pillars. And, as Mr. Ballaban puts it, this is the way the world ends - not with a bang, not with a whimper, but with one melancholy little band.
(SOUNDBITE OF VIDEO, "TURNER'S DOOMSDAY VIDEO")
SIMON: I don't know if this doomsday video is any more than an old joke put together by people on the night shift, but it caused us to look around NPR's archives. And sure enough, deep in the vault of reel-to-reel tapes, we discovered our very own recording to play in the event of the apocalypse.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ROBERT SIEGEL, BYLINE: This is special coverage of the end of the world from NPR News. I'm - well, who cares? I won't be for long. An asteroid is speeding toward the earth and will soon destroy it. Of course, NPR News will have the best analysis of it all the day after the world ends. But there is still time for you to become a member of this local public radio station.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Imagine your favorite meal. Mine happens to be homemade mac and cheese which I just had the other night. Now try to think about what makes it so delicious. The tang of the sharp cheddar, the punch from that little sprinkle of pepper, the way each warm bite sort of melts in your mouth in this beautiful medley of salty, cheesy goodness. OK. But why do those things make something delicious? And why is what is delicious to me different from what is delicious to you? Why do we taste at all, for that matter? Those are among the questions John McQuaid sets out to answer in his new book. It is called "Tasty: The Art And Science Of What We Eat." And the first thing you need to know - taste and flavor are not the same thing.
JOHN MCQUAID: Taste is a sense sensed by the tongue of certain basic chemicals that are sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami which is a savory taste. Flavor, which I would say is more of what people experience when they eat, combines taste with the sense of smell because when you chew, aromas are liberated from the food which waft up into your nose. And the brain then combines the sensations, along with other things such as your memories and feelings and the way things look, into the experience of flavor.
MARTIN: You write in the book that - and I'm quoting here - flavor is the most important ingredient at the core of what we are. It created us. That's a big statement. What does that mean? Why do we need flavor?
MCQUAID: Flavor is at the crux of various evolutionary advances throughout the history of life going back more than a billion years because what we consider flavor are the earliest antecedents of it. Among creatures floating around in some ancient sea was the need to sense what was going on around them and to chase it down and to devour it. And so this is kind of a basic motivational hinge that drove evolution because in order to outcompete your fellow primitive creatures, you needed sharper senses. If you had sharper senses, you also needed a bigger brain in order to process those senses. And this also shows up in human evolution. And so humans, as they began eating meat and then cooked meat, their brains grew bigger. Their faces flattened. Their perceptions changed and expanded. And their appreciation of food grew along with the improving taste of the food.
MARTIN: What did you learn about how our preferences play into all of this? Why is it that some of us are really attracted to bitter foods? Others of us have a real sweet tooth and crave sweet foods. Why is that? Is there an evolutionary reason?
MCQUAID: For some of it there is. I mean, sweetness, for example, is very ancient from an evolutionary standpoint because sugars are part of the basic cycle of life. So this is sort of programmed into us from - at a very deep level.
MARTIN: Sugar is life is what you're saying, John.
MCQUAID: Basically. Sorry to say that, yeah.
MARTIN: I knew it.
MCQUAID: However, humanity is weird with flavor in ways that no other creatures are.
MARTIN: What do you mean?
MCQUAID: Because we have certain genetic programming such as liking sugar and disliking bitterness, but we're also very malleable. Our tastes are malleable. This is also partly a result of our evolutionary heritage and that our ancestors lived in so many different parts of the world with so many different types of food and still do that flexibility is programmed into our makeup as well.
MARTIN: So does that mean we can learn to like things?
MCQUAID: That's exactly what happens. We learn to like things that by rights no one should like.
MARTIN: For example?
MCQUAID: Well, I paid a visit to Iceland during my research, and I tried some hakarl which is a type of fermented sea shark. It used to be buried in the sand for months, and then they would dig it up in a semi-fermented, rotted state, and eat it. Vikings did that, I guess, when they had no other option. But today it's a delicacy. It's a national tradition in Iceland. But it smells like a combination of ammonia and rotting fish.
MARTIN: (Laughter) Delicious.
MCQUAID: Yeah. You're supposed to drink it with some Icelandic schnapps and toast the god Thor. I tried this, and, you know, I have to say I did not learn to like it.
MARTIN: (Laughter). Maybe you didn't have enough of the schnapps.
MCQUAID: Perhaps not, yeah.
MARTIN: Maybe that's what's supposed to help.
MCQUAID: But if you live in Iceland, you will learn to like it because you derive other pleasures from it. You derive fellowship, and it's fun. And your brain kind of shifts around. And so things that other people find disgusting, you find enjoyable.
MARTIN: Has this changed the way you eat and taste things?
MCQUAID: Oh, yes, very definitely. I consider each bite much more carefully now and wonder where did this come from, or how is it made? You know, particularly with wines or cheeses which have all these very complex chemicals which set off neurons firing in your memory for associations.
MARTIN: A lot going on when you sit down at the dinner table.
MCQUAID: Yes. Yeah, always. So...
MARTIN: John McQuaid - his new book is called "Tasty: The Art And Science Of What We Eat." He joined us in our studios here in Washington. John, thanks so much.
MCQUAID: Thank you.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
"China Dolls," a book by Lisa See, explores the lives of three Asian-American girls who dream of being stars. The novel begins in the late 1930s in San Francisco with the Forbidden City nightclub as a backdrop. It was one of the more famous venues in the so-called Chop Sui circuit. That's the name given vaudeville shows starring all-Asian casts.
Lisa See's "China Dolls" is this Sunday's weekend read. It was selected by Jean Kwok, author of "Mambo In Chinatown." And Jean Kwok told me she picked this book in part because it felt familiar.
JEAN KWOK: The funny thing is that "China Dolls" came out a month before my book. And my book is about a Chinese-American woman who becomes a dancer. And people kept saying, you know, there's this other book that's just out by Lisa See about young, Asian-American women who become dancers. And I mean, what are the odds, you know? I have never even heard of another book about this topic. And then suddenly, both of our books appeared within a month of each other.
So it was really fascinating to read Lisa See's "China Dolls" because it's about three very different, young, Asian-American women who meet by chance at this glamorous nightclub called the Forbidden City in 1938. And we kind of follow the lives of Grace, Helen and Ruby as they become dancers. And these, you know, the friendships and relationships wax and wane throughout the novel, but Grace is the glue that holds everything together. She's the most talented one. She's kind of naive. And as the novel opens, Grace is running away from her abusive father in the Midwest in hopes of making it as a dancer in San Francisco.
MARTIN: These are all three young women who are, in some ways, trying to reinvent themselves. We just heard a little bit about Grace's back story. She's trying to escape an abusive situation. Can you tell as more about where Ruby Tom and Helen Fong are coming from? What is animating them?
KWOK: You know, Helen comes from one of the most powerful families in Chinatown. So she comes from a really affluent background. And she's had a very conservative Chinese upbringing. And then Ruby, you know, Ruby's the sparkler of the bunch. I mean, she is rebellious. She's ambitious. She's ruthless. But she's honest, too, you know. She's generous in her honesty. And I love how Ruby describes herself, you know, in her own words. She says, I didn't have a lot of talent, but I had plenty of bazing. And she really does.
(LAUGHTER)
MARTIN: The book is set at this very precarious time in American history. World War II is unfolding. There are a internment camps that have been set up around you the United States where Japanese Americans are being held. There is racism in all different pockets of American society. How does this play out in the book?
KWOK: One thing that I thought was really well done was that, you know, you've got these three young women. And what Lisa See does is she makes Ruby actually Japanese. So Ruby is passing as Chinese and pretending to be Chinese, but she's actually Japanese. And so you immediately have conflict because Helen, the conservative affluent one, has reason to hate the Japanese, especially after their invasion of China.
And because Ruby is Japanese and her family, you know, gets embroiled in the politics of that time, you know, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, as anti-Japanese sentiments rise in the U.S. and Japanese people were rounded up into internment camps, you know, that gives us a reason to follow the story into that very difficult world as well. So, you know, through the book, we can kind of see the scars of war on both Asians and non-Asians alike.
Something else that I think Lisa See does really well is that she shows racism throughout the book in large and small ways. So there are also so many little details like when Grace first arrives in San Francisco. And she's at an interview, and she's trying to get a job at the world fair. And her interviewer says to her, (reading) you've got a big problem. You're gams are good and your contours and promontories are in the right places. You've got a face that could crush a lily, but your accent. Grace says, my accent? Yeah, he says, you don't have one. You've got to stop talking all perfect. You need to do the ching-chong thing. And I thought that was just so funny and so heartbreaking at the same time.
MARTIN: That was best-selling novelist Jean Kwok talking about Lisa See's novel "China Dolls." You can read an excerpt from "China Dolls" on our website, npr.org. Jean, thank you so much for talking with us and sharing your thoughts on this book.
KWOK: Thank you, Rachel.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Rachel Martin. News that the Palestinians will join the International Criminal Court in April comes at a challenging time for the world's only permanent war crimes tribunal. The ICC has had to back off from some controversial cases recently - for instance, when charges against Kenya's president for election violence collapsed. And now the Hague-based court may have to walk an especially fine line when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. NPR's Michele Kelemen reports.
MICHELE KELEMEN, BYLINE: Duke University law professor Madeline Morris calls this a nightmare scenario for the ICC. Something, she says, experts like herself have been talking about ever since the court was formed.
MADELINE MORRIS: Being brought into and being unable to extricate itself from a diplomatic and political morass and asked to judge it as a criminal adjudication was always seen as a potential disaster.
KELEMEN: Morris calls it a no-win situation for the court.
MORRIS: It's a losing proposition for the court either way. If it acts, it will be very much criticized, and if it doesn't act, it will be very much criticized.
KELEMEN: When the Palestinian ambassador to the U.N., Riyad Mansour, submitted the documents to join the International Criminal Court and give it the jurisdiction in the Palestinian territories, he made clear that Palestinians want to see Israelis investigated for the way Israel carried out the war against Hamas in Gaza last summer and its policy of building Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.
RIYAD MANSOUR: It is a peaceful option. It is a civilized option. It is an option that anyone who upholds the law should not be afraid of.
KELEMEN: Legal experts, though, say it's an option that may not lead to any indictments, at least not anytime soon. The lead prosecutor would first have to open a preliminary examination, and that could drag on for years. And there are many other legal hurdles, according to David Bosco, author of a book about the ICC called "Rough Justice."
DAVID BOSCO: The ICC has been very hesitant to get involved. I think they realize it's both legally extremely complicated and politically extremely dangerous for the court. And so you sometimes hear people say that the ICC is eager to go after Israel. But the record really doesn't support that.
KELEMEN: What he worries about is what this could do to U.S. relations with the ICC. The United States is not a party to the court, but its relationship has evolved over the years. While Congress prohibited U.S. support for the court, the U.S. has cooperated on investigations into genocide in Darfur, Sudan and helped to get an indicted warlord from the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo to the Hague.
BOSCO: So there is some kind of concrete ways in which the U.S. can help the court. And I think if a Palestine investigation moves forward all of that would be at risk.
KELEMEN: So far the U.S. response has been to warn the Palestinians they could lose aid rather than putting pressure on the court. The U.S. could also go through the U.N. Security Council to freeze any future investigations, but for that, it would need others to go along. And Bosco, who teaches at American University, says this gives the Palestinians a bit more diplomatic leverage.
BOSCO: Most of the time, on Israel-Palestine issues, the U.S. is trying to avoid Security Council action. But now if it wants to really block an ICC investigation, it needs to counsel. And that means that other council members who are more supportive of the Palestinian cause have a real point of leverage. And they can say, OK, we'll do a freeze on an ICC investigation, but you, the United States, need to give something.
KELEMEN: The Palestinian decision to join the ICC came after the U.S. helped block a Security Council resolution that would have set a timeline for negotiations on Palestinian statehood. The Palestinians say they want to keep pursuing this at the U.N. Michele Kelemen, NPR News, Washington.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The new novel "Outline" by Rachel Cusk is in some ways just that - an outline of a woman as she spends a summer in Greece teaching a writing course. We know she has kids back in London and maybe a spouse but maybe not. There's a lot that's unclear. What fills in this silhouette is a series of conversations the narrator has with other people during this experience - strangers, friends, students. A picture slowly emerges of a woman trying to rebuild herself. Cusk has written about the repercussions of broken marriages before. Most recently, her own, in the memoir "Aftermath." The experience left her, like her narrator, in pieces.
RACHEL CUSK: Once this sort of family reality has broken apart, you're left with something much more fragmented and something in which your sort of encounters with other people are more objective, I suppose - that they tell you who they are, and you tell them who you are. And who you are isn't reflected anymore by your house or your sort of family situations.
MARTIN: That idea of fragmentation is then echoed in the actual structure of this book because it is a collection of conversations that the narrator has with other people, many of them are writers. And they talk about their craft. But as you say, they're also telling the story of their life. And in that is revealed some kind of truth about how honest we are when we tell those stories - right? - or dishonest?
CUSK: You know, human beings have an amazing gift for narrative when it comes to themselves, to the story of themselves. And this is something that I've listened to an awful lot as a teacher. So I suppose for me the sound of that - how people sound when they speak and how, in fact, formally correct they are, how artistically correct they are in the ways that they narrate their lives is something that I very much wanted to sort of replicate.
MARTIN: There's kind of an example of this. I'm thinking of one particular passage. At one point our narrator is having lunch with a writer friend and another person, a mutual acquaintance, a woman named Angelique (ph). And this woman starts to wax on about motherhood and what she sees as rather enslaving qualities. I wonder if you could read a little bit of that.
CUSK: (Reading) For many women, she said, having a child is their central experience of creativity. And yet the child will never remain a created object. Unless, she said, the mother's sacrifice of herself is absolute which mine never could've been and which no woman's ought to be these days. My own mother lived through me in a way that was completely uncritical, she said. And the consequence was that I came into adulthood unprepared for life because nobody saw me as important in the way she did which was the way I was used to being seen. And then you meet a man who thinks you're important enough to marry you so it seems right that you should say yes. But it is when you have a baby that the feeling of importance really returns, she said with growing passion. Except that one day you realize that all this - the house, the husband, the child - isn't important after all. In fact it is the exact opposite. You have become a slave, obliterated.
MARTIN: That's a big statement.
CUSK: (Laughter).
MARTIN: ...To say the least.
CUSK: It's in quote marks. (Laughter) Nothing to do with me.
MARTIN: This book, though, does reflect different parts of your own life. This is a writer. You are a writer. This is a person who teaches creative writing which you do, and it has informed this story.
CUSK: Oh, absolutely. I learned an awful lot in my memoir writing about - I mean, I suppose I found possibilities in it that I brought back to my novel writing. You know, the idea that when you fictionalize something you get further and further away from it in order to make it fake in some way. It has become a lot less interesting to me. So I've wanted to keep this - it's a kind of dangerousness as a sort of energy that's absolutely there in autobiographical writing.
MARTIN: Why look for that distance that a novel creates? Why not just write another memoir?
CUSK: I mean, I'm very clear about sort of why and when I would write a memoir. And for me it's to describe experiences that feel like you're the only person they've ever happened to. Sorry, that was an ungrammatical sentence. But having a baby is a very good example. The evidence is all around you that this is something women have done, you know, always. And yet, you have a baby, and you feel you are the only one. So that for me is what a memoir is really, really suited to is describing that precise quality of experience. In this book, I didn't want to do that because the circumstances of the novel are not like that. So it's not necessarily that the form chooses me. You know, it's that I choose it.
MARTIN: Your last memoir, "Aftermath," was the story of the end of your marriage. And then I read that you stopped writing for a while after that book. Is that right?
CUSK: I did, yes. I was very severely criticized for "Aftermath." I had a very intense experience of disapproval, I suppose - public disapproval. But it's just the idea, really - the idea that there ought to be some limit, you know, to autobiographical writing which, you know, I don't believe at all. So that was one reason. And also, I suppose it represented, I mean, just as the book is about the whole sort of mode and form of life that I live, you know, breaking apart. It takes time to reconstruct yourself after that. And it takes silence and waiting and nothingness.
MARTIN: So I guess how did you know that you were ready? I imagine it's not you just wake up one day and say today I will write the next novel.
CUSK: Well, I saw it. And for me I can't write something unless I see the form clearly and see that life has fallen in or arranged itself in a pattern that can be written about originally. And looking for that, you know, it's like somebody looking for some wild animal in a jungle. And anyway one day I just saw this book and realized for whatever reason things had sort of coalesced to a degree that I could actually write it.
MARTIN: The book is called "Outline." Rachel Cusk is the author. She joined us from the studios of the BBC in London. Rachel, thank you so much.
CUSK: Thank you.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Rachel Martin. Pretty soon sports fans won't need a cable or satellite subscription to watch the big game on ESPN. That's thanks to a new streaming service from Dish Network called Sling TV. NPR TV critic Eric Deggans says platforms like this are redefining the industry and how we watch television.
ERIC DEGGANS, BYLINE: Tina Fey is coming back to series TV for the first time since her show "30 Rock" ended in 2013. And she's already got an idea for how her new show will be different now that it's airing on Netflix instead of NBC.
(SOUNDBITE OF PRESS CONFERENCE)
TINA FEY: I think season 2 is going to be mostly shower sex.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: Yes.
DEGGANS: She was cracking jokes at a press conference for TV critics, but she also had a point. Fey's new show, "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt," was developed for NBC, but when the network couldn't find a good time slot, they cut a deal to move it to the streaming service Netflix. There, the show has no official language restrictions, no content restrictions and no timeslots.
TED SARANDOS: We can make a show work on its own merits.
DEGGANS: That's Ted Sarandos, chief content officer for Netflix.
SARANDOS: If it would've gone the NBC route, it would've been, you know, I didn't know what night it was on. It got preempted by a football game. It was all the different things where - that keep people from having that deep relationship with programming that they used to have.
DEGGANS: Ask if this new way of watching TV comedy will obliterate the broadcast networks, though, and Fey is not quite ready to go there yet.
(SOUNDBITE OF PRESS CONFERENCE)
FEY: I think the future is a mix. People still have the communal feeling when the next season of "Orange Is The New Black" goes up. And they do want to talk about it. They want to email about it. They want to talk about it at work. So you still have the communal feeling of, like, oh, we all want to see this and talk about it right now. But it's just not literally at that specific hour of the night.
DEGGANS: In fact there's several new streaming services coming in 2015 to give viewers more control. HBO and CBS have announced services, but Dish Network's got a lot of attention at the Consumer Electronic Show by unveiling its Sling TV. Mostly for this reason...
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "SPORTSCENTER")
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: This is SportsCenter.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: We are just two days away from...
DEGGANS: ESPN and ESPN2 are among a slimmed-down package of channels offered by Sling TV for a $20 monthly subscription. It will be the first time viewers can stream ESPN channels without paying for a cable subscription - a development that hints at a future without cable television. But James Rollins, vice president of digital distribution for ESPN said during a press conference that Sling TV was mostly a way to target people who have broadband internet service but don't buy cable television.
JAMES ROLLINS: We see it as being kind of supplemental. It's going to be additive, in a way, to serve a market that's been underserved, be that bridge into higher tiers of service.
ERIK FLANAGAN: If you're not getting to those audiences where they want to be watching and where they want to be shifting their time, you are leaving them behind.
DEGGANS: Erik Flanagan is an executive vice president at Viacom Entertainment Group. He says viewers have grown to expect access to TV shows when they want, where they want, thanks to the digital video recorder.
FLANAGAN: The DVR was the first thing that put you off the clock and on your own schedule and essentially watching shows when you wanted to watch them, binge view them when you wanted to watch them. Then you throw the streaming services onto that, you start to get all these what are now new behaviors.
DEGGANS: Flanagan works on TV Everywhere. It's an effort by the cable industry to give subscribers access to their channels over the Internet on laptops, tablets and smart phones. Flanagan says a service like Sling might help Dish hold on to customers who would otherwise cut the cord and drop their subscriptions either because they want lower payments or because they watch TV differently.
FLANAGAN: I tend, at this moment, to pull out my phone, and say people for whom this is their first screen, not their second screen, I think having some answer to those folks is something we need to do.
DEGGANS: Netflix content chief Sarandos says their data shows people watch TV differently when they use their service.
SARANDOS: Everything that's watched on Netflix is watched super deliberately. It's not background noise. It's not just, you know, something you turn on and you go off and eat dinner and watching the same show until you're done. This is much closer to books where people are really saying, oh, I'm going to start "Breaking Bad" tonight.
DEGGANS: At a time when everyone in the TV industry is trying to guess what the future holds, it seems that technology and services that meet viewers new on demand attitudes are the surest ways to success. I'm Eric Deggans.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Rachel Martin. Quick, what's a six-letter word that describes your personal happy place? Hint, it starts with P and ends with E, and we are taking you there right now. Joining me is WEEKEND EDITION's puzzle master, Will Shortz. Hi, Will.
WILL SHORTZ, BYLINE: Good morning, Rachel
MARTIN: OK. What was last week's challenge?
SHORTZ: Yes. It came from listener Andrew Chaikin of San Francisco. I said name a world capital, change a letter in it and rearrange the result to name a country. Then change a letter in that and rearrange the result to name another world capital. What names are these?
Well, the answer was Berlin, as in capital of Germany, Brunei and then Beirut, which is the capital of Lebanon. And I have to tell you, a number of readers sent in Abuja, capital of Nigeria, to Aruba to Rabat, which is the capital of Morocco. But Aruba is not an independent country. It's part of the Netherlands so we didn't count that.
MARTIN: Good try. So 165 of you got it exactly right. And our winner this week is Paul Keller of Lompoc, California. He joins us on the line now. Hey, Paul, congratulations.
PAUL KELLER: Thank you, Rachel.
MARTIN: So this one was kind of hard. Did this come pretty easily to you, or did you have to work at it?
KELLER: I had to work at it. And I was tempted to submit Juba, Cuba and Baku . But I realized from a previous episode that unlike mathematicians, puzzlers do not consider words to be anagrams of itself. So I was forewarned not too settle for that answer.
MARTIN: Loyal listening pays off is what you're saying.
KELLER: That's right.
MARTIN: And what's life like in Lompoc, California?
KELLER: Oh, generally pretty foggy. It's on the coast, gets a lot of fog.
MARTIN: And what do you do there? How do you pass your days besides puzzling?
KELLER: I'm a retired school teacher, and my biggest hobby is birdwatching.
MARTIN: And do you have a question for Will Shortz?
KELLER: I'm a crossword puzzle fan. I guess it's sort of a complaint in a way. I've often wondered how is it that it's kind of impossible to complete a crossword puzzle unless you're, like, some kind of expert in English literature and Hollywood trivia?
MARTIN: Oh, I like it. A little puzzle kvetching.
SHORTZ: Yeah. Well, as far as The New York Times crossword goes, it in increases in difficulty through the week so it starts easy, medium I'd say on Monday, and build up to very hard on Friday and Saturday. And yeah, you have to know a lot of words and have to know a lot of stuff. I'll tell you, the best solvers can do even a Friday and Saturday New York Times crossword in four minutes.
MARTIN: Are you kidding?
KELLER: Four minutes.
SHORTZ: Yeah.
MARTIN: That is amazing.
KELLER: Well, I have a long ways to go.
(LAUGHTER)
MARTIN: We ALL need things to aspire to. All right, Paul, with that, are you ready to play the puzzle?
KELLER: I am.
MARTIN: OK, Will, let's do it.
SHORTZ: All right, Paul and Rachel, it's another geographical puzzle. I'm going to give you some familiar two-word phrases and names. And for each one, take one or more letters from the start of the first word plus one or more letters from the start of the second word, read them in order from left to right to name a country.
For example, if I said chicken leg, you would say Chile because C-H-I from Chile starts chicken and LE starts leg. So just from the start...
MARTIN: OK.
SHORTZ: Yeah. Just from those two words and read them left to right. No scrambling necessary. Number one is space invaders.
KELLER: S-P-A.
SHORTZ: It's going to start with S.
KELLER: Spain - no.
MARTIN: Yeah.
KELLER: Spain. That's right. That works.
SHORTZ: Spain is it. Good. Number two is marriage license.
KELLER: M-A - M-A-L-I.
SHORTZ: There you go.
KELLER: Oh, Mali, of course.
SHORTZ: Mali. There's your name. Congressional oversight.
KELLER: Well, that'd be Congo.
SHORTZ: Congo is it. International dialing.
KELLER: That would be India.
MARTIN: Yeah.
SHORTZ: Uh-huh. Charles Adams.
KELLER: C-H - Chad. There we go.
SHORTZ: Uh-huh. Malcolm Taylor.
KELLER: That would be Malta.
SHORTZ: Uh-huh. Owner's manual.
KELLER: O - Oman.
SHORTZ: Uh-huh. Beethoven's ninth.
KELLER: B-E-E - Benin.
SHORTZ: Benin is right. Hair tie - H-A-I-R T-I-E.
KELLER: Hair tie - H - Haiti.
SHORTZ: Uh-huh. Personal use.
KELLER: P-E - oh, Peru.
SHORTZ: Uh-huh.
KELLER: There we go.
SHORTZ: Intermediate range.
KELLER: I-N - oh, Iran.
SHORTZ: That's it.
MARTIN: Good.
SHORTZ: And your last one is Malaga wine - M-A-L-A-G-A - Malaga wine.
KELLER: I guess Mali doesn't quite fit. Let's see - M-A - Malawi.
SHORTZ: Malawi is correct. Boom. Boom. Boom.
MARTIN: Well, I just got a lot of online shopping done because you did not need me at all, Paul. Well-done. Good job.
KELLER: Well, thank you.
MARTIN: For playing the puzzle today, you get a WEEKEND EDITION lapel pin and puzzle books and games. You can read all about your prizes at npr.org/puzzle. And tell us where you hear us, Paul. What's your public radio station?
KELLER: KCBX in San Luis Obispo.
MARTIN: Paul Keller of Lompoc, California. Thank you so much for playing the puzzle.
KELLER: It's been an honor and a pleasure. Thank you both.
MARTIN: OK, Will, what's the challenge for next week?
SHORTZ: Yes. It comes from listener Steve Baggish of Arlington, Massachusetts. Think of a U.S. city whose name has nine letters. Remove three letters from the start of the name and three letters from the end, and only two will remain. How is this possible, and what city is it?
So, again, a U.S. city, name has nine letters. Remove three letters from the start and three letters from the end, and only two will remain. How is this possible, and what city is it?
MARTIN: OK. When you've got the answer, go to our website. It is npr.org/puzzle. Click on the submit your answer link. One entry per person please. Send in those answers by Thursday January 15, at 3 p.m. Eastern time. Don't forget to include a phone number where we can reach you at about that time. And if you are the winner, then we give you a call, and you can play on the air with the puzzle editor of The New York Times and WEEKEND EDITION's puzzle master, Will Shortz. Thanks so much, Will.
SHORTZ: Thanks, Rachel.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Now to a very personal story from the front lines of the ongoing fight against Ebola in one of the countries hardest hit - Sierra Leone. The World Health Organization reports that the Ebola epidemic in that country may be leveling off, although, nearly 250 new cases were reported there last week. And two promising Ebola vaccines will soon be tested on healthy volunteers in West Africa.
Since early December, American doctor, Joel Selanikio has been treating Ebola patients in Lunsar, Sierra Leone, about 60 miles from the capitol of Freetown. As he wrapped up his tour with the International Medical Corps, he sent along this audio diary of his time in the epidemic's hot zone.
In his first entry, Selanikio is getting ready to enter the Ebola ward, and he's suiting up in his PPE. This is personal protective equipment. A word of caution here, some listeners may find portions of this story disturbing.
(SOUNDBITE OF AUDIO DIARY)
DR. JOEL SELANIKIO: I rounded on a 16-year-old girl a few days ago. Her name was Hawanatu (ph), or Hawa (ph) for short. When I first saw her under her blanket, I thought that she must be an amputee. Then I realized that she was just a very, very small, thin girl. I didn't get to Hawa the next day and today, I rounded on her again. For the first time in two days wanting to examine her fully, I pulled away her blanket and found that rather than just having a rash, her entire body surface was peeling off in thick pieces, revealing very, very red painful-looking skin underneath.
Honestly, every person around that bed literally gasped when they saw what she looked like. It was like a burn victim. I've honestly never seen anything like it except in a burn victim.
It's really hard to describe all the emotions that I felt when I realized what this 16-year-old girl had been going through while supposedly under my care. But I can say that mostly I felt ashamed because I had agreed to care for her, and I hadn't. It's a hard, hard thing to realize that your actions or your inactions have harmed a child.
Martha (ph) was a baby girl about 13 months old whose mother had died at our facility. When Martha came in, she seemed like a normal, healthy baby. She was drinking well, eating well, smiling and active. But over the next few days, she became more irritable and less active, drinking and eating less. And we could see her becoming dehydrated despite our efforts to provide IV fluids. Because unlike in a normal hospital setting, we didn't have the staff or the IV pumps to provide continuous fluids or continuous observation of Martha.
On the third day, she lost her IV access and still wasn't drinking. For about 45 minutes, I cradled her in one of my arms and used my other hand to squirt oral rehydration solution into her mouth with a syringe. She drank like she was starving to death, which she was. And the next morning, she was dead.
One of the things that has surprised me here, although it probably shouldn't, is how fast death has become part of my routine. Of course, I knew from the news that many Ebola patients die. And I knew that many of my Ebola patients would die. And I knew from years of working in hospitals and health care that care providers, doctors, nurses, everyone else, can't function if they breakdown every time a patient dies. So I knew that I would handle it. I'd compartmentalize it. Still a few weeks into this, I've certified the deaths of more patients than in my last two decades. And I'm shocked to the degree to which it has just become part of my daily routine.
So Martin (ph), a 19-year-old boy, was double negative today. That is he got the second of two negative Ebola tests separated by 48 hours proving that he was now cured and can go home. I remembered when he'd come in very sick and also he was tired of living, he said, because his father had died. And he said, I'm going to die like my father. And I said, no, you're not going to die Martin, you're going to fight it. And you're going to drink, and you're going to eat, and you're going to rest, and you're going to live for your father. And I thought about that while I was laughing and clapping for Martin. And then I thought about little Martha who had died and Hawa with the skin condition and Aminata (ph) and Ibrahim (ph) and Sori (ph) and Ahmed (ph) who had died. And I was crying inside my PPE behind my fogged up goggles just crying to myself.
(SOUNDBITE OF CELEBRATION)
SELANIKIO: When a confirmed Ebola patient manages to defy the odds and fight the disease, they can be discharged. At that point, the patient is brought out of the confirmed award inside the hot zone, led into a little shower building that straddles the hot and the cold zones and which is referred to by the staff as the "showers of glory," quote-unquote. And they emerge reborn, as it were, from the hot zone into the world. And the patient is welcomed out of the shower with all kinds of clapping and shouting, music and lots and lots of dancing. Really excited that we managed to save one more person.
(SOUNDBITE OF CELEBRATION)
MARTIN: That was an audio diary from Dr. Joel Selanikio. He finished his tour of duty in Sierra Leone this weekend. He is headed home to Washington, D.C.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Rachel Martin. More than a dozen hospitals across Great Britain declared major incidents this past week. They canceled all nonemergency operations and called in extra staff to cope with overcrowded emergency rooms. And still, the back log in waiting rooms is growing. Vicki Barker reports from London.
(SOUNDBITE OF NEWS REPORT)
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Waiting times in England are at their worst for a decade.
VICKI BARKER, BYLINE: The horror stories just keep coming of long lines outside emergency departments just to get into the waiting room, of hospitals locking their doors to keep new arrivals away.
In Portsmouth in southern England, patient David Cunningham watched the scene outside his hospital's accident and emergency department, or A and E.
DAVID CUNNINGHAM: There had been ambulances parked outside for five hours with their patients inside, who are being treated by paramedics in the ambulances also with, I believe, nursing staff. They couldn't even get in the A and E department.
BARKER: New figures show not one NHS hospital system in England has met the government's target of treating 95 percent of emergency room patients within four hours. But no matter how hard Nurse Sarah Gwilt works, she won't make that target because there are simply no hospital beds for the patients she sees.
SARAH GWILT: Problem is we've just got nowhere to put people. We can deal with them in A and E, and we can get them through. But there's nowhere to put them, just the volume coming in is just too much.
BARKER: Dr. Ian Stanley is deputy director of hospitals in East Lancashire.
DR. IAN STANLEY: This year has been busier than any of us can remember both in the number of patients who are attending and actually in how sick the patients are who are attending our emergency departments.
BARKER: And many of those patients are among the growing ranks of Britain's elderly. The doctors say cutbacks in community, nursing and social work mean that by the time many old people get to the hospital, minor ailments have become major. Then, the lack of social safety nets at home means many stay and stay.
Bernadette Garrihy of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine.
BERNADETTE GARRIHY: We have hospitals full of frail, elderly patients who have great difficulty getting home in a timely matter because they require complex packages of care so that they can be safely discharged to the community.
BARKER: With national elections just four months away, all the main parties have been pointing accusing fingers at each other. The opposition Labor Party blames the conservative-led coalition government for the crisis and says the NHS will be rendered unrecognizable if the conservatives are reelected.
The conservatives have been promised to protect the health service from future austerity moves. And they insist a triumphant Labor Party would endanger the NHS by spending recklessly on other social welfare programs. In fact, health care professionals say repeated reorganizations under both conservative and labor governments have left the NHS fragmented and unable to cope with changing demographic realities. Chris Ham runs The King's Fund, a health care think tank.
CHRIS HAM: Staff in A and E are working their socks off at the moment. I've been out there myself. I've seen this firsthand. They couldn't be working any harder, but you can't make a broken system work better by working harder. You need an entirely different system.
BARKER: For its part, the British government denies there's a crisis and notes that the U.K. consistently tops world rankings in emergency care. It also says it's currently reviewing how to adapt the NHS to best serve Britain's aging population. For NPR News, I'm Vicki Barker in London.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Last week we brought you the story of Allan Edwards, a Presbyterian minister from Pennsylvania who is attracted to men but married to a woman. He says his attraction puts him in conflict with his faith, so he doesn't act on it.
ALLAN EDWARDS: I think we all have parts of our desires that we choose not to act on, right? So for me, it's not just that the religion was important to me but communion with a God who loves me. What I do with my sexual orientation, what I do with my experience of sexuality, that kind of comes after this experience with a very transformative and gracious God.
MARTIN: Our interview drew more than 1,500 comments on our website. And it also prompted a response from Allan Edwards younger brother, Dexter, who is openly gay. Allan Edwards hadn't mentioned his brother in our interview. After hearing his brother on the air, Dexter contacted The Advocate, a gay publication. We contacted him by phone yesterday.
DEXTER EDWARDS: I was shocked. And I was very uneasy. It brought up the feelings I've had through the past, you know, six and a half, seven years - just feelings that I've tried to suppress. I took it as, like, almost a personal jab.
MARTIN: Allan Edwards believes you can't be a Christian and live an openly gay life. Dexter respects his brother but felt compelled to speak out.
D. EDWARDS: I was kind of frustrated that NPR made this a news story because I feel as how detrimental it can be to other people. I mean, I understand that it's an opinion, and it's a lifestyle choice, and that everyone does and can choose what they want to do. But I would never want this to harm anyone. I just want to be a voice of encouragement to people that have come through it or are going through it or are in the closet and don't feel comfortable because of people like this.
MARTIN: We reached out to Allan Edwards to see if he wanted to comment further. He politely declined. But he did respond to The Advocate. Allan says his brother is, quote, living his life based on what he believes, and I am living my life based on what I believe. We disagree about issues of faith and sexuality, but I love him.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The Golden Globe Awards are tonight, and one film that could take home a few statues is "Selma." The movie depicts the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches, which led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act.
This weekend, Paramount Pictures began free screenings in the movie's namesake town in Alabama. Andrew Yeager with member stationed WBHM went to see how residents are reacting to the Hollywood version of events.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Hey there. Welcome to the Walton Theater. Enjoy the movie.
ANDREW YEAGER, BYLINE: It's a half an hour until show time, and the majority of seats are already taken. In the front row in the far left seat is 85-year-old George Sallie. He's black, grew up near Selma and was drafted as a young man.
GEORGE SALLIE: I went to Korea fighting for somebody else's freedom. And really, I didn't have freedom myself.
YEAGER: Sallie says after he came back, he became involved in the Civil Rights Movement. He lifts up his ball cap and points to a scar on his forehead. A memento of what's known as Bloody Sunday. That's the day in March 1965 when protesters were brutally beaten by police as they tried to cross Selma's Edmund Pettus Bridge.
Many people in the audience have first-hand connections with this history. Monique Williams was just a child then, but she remembers Annie Lee Cooper, who's played in the movie by Oprah Winfrey.
MONIQUE WILLIAMS: Annie Lee Cooper. I'm not quite sure how mamma found her, but she was our housekeeper for about six months. She was wonderful.
YEAGER: Cooper was a civil rights activist most known for whacking the county sheriff at the time across the jaw. Williams says she's sure Cooper will come off great in the movie but is a little uneasy about how white southerners will be depicted. Still, she's looking forward to it.
WILLIAMS: If you find me after the movie, I'll tell you what I think. I just feel like it's a wonderful thing for Selma. I do.
YEAGER: Because the thing is, it took a special effort to bring this film here. The town doesn't have a commercial movie theater. Selma Mayor George Evans says it only makes sense the movie should be shown here and looked for a way to do it. He spoke with the filmmakers and the owner of a theater a few towns away. They made it happen in the city-owned auditorium. Evans says, people at first couldn't believe the movie would be shown in Selma.
MAYOR GEORGE EVANS: When we said it's going to be for here and free, man, people just was overly elated over that.
YEAGER: Inside, the audience is in rapture. They cheer, they sigh and when the credits roll...
(APPLAUSE)
YEAGER: For Reverend F. D. Reese, it brought back a lot of memories. He was head of the Selma movement at the time.
REVEREND F. D. REESE: Well, I hope that people will understand the type of sacrifices that had to be made in order for us to enjoy the freedom that we now enjoy today.
YEAGER: This is Terri Sewell's third time seeing the film, but the first with the hometown crowd. She represents Selma in Congress, and is Alabama's first black congresswoman. She especially wanted to see the movie with her parents.
CONGRESSWOMAN TERRI SEWELL: Mommy was literally in tears when she saw the reenactment of Bloody Sunday. And, you know, as I comforted her, I said, isn't it great that we are in a different space today?
YEAGER: Monique Williams, the one who's housekeeper was activist Annie Lee Cooper, she agrees much progress has been made. But the film made her feel almost embarrassed. Teary-eyed, she explains, yes, she was a child, but oblivious to the injustice of segregation.
WILLIAMS: I wish I could talk to Annie Lee Cooper today and just say, Annie, I'm so proud of you. I mean, I think it sort of overwhelmed me as you can see (laughter).
YEAGER: Several moviegoers remark about the need to take voting rights more seriously today. Some lament that race relations in America are still frayed. One native, though, says the voting rights marches needed to happen somewhere. He's proud they happened in Selma. For NPR News, I'm Andrew Yeager.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Time to roll out the red carpet. Award season is underway. Tonight, the Golden Globes will be handed out. And one of the nominees for best motion picture is the film "Boyhood." It was directed by Richard Linklater, and it was shot over 12 years. The result is a time lapse of childhood - no special effects, just the sometimes dramatic changes that can take place from year to year. NPR's Tamara Keith spoke to the star of that film when the movie came out. Here is her interview with Ellar Coltrane, who plays Mason, Jr.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Let's get something out of the way. This is not a documentary, right?
ELLAR COLTRANE: Yeah, that's correct. It does document the passage of time, in a way, but it is a very crafted story.
KEITH: I read that the director, Richard Linklater, didn't want Mason, Jr. to do anything on screen that you hadn't already done in your real life. So what was that process like? Did he call and say, hey, have you smoked yet?
COLTRANE: Right. I mean, he was never quite that direct about it. You know? He would kind of just keep in touch with me throughout the years between filming and I think just try and get a feel for where I was. You know? It's like there was a point where I, like, had a girlfriend, so it was probably the case that I had kissed a girl before and that kind of thing. I mean, I think he tried not to put me on the spot too much.
KEITH: And so then you'd show up for your summer filming and, what do you know, you have a girlfriend who you're going to kiss on screen. Is that how it worked?
COLTRANE: Yeah, more or less. (Laughter).
KEITH: So did you ever find yourself doing things and then thinking is this going to show up in the script?
COLTRANE: Now, I mean, I have to do it in the movie. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, a lot of times he would even give me kind of assignments to sort of be thinking about and even taking notes on things that happened in my life to then use that material to, you know, supplement the character.
KEITH: Do you have an example?
COLTRANE: Well, the first - the Sheena character, the girlfriend, that - I mean, that conversation that I had with her was taken pretty directly from a similar conversation in my life.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BOYHOOD")
COLTRANE: (As Mason) I really like talking with you. I don't usually even try to, like, vocalize my thoughts or feelings or anything. Just - I don't know, it never sounds right. Words are stupid.
ZOE GRAHAM: (As Sheena) So why are you trying with me?
COLTRANE: (As Mason) I don't know. I guess I feel comfortable.
GRAHAM: (As Sheena) I'm glad.
COLTRANE: He was, like, well, so next time you're, you know - he's going to have a girlfriend, or he's going to meet a girl next year. So next time you're alone with a girl for the first time just, you know, think about what you say.
KEITH: Did that affect your conversation with girls?
COLTRANE: Probably so. That's something I thought about a lot. I mean, I was already a pretty introspective person but being tasked to take notes on my social interactions, I'm sure, added a new level to that.
KEITH: You were 6 when you started this. Did you have any idea what you were getting into?
COLTRANE: As much as I could. You know, I mean, I was a pretty alert kid and I, you know, I was very interested in art. So I understood, you know, how kind of strange it was and how big an undertaking it was. But there's also absolutely no way to understand, like, how long 12 years is. I mean, it's hard now to wrap my head around the next 12 years. But when you've been alive, you know, half that long, it's a very abstract kind of concept.
KEITH: So all of us growing up, we have bad years or years where we were awkward or looked terrible or had lots of zits or whatever it was. And most of us are lucky enough not to have that particularly well documented.
COLTRANE: Right. And I've got a whole movie.
KEITH: You've got a whole movie. So what is it like to look at those sort of early teen years? Is it hard to watch your awkward years on screen?
COLTRANE: Yeah, I mean, it can be awkward sometimes but seeing it put together like that it kind of puts it in context and makes it - kind of makes it easier to go easy on myself. And also it's just - I think if I let myself worry about, like, being embarrassed, you know, I would lose my mind.
KEITH: Do you have any sense at this point of how this experience is going to write itself in the narrative of your life? Is this going to be something you did when you were a kid, or do you think this is going to be this thing that changed the trajectory of your life?
COLTRANE: I think it absolutely - I mean, it's a very large part of who I am. I mean, you know, having this very long-term and very focused, like, guided kind of outlet to throw myself into art and the creation of something was a really incredible therapeutic thing to have, especially as a teenager. I feel like it kind of showed me what I want to do with my life.
KEITH: Ellar Coltrane stars in the film "Boyhood." He joined us from our New York bureau. Thanks for joining us.
COLTRANE: Yeah. Thank you for having me.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
It was a powerful scene - world leaders marching arm in arm this morning in the streets of Paris as hundreds of thousands of people rallied at the city center. It's been hailed as a unity march meant to send a message of resolve after last week's deadly attacks.
Earlier this morning, leaders and intelligence officials from around the world, including U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, gathered in Paris for high-level security talks. The meeting was convened by French President Francois Hollande in direct response to the recent terrorist attacks. Reporter Lauren Frayer is there in Paris at the rally. She joins us now. Lauren, can you describe the scene for us where you are?
LAUREN FRAYER, BYLINE: Rachel, I'm watching people streaming through the city. The sky is streaked pink. It's sunset here. People are draped in French flags. Almost every marcher has a je suis Charlie sign - I am Charlie. I just passed a man who was carrying a giant eight-foot pencil, and that's in remembrance of those cartoonists who were killed Wednesday at the Charlie Hebdo magazine. We've been talking to marchers who described an eerie silence as they walked arm in arm across Paris, led by a delegation of world leaders - French President Francois Hollande and many, many others.
MARTIN: Lauren, we mention these high-level security talks. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder took part in those. Any idea what came out of those meetings?
FRAYER: Well, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, here in Paris, has said that the U.S. is at war with terrorists - terrorists who use Islam to justify their actions, he said. He also said that the U.S. has no credible information as to which terror group, if any, was responsible for this past week's terror siege. We've had several posthumous claims by the gunmen that they were affiliated variously with the Islamic State, with al-Qaida in Yemen. All three gunmen were killed on Friday. Holder also announced that there would be summit on combating violent extremism to be held in Washington in February. And here he is talking about some of the decisions that were made during the talks today.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL ERIC HOLDER: We work with our allies. We share information. It is one of the things I think that we, frankly, have to do better. We have to monitor each other's citizens because the reality is that any one nation can be hurt by the citizens of another nation, given the way in which people can transit from one country to another.
MARTIN: That was the attorney general on CNN this morning. Lauren, wondering how France's Jewish and Muslim communities are reacting, given that one of the attacks on Friday happened at a Jewish market - and we have seen reports of some backlash against mosques throughout France. What are you hearing from those groups?
FRAYER: That's right. There's a definite fear in the Muslim community here. France has Western Europe's biggest Muslim community - 10 percent of the French population. There has been vandalism against mosques across France, including reports of a severed pig's head being dropped at the door of one mosque in Corsica, a French territory.
I went to Paris's Grand Mosque and talked to the grand mufti there. He decried the terror attacks, just like everyone else has, and says he's very concerned about his community. There's also heavy security outside synagogues and Jewish businesses across the French capital, and French President Francois Hollande had called that attack on the kosher supermarket Friday a horrifying act of anti-Semitism. Among the world leaders today in Paris, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
MARTIN: And lastly, Lauren, there is still an ongoing investigation. Three of the terrorists were killed in raids by French security forces, but there is still one person at large - someone associated with these three men. She is a young woman. What do you know about the search for her?
FRAYER: That's right. So as Parisians flood the streets today in solidarity with the terror victims, there still is a manhunt underway. This is for this 26-year-old woman who French authorities have described as the partner of one of the gunmen killed Friday. There are some reports that she may already have left France, perhaps even before the attacks took place. Her picture is plastered all over French television. Police have set up a tip line for any witnesses to call in and report any information anyone might have.
MARTIN: Reporter Lauren Frayer from Paris. Thank you so much, Lauren.
FRAYER: You're welcome.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Last week's tragedy inspired a larger debate about freedom of speech and the future of Islam. In a moment, we'll hear from one outspoken advocate for reform. But first, a few perspectives from the past week.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
CONAN O'BRIEN: In this country, we just take it for granted that it's our right to poke fun at the untouchable or the sacred. But today's tragedy in Paris reminds us very viscerally that it's a right some people are inexplicably forced to die for.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
IMAM ANJEM CHOUDARY: Many right-wing organizations are now allowed to espouse their own anti-Islamic, you know, ideas very openly. And if we could have a government in places like France, which are very anti-Islam and anti-Muslims.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
AYAAN HIRSI ALI: But the most important bit of it is to face the grim reality that this is embedded in the religion that we were brought up in.
MARTIN: We just heard the voices of Conan O'Brien, Imam Anjem Choudary and Somali-born writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
For another prospective, we are joined in the studio by Irshad Manji. She is the founder of the Moral Courage Project at NYU and the author of a number of books, including "The Trouble With Islam Today."
She's been an outspoken advocate for reform in Islam, particularly for what she feels is the inferior treatment of women, anti-Semitism within the religion and an overly literal reading of the Quran. Irshad, thanks so much for being with us.
IRSHAD MANJI: Thanks for having me.
MARTIN: You have a somewhat different interpretation of last week's events. You have said in the past few days that you feel optimistic. Can you explain that?
MANJI: Yeah. And I realize, Rachel, that's a hard-sell and of course time will tell. But I can report to you that the rate of inter-marriage between Muslims and non-Muslims in France is at its highest level ever and is only rising. And historically, inter-marriage between any so-called races or religions or ethnicities has been a check on the most extreme elements in either party's cultures.
And it's also a wonderful, historically-proven strategy for integration and pluralism. That's this side of the story that we are not hearing. And of course, it's not going to make the news because it's not sensational. But it doesn't mean that piece of the story isn't real.
MARTIN: But when you talk about reforming Islam, I imagine, though, it's still difficult to look at what happened last week in Paris and not see this as a setback to the kind of progress you're talking about.
MANJI: Yeah. It is a setback in the sense that there will be more fear now, more anger, anger and fear on the part of non-Muslims but also on the part of Muslims who will become more and more defensive about, you know, the reality of Islamophobia in their lives.
Nonetheless, I think it's important to realize that there are many reasons for why something like this crime could've happened. Not the least of which is that, you know, these young men, who were petty criminals to begin with, had become hardened and calcified by a much older man who gave them a narrative that, you know, suggested that the world is out of control precisely because of the pluralism I just talked about.
In other words, these crimes, you could say, were a backlash against a more progressive future. And if we remember to look for the hope rather than simply ingesting what's in the headlines, we'll find that, you know, these crimes, as horrific as they are, are actually the exceptions, not the rule.
MARTIN: One of the people connected to the Paris terrorists is a young woman. She's still at large - Hayat Boumediene. What does her involvement in all of this signify about women's role in extremist movements? How do you interpret that?
MANJI: Oh, listen, you know, women have been key in the emergence of extremist movements for, frankly, you know, at least a decade and more. Look, there is an interpretation of Islam that tells us that women historically have been a huge factor in the winning of global jihad or at least in the winning of Jihad.
And so these women are likely sort of feeding off of that interpretation and of course twisting and manipulating it to a more destructive end. But at the same time, people like me, reformist Muslims see how strong women historically have been in Islam; see, for example, that the Prophet Muhammad married a woman 15 years his senior. She, you know, proposed to him, and she was a self-made merchant. The point being that we reformist Muslims have our own role models as well. And frankly, it is our challenge and our opportunity to step up, speak out even more for reform, and the opportunity and challenge of media outlets like this to listen.
MARTIN: At the center of all of this, of course, are larger questions about limits to free speech. And, of course, the terrorists were acting, they say, in retribution for cartoons that the magazine published of the Prophet Muhammad. Is Islam, in your view, compatible with freedom of expression as realized in western secular societies?
MANJI: If I didn't believe it was compatible, I could not be a Muslim today. Freedom of expression is, for me, at the heart of what it means to live in a progressive, pluralistic society. Very briefly, I can tell you that there are plenty of passages in the Quran that defend freedom of conscience and even freedom of disbelief. And in fact, there are three times as many passages in the Quran calling on us to think and reflect and analyze and rethink, rather than merely submit blindly.
So yes, it's up to people like me to, you know, to advocate bold and competing reinterpretations of Islam. You're not going to get that from moderate Muslims, who typically only condemn violence once it happens. And frankly, I don't feel that that's a big deal. It doesn't help matters. I think that media and Americans will want to turn more to reformist Muslims, who are at the forefront of a movement for positive change.
MARTIN: And briefly, you wrote your book, "The Trouble With Islam Today," a decade ago. And at the time, you received death threats for that. How do people respond to your message now?
MANJI: It's interesting. I certainly still receive hate mail, but I have not received a credible death threat in over two years. And I can report to you, I get more love bombs, if I can put it that way, from young Muslims today than anything else. They are hungry - this new generation is hungry for debate and discussion. I think that if we all understood that, there would be less of a need for them to become defensive and less of a need for us, all of us to be fearful.
MARTIN: Irshad Manji. She's the founder and director of the Moral Courage Project at NYU. She joined us here in our studio. Thank you so much.
MANJI: Thank you.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Winter weather is making an already vulnerable situation even worse for the millions of Syrian refugees who've been displaced. Makeshift camps and flimsy shelters provide little protection against the frigid temperatures. Aid organizations have stepped in to help. UNICEF and the U.N. World Food Program will provide more than 40,000 Syrian refugee children with a cash donation to buy winter clothes. Here to tell us more about the program is UNICEF's humanitarian affairs specialist, Lucio Melandri. He joins us over Skype from Amman, Jordan. Welcome to the program.
LUCIO MELANDRI: Thank you very much.
MARTIN: I imagine you have been to these refugee camps. Can you describe the conditions there and why things get so much worse in the winter time?
MELANDRI: When you are a refugee, you are escaping for a war. Usually, you have not even the time to get the basic needs with you. You simply pack the few things you can get, and you escape. And that is the way that refugees are getting to Jordan, to Lebanon, to Iraq when they are escaping from the conflict in Syria.
Here, once we are receiving the first support, they're getting shelter. They're getting tents. They're getting some material in order to survive. But of course, we have to understand that those shelters are not houses, but temporary shelters. So those are quite acceptable in normal situations, in normal weather conditions. But when exceptional weather conditions are affecting the refugee camps, you can imagine that under the snow, unprotected, the children are the first paying all the consequences.
MARTIN: UNICEF and other aid organizations have upped their assistance during the winter for Syrian refugees the past few years of this war. But this is the first year I understand that you are unrolling this voucher program for winter clothes. Can you explain how it works?
MELANDRI: Yeah, exactly. The refugees are receiving an electronic card. And this electronic card is sort of credit card with whom they can access supermarkets that have been established in the refugee camps where goods, food, clothes are available. And through these cards, they can choose what is the best for their children, and they can pay with these card. This system is avoiding, first of all, long queue of people lining just to receive some items. It is increasing the dignity of the refugees because they are experiencing a sort of normality.
MARTIN: I can imagine that things get desperate in these kind of situations and in refugee camps. Is there an accountability mechanism in place to make sure that the guardian of that child is buying the winter clothes that they're supposed to buy?
MELANDRI: We have agreement with those supermarkets that this pocket of money is to be used only to buy clothes for children. So when they're going to the cashier and paying, they can't use this pocket in the electronic card to pay anything else.
MARTIN: Lucio, where do the winter clothes come from? Are they all donations?
MELANDRI: No. The winter clothing the refugees access through this voucher system are commercial clothes. The supermarkets are private supermarkets, Jordanian supermarket that made an agreement with the government and with the U.N. system. And they have their normal supply chain.
What we have the right to do is to check the quality of the items and the price of the items. So in such a way, we are assuring even a positive impact on the economical, financial situation of the hosting country.
MARTIN: Lastly, Lucio, these refugee camps were set up as a temporary refuge for people, as a temporary sanctuary for people who have fled the war in Syria. What you're describing, though, are institutions, supermarkets set up to cater to refugees to help them, credit cards. What does this say about the crisis itself?
MELANDRI: So I think there are two main points to make on such an issue. The first is everybody in the beginning of the crisis was expecting a short-term displacement. But now entering the fourth year of this conflict, everybody we realize - is realizing that it will take time. It will be a long-term displacement. So we need to be normative.
And we need to assure that whatever we are doing is not only providing the benefit to the refugees that generously have been hosted by Jordan, but in a way is providing a benefit even to the hosting community, to the Jordanian community. Refugee camps are becoming not permanent settlement, but the methodology that we have to use is to give dignity, possibility and normality to the people that lost their normal daily lives.
MARTIN: Lucio Melandri with UNICEF. Thank you so much for talking with us.
MELANDRI: Thank you very much to you.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
What makes a song a hit? Is it a catchy beat, an amazing voice? Let's use this song as an example.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SHAKE IT OFF")
TAYLOR SWIFT: (Singing) 'Cause the player's gonna play, play, play, play, play. And the hater's gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate. Baby, I'm just gonna...
MARTIN: That is Taylor Swift's "Shake It Off." You've probably heard in a million times or so. But what makes it so popular? Joseph Nunez is the lead author of a new study that looks at thousands of hit songs from the past 50 or so years. And he has the answer.
JOSEPH NUNEZ: Songs that are more repetitive do better.
MARTIN: Repetitive?
NUNEZ: Yep. The more times you sing a chorus, the better the song will do in the charts.
MARTIN: It's true. I got to say, I have danced to my fair share of "Shake It Off" in my living room.
NUNEZ: Of Taylor Swift, right.
MARTIN: So in a separate study, you looked at the instrument and vocal combinations that can make a song successful. So what did you find there?
NUNEZ: Well, the big thing is background vocals. So if you have background vocals, a synthesizer and a clean guitar...
MARTIN: What do you mean by clean guitar?
NUNEZ: If you take an electric guitar, it has all kinds of different sounds. The cleaner the sound is, the less distortion that you have.
MARTIN: OK.
NUNEZ: So take a song like Madonna's "Papa Don't Preach."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "PAPA DON'T PREACH")
MADONNA: (Singing) Papa, don't preach. I'm in trouble deep. Papa, don't preach. I've been losing sleep. But I've made up my mind, I'm keeping my baby.
NUNEZ: Background vocals also help us want to sing-along. Songs that are more repetitive get listeners in pop music to want to sing-along and want to repeat the chorus with you.
MARTIN: Is there such a thing as too much of a good thing? I mean, are there songs out there that repeat way too much and then we stop listening?
NUNEZ: I think so. But that didn't happen in our data. So once you got on the hot 100, the more you repeated the chorus, the more word repetition, the less complex the song, the better it did.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ALL ABOUT THAT BASS")
MEGHAN TRAINOR: (Singing) Because you know I'm all about that bass, 'bout that bass, no treble. I'm all about that bass, 'bout that bass, no treble. I'm all about that bass, 'bout that bass, no treble. I'm all about that bass, 'bout that bass, bass, bass.
MARTIN: There have to be some outlines in all of this, right - songs that didn't have any of these characteristics, but still did really well? What's an example in that camp?
NUNEZ: Well, one that stands out is Lionel Richie's "Truly."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TRULY")
MARTIN: Great song.
NUNEZ: Great song.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TRULY")
LIONEL RICHIE: (Singing) Girl, tell me only this.
MARTIN: (Singing) 'Cause I'm truly - sorry, I digress.
NUNEZ: Oh, no problem.
MARTIN: (Laughter).
NUNEZ: Can you remember any of the lyrics of the song?
MARTIN: No (laughter).
NUNEZ: It's because he only repeats the chorus one time. Yet he soared to number one.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TRULY")
RICHIE: (Singing) ...Because I'm truly, truly in love with you girl.
NUNEZ: There's also songs that have lots of repetition that never even made it to number one.
MARTIN: Yeah. So what's an example of a song that supposedly has all the right ingredients, but just doesn't do well.
NUNEZ: 1977, Van Morrison's "Moondance" repeated the course more than six times, but yet he never made above number 90.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MOONDANCE")
VAN MORRISON: (Singing) Well, it's a marvelous night for a moondance with the stars up above in your eyes.
MARTIN: Joseph Nunez is a professor at the University of Southern California. Thanks so much for talking with us, Joe.
NUNEZ: Oh, I enjoyed it. Thank you, Rachel.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MOONDANCE")
MORRISON: (Singing) You know the leaves on the trees are falling to the sound of the breezes that blow. And I'm trying to please to the calling of your heart strings that play soft and low.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Rachel Martin. And this is For The Record. There are at least 43 million people in this country over the age of 65. And in 35 years that number is expected to double. That means more families than ever are grappling with a difficult decision - what to do when a grandparent, a parent or spouse can no longer take care of themselves and live on their own? And the conversation around that can be a difficult one. For The Record today - aging out and moving on.
We begin with 73-year-old Juanita Gillette. She and her husband lived in Chicago for decades. They raised their kids there, had a full life, a house they loved. But when that house started to age, they began to notice their own limitations.
JUANITA GILLETTE: Things started breaking down. And you don't have the money to fix it. You know, the older you get, you know, you start breaking down, and the house starts breaking down. And there's no extra money coming in.
MARTIN: Eighty-eight-year-old John Kaiser and his wife, Dorothy, had been living out their golden years in Florida. Dorothy had a stroke. But John says they were managing the most basic tasks together.
JOHN KAISER: Between her being able to do a little footwork and me supporting her - between us we could transfer to the commode, to the wheelchair, into the car. So we still went out and played duplicate bridge, and we had our normal life. And we were doing just fine.
MARTIN: Then his wife took a turn for the worse.
KAISER: And that changed the whole equation.
MARTIN: On the other side of this story is Hope Heidenrike of Dayton, Ohio.
HOPE HEIDENRIKE: My father is going to be 89. He is on dialysis three times a week.
MARTIN: And her mom, who's 80, is starting to have memory problems. Hope says she's afraid of getting more phone calls like this one that happened recently.
HEIDENRIKE: I called my mom, and she's like, well, your dad's on the floor. And I was like, why? And she goes, well, he fell, and he hasn't been able to get up for the last two hours. I go, why is he there? And she's like, well, he doesn't want me to call anybody. And I'm like, well, then I'm calling. And I literally hung up on my mother, called the local number for the EMS and sent the EMS squad out there so they could scoop my dad up off the floor and make sure he was OK. And I caught holy heck for that.
MARTIN: So first there's a realization that things have changed. Then, for a lot of families, there is a conversation. For John Kaiser, it was a short one. His wife was really sick. He couldn't take care of her alone, and his kids wanted them to move closer into an assisted care facility in Washington, D.C.
KAISER: One day my daughter called me and told me that this isn't sustainable. I immediately recognized that.
MARTIN: Juanita Gillette's conversations with her kids also happened long-distance.
GILLETTE: Every time we would talk to them, they were like, mom, dad, you guys are getting older. Something happens to you, we've got to get on a plane. We've got to do this. And it would be just so much easier, and, you know, we were like...
MARTIN: What did you say in those conversations?
GILLETTE: I was like, no, no, no. You know, I'm fine.
MARTIN: For Juanita, the idea of moving to a different state to a seniors-only community felt like giving up.
GILLETTE: I thought you move into this place, you have a whole bunch of old people sitting down looking at you and just watching the door and waiting for their relatives to come and take them somewhere.
MARTIN: Hope Heidenrike had the conversation with her parents a few months ago.
HEIDENRIKE: We were in the family room which is where my parents spend most of their time. It's where my dad's lift chair is, and it started out OK. And then as soon as I would say, you know, well, what kind of a time frame are we thinking here, they both immediately - oh, we're not ready for that yet. We don't need that. They don't feel like they are, quote, nursing home material, unquote. And they basically shut the conversation down. I love my parents very much, and whenever they are hurting or get hurt or are struggling, it just really bothers me that I can't do anything about it.
MARTIN: After some convincing by her kids, Juanita Gillette and her husband, Calvin, sold their house in Chicago and moved into a co-op for seniors, The Palm Terrace in Ontario, California. The downsizing took some time to get used to.
GILLETTE: When I saw the apartment I was like, oh, my God.
MARTIN: But in the end, Juanita says it was the right choice. She likes the community. There are potlucks and, yes, there is bingo. And something she didn't expect - leaving home, moving into this place, has drawn her even closer to her husband.
GILLETTE: The apartment is smaller. It makes us talk more. As we get older, we seem to realize that, you know, we love each other more and more as time goes by. Where you're younger, and you're busy, you're doing things, you're trying to raise the kids and everything. You'll say, oh, yeah, I love you, or you know I love you. But now we really talk about how we really feel about each other.
MARTIN: John Kaiser and his wife ended up moving to an assisted living complex close to where many of his kids and 18 grandkids live. It's called Sunrise Senior Living in Washington. His wife, Dorothy, passed away three years ago. He still lives in the same apartment he shared with her. And when he thinks about his life now, he is clear eyed.
KAISER: I'm in the last chapter of my book of life. I've been able to take chapters and put them on a shelf. So that Florida life was wonderful. We had a lot of great times. I just close that book, and put it away.
MARTIN: Although he acknowledges that starting over late in life can be more difficult for others.
KAISER: I know a lot of people can't make that change. They don't like to go out and put themselves in a dining room with 40 strangers every night. But, you know, you have to be realistic about your needs.
MARTIN: For many people, the most comfortable and often most affordable option is to move in with other family members. John says he and his wife never considered that. They didn't want to burden their kids and had resources to pay for assisted living. But Juanita says it is still a real possibility for her. Although there are family politics at play.
GILLETTE: I've talked to my daughters and so now the thing is knowing my three daughters, I have to kind of lean toward the one that I'm not going to be fussing with a lot.
MARTIN: (Laughter).
GILLETTE: You know. I can do something, and they won't be, like, mom, why'd you do that? You know? And so I hope and pray that the lord let me live independent for a long time. I don't want to hurt their feelings but oo wee.
MARTIN: Meanwhile, Hope Heidenrike is still working through this process with her parents. She's offered to have the move into her house, but they don't want to talk about that either. She says it feels like the whole parent-child relationship has been flipped on its head, and she wants others to be prepared to face the same thing.
HEIDENRIKE: I always thought that kind of my parents were, you know, invincible, and they were the ones that would, you know, always take care of me. And in a much quicker fashion, those roles have reversed. So do think about it, do start having the conversations, even if they don't go well at first.
MARTIN: Hope's next move - she's planning to ask a local minister who lives nearby if he can help facilitate yet another talk with her parents about what comes next.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
It's here - the big moment for college football fans. Tomorrow is the first ever playoff championship game. The Oregon Ducks take on the Ohio State Buckeyes. And while fans are excited about the football, we're going to talk about what the playoffs mean for the economics of the game. Joining us now is Mike Pesca, host of "The Gist" podcast on slate.com. Hey, Mike.
MIKE PESCA: Hey.
MARTIN: So this is about money. Break it down.
PESCA: Of course. To quote Jessie J, it's all about the money. The number one most-watched game in the history of college football was one semi-final last week. And the other - number two most-watched game in the history of cable television was the second semi-final. People are into college football. And it wasn't ever really realized until the NCAA got its act together and said we're not going to do the Rose Bowl, the Sugar Bowl. I mean, we'll still keep them, but we'll have the structure of a chairmanship, of a playoffs. Americans love playoffs. And guess what? This championship game is selling for - a 30 second ad spot is selling for a million dollars. Now the Super Bowl is selling for 4 million, so it's not quite there. But...
MARTIN: But still.
PESCA: I wouldn't be shocked if the ratings for this championship game rival the Oscars, if it was the second most-watched thing on television of the year.
MARTIN: But I still don't understand. It feels more legitimate to have a playoff before a championship. So fans wanted this to happen. If this is so economically viable why didn't it happen before?
PESCA: Well, there were fiefdoms. So the answer was economics before, but it was more of the cartel of the college bowls. And there was people who made money on the college bowls, even though they're all considered nonprofits. But the college bowls had a lot of power within college football. And it's an old boys club. So it's very hard to get the ball rolling on change even though people who enjoyed competition and people enjoyed sports and people enjoyed making as much money as you could from an enterprise that America is crazy about wanted it to change.
So now that it's changed, and now that those semifinals prove that people are really into college football, I think that ESPN has got - even though they spent, you know, billions of dollars on a 12-year contract - they are getting what amounts to a great return on investment. I don't see how this doesn't expand to, say, an 18 playoffs. There are so many weeks between the end of the regular season which ends in early December. Hey, look at the date on the calendar. It's getting to mid-January.
MARTIN: Yeah.
PESCA: So you could fit three weeks' worth of games there. And the games get better, too, when you think about it because the national championship used to be after, like, a 40-game layoff. Now they only played 10, 11 days ago. So the games will be better.
MARTIN: Real quick because we have talked with the NFL. But really quick - are the players - are the college players themselves getting any of this cash?
PESCA: A little bit. It was just - it would be too guilt inducing if you had the specter of their families not being able to afford to go to these games because the players have amateurism impressed upon them. Right? I consider them indentured amateurs. So now there's a stipend so families, two family members, can go and a few thousand dollars can be spent on hotels. That's about it, though.
MARTIN: OK. OK, can we talk about the game last night? I mean, I know there were a couple NFL games last night. But the Patriots and the Ravens, there was this awesome play.
PESCA: Yeah. Yeah. So OK, so the Panthers lost to the Seahawks. And then in the other game...
MARTIN: (Laughter) Yeah, yeah.
PESCA: The Patriots were hosting the Ravens. And it was - Ravens go out to an early lead, but back-and-forth. Play of the game - Tom Brady, who had thrown for three touchdowns, or would go on to throw for three, swings it out. So it looks like a throw, but it's really behind him which means that it's a handoff, essentially. Throws it to Julian Edelman, who played quarterback in college.
MARTIN: But not a quarterback now.
PESCA: Normally a wide receiver - throws it for a 51-yard touchdown to Danny Amendola, proves to be the decisive play of the game. There is parallelism. It was the longest postseason touchdown thrown by a non-quarterback since a game called the Ice Bowl in 1967. That was when the Packers hosted the Cowboys. For the second time ever, the Packers are hosting the Cowboys today.
MARTIN: Whoa, weird. Bringing it all together.
PESCA: There you go. We're going to see another wide receiver throw a touchdown, for sure.
MARTIN: I hope so. It was awesome. Mike Pesca, host of Slate's podcast "The Gist." Thanks so much, Mike.
PESCA: You're welcome.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
We turn now to a story about language. Did you cringe a little bit when you heard we turn now? I know, I know it's probably one of the most tired cliches in public radio - that and the old favorite let's take a listen. But here's the thing. Cliches are useful a lot of the times. Here in news, we find ourselves using them to signal something to you that is familiar because that's what these hardy little phrases do for us. To talk more about cliches, we have reached out to Orin Hargraves. He's the author of the book "It's Been Said Before: A Guide To The Use And Abuse Of Cliches." He joins me from KGNU in Boulder, Colorado. Thanks so much for being with us, Orin.
ORIN HARGRAVES: Oh, thanks for having me on.
MARTIN: OK, so right off the bat, I am going to say that I found it incredibly refreshing that, to a point, you defend the use of cliches because there is a utility there, right? I mean we use these because they help us.
HARGRAVES: There certainly is. I started out with the idea of the book that I was become a cliche killer and convince everyone that they couldn't be used. But then when I found that I could not avoid using them myself and studied them more in context, both in speech and in writing, I saw that they - really, they are inevitable, especially in speech. And they're very helpful sometimes. So they'll live on in language despite what anyone wants to do to get rid of them.
MARTIN: There's a real problem, especially in something like broadcast journalism, where you're trying to condense information in a familiar way.
HARGRAVES: That's a very good point. And I think of all the people who use cliches - and, of course, everyone does - journalists have to be excused first because, as you just said, they have to get out a great deal of information in a short time in a familiar way, in a way that's digestible.
MARTIN: Now that we've made, you know, ourselves feel better about the situation, where are they absolutely intolerable to you? Where should they be eradicated?
HARGRAVES: Oh, my goodness, if I wielded such power, what fun it would be. Certainly they should be eradicated from political speeches because then we would have to sit still for only one minute as opposed to 20. Writing is the place where it's a lot easier to get rid of cliches than elsewhere because you have the miracle of editing. In other words, you have a chance to look at what you've written before somebody else does. The fact that cliches are overly familiar makes us think that the person using them wasn't really thinking very hard, wasn't making any effort at all to be creative or to be precise. And, therefore, has committed a kind of failure of invention or creativity.
MARTIN: You've spent so much time thinking about cliches. Are you more attuned to them just when you're in conversations with friends or family? Are people really cautious around you, editing what they say all the time?
HARGRAVES: I think I can say I now have a kind of cliche switch so that I can become much more sensitive to them. When I was doing research on the book - and I have to admit I've been an NPR listener for years - I collected many of these cliches while actually listening to NPR News.
MARTIN: Because we were saying them all the time?
HARGRAVES: Well, yeah, you're journalists. You know, you have to. You can't avoid saying them. I had a message from a grad student the other day that really pleased me. I'd given him my book. And I think he absorbed it because he said to me - he's working on his dissertation. And at one point he wrote something along the lines of these differences provide ample food for thought. And he said then he looked up on his bookshelf and saw my book and felt guilty and went back and rephrased it more meaningfully, as he said, so that he could avoid the cliche food for thought. So I felt like that was a cure. I'd had my first success.
MARTIN: Orin Hargraves is a lexicographer and language researcher. His book is called "It's Been Said Before: A Guide To the Use And Abuse Of Cliches." It's been a pleasure. Thanks so much.
HARGRAVES: It's been a pleasure for me, too.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CLICHES")
JIMMY BUFFETT: (Singing) Cliches, good ways, to say what you mean, mean what you say - to say what you mean and mean what you say.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
We have an update on an NPR investigation that we've heard about on this program. It focused on thousands of American mine operators. They were fined over safety concerns but failed to pay almost $70 million in penalties. And meanwhile, the companies continue to manage dangerous and sometimes deadly mining operations, reporting nearly 4,000 injuries. Now federal regulators are responding, as NPR's Howard Berkes reports.
HOWARD BERKES, BYLINE: Since our series aired, the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration did something critics have said it should've been doing all along. It threatened to shut down a mine with delinquent safety penalties. The owner had two weeks to pay, and when he didn't, they did shut him down. Within 40 minutes, he agreed to a payment plan and reopened. It sounds simple, but it's a novel approach, says Larry Grayson, a mine safety consultant to Congress and industry.
LARRY GRAYSON: The operator in this particular case did not challenge that legally. Someone's going to. And then that's going to protract the amount of time it's going to take to resolve the issues.
BERKES: This has been tried before, but it's rare. And it's not clear that federal regulators have the authority to do it. The law won't let them close a mine simply because of delinquent fines, but they can force a mine to fix safety problems. They're essentially treating unpaid fines as unfixed safety problems. Grayson says it will probably take a court challenge to sort it out.
GRAYSON: Until it is challenged, it is iffy. But once that process starts, as slow as it may be, there will be a level of worry among the operators, and hopefully it would change many of them.
BERKES: The Tennessee mine targeted with this direct approach owes about $30,000 in delinquent penalties. But its owner has other mines owing $2 million overall. Federal regulators hit them with blitz inspections and other tough enforcement while they were open. But safety violations continued. This is the mine safety agency's typical approach and Grayson says it's not enough.
GRAYSON: In the meantime - let's say it takes two years to ferret out all of the top egregious violators - look at all of the injuries that are going to occur. And these are the high injury rate mines or operators.
BERKES: The Mine Safety and Health Administration says it's also putting together what it calls a better early warning system for delinquent mines it might take to federal court. But agency officials won't discuss details or any new initiatives. A written response to our series is posted on our website at npr.org.
Taking mining companies to court takes time, rarely results in payments and doesn't stop ongoing violations and injuries, according to our investigation. Something more definitive is required, says Democratic Senator Bob Casey in Pennsylvania.
SENATOR BOB CASEY: Unless the law is clear and unless the tools are substantial to impose accountability, they will keep violating.
BERKES: Which is what would happen if Congress enacts a sweeping mine safety reform bill Casey says he'll soon reintroduce. It would automatically shut down delinquent mines six months after they become delinquent. Casey also says he might consider making that delinquent mine sanction a separate bill or attaching it to a budget measure.
CASEY: I want to get results, and if results take more than one bill, I'm willing to consider that.
BERKES: Mine safety consultant Larry Grayson says he may fold our findings into a new analysis of safety risks in coal mines. There's also a major workers' compensation insurance company now looking at our data. A statistician at AIG is considering the higher injury rate we found at delinquent mines. He wants to know whether delinquent mining companies have additional risk that should be factored into their insurance policies and rates. Howard Berkes, NPR News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Today in our segment Your Health we're going to hear about one of the most important advances ever in human health - the revolutionary combination of water and soap and hands. You might be rolling your eyes, but really, hand-washing is still considered the number one defense against the spread of germs. Let's hear this morning the story of the physician who realized the importance of clean hands well before anyone knew about germs. NPR's Rebecca Davis has our story.
REBECCA DAVIS, BYLINE: This is the story of a man whose ideas could have saved a lot of lives and spared countless numbers of women and newborns' feverish and agonizing deaths. You'll notice I said could have. The year was 1846 and our would-be hero was a Hungarian doctor named Ignaz Semmelweis. Now, Semmelweis was what you might call a man of his time. Justin Lessler is an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. He says in those days doctors like Semmelweis were trained to approach medicine scientifically.
JUSTIN LESSLER: This is the start of the golden age of the physician scientist, where physicians were expected to have scientific training and some scientific understanding.
DAVIS: So doctors like Semmelweis were no longer thinking of illness as an imbalance caused by, say, bad air or evil spirits. They looked instead to anatomy. Autopsies became more common and doctors got interested in numbers and collecting data. The young Dr. Semmelweis was no exception. When he showed up for his new job at maternity hospital in Vienna he started collecting some data of his own. Justin Lessler says Semmelweis wanted to figure out why are so many women in maternity wards dying from something called childbed fever. First, he compared two maternity wards in the hospital.
LESSLER: One of the things he did was count up the number of patients and the number of deaths that occurred in the first clinic, which was staffed by almost all male doctors and medical students, and the number of deaths that occurred in the second clinic that was staffed by almost all female midwives.
DAVIS: Semmelweis crunched the numbers and discovered that women in the clinic staffed by doctors and medical students died at a rate nearly five times higher than women in midwives' clinic. But why?
LESSLER: He went through and he, you know, started ruling out ideas.
DAVIS: And right away he discovered a big difference in the two clinics. In the midwives' clinic...
LESSLER: Women gave birth laterally, or on their side. In the doctor's clinic women gave birth laying on their backs, so he had the women in the doctor's clinic give birth laying on their side.
DAVIS: And...
LESSLER: No effect.
DAVIS: Then he noticed that whenever someone in the ward died of childbed fever, a priest would walk slowly through the doctor's clinic, past the women's beds and there'd be an attendant ringing a bell. This time Semmelweis theorized...
LESSLER: That priest and the bell-ringing attendant so terrified the women after birth that it sent them over the edge and they developed some fever and, you know, get sick and die.
DAVIS: So Semmelweis had the priest change his route and ditch the bell, and...
LESSLER: It had no effect.
DAVIS: By now, Semmelweis is frustrated. He takes a leave from his hospital duties and travels to Venice. He hopes the break and a good dose of art would clear his head. Professor Jacklin Duffin teaches history of medicine at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. She says when Semmelweis got back to the hospital, some sad but important news was waiting for him. A colleague of his, a pathologist, had fallen ill and died.
JACKLIN DUFFIN: This often happened to pathologists. There was nothing new about the way he died. He pricked his finger while doing an autopsy on someone who had died of childbed fever.
DAVIS: And then he got very sick himself and died. Semmelweis studied the pathologist's symptoms and realized the pathologist died from the same thing as the women he autopsied. This was a revelation - childbed fever wasn't something only women in childbirth could get sick from. It was something other people in the hospital could get sick from as well, but this still didn't answer Semmelweis's original question - why were more women dying from childbed fever in the doctor's clinic than in the midwives' clinic? Jacklin Duffin says the death of the pathologist offered him a clue.
DUFFIN: The big difference between the doctor ward and the midwife ward was the fact that the doctors were doing autopsies and the midwives weren't.
LESSLER: So he hypothesized that there were cadaverous particles.
DUFFIN: Little pieces of corpse, basically.
LESSLER: That doctors and medical students were getting on their hands from the cadavers that they dissected, and when they delivered the babies, they would get the particles inside the women who would eventually develop the disease and die.
DAVIS: If Semmelweis's hypothesis was correct, getting rid of those cadaverous particles should cut down on the death rate from childbed fever. So he ordered his medical staff to start cleaning their hands and instruments, not just with soap, but with a chlorine solution. Chlorine, as we know today, is about the best disinfectant there is. Semmelweis didn't know anything about germs. He chose the chlorine because he thought it would be the best way to get rid of any smell left behind by those little bits of corpse.
DUFFIN: When he imposed this rule in his ward the rate of childbed fever fell dramatically.
DAVIS: And you'd think everyone would be thrilled. Semmelweis had solved the problem. But they weren't thrilled. For one thing, doctors were upset because Semmelweis's hypothesis made it look like they were the ones giving childbed fever to the women, and Semmelweis was not very tactful. He publicly berated people who disagreed with him and he made some influential enemies. Eventually, the doctors gave up the chlorine hand-washing and Semmelweis lost his job. Even so, he kept trying to convince doctors in other parts of Europe to wash with chlorine, but no one would listen to him. Over the years Semmelweis got angrier and, eventually, even strange. There's been speculation he developed a mental condition brought on by possibly syphilis or even Alzheimer's. In 1865...
LESSLER: He was only 47 years old.
DAVIS: Ignaz Semmelweis was committed to a mental asylum.
LESSLER: The story goes that he was probably beaten. Regardless, in the end he died of sepsis a little while after being committed.
DAVIS: And sepsis, as it turns out, is basically the same disease Semmelweis fought so hard to prevent in all those women who died from childbed fever. Rebecca Davis, NPR News.
MONTAGNE: And now, hearing all that, let's remember that flu season is upon us. Proper hand-washing is more important than ever. So a good time to remember the basics - just use regular soap - just regular old soap and water, warm or cold water, suds up, don't forget the back of your hands, in between fingers and under the nails. Scrub for 20 seconds and voila. You're set.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Speaking of politics and winners and losers, lobbyists in Washington, D.C., are busy adjusting to Republican control of the House and Senate. Meanwhile, some departing lawmakers are also adjusting, moving downtown to join lobby firms. NPR's Peter Overby reports.
PETER OVERBY, BYLINE: Lobbyist Nicholas Allard has a story for this occasion. It's about his late boss, the master lobbyist Tom Boggs. Allard says a reporter contacted Boggs for a story much like this one. It was 1980 when Republicans took the Senate and White House.
NICHOLAS ALLARD: The morning after the Reagan landslide, he was asked by one reporter what he expected business to be like. And he said, I don't know. I've only been a Republican for 12 hours.
OVERBY: Boggs adapted, and so will today's lobbyists. Allard says the biggest changes don't even come from last fall's election, but from the way congressional leaders have amassed power.
ALLARD: We're moving away from a national legislature to a - more like a parliamentary system.
OVERBY: That means the leaders, not committees, make the decisions.
ALLARD: Which means that you're lobbying on a grand scale and affecting the electorate in general, with somewhat of a de-emphasis on the classic face-to-face lobbying.
OVERBY: Other lobbying forecasts predict more lobbying on familiar topics, such as the Keystone XL pipeline. Republicans have legislation to build the pipeline. President Obama says he'll veto it. That could lead to override votes. But whatever happens, it's new tactics on the same, old issue.
SCOTT SEGAL: The energy industry has had a fairly consistent set of asks.
OVERBY: Energy lobbyist Scott Segal says the industry has higher hopes for this new Congress.
SEGAL: I don't think it's going to change what we do. It may change the art of what is possible at the end of the day.
OVERBY: Even in a Republican Congress, lobbyists will need to court Democrats, too. Heather Podesta is happy to point that out. She runs her own small Democratic firm.
HEATHER PODESTA: The power of the Congressional Black Caucus has really grown.
OVERBY: In fact, she says CBC members are expected to be the top-ranking Democrats on 17 House committees and subcommittees.
PODESTA: Corporate America has to have entree into those offices. And we're very fortunate to have the former executive director of the Congressional Black Caucus as part of our team.
OVERBY: And lobby firms aren't the only ones making plans. Former lawmakers and congressional staffers are job hunting, and lobbying jobs pay far better than Capitol Hill. So far this year, at least three former lawmakers have already signed with lobbying law firms. Longtime Utah Senator Robert Bennett went through that revolving door four years ago. He likes the access he's got.
ROBERT BENNETT: Yes, as a former member, you probably get a warm reception when you call one of your colleagues.
OVERBY: But, he says, if you don't bring good, reliable information...
BENNETT: Your axis doesn't do you any good at all.
OVERBY: It's all a matter of finding where the lawmakers' goals match those of your client - in other words, same as it ever was. Peter Overby, NPR News, Washington.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ONCE IN A LIFETIME")
TALKING HEADS: (Singing) Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
The International Consumer Electronics Show, the world capital of all that's cutting edge in tech, wrapped up over the weekend in Las Vegas. The show has become gizmo central for millennial's and early adopters, and, it turns, out for older adults as well. About 50 members of the AARP's Nevada chapter spent a day touring the show. NPR's Ina Jaffe covers aging, and she tagged along.
INA JAFFE, BYLINE: The intentions of the AARP members here were pretty clear. They all wore bright red T-shirts that said #disruptaging. Doug Verb was wearing one of them.
DOUG VERB: This industry should pay attention to what we're doing, and our demographic uses all of these things. You'll see everybody is on here with tablets, with Twitter, and we have just a huge amount of people interested in it.
JAFFE: And that interest goes way beyond Twitter and tablets.
BARBARA SPEAR: Start talking to everybody, I'll get everybody.
DAVIDE ROSSI: Sure.
JAFFE: Barbara Spear rounded up a group of AARP members at a booth for a product called FitBark. Davide Rossi explained that the device monitors the physical activity of your dog.
ROSSI: You can review your dog's activity, understanding what kind of a day your dog's having. Is this a typical day or is my dog very lethargic today?
JAFFE: And no, it's not available for cats. Some of the AARP members were unimpressed. They know their dogs sleep most of the time, but Mark Ellington could see how FitBark might come in handy for people his age.
MARK ELLINGTON: It's a great way to get you started, like walking or doing things. I'm thinking already in my recovery with heart surgery that would be - it would have been perfect.
JAFFE: And where would Ellington have tracked all this data about his dog? On a smartphone, says member Janice Alpern, of course.
JANICE ALPERN: Whatever you do, it's an app and a phone.
JAFFE: In fact, this particular convention hall that focused on health and lifestyle products would have been nearly empty if it weren't for smartphones. Tracking your pet's activity level, or your own, or watching who's coming into your house or tracking your weight and blood pressure or analyzing the ingredients in your food or adjusting your hearing aid or learning relaxation techniques or remembering whether you took your pills - it all ends up on your phone.
MARY LIVERATTI: Some of these devices give us a lot of data.
JAFFE: Says AARP Nevada state president, Mary Liveratti.
LIVERATTI: It's, like, what do you do with the data once you get it?
JAFFE: Maybe important things, says AARP member Mark Holzhauer, especially if it's medical data.
MARK HOLZHAUER: If I go out of town and I'm hurt, the doctors can look at the computer and pull up all my medical records, know what medications I'm on, etcetera, make it available with a secure password so that the medical providers can treat me properly.
JAFFE: But most of the members were more interested in having fun than planning for medical emergencies or digitally tracking their every breath. Actually, if anyone was stereotyping AARP members, it may have been the AARP. Member Mary Ellen Burton says she was interested in seeing a lot more than the health and lifestyle products on their tour schedule.
MARY ELLEN BURTON: I want to see 3-D printing and I want to see the new TV technology - the curved TVs. There's also a washer in here that looks like it also does your ironing. I mean, there's just so many things 'cause I'm a gadget person, so it's like - this is adult candy for me.
JAFFE: This stuff isn't just for kids, she says.
BURTON: Because kids can't afford this stuff. It's the older people that buy it for the kids.
JAFFE: So be nice to grandma, everybody, cool gadgets could be coming your way. Ina Jaffe, NPR News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
So let's talk about reptiles now. Scientists in Scotland have identified a prehistoric behemoth, a new species of reptile that lived in the oceans during the time of dinosaurs - and no, they say, it has nothing to do with the Loch Ness Monster. Here's NPR's Joe Palca.
JOE PALCA, BYLINE: Paleontologist Stephen Brusatte at the University of Edinburgh led the team that characterized the new reptile species. He says you can be forgiven if you were to mistake it for a dinosaur.
STEPHEN BRUSATTE: It looks like a dinosaur, but it isn't technically a dinosaur. Now, that's a little bit confusing because it looks like one, and it lived at the same time as the dinosaurs. But dinosaurs didn't live in the oceans and these other types of reptiles were what were around in the oceans at that time. And it's the first one of these sea-living, enormous, colossal, top-of-the-food-chain reptiles that's ever been found in Scotland.
PALCA: And how big was it?
BRUSATTE: It was about motor-boat size, so 14, 15 feet long or so.
PALCA: Brusatte says it looks like a reptile version of a large dolphin and probably devoured fish and squid and stuff like that.
BRUSATTE: It was the top dog in the oceans while dinosaurs were the top dogs on land.
PALCA: Brusatte says the new fossil was found on the Isle of Skye off the west coast of Scotland. But he didn't find it. It was found more than 50 years ago by an amateur fossil hunter named Bryan Shawcross, and it's been sitting in a museum in Glasgow unidentified because 50 years ago, there just weren't a lot of paleontologists in Scotland.
BRUSATTE: But over the last few years and especially over the last decade, a number of paleontologists, including me, have been hired in Scotland. I was brought over from the U.S. You can certainly tell that I don't speak with a nice Scottish brogue. I'm from Chicago, but I'm a Scotsman now.
PALCA: And he and other Scottish scientists have been searching through Scottish fossil collections trying to identify what earlier fossil hunters have found. Now, when you identify a fossil, you get to name it.
BRUSATTE: It's a new genus and species, so it gets two names. And each one of those names is really special to us because the genus name is Dearcmhara.
PALCA: Dearcmhara is the Scottish Gaelic word for marine lizard.
BRUSATTE: And the species name then is shawcrossi.
PALCA: Named for Bryan Shawcross, who found the fossil. Brusatte says there's lots more fossils to be found in Scotland. In fact, he says Scotland could be quite a mecca for fossil hunters. There seem to be a lot from around 170 million years ago, a time not terribly well represented in the fossil record. And you don't have to be a paleontologist to find fossils. There are lots of amateurs hard at it. So anyone can come to the Isle of Skye and go hunting. What's more, Brusatte says there's a great whiskey distillery on the island.
BRUSATTE: Have a nice whiskey tasting, get some smoky, peaty whiskey in the afternoon and go find fossils afterwards. Or maybe do it in the reverse order.
PALCA: And if you find a new species, Brusatte says they'll be happy to name it after you if you donate it to them to study. Joe Palca, NPR News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Iowa's biggest city is confronting the farms that surround it over water pollution. The Des Moines Water Works has announced it will sue three neighboring counties, claiming the counties are letting fertilizer runoff contaminate the drinking water in Des Moines. It is a novel attempt to control water pollution from farms, something that has been largely unregulated. NPR's Dan Charles reports.
DAN CHARLES, BYLINE: The city of Des Moines gets its water from two rivers - the Raccoon River and the Des Moines - and those rivers have a problem. Bill Stowe, general manager of the Des Moines Water Works, told Iowa Public Radio that the water often violates legal limits for a pollutant called nitrate.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BILL STOWE: We're still seeing the public water supply in central Iowa directly risked by high nitrate concentrations.
CHARLES: Too much nitrate can be a health risk, especially for infants just a few months old, and it costs a lot of money to remove. Filtering out nitrate cost the Des Moines Water Works almost a million dollars in 2013. And Stowe says we know where a lot of this nitrate is coming from.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
STOWE: We've been in northern Iowa with our lab personnel testing water.
CHARLES: The problem comes from farms, he says. Farmers spread nitrogen fertilizer on their cornfields, it turns into nitrate and then it often runs into streams through networks of underground tile pipes that drain the soil. Those drainage systems are managed in some cases by county governments.
STOWE: When they build these artificial drainage districts that take water quickly into the Raccoon River - polluted water - they have a responsibility to us and others as downstream users.
CHARLES: Stowe's agency announced last week it intends to sue three upstream counties that manage those drainage systems.
STOWE: We need to get now down to specific improvements that they're willing to make. If they're not willing to make that, we'll see them in federal court.
CHARLES: Fertilizer runoff affects a lot more than just drinking water. It's been killing off webs of aquatic life from small Midwestern lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. And lots of programs have been set up to try to solve the problem. Scientists have created tools to help farmers minimize their use of fertilizer. John Downing, an ecologist at Iowa State University, says farmers can also build sediment-trapping ponds or create wetlands to capture water from those drainage systems. That can be costly, though.
JOHN DOWNING: You'd have to take land out of production. And if you look at the prices of land in agricultural production areas, it's very pricy.
CHARLES: So state and federal governments have been offering financial incentives, paying farmers to build those pollution traps on their land. Dan Hanrahan, a farmer in Madison County, Iowa, who's on a local committee that reviews soil and water conservation projects, says these programs are popular.
DAN HANRAHAN: We've got over a two-year waiting list of people wanting to put practices in place.
CHARLES: He says these cooperative, voluntary efforts have accomplished more than litigation ever will. Yet the problem of nitrate pollution has not gone away. And the Des Moines Water Works is saying it's time to take a harder line. Dan Charles, NPR News.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
People who put up signs and posters around town feel like they have the right to do it. For one thing, there can be a free speech argument. But municipal governments feel like they have a pretty solid argument for why they need to regulate signs. For one thing, they want to keep a community looking nice. One case pits a small religious group against the suburban town of Gilbert, Arizona. It's before the U.S. Supreme Court. Here's NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg.
NINA TOTENBERG, BYLINE: Sign regulation is a thorn in the side of local governments. They get sued over these rules all the time. And the lower courts are divided over what constitutional standard to use in evaluating these regulations. Today's case gives the Supreme Court the opportunity to resolve that question.
WILLIAM BRINTON: From the standpoint of local governments across the United States, it is one of the most important cases to come before the court.
TOTENBERG: William Brinton is an authority on sign regulation for local governments and filed a brief in this case on behalf of municipal governments.
BRINTON: In your own neighborhood, if you were to drive down the street and be faced with all sorts of sign clutter, it would be distracting; it would be ugly; it would probably degrade property values. So almost all communities across the country have some sort of sign regulations where they try to protect those interests.
TOTENBERG: Enter Pastor Clyde Reed and his tiny congregation of 25 to 30 people. For seven years, they've been battling the Gilbert town fathers over the signs the pastor posts directing people to weekly services at his Good News Community Church. The church has no permanent home, so it moves around a good deal. The town maintains that the signs fall into the category of temporary directional signs for events, which are limited to 6 feet square and can be posted just 12 hours before the event and must be removed afterwards. Pastor Reed counters that since other noncommercial signs - political signs, ideological signs - can be bigger and stay up longer, the town is discriminating against him and violating his free speech rights.
DAVID CORTMAN: The easy answer is treat signs all the same.
TOTENBERG: David Cortman of the Alliance Defending Freedom is Pastor Reed's lawyer. He'll tell the Supreme Court today that the town of Gilbert, by dividing regulations for noncommercial signs into categories - political, ideological and event signs - the town is regulating speech based on its content. And that, he says, is prohibited by the Constitution. For example, is Pastor Reed's Sunday church service sign just a directional sign? During the course of this litigation, the words on the signs were changed to invite people to church services, not just direct them there. Again, lawyer Cortman.
CORTMAN: We believe it is an ideological sign. We believe it's also religious. We believe it's also directional.
TOTENBERG: Not so, says the town's lawyer Philip Savrin.
PHILIP SAVRIN: It's not about religious speech. There is one rule for everybody, and if you want to have a directional sign to an event, then the same rule applies.
TOTENBERG: Lawyer Cortman says the only constitutional solution is for the town to make the sign rules apply uniformly to everyone. And he says there are plenty of ways to do that and protect the local community from clutter and traffic safety problems.
CORTMAN: You could say first-come, first-serve. You could say, for example, you can put up, you know, a total of whatever - 30 signs, 20 signs. You could limit it to, you know, 60 days at a time but only three per block. And you could be as creative as you could be, as long as you're not looking at what the sign says to make those distinctions.
TOTENBERG: Any regulation based on the purpose of the sign would violate the Constitution he maintains. And he'll urge the Supreme Court to set a standard requiring the strictest scrutiny of sign regulations. Lawyers for municipality say if that standard is applied, sign regulations will fail because as lawyer Savrin puts it...
SAVRIN: It's not one-size-fits-all when it comes to signs.
TOTENBERG: Savrin will urge the justices to adopt a standard for signs that allows for some leeway in regulating them.
SAVRIN: There really needs to be some flexibility built into it so that you're looking to see whether the government is suppressing or favoring certain ideas or certain types of speech and that that's what the First Amendment is intended to guard against.
TOTENBERG: Any standard stricter than that, he maintains, will make it practically impossible to regulate signs in a rational way. A decision in the case is expected by summer. Nina Totenberg, NPR News, Washington.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Let's catch up on last night's Golden Globes. They kicked off the big awards season in Hollywood last night. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler hosted for the third consecutive year.
(SOUNDBITE OF GOLDEN GLOBE AWARDS)
TINA FEY: Tonight, we celebrate all the great television shows that we know and love, as well as all the movies that North Korea was OK with.
GREENE: Well, one movie that we seemed to love - "Boyhood." It was the big winner, taking best drama and best director. "The Grand Budapest Hotel" took top honors in the best musical or comedy category. And last night, the Globes highlighted what NPR's TV critic Eric Deggans is calling the next step in a TV revolution. Let's find out what he means. Eric is on the line with us. Eric, good morning.
ERIC DEGGANS, BYLINE: Hey, David.
GREENE: So a lot of the buzz right now seems to be focusing on Amazon's streaming service, which won its first two globes for an original television series called "Transparent." Tell us why this is important.
DEGGANS: Basically, these awards - and "Transparent" won as best TV comedy and also got a win as best comedy actor for its star, Jeffrey Tambor - make Amazon a major player in the quality TV industry. It allows Amazon to claim it's on the same level as an HBO or an AMC in the same way that Netflix's nominations and wins turned it into a major player a few years ago. Amazon's slate of original series haven't always been as consistently good as Netflix's, and there was a sense that they were having trouble finding their way in the original series area, so this award is validation that they're on the right track. And it was a great recognition for Tambor, who's this beloved character actor, who found his greatest success playing a type of character that's often stereotyped by television - a man transitioning to become a female. Let's hear a clip from his acceptance speech.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
JEFFREY TAMBOR: I would like to dedicate my performance, and this award, to the transgender community.
(APPLAUSE)
TAMBOR: Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for your courage. Thank you for your inspiration. Thank you for your patience. And thank you for letting us be a part of the change.
GREENE: All right, so that's actor Jeffrey Tambor, accepting an award last night, one of the awards won by Amazon's streaming service. Let's talk about something that didn't happen last night, Eric, and that is the four broadcast networks - ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX - they didn't win anything.
DEGGANS: So that's very true. PBS won an award, but the real success among broadcasters came for the fifth network, the CW, which also won its first Golden Globe on Sunday. Gina Rodriguez, star of the CW comedy "Jane The Virgin," won as best actress in a comedy or musical. And it's been an amazing time for Rodriguez, who just won a People's Choice Award, and also recently learned that her show was picked up for the next TV season. Viewers last night saw a TV star born at the Globes, as Rodriguez gave this really heartfelt speech about inspiring other Latino girls to dream big. Let's check that out.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
GINA RODRIGUEZ: This award is so much more than myself. It represents a culture that wants to see themselves as heroes.
DEGGANS: Her win also showed off the diversity among the Globe's winners that included "Transparent" and the theme song for the civil rights movie "Selma."
GREENE: You know, just a lot of touching moments last night. And I guess we should say the Golden Globes - I mean, the event itself is a form of entertainment. A lot of people are looking to really, you know, get some entertainment value out of going to see this thing.
DEGGANS: Exactly, it has to be an entertaining TV show. And the hosts - Amy Poehler and Tina Fey - were just great. They were funny. They got the show off to a great start. They kept it humming. Even George Clooney, who's been the butt of jokes from Tina Fey and Amy Poehler over the last two Globes broadcasts, said backstage he thinks they should host the show again, even though the two women have said this was their last time.
GREENE: Oh, come on, we've learned from politics that doesn't mean anything if they're saying that now. We'll probably see them up on stage next year. NPR TV critic Eric Deggans - thanks, Eric
DEGGANS: Thanks for having me.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
A chilling development in the ongoing insurgency in northeast Nigeria. Islamist militants there known as Boko Haram are apparently utilizing a new type of suicide bomber - young girls. NPR Africa correspondent Ofeibea Quist-Arcton is in Accra and joins us. Ofeibea, good morning.
OFEIBEA QUIST-ARCTON, BYLINE: Good morning, Renee.
MONTAGNE: So tell us more about this phenomenon of using children - and as I understand it girls, little girls - to detonate explosives.
QUIST-ARCTON: Saturday's bombing, and that was in Maidurguri - that is the metropolis of the Northeast, the main heart of the troubled area of Nigeria and where Boko Haram itself was created. We're told that a 10-year-old girl with explosives strapped to her body blew herself up. But, Renee, what we don't know of course is whether this was by choice - 10 years old, probably not. The day later, Sunday, we're told that either young women or young girls also blew themselves up, this time in Potiskum, in a neighboring state.
So Nigerians are saying, what is going on? Why are women being used? And the answer is probably because young girls, women are not seen as violent. So they can be slipped in whether they've agreed to do it or not. And they can become the new mules of these insurgents who are really stepping up their campaign of violence, their offensive.
MONTAGNE: And this comes in the context, when you speak of stepping up the campaign, of a very deadly attack on another town there.
QUIST-ARCTON: Yes, indeed, Renee - Baga, which is on the shores of Lake Chad. Its nearby military base, which was meant to be a regional military base in the fight against terrorism, was attacked first a week ago, Saturday. We're told hundreds of people were killed, corpses littering the bush. The insurgents came back midweek to finish off whoever was left, sending those people fleeing. This is part of this relentless campaign. Every day a new attack, that Nigerians are saying, what is going on?
MONTAGNE: So what are the Nigerian military and the government doing about all of this?
QUIST-ARCTON: President Goodluck Jonathan is busy campaigning for re-election next month. You know, Renee, he has had time, Nigerians say, to condemn the Charlie Hebdo killings in France, but the past week of relentless attacks in Nigeria, he has said nothing about. But he campaigned in the center part of the country, in Jos, over the weekend. And we're told that one of the campaign vehicles was attacked, and people were shouting, bad luck Jonathan, bad luck Jonathan. What are you doing about this?
MONTAGNE: NPR's Ofeibea Quist-Arcton. Thanks very much.
QUIST-ARCTON: Always a pleasure, Renee.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
And let's turn now to France. Millions took to the streets in anger and solidarity yesterday after Islamist radicals killed 17 people. Those attacks last week stunned the country, but for French Jews it was nothing new. NPR's Eleanor Beardsley reports.
(SOUNDBITE OF DEMONSTRATION)
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: Hundreds of thousands of people marched through the streets of Paris. They expressed outrage over attacks on a satirical newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, and a kosher supermarket. In France, this was a first - journalists targeted and killed in a terrorist attack. But it's not the first time it's happened to French Jews.
(SOUNDBITE OF DEMONSTRATION AND APPLAUSE)
BEARDSLEY: President Francois Hollande and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were applauded when they went to Paris's main synagogue after the march. The two leaders attended a ceremony for the four Jewish hostages killed in the kosher store. French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has tried to reassure French Jews this week.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRIME MINISTER MANUEL VALLS: (Through interpreter) Do not be afraid, do not be afraid to be Jewish. We are all policemen. We are all journalists. And the cry that resounds across France is that we are all the Jews of France.
BEARDSLEY: In 2012, another Islamist extremist killed three Jewish schoolchildren and a teacher in the southern city of Toulouse. In 2007, a young, Jewish man was kidnapped, tortured and killed by a group of thugs calling itself the Gang of Barbarians.
(SOUNDBITE OF UNIDENTIFIED TV SHOW)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Speaking French).
BEARDSLEY: Sunday night, French television profiled the four men killed in the kosher market - a father of three, a young man engaged to be married. Wives, daughters and fathers gave wrenching testimony to the victims' generosity and courage.
An overflow crowd stood outside the synagogue during the memorial service. Twenty-year-old engineering student Raphael Lasseri says the reaction to the attacks has been overwhelming and given him hope.
RAPHAEL LASSERI: We believe that most of the people in France are on the side of the Jewish community and want to defend all of the Jewish people of France because we are citizens. The problem is that the state will do everything that it can, but the main problem is that, will it be enough to really protect everyone?
BEARDSLEY: France has the world's largest Jewish population after the U.S. and Israel. But growing numbers of French Jews have been leaving the country citing increasing anti-Semitism. Last week's attack did nothing to help the situation.
(SOUNDBITE OF SIREN)
BEARDSLEY: But Rudy Sitbon is defiant. He was out on the street wearing his skullcap or kippa while the hostage drama was still unfolding Friday at the kosher market.
RUDY SITBON: I'm with my kippa to tell to the terrorists, I don't afraid about you. I stay in France because my family was here. I work here. Perhaps I will go in Israel in a few years. I don't know. But now I'm here. I'm French, I'm Jewish and proud.
BEARDSLEY: Eleanor Beardsley, NPR News, Paris.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Politics and a painful anniversary are colliding today in Haiti. It's been five years since a devastating earthquake struck Haiti. Coincidentally, today is also the deadline to reach a political agreement on new elections, which, if not met, would allow the president to rule by decree. As NPR's Carrie Kahn reports, the prolonged political crisis threatens Haiti's fragile recovery.
CARRIE KAHN, BYLINE: Five years ago, Carline Lomil's small concrete home in the capital came crashing down. She escaped with her young son and spent the first night sleeping on the sidewalk among dead bodies. She was eight months pregnant.
CARLINE LOMIL: (Foreign language spoken).
KAHN: She feared her husband, who was at work when the earthquake struck, was dead. It took him more than 24 hours to make it back home. Like an estimated one-and-a-half million other people, Lomil and her family had no choice but to move into overcrowded tent camps in Port-au-Prince with little water, no sewers and high crime. A month into their stay, Lomil gave birth to a baby boy on the floor of the family's cramped, hot tent.
LOMIL: (Foreign language spoken).
KAHN: Last August, four and a half years since moving to the tent, police with batons showed up. Lomil was given the equivalent of $500 for rent assistance and forced out.
She and her now three children and husband came here, the dusty, rocky hillsides north of Port-au-Prince called Canaan. As many as 300,000 people moved here, too. Some got temporary wooden houses donated by international aid groups. Others constructed whatever they could. There's no electricity, roads or sewer lines. Lomil lives in an uncle's house for now until she can finish building her own home, which she's happy to show off just a short walk away.
LOMIL: (Through interpreter) Three bedrooms, living room, dining room.
KAHN: Lomil says with her bigger house, she's better off. And clearly so is Haiti. Five years later, the rubble is gone. New roads and businesses have been built, including major hotel chains as well as schools and hospitals. The economy got a boost from billions of dollars of foreign aid and investment. Crime and poverty are down.
But the recovery has been anything but even, especially when it comes to housing. Eighty thousand people still remain in tents. Three-quarters of Port-au-Prince residents live in slums. Peter de Clercq, the U.N.'s humanitarian coordinator in Haiti, says securing land for new development has been a particularly difficult and slow process, since ownership and legal titles were not clear even before the earthquake.
PETER DE CLERCQ: I think we do have a long way to go because we're not reconstructing in many senses. We are actually constructing.
KAHN: International aid helped fund Haiti's first modern land registry, essential for legal disputes and sales. But despite progress in some arenas, others have not improved, like Haiti's continual political turmoil.
(SOUNDBITE OF DEMONSTRATION)
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (Chanting in foreign language).
KAHN: Throughout the weekend, demonstrators marched in the streets, sometimes clashing with police, as lawmakers met late into the night hoping to avert a political crisis and schedule long overdue elections. Without an agreement, the terms of a majority of lawmakers expire, leaving only the president left to legally rule, a troubling echo of Haiti's dictatorial past. The U.S. Embassy in Haiti issued a strongly worded statement late last night, urging all parties to come to an agreement and schedule elections. Other international officials warn that continual political instability will scare off foreign investors and undermine Haiti's fragile earthquake recovery. Carrie Kahn, NPR News, Port-au-Prince.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Good morning. I'm David Greene. In 1979, Robert Fowler was a teenager catching some waves on a California beach. His class ring slipped off into the Pacific, lost for good he figured. Fast-forward 35 years, and Larry Feurzeig was on that beach with a metal detector. He found the ring, which had the initials for Robert Fowler and his high school. Larry tracked down Robert. He handed over the ring. Robert gave Larry some champagne. Robert's fingers are bigger now, but the ring fit perfectly on his wife. You're listening to MORNING EDITION.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Across the United States police departments have been facing tough questions after black men died in encounters with police. The rallying cry for protesters has been black lives matter. Now, in cities like Seattle and Denver, supporters of police officers are holding their own events with the slogan police lives matter. That was the message at an event yesterday in Birmingham, Alabama, as Melanie Peeples report.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FANFARE FOR THE COMMON MAN")
MELANIE PEEPLES, BYLINE: It's a raw, gray day as former Birmingham Police Officer Scott Morro stands in front of the city's monument to slain officers, and plays Aaron Copland's "Fanfare For The Common Man."
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
SCOTT MORRO: That's what police officers are, but they're special also. They're courageous. They have valor, loyalty. Police lives matter.
(APPLAUSE)
PEEPLES: It was a common refrain. And for every police lives matters a speaker uttered, they followed it with all lives matter. It's clear they feel defensive.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BILL DAVIS: We're called racists, bigots and a few other names that I can't mention in public.
PEEPLES: Bill Davis is a retired police officer from up the road in Huntsville.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
DAVIS: But we're sworn to serve and protect. Instead, now we have to serve and survive. I know that these times we do make mistakes. Officers are human. We can make mistakes. We do make mistakes.
PEEPLES: And when officers make mistakes, their critics have the luxury of hindsight, says Jefferson County Sheriff Deputy David Crews.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
DAVID CREWS: Many people love to be Monday morning quarterbacks and judge what we do during a use of force encounter. We have a job that requires us to make split-second decisions sometimes concerning life and death.
PEEPLES: They are not decisions police officers want to make, says Birmingham Police Officer Ed Watkins, a 27-year veteran of the New York Police Department.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ED WATKINS: You know, I don't know too many police officers that leave their house on a daily basis and say I'm going to beat somebody up for no reason. I'm going to shoot somebody for no reason. I've been in three shootouts. I don't know if I got any witnesses here. I've taken three slugs to the vest when my eldest - my middle child, my son is 25 - he was 6 days old and all I could think about because I couldn't get up. I tried to get up. I couldn't. I was watching my weapon, trying to get to it as the fire continued, struggling. All I could think about was my son, my son, my son, my son.
PEEPLES: Pretty much everyone at this rally is either a current or former law enforcement officer, or related to one. Clearly, they're closing ranks. A reminder that law enforcement officers should follow their training, resist second-guessing themselves. As one former police officer put it, it's better to be tried by 12 than carried by six.
Still, young black males have a greater risk of being shot dead by police than whites, according to a recent ProPublica analysis of federally collected data. This issue has polarized people across the country and feeds the perception that a person must choose between being for Michael Brown and Eric Garner or for the police. Criticize them if you will, says Birmingham Police Department Sergeant Heath Boackle. Just remember one thing...
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BOACKLE: But when you, in the public, forget what we do while you're sleeping, and who are you going to call when you need someone?
PEEPLES: Everyone here, he said, is doing their best. For NPR News, I'm Melanie Peeples in Birmingham.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Time for trash talking ahead of tonight's big game between Oregon and Ohio State. It's the first championship game in college football's new playoff system, and our reporters on this story are totally biased. NPR's Tom Goldman goes first.
TOM GOLDMAN, BYLINE: That's Tom Goldman, University of Oregon, class of 1979. Hit it.
(SOUNDBITE OF OREGON MARCHING BAND SONG, "MIGHTY OREGON")
GOLDMAN: I drove to the U of O campus in Eugene last week where hotel and restaurant marquees proclaimed, Ducks Beat Bucks and Bring Home The Championship. On my mind - one question. Why will Oregon beat Ohio State?
DON PELLUM: You said that. I didn't
GOLDMAN: Of course I did, but I understood why Oregon defensive coordinator Don Pellum wouldn't give the Buckeyes any bulletin board material. Maybe linebacker Tony Washington would.
GOLDMAN: As good as they are, why will you beat them?
TONY WASHINGTON: I'll tell you that after the game (laughter).
GOLDMAN: Obviously these Ducks were as adept at tap dancing through interviews as executing their warp-speed style of football. So I headed to the campus bookstore, now called The Duck Store, searching for a better answer to why will Oregon win. I got it from freshman Mercedes Mingus.
MERCEDES MINGUS: 'Cause we're better. We have more weapons.
GOLDMAN: Ain't that the truth? Oregon's first ever Heisman Trophy winner, quarterback Marcus Mariota, leads the third-ranked offense in the nation, which averages a whopping 553 yards a game. The defense showed its grit in the playoff semifinal trouncing of defending champion Florida State. So the defense ranks 84th nationally compared to 17th for Ohio State. As Mingus points out, there are other obvious advantages to Oregon.
MINGUS: It's so beautiful. Do you see how many beautiful, green trees are here? I can't imagine living somewhere that's brown and smoggy. Oh, God, no. I don't want to be in Columbus. I'd be in Eugene any day over Columbus.
GOLDMAN: Great trees, great movies.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ANIMAL HOUSE")
JOHN BELUSHI: (As John Blutarsky) Food fight.
GOLDMAN: The greatest college movie, "Animal House," was filmed at the U of O. And then Oregon's got that great, little mascot that inspires its fans, fans like 72-year-old Barbara Arvinitas.
(SOUNDBITE OF DUCK QUACKING)
BARBARA ARVINITAS: Everybody quacks.
GOLDMAN: Not at Ohio State where the mascot is a nut - seriously? To be fair, which none of this is, there's another side to the story in Columbus, where reporter Karen Kasler went to grad school. OK, Karen, bring it.
KAREN KASLER, BYLINE: Hey, Tom, our incredibly cute mascot, Brutus Buckeye, knows of a great tree in Oregon. That buckeye tree is on the University of Oregon campus. It was planted 57 years ago after Ohio State beat Oregon in the Rose Bowl. So Buckeye fans here in Columbus have no doubts about who will win this game.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHEERING)
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: O-H-I-O.
KASLER: Three dozen tough fans braved frigid cold and snow flurries to cheer on the team as they left for the game. Bridget Mahoney drove two hours from Cincinnati.
BRIDGET MAHONEY: This is a compelling story, a compelling team. They've risen from adversity two, three, four times. They are just the pride and joy of Ohio.
KASLER: That pride follows the last two huge wins in the Big Ten championship and against number one, Alabama, led by third-string quarterback Cardale Jones. That's right, Tom, third-stringer. He came in after second-string QB J.T. Barrett broke his ankle. Buckeye fans are everywhere. Ohio State alum Mark Heitz is flying to the game from - wait for it - Dubai.
MARK HEITZ: Because it's the Buckeyes. You know, why not? Probably once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, so jump on the plane and 16 and a half hours later, we'll land in Dallas and get ready for the game.
KASLER: The game is such a big deal that 15-year-old Jack Hendrix started an online petition asking the state to close all schools tomorrow. It got nearly 49,000 signatures and a call from Ohio's governor.
JACK: He invited me to go to the gala on Monday to watch the game, which I kind of thought that was a little ironic.
KASLER: Governor John Kasich is being sworn in for a second term today. And tonight's inaugural party has essentially become a black-tie tailgate with big-screen TVs for guests who don't want to miss the game. OSU fan Don Cary loves his Buckeyes so much, he wrote a song just for this game.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE SUGAR BOWL SONG")
DON CARY: (Singing) Go Bucks, beat Ducks.
KASLER: For NPR News, I'm Karen Kasler, class of 1995, the Ohio State University Columbus.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
We are learning more about the four people French and U.S. authorities believe were behind last week's terror attacks in Paris. Seventeen people were killed, including policemen, shoppers at a kosher grocery store and some of France's most famous cartoonists and editors. Authorities are trying to understand the people behind the attacks, who might've sent them and whether there are other terrorists who may strike next. Meanwhile, France is mobilizing 10,000 soldiers to beef up security in the country. NPR's counterterrorism correspondent Dina Temple-Raston has been covering this story, and she joins us online from Paris now. Dina, good morning.
DINA TEMPLE-RASTON, BYLINE: Good morning.
GREENE: So a lot of news about these four people who've been linked to these attacks over the weekend. What are we learning now?
TEMPLE-RASTON: Well, there were two big developments. The first was news that a possible fourth accomplice - a 26-year-old woman named Hayat Boumedienne - may have left France. Turkish officials are saying that someone with her passport came into Turkey, heading for Syria, on January 2. And then today the Turkish government has said that they think she passed into Syria January 8, which would've been a day after the initial attacks. And that would change a lot of what we thought we knew about her role. Authorities thought she had been at the police shooting and possibly at the kosher supermarket siege. Now officials are looking to see if what she actually did was help with the planning of the attacks but left before they were actually carried out.
GREENE: OK, you talk about the attack at the kosher supermarket, and there was some news about the man who took hostages there because there's this videotape that's been released on YouTube, right?
TEMPLE-RASTON: Right, this is a videotape of Amedy Coulibaly. Police have determined that he was a friend of the two brothers who are thought to be behind the shootings at Charlie Hebdo, a magazine, last Wednesday. And the videotape was clearly made over the course of some days after the attacks had started. It's a little over seven minutes long, and authorities believe that Coulibaly is in fact the person in the videotape. And he admits to a connection with the Kouachi brothers and it's in French and his voice is very calm. And he pledges his allegiance into the so-called Islamic State and to its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. But it's hard to tell and authorities are looking at this - whether his connections to the so-called Islamic State are virtual - just on the Internet - or whether he actually trained with the group in Syria. U.S. officials have been scouring travel records to see if he might've gone to Syria, but so - or even Iraq - but so far they haven't come up with anything.
GREENE: Well, speaking of looking for connections, the two brothers - the two gunmen - at the satirical publication, I mean, they are now saying that they are members of - were members of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. What is that?
TEMPLE-RASTON: Right, also known as this group AQAP. In this case, U.S. officials are sure that Said Kouachi, the older brother, spent time in Yemen training with AQAP, but they've yet to find any sort of evidence that his younger brother, Cherif, did. Now, Cherif claimed in a radio interview in France that he'd been sent by AQAP and that this whole operation was financed by the American-born, now dead, radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, but officials haven't been able to verify that claim either.
GREENE: All right, Dina, we'll have to stop there. NPR's Dina Temple-Raston is NPR's counterterrorism correspondent. She joins us from Paris. Dina, thank you.
TEMPLE-RASTON: You're welcome.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
And for a look at reaction here in the U.S., and some other domestic political news, we turn now to Cokie Roberts, as we do most Mondays. Good morning.
COKIE ROBERTS, BYLINE: Hi, Renee.
MONTAGNE: So Congress is soon scheduled to vote on funding for the Department of Homeland Security. It's part of an ongoing debate with the Obama administration about it immigration. What's likely to happen now on what some Republicans were hoping to be a showdown vote against the president?
ROBERTS: Well, it's bad timing, isn't it? In listening to Republican leaders yesterday, I think not much is going to happen. They're likely to give the department what it wants and not make those cuts in the TSA that had been proposed. It was always, look, a bad idea from the Republican's standpoint. You had in the exit polls from the last election 72 percent of the people saying that they're worried about a terrorist attack. I suppose if you had taken that the same poll any time over the last few days, listening to our law enforcement and military officers, it would be closer to a hundred percent worried about these attacks.
The American officials, starting with Eric Holder in Paris, have made it very clear that these so-called sleeper cells are terrifying them. They don't know who's training in Yemen, and especially in Syria, so they don't even know who to put on the no-fly list. And it's very clear that these trained operatives are very, very scary. So it'll be interesting to see how the Republicans deal with this if they really want to make their point on immigration on a bill that deals with all of security.
MONTAGNE: Well, also a security issue that almost got lost this past week, in the horrors that happened in Paris, is cybersecurity. Yesterday the chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, Martin Dempsey, was not exactly encouraging.
ROBERTS: No, to put it mildly. And, you know, we've just seen the Sony hacking and lots of experts said then, look, this was a movie studio, so it wasn't so terribly important. But other institutions could be very dangerous. And the chairman of the joint chiefs said yesterday that while the U.S. has military superiority in almost every aspect that we have, quote, "peer competitors" in the cyber area. And he said cyber-terrorists can, quote, "destroy hardware and disable critical infrastructure." So there's a big sense of threats out there.
Both the president and the vice president are doing cyber events this week, calling for collaboration between industry and government on cybersecurity and proposing legislation to protect individual security. But, you know, what happens is that American politics changes. The focus of what people are concerned about changes, and it can change overnight. And that's what we're seeing right now. We're dealing with a new concern in politics and if personal safety is at issue it becomes, Renee, the only concern. And I think that that is what the leaders are dealing with now.
MONTAGNE: Cokie Roberts joins us most Mondays on MORNING EDITION. Thanks so much.
ROBERTS: Mhmm.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Let's talk now about the price of oil, which is pretty cheap right now, about $50 a barrel. But for some it's even cheaper. It's free; that's because they just steal it. In Nigeria, theft is big trouble. Some 10 percent of Nigerian oil goes missing every day. Julia Simon from NPR's Planet Money team went to West Africa to learn more.
JULIA SIMON, BYLINE: It's not hard to find stolen oil. People put up ads from the Nigerian version of Craigslist saying, come and get it. Bring your own tanker. I contacted one the guys with an ad - Lawrence.
Would it make you more comfortable if you sat here?
I met him at this nice hotel in Lagos, Nigeria. He doesn't call the oil stolen. He uses the slang term - racket.
And what's racket?
LAWRENCE: Racket is more or less non-official. I can say that.
SIMON: Non-official. Lawrence lays it all out for me. In the oil-rich Niger Delta, there are pipelines everywhere. People can go to their local pipeline, drill into it with a power tool and siphon out all they can haul away. Or for oil thieves with a bigger appetite, there's a way to get a whole tanker full of oil. At the oil terminal near the ocean, where empty tankers fill up with crude, some thieves bribe the guys working the pump to get a few hundred-thousand barrels extra.
Stealing the oil is easy, people told me. Selling it on the international market, that's the challenge. First of all, thieves need paperwork - a paper that says this oil is from Nigeria - oh, yeah, sure. It's legit. There are specialists who can get you the official papers, guys like Kossi.
KOSSI: (Foreign language spoken).
SIMON: I met Kossi in Togo, not far from Nigeria. He used to be a taxi driver. Then he became a sort of courier of documents. Remember that oil terminal in Nigeria? Most of the ships are legal. When they pay for their oil, they get a paper with a government stamp. Kossi says if you bribe the officials there, instead of printing one copy...
KOSSI: (Foreign language spoken).
SIMON: ...The Nigerian officials print two. The original copy goes with the legal boat. The second copy is for Kossi. And it's precious because when you attach it to a tanker of stolen oil, you can sail away with oil that looks totally legit. The final challenge for oil thieves is to sell it to a refinery somewhere in the world. To do this, you need a broker. And I met one, not in Nigeria, in Syosset, Long Island.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Hi...
SIMON: OK. So will you...
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: What's your first name?
SIMON: Julia.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Julia, will you sign in please?
SIMON: Sure.
In this typical office in a boring-looking office park, I meet...
PAUL OLAKENGGIL: Paul Olakenggil, and I'm a securities and commodities trader.
SIMON: Guys call up Paul from West Africa all the time and say, I have a tanker full of oil off the coast. Do you know a refinery?
(SOUNDBITE OF CELL PHONE RINGING)
SIMON: Oh no, go for it.
When I was with Paul, his cell phone dinged. He got an email from a guy in Nigeria.
Do you need to do something?
OLAKENGGIL: This is from a guy (inaudible). His uncle is a seller.
SIMON: Paul was getting word that a ship with almost a million barrels of Nigerian oil was on its way to Rotterdam. We went online to track the ship.
Oh, my God, there it is. Wow, there are so many tankers.
OLAKENGGIL: Yeah.
SIMON: So it's, like, rounding Spain right now.
OLAKENGGIL: Right.
SIMON: Paul says ships like this - full of oil but with no buyer - the stuff inside is called distressed cargo. Maybe the owners of the oil had a deal and it fell through, or maybe the oil is stolen. He doesn't know for sure.
OLAKENGGIL: The way I look at it, it's possible that some of the crude you're buying and selling may be mixed up with sources that are not that legal.
SIMON: Paul trusts his sellers. He says he doesn't think the stuff in his deals is illegal. But the truth is the further the oil gets away from Nigeria, the harder it is to know what's legal and what's not. I've heard from sources that stolen Nigerian oil ends up in India, in Italy. And when it comes down to it, when people fill up their tank, they look at the price and don't always ask where the stuff came from. For NPR News, I'm Julia Simon.
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A call-out in Australia for teeny, tiny mittens has brought a deluge. It's not cold there. Rather, brushfires have been raging across land where many koalas. The poor little koalas are showing up in shelters with scorched paws. The International Fund for Animal Welfare says the marsupial mittens are used to seal in medication while they heal. And the group helpfully included in its call-out a pattern to make the cotton mittens. It's MORNING EDITION.
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In France yesterday, an overwhelming show of solidarity after last week's attacks by Islamist radicals.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
At the head of a unity march in Paris, more than 40 world leaders linked arms in a slow procession. And it's worth noting who this event brought together.
MONTAGNE: The leaders of Israel and the Palestinian Authority were there.
GREENE: Also the president of Ukraine and the foreign minister of Russia, at least symbolically, setting aside their differences.
MONTAGNE: French President Francois Hollande said Paris became, on this day, the capital of the world.
GREENE: More than a million people flooded that city's streets. They were determined to honor the victims of last week's attacks.
MONTAGNE: Marchers said they were sending another message as well - that people of all different faiths, races and political beliefs can join together and stand for liberty and tolerance. At times, the mood in Paris almost seems celebratory.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC, CHEERING)
MONTAGNE: But much of the day was solemn.
FLORIAN CHEVOPPE: I felt like I was doing my duty today as a citizen.
GREENE: That's Florian Chevoppe. These were some of his only spoken words yesterday because he spent much of his time walking in silence.
CHEVOPPE: The time to say the national anthem in France came up, and we sang along but in a very low voice, very respectful, not chanting like we would at a football match or any soccer, as we call it in America, events.
GREENE: The crowd included people from all over the world like Claire Mays. She's an American who's been living in Paris for nearly 30 years.
CLAIRE MAYS: This was a silent march, but what was wonderful was to hear the waves. Here there was a wave of Charlie (claps) Charlie (claps), and it would just travel right up the avenue.
MONTAGNE: Jean-Jaque Fourmond came to the rally with his wife and their son and a homemade sign supporting the satirical magazine that was targeted in the attacks, Charlie Hebdo.
JEAN-JAQUE FOURMOND: I'm a policeman and I'm Charlie. That's what is written on my poster. En Francais, (speaking French).
GREENE: That voice - one of the millions of people out on the streets yesterday in cities and town across France.
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So a losing battle for ducks - onto another battle involving bats. They're flower pollinators, and they devour nuisance insects. But millions of bats have been killed by a disease called white-nose syndrome. But as North Country Public Radio's Brian Mann reports, some bats are bouncing back.
BRIAN MANN, BYLINE: When I first visited Aeolus Cave in Vermont's Green Mountains six years ago, the floor was carpeted with tiny bodies and delicate bones. Scientists like Scott Darling with Vermont's Fish and Wildlife Service were shaken by the carnage.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
SCOTT DARLING: This is just far more than I expected. It's way more - so many more dead bats here.
MANN: That was 2009. Scientists say a quarter-million animals died here, many of their tiny faces crusted with the white fungus that gives this disease its name. So on my latest trip to the cave, the first bit of good news is that bats are still living here. The population is much smaller. But as I crawled through the gap of mud and rock into darkness, my headlamp falls again and again on living bats, clinging to the roof.
JONATHAN REICHARD: It's a little bit of a curveball to be here today, you know, six years after being here and seeing all the dead bats, to think that there are still bats in there.
MANN: Jonathan Reichard is national assistant coordinator for white-nose syndrome for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Like a lot of scientists, he feared that this disease might exterminate the animals entirely, sweeping them from large parts of North America. On this night, Reichard is part of the team catching bats, inspecting them. Listen closely, and you can hear the flutter of their wings, their tiny squeaks. To guys like Reichard, that's the sound of hope, especially for a type of bat known as the little brown.
REICHARD: The declines in that species have slowed down or even reversed in some cases. There's evidence that colonies may even be increasing at a slight tick.
MANN: There's other good news. While researchers study the tough little holdouts here in Vermont, a wildlife veterinarian at the University of Wisconsin has been cracking the code on how exactly white-nose syndrome kills these animals. The study's lead author, Michelle Verant, says the fungus causes bats' bodies to overheat, burning energy too quickly.
MICHELLE VERANT: The amount of fat energy that bats affected with white-nose syndrome used was twice as much as the healthy bat.
MANN: Verant says hibernating bats begin to starve. Some flee into the deadly cold, searching for more food. Verant thinks her work, funded by the U.S. Geological Survey, could help point the way toward helping more bats, like the ones in Aeolus Cave, survive. Scientists are scrambling to develop targeted fungicides that might kill white-nose outright. In the meantime, Verant says wildlife managers need to make sure bats are healthy and plump before they go into the caves for the winter.
VERANT: The best thing that we can do right now is supporting bats with good habitat and reducing those additional stressors.
MANN: As this disease spreads west, Verant's findings will play big part in the debate over the federal government's response. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is now deciding whether one type of bat, called the northern long-eared, should be added to the endangered species list. That would mean more protections for the forests and caves that bats rely on when building their stores of fat. Last month, Canada's government did just that, adding three types of bats to their list of endangered animals. For NPR News, I'm Brian Mann.
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All this week, we're taking a close look at America's veterans and especially the benefits they receive. Now, over the past year, we've heard a lot about the long waits for care and also a persistent backlog for disability claims. It turns out there's something else. When you're a veteran, where you live matters, especially when it comes to getting all the benefits you might be eligible for. NPR's Quil Lawrence covers veterans' issues, and he joins us on the line. Hey, Quil.
QUIL LAWRENCE, BYLINE: Good morning.
GREENE: So Quil, I know we're going to dig into some data here in a moment. But just a broad question - I mean, if geography matters in terms of the benefits that you receive when you're a veteran, why is that important?
LAWRENCE: Well, really because the VA's mission says it shouldn't matter. The VA's mission is to care for those who've borne the battle and their widow and their orphan. And it doesn't say just if you live within 30 miles of a VA. So NPR, along with several of our member stations - we looked at data from 3,000 counties nationwide. And we're going to share some of what we found this week. The benefits they get - you know about a lot of them - health care is a big one - probably the biggest. There are monthly disability checks if you have a service-connected disability. There's also home loans. There's life insurance. There's education through the GI Bill. There's a lot that people don't know about.
GREENE: Yeah, a lot of these benefits, really - it runs the gamut. So tell us, in this research, what exactly you found.
LAWRENCE: So we found there's a huge variation from state-to-state and even within each state on how much the VA spends per veteran. It can sometimes be 50 percent more spent per vet per year. In the highest state, it's about $7,600 per year per veteran, and in the lowest one, it's less than $5,000. And we didn't find one big explanation, but we found a few things that might explain some of it. And we can start out with a story out of Massachusetts, where data from the VA shows that they spend nearly four times as much on health care for veterans in Boston as they do out in Cape Cod.
GREENE: That's a big discrepancy within one state.
LAWRENCE: And it can make a huge difference in a veteran's life. So we can hear now a piece from Martha Bebinger from member station WBUR. And she talked to vets in both places. She starts with a vet in Boston.
GEORGE MURRAY: This was my challenge coin when I was state commander.
MARTHA BEBINGER, BYLINE: At 69, George Murray is a shirt-popping, proud leader in the Veterans of Foreign Wars Home Post 1018, Boston. Murray served in Vietnam. He says his health problems started after exposure to Agent Orange.
MURRAY: I've had lung cancer, heart disease. I've had a heart attack. I had a triple bypass. I had a heart attack after that. Then I had a stroke.
BEBINGER: Murray gets almost all of his care at VA hospitals and clinics and has no complaints - well, one.
MURRAY: The service at the VA has been outstanding. You get great care. The food isn't bad. The coffee stinks. If they improved the coffee, I'd go up there for coffee in the morning.
BEBINGER: Places like Boston with special VA services for elderly, homeless and low-income veterans tend to have sicker patients. That may help explain why the VA spends $25,000 per veteran every year in Boston and just $6,500 per vet on Cape Cod. Convenience is also a big factor. For 20 years, Murray went to one of two VA medical centers in Boston, very close to home.
MURRAY: Tops - four miles - to the left, to the right. I mean, neither one of them are bad to get to.
BEBINGER: Now meet Ron Percy, a Vietnam vet on Cape Cod. When Percy woke at 3 a.m. one morning last July with chest pains, he was a long way from his assigned VA hospital.
RON PERCY: I couldn't breathe. So there's no way I could go the 75 miles to Providence.
BEBINGER: Cape Cod veterans have a clinic for check-ups, but for almost everything else, they're sent to the VA in neighboring Rhode Island. After his heart attack, Percy has bills from a Cape Cod hospital that the VA has so far refused to pay. He's appealed. And the VA says it is reviewing his case. For all his planned care, Percy makes the three-and-a-half to four hour round trip.
PERCY: Couple of years ago, I had - I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. So I had 44 treatments that I had to go to Providence for every single day.
BEBINGER: Percy got there in a van run by volunteers. It would leave at 7:30 a.m. and return after all the passengers getting tests or treatments were ready.
PERCY: My appointment was, like, at 9:30. I'm all done a quarter of 10. That's wasting the whole day. Lot of people just will say, hey, I can't put up with it. And they won't go.
BEBINGER: Won't go - that's one reason vets who live far from VA medical centers are not getting all the benefits they've earned. That includes men and women suffering from PTSD. Rob Harrington, a vet whose convoy was bombed in Baghdad, works at a Cape Cod outreach center.
ROB HARRINGTON: There's a lot of veterans. I try - I get them set up for a doctor's appointment and everything else. And they don't get down there for transportation reasons. It's a long drive. Their stress level - definitely it's not fair.
BEBINGER: Harrington says some vets on Cape Cod give up on the VA.
HARRINGTON: They get on MassHealth, or they allow them to use your own personal insurance, even if it's combat-related because of the inconvenience of it.
BEBINGER: Here's another factor. It costs more to treat veterans in cities where doctors and nurses are paid more. Still, part of the spending gap is hard to explain.
ASHISH JHA: Our best guess is that a lot of that probably has to do with management and stewarding the public dollar.
BEBINGER: Ashish Jha studies VA health care at the Harvard School of Public Health.
JHA: And even when you look across VA hospitals, some organizations seem to be a little bit better at managing resources than others.
BEBINGER: Whatever the explanation, veterans on Cape Cod are frustrated that the VA spends four times more per vet in Boston than it does on them. Tom Sullivan, who heads the Cape Cod chapter of Disabled American Veterans, says vets where he lives deserve better.
TOM SULLIVAN: We don't need, you know, a thousand-bed hospital but a hospital where they can actually caring for the vets here, and they don't have to go to Providence or Boston.
BEBINGER: There's no talk about building a new VA hospital in Massachusetts.
GREENE: OK, that reporting came to us from Martha Bebinger from member station WBUR. We still have NPR's Quil Lawrence with us. He covers veterans' issues. And Quil, one thing there that struck me in Massachusetts - convenience. I mean, there's some veterans who are literally leaving money on the table because they just can't get to a VA. Go through some of the other reasons that there are these discrepancies.
LAWRENCE: Right. There's that - that if they just don't go down there, they end up opting for private care. Some are totally beyond the VA's control. Where vets decide to retire - that ends up raising the number in that particular county. Some hospitals are more or less expensive depending on the location, the management. Another reason is outreach. If the vets in a state or county don't hear about these benefits, they're not going to use them. So that's down to the state VA on whether they're educating their veterans on the benefits they've earned. And each one of these has its own eligibility requirements, and they're very complicated.
GREENE: How complicated? I mean, can most people finally figure out how to - to sort of get through the bureaucracy?
LAWRENCE: They're set up so you're supposed to be able to do it yourself. But I don't know. Do you do your own taxes?
GREENE: I don't. I used to.
LAWRENCE: Yeah, yeah.
GREENE: It got too complicated.
LAWRENCE: It's a bit like that. And the VA sort of says, well, everyone should be able to do it. But at the same, time they've got a built-in system of advisors in each VA who are supposed to help you fill out your benefits. And we found that - you'll hear this in our story tomorrow - that if you get this semi-professional help to fill out your paperwork, you can end up getting double the compensation on your disability claim.
GREENE: Does the VA acknowledge these discrepancies and try to explain them?
LAWRENCE: Well, these stats cause the VA a huge headache every year when they come out because some state has to come in last in terms of VA dollars spent per veteran. And then the VA gets a dozen angry calls from that state's congressional offices. And they basically told us there are so many unknowns and so many factors in this data. And bear in mind only about nine million veterans use the VA, and that's out of about 22 million vets nationwide. So that's a huge unknown as well. But our look at the data sort of suggests that if VA services were all being given with equal efficiency, if all veterans were being educated equally well about the benefits that they've earned, then you wouldn't see these crazy variations in the numbers.
GREENE: And I know we'll be looking at a lot of these variations much more deeply as this week goes on. It's NPR's Quil Lawrence. Quil, thanks a lot.
LAWRENCE: Thank you, David.
GREENE: And we should say this project is a collaboration with NPR member stations. It's called Back at Base. Tomorrow, we'll hear about veterans in Indiana. And you can learn how much money the VA is spending on veterans in your county. Just go to our website, npr.org.
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And let's move from New Orleans to Oklahoma. There, and in other big-energy states, folks hope this slide in prices is a blip and not a bust. Joe Wertz of member station KOSU reports.
JOE WERTZ, BYLINE: The sign on the front door says closed, but this kitchen is open for business. Pecan Creek used to be a cafe, but owner Chad Igo closed the restaurant years ago to focus on catering exclusively to the oil industry.
CHAD IGO: We do everything from steak, prime rib, catfish, all the way down to barbecue brisket.
WERTZ: But Igo knows that on-site dining in the oil patch is a luxury.
IGO: We're kings when it's good. They love us. But as soon as it gets tight, we're the first ones to get cut.
WERTZ: Some energy companies are slashing spending and idling rigs. Igo hasn't heard of any large-scale layoffs, but the oil field is anxiously waiting.
IGO: Again, we're nervous. We don't know. I mean, $40-a-barrel oil? It's going to shut everything. I mean, it's going to. They won't do it. I mean, it's going to catch up sooner or later. They will shut down.
GOVERNOR MARY FALLIN: We're hoping that this will be a temporary, short-term drop in the price of a barrel of oil. But that's hard to predict, so we're being cautiously optimistic in planning that there might be a potential slump in the economy.
WERTZ: Governor Mary Fallin and other lawmakers are warning state agencies that low oil prices could stall the state economy. The crash could deepen a $300 million state budget gap.
MARK SNEAD: The oil and gas industry is by far the largest single source of tax revenue to the state.
WERTZ: Mark Snead is an economist and the president of RegionTrack, which provides economic forecasting for state finance officials. He's telling lawmakers to build their budget with $60-a-barrel oil in mind.
SNEAD: The share of earnings of workers in the state from oil and gas is actually slightly higher today than it was in 1982.
WERTZ: The 1980s oil boom and the devastating bust that followed lingers in many Oklahomans' minds. The industry recovered, and $130-a-barrel oil helped insulate the state from the worst effects of the Great Recession. Those record prices plunged in 2009, but again recovered until recently.
JENNIFER ETRIS: Well, I cheat.
WERTZ: Back in the Pecan Creek kitchen in the Western Oklahoma oil patch, Jennifer Etris is mixing up gallons of her signature condiment.
ETRIS: I use two - two of these ranch dressing mixes instead of one. It's known all over the world, my ranch dressing.
WERTZ: By the end of the week it'll disappear into the stomachs of hungry roughnecks, frack crews, truck drivers and tool-pushers. The catering company grosses about a million dollars a year and employs about a dozen people. Those are big numbers for a town with less than 3,000 people.
IGO: Last year we dumped $300,000 worth of payroll into Cordell, America. And that's something we're proud of. I mean, because we're - it's a small town.
WERTZ: For now, Pecan Creek is holding steady. Igo is confident because he, like many Oklahomans who depend on the energy industry, survived the last crude crash. But this time around Igo has a fallback. He bought a building down the road just in case he has to stop catering to the oilfield and get back in the restaurant business. For NPR News, I'm Joe Wertz in Oklahoma City.
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Let's hear now about a video game that has deep roots in Iran, as do the two entrepreneurs who hope to make an international splash with it. There are an estimated 20 million or so gamers in Iran, where half the population is under 25 years old. And a couple of years ago, when the Obama administration eased sanctions on Internet services there, that boosted the video game market. NPR's Deborah Amos met up with the creators of that game and brings us their story.
DEBORAH AMOS, BYLINE: This online multiplayer game is called "Seven Quests." The game is an update of a thousand-year-old Iranian poem, the "Shahnameh" or the "Epic Of Kings." The hero is Rostam. He's the Persian version of Hercules.
AMIR BOZORGZADEH: It's our hero. It's our Iranian national hero. It's our mythological symbol for a warrior who conquers all evil.
AMOS: That's Amir Bozorgzadeh. He heads a game development company based in Dubai. He's creating this "Seven Quests" game for an international market. He's also aiming at Iran's huge gaming community, where everyone already knows this story.
BOZORGZADEH: Markets like Iran are filled with some of the most hard-core gamers the world's ever seen.
AMOS: "Seven Quests" is a traditional war game, but not just about shooting stuff. This violence has a twist.
BOZORGZADEH: You're going to see him, you know, battling a three-headed dog or a 10-headed snake. That's the cool thing about mythology is that it's usually not so much centered between humans versus humans, but humans versus monsters.
AMOS: Battling online monsters wasn't exactly the goal of Washington policy when sanctions that limited Iranian access to Internet services were lifted in 2013. The point was to help Iranians to freely communicate on social media - Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. The Iranian government still blocks those services, but online games, that's the success story - an open channel of communications.
BOZORGZADEH: And when you have a game that is filled with real-time players and dynamics and people are making alliances and people are making enemies but they're working together in their chats, their forums, everyone's interacting, it's very compelling.
(SOUNDBITE OF VIDEO GAME, "SEVEN QUESTS")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) My death will not free you from this madness.
AMOS: Compelling, says Hossein Jalali, to finally connect with the world after decades of isolation. Jalali is a partner in the development team. He's passionate about multiplayer games because he grew up playing them Iran.
HOSSEIN JALALI: We've been playing games within our own realm for so long, and then suddenly you have the opportunity to play with the world. So it's, you know - it's a fascinating situation.
AMOS: He's the tech guy. And to build a complex game that looks good on smartphones, his team has turned to a company that's already produced hit games in the Middle East for a billion-dollar market.
(SOUNDBITE OF RINGING)
JALALI: Hello?
RADWAN KASMIYA: Hi, Hossein?
JALALI: Hi, Radwan. How are you?
AMOS: This tech meeting, conducted on Skype, connects Jalali to the offices of Falafel Games in Hangzhou, China. Radwan Kasmiya, a Syrian, moved his game development company to China's technology hub. Kasmiya tells me "Seven Quests," a game based on an epic Persian poem, is kind of like falafel, the popular Middle East snack - a familiar taste for Iranians, a new treat for an international audience.
KASMIYA: This is what we think our message within our game. We are creating something delicious, affordable for everybody, and it can go across borders. Hopefully, many of them will like it and will keep consuming it.
AMOS: That's the hope when the game launches in a few months, says Jalali, first in English and then in Farsi.
JALALI: We're hoping for millions of people to play. It's got a great story behind it.
AMOS: You're an Iranian. Will it please you if Iranians really like this game?
JALALI: Of course. I mean, everyone in Iran actually, you know, has heard the story from their parents or from school. So obviously if we get, you know, positive feedback from them, it will be excellent.
AMOS: Excellent, he says, if Iranians open another channel to talk to the world. If international gamers learn a little about Iranian culture, that would be excellent, too. Deborah Amos, NPR News.
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Buying a house - it's often the biggest financial transaction in a person's life. So with all that money at stake, consider this - many Americans don't bother to shop around. They don't search for better interest rates for a mortgage. That's one take-home in a new report from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. NPR's Chris Arnold reports.
CHRIS ARNOLD, BYLINE: Many Americans really love getting a good deal. We'll shop around to save 10 or 20 bucks on a pair of pants or winter coats for the kids. But with mortgages, nearly half of us don't even call around to different banks to hear what interest rates they're offering. And 75 percent of us - we only fill out an application with one lender. Richard Cordray is the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. He sat down with NPR to talk about the report.
RICARD CORDRAY: It is a surprising finding, and it suggests that they're still fairly intimidated by the mortgage transaction. Or they're a little distracted because at the same time, they're picking out a house.
ARNOLD: But especially in these days of stagnant wages, this is serious money. Cordray says on a $200,000 loan - a loan at four percent versus four-and-a-half percent - that is a big difference.
CORDRAY: The difference in even a half percent of interest racks up pretty quickly over five years to about $3,500. And over the life of a 30-year loan, obviously far more than that.
ARNOLD: You also pay off more principal more quickly with a lower rate. So why don't more people shop around? Are they intimidated, confused, distracted, all of the above? We called up Brigitte Madrian. She's a behavioral economist at Harvard, and she studies how human nature gets in the way of us making better financial decisions.
BRIGITTE MADRIAN: So one is that interest rates seem small.
ARNOLD: A half of 1 percent difference - our brains say, well, whatever.
MADRIAN: Consumers don't really understand compound interest. And it's the effect of these small interest rate differences applied to a large sum of money - which a mortgage is - and then compounded over time.
ARNOLD: Another thing our brains do, Madrian says, is that we tend to look at cost savings in relative terms.
MADRIAN: So if a store is offering a discount - $10 on a $30 pair of shoes - that's a 33 percent discount - people will drive 20 minutes out of their way because it's a big relative difference in price whereas they might not drive 20 minutes out of their way to save $300 on a car if that $300 is only 1 percent of the price of the car because 1 percent seems small.
ARNOLD: There's actually a name for this behavior if you want to impress your friends. Madrian says it's called the Weber-Fechner law of psychophysics. So OK. Many of us humans could use some help with our financial decisions. That's why in addition to coming out with the report, Richard Cordray says the CFPB is also today launching a toolkit on its website.
CORDRAY: A set of tools which will help empower consumers to shop more effectively and make the best deals they can for themselves and their families.
ARNOLD: There's a rate tracker tool. Cordray says you can plug in your credit score and ZIP code and other info, and it'll tell you the range of interest rates that lenders are offering that day. Of course, there's a lot of financial information out there on the Internet - some good, some bad, some ugly. Cordray says one goal here is to give people some tools that they can trust since his agency is not trying to sell you anything. Chris Arnold, NPR News.
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In Paris this morning, French President Francois Hollande spoke at a memorial service for three police officers killed last week by Islamist extremists. And the four people killed in an attack on a kosher supermarket in Paris were buried today in Israel. We'll hear from Jerusalem in just a moment. But first, to Paris, where expectations are building for Charlie Hebdo, the satirical magazine whose offices were attacked, to release its first issue since the shooting. Earlier we spoke to reporter Lauren Frayer in Paris.
This seems like really important symbolism for this magazine to come out with an issue, you know, in the wake of this.
LAUREN FRAYER, BYLINE: Right. So despite the manhunt on the ground here, despite a very fluid situation in terms of the investigation, what everyone is talking about in Paris is Charlie Hebdo. The magazine will print on schedule in less than 24 hours, expecting a printing of 3 million copies. Now, just to give you a perspective, their normal circulation before these attacks was 60,000.
I went to a newsstand this morning and tried to get my name on a waiting list to buy a copy. The man behind the counter was extremely overwhelmed. He said he's been flooded with queries, and he told me to come back when they're delivered.
Now, what the magazine will consist of is a closely guarded secret. We're expecting it to feature past work of those slain cartoonists. There's been lots of speculation about the cover. One image has been leaked to the press, and it shows a cartoon of what looks like the Prophet Muhammad with a tear in his eye holding one of those now ubiquitous posters, Je suis Charlie. The headline reads, "All Is Forgiven."
GREENE: Wow. That sounds like it'll be pretty powerful when that comes out. Well, you mentioned the investigation as well, people talking about that. What's the latest?
FRAYER: So NPR has confirmed that French police are looking for six more suspects. This is new information, that the gunmen killed Friday may have had many more accomplices than previously thought. French police are describing them now as a terrorist cell based in Paris, so not lone wolves radicalized in isolation. Authorities had long suspected that the cell included more people than the gunmen who police have publicly identified. One of the suspects now being sought may be driving a car that belongs to that 26-year-old woman police have described as the partner of one of the dead gunmen. She's believed to have already fled France, possibly to Turkey and Syria.
GREENE: And, Lauren, just in the few seconds we have left, and we've heard about the security really being beefed-up in Paris. What does the city feel like right now?
FRAYER: So authorities have announced 10,000 more soldiers, 5,000 more police fanning out across the country. Thousands of police and soldiers are also deployed around Jewish schools and other potential targets. I passed by a very, very small Jewish religious office in central Paris where two French soldiers are guarding in military camouflage, big automatic weapons. The Jewish community, understandably, is very on edge here.
GREENE: All right. Lauren Frayer joining us from Paris. Lauren, thanks a lot.
FRAYER: You're welcome.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
And now let's go to Israel where four victims from the attack on a kosher supermarket in Paris are being remembered. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to mourners there. The numbers of Jews moving from France to Israel has been rising in recent years. And as NPR's Emily Harris reports from Jerusalem, that is magnifying the emotional and political response in Israel to the attacks in France.
EMILY HARRIS, BYLINE: Twenty-one-year-old Goreyl Chiche immigrated to Israel from France last October. He was shocked when two of his friends were killed in last week's supermarket attack in Paris.
GOREYL CHICHE: I don't know if it's a one-time event or if it's going to continue. I don't know. I really don't know. But I really want my family to come here - my mother, my father, my sisters, my brothers. I want everybody to follow me.
HARRIS: Seven thousand French Jews got Israeli citizenship last year. That's just over 1 percent of France's nearly half a million Jewish population, but it makes twice as many French immigrants to Israel as the year before. Following the attacks, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said a special government team would take steps to increase Jewish immigration from Europe to Israel. The Jewish Agency encourages and facilitates immigration, but agency spokesman Yigal Palmor says this is political talk, and attracting immigrants is not that simple.
YIGAL PALMOR: They can't bring over anyone. And the truth is that no one knows whether immigration from France will rise this year.
HARRIS: In Paris, Netanyahu said the people who carried out the attacks there and those who killed Jews in a Jerusalem synagogue last fall are part of the same terrorist movement. France and Israel often disagree on steps to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but Tsilla Herscho, an expert on French-Israeli relations at Israel's Bar-Ilan University, says last week's attacks might build empathy for Israel in France.
TSILLA HERSCHO: When they are confronted with things which we are confronted in our lives, I think they will understand Israel better, yeah.
HARRIS: She says French security services have, in recent years, sought training from Israel on fighting terrorist groups. Claude Taieb left France four years ago. She says she feels much safer in Israel.
CLAUDE TAIEB: Really I feel safer here because we can identify our enemy. In France, you cannot.
HARRIS: A more recent immigrant worries that too many French Jews could seek safety in Israel. If all Jews left France, he said, terror will have won. Emily Harris, NPR News, Jerusalem.
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Last week's attacks began with a massacre at the editorial offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. The killing ended in a kosher supermarket where the targets were members of France's large Jewish community. As we've just heard, 70 years after the Holocaust, French Jews are again feeling at risk. New Yorker Editor-in-Chief David Remnick has a new post online today, called "The Shadow Of Anti-Semitism In France." We reached him in New York to find out his thoughts on the terrible and also touching events of these last few days.
DAVID REMNICK: A couple of my identities are as a journalist and as an American-born Jew. And to watch this horror and think about the implications for free expression, what it says about the anxious state for French Jews in France is really shattering on the one hand. And then to watch the demonstration on Sunday in which not just a a million-plus people were on the streets of Paris, but millions of people all over France, including many Muslims carrying signs saying, Je suis juif - I am a Jew...
MONTAGNE: Right.
REMNICK: ...In solidarity and in absolute defiance of the so-called principles of the murderers was something thrilling. I don't want to draw any false comparisons. But look at what has happened in the United States in terms of demonstrations of people insisting that black lives matter, two generations after the civil rights movement as a necessity. And to see in France, generations after the Vichy government, after the Drancy internment camp, after all the history of anti-Semitism there - to see this resurgence on all sides - and historically, it speaks of a real crisis.
MONTAGNE: How do you think Jews in France will process this?
REMNICK: Now most of the anti-Semitic sentiment, violence and incidents tend to be coming from the suburbs of cities like Paris, from immigrants and the - generally the sons of immigrants from - some from North Africa, some from the Arabic countries - but the fact of matter is it is a problem. The French prime minister spoke very eloquently about this - in fact, said to my colleague Jeff Goldberg at The Atlantic that if the French Jews leave the country, that's the end of France. And what he means is that's the end of the principles of an open society that seems unable to protect its Jewish minority.
MONTAGNE: The New Yorker's cover this week drew a lot of attention, as it often does in situations like this. And I'll just briefly describe it. It's the Eiffel tower resting on what looks like a swirling fog of blood. And the tower is emerging from that as a pencil - a red-tipped pencil. It's quite stunning, actually. But I'm wondering - how did you arrive at this - the magazine - or was it just quick?
REMNICK: Well, it had to be quick because the event had happened when it did. We saw dozens and dozens of sketches. As you can imagine, this subject was of a particular interest to the artists out there who could readily relate to their brothers and sisters at Charlie Hebdo, whether they agreed with their particular politics or images or not. Just the issue of freedom of expression hit very, very deeply with them. But, you know, I should say that we've published any number of covers over the years that have been controversial, including, famously, Barack Obama and Michelle Obama in the Oval Office with all the kind of trappings that right-wing fantasists had attributed to them, including, you know, a portrait of Osama bin Laden on the wall and them dressed as radicals or as Islamists or whatever it might be. And while I got thousands and thousands of critical emails or notes of complaint or all kinds of debate, I never felt threatened at any point. There was never an iota of that. I've never gotten anything that would've hinted at something that came the way of the staff of Charlie Hebdo.
MONTAGNE: Do you have thoughts that there ever would be after what we saw last week?
REMNICK: Well, I live day-to-day.
MONTAGNE: Hmm. David Remnick, thank you very much for joining us.
REMNICK: Thank you.
MONTAGNE: David Remnick is editor-in-chief of the New Yorker.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
After two New York City police officers were shot and killed, there were tensions between Mayor Bill de Blasio and the NYPD's rank-and-file. These tensions were not new. The two sides have long been at odds over an expired labor contract. Some wonder whether all this explains an apparent work slowdown in the department. Here's NPR's Joel Rose.
JOEL ROSE, BYLINE: For two weeks, the NYPD basically stopped making arrests and writing tickets for low-level offenses. So if you had an open container on New Year's Eve or hopped a subway turnstile, you could be pretty sure the cops were going to look the other way. But Police Commissioner William Bratton says arrests and tickets are starting to rise.
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COMMISSIONER WILLIAM BRATTON: While the numbers aren't what we would describe as normal numbers based on previous years, previous months, we are pleased with the fact that the officers are beginning to re-engage again.
ROSE: The NYPD's work slowdown came after scores of cops turned their backs on Mayor Bill de Blasio at the funerals of two officers who were shot in their patrol car last month. Police unions accuse de Blasio of contracting to an anti-NYPD climate by what they see as the mayor's sympathy for protesters against police brutality. But the unions deny coordinating the work slowdown. And they insist that all this has nothing to do with contract negotiations.
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PATRICK LYNCH: That's not what this is about.
ROSE: That Patrick Lynch, president of the Patrolman's Benevolent Association, speaking last week to NPR's All Things Considered. The 20,000 members of Lynch's union have been working without a contract for four-and-a-half years.
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LYNCH: This was about safety, and this is about the tone on the street. We've been having contract fights for centuries with City Hall and will continue to have that.
ROSE: In the past year, Mayor Bill de Blasio's administration reached agreements with teachers and other municipal workers, including some police managers, but not with the patrolman's or sergeants' unions. And now the PBA is headed to binding arbitration with City Hall.
NOEL LEADER: To say that it has nothing to do with contracts - I think that's not being totally honest.
ROSE: Noel Leader is a former NYPD sergeant and a cofounder of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care. He thinks the department's work slowdown had many causes, including bare-knuckle negotiating tactics.
LEADER: Some of it is political theater, positioning for a better contract by attempting to put some pressure on the mayor because I can see how it works in the best interest of the union to force the mayor to resolve this negative relations as soon as possible.
ROSE: Leader isn't the only insider who thinks that union politics are adding fuel to the fight between the NYPD's rank-and-file and City Hall. John Liu is a former New York City comptroller and a professor at Baruch College.
JOHN LIU: If the contract was the only issue out there, that would not be driving this level of discontent. But the reality is that the lack of a contract is a clear and explicit manifestation of the ongoing frustrations and feelings of disrespect.
ROSE: On the other hand, this is not a brand new dynamic between the unions and City Hall. For the patrolmen's union, arbitration has become routine. It had similar fights with former mayors, including Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg - two administrations that had friendlier relations with the rank-and-file.
HANK SHEINKOPF: This is largely not about the contract. This is about a clash of cultures.
ROSE: Hank Sheinkopf is a former cop. He's now a political consultant who's worked with police unions in 25 states.
SHEINKOPF: You're talking about an underpaid group of individuals - underpaid as compared to other police departments within this region - doing a very dangerous job. And they don't feel they're being respected. What makes it worse is they are very blue-collar. And the people in power are - they feel are - looking down at them.
ROSE: Sheinkopf says the financial issues can be dealt with in arbitration. But it may be harder to fix the feelings of disrespect which go back to Mayor de Blasio's campaign promise to reform how the NYPD interacts with communities of color. The mayor has softened his tone in recent days, talking more about the greatest police force in the world. But that hasn't translated into any breakthroughs at the bargaining table. Joel Rose, NPR News, New York.
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A record number of Germans poured into the streets of Dresden last night to protest radical Islam and what they see as runaway immigration. More than 25,000 Germans came out for a Monday rally that has been going on weekly for months. Observers say the swelling numbers were a result of last week's terror attacks in Paris. As NPR's Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson reports from Dresden, they were also fired up over the German chancellor calling Islam a part of Germany.
SORAYA SARHADDI NELSON, BYLINE: One of the angry protesters last night was Frank Liebers.
FRANK LIEBERS: (Speaking German).
NELSON: He held up a Photoshopped poster of Chancellor Angela Merkel wearing a traditional Muslim headscarf and said, if she's going to say Islam belongs in Germany, she ought to look like a Muslim leader.
LIEBERS: (Speaking German).
NELSON: The pensioner from the eastern city of Chemnitz and his wife, who refused to give her name, also took aim at Islam. They called it a war-like religion, claiming falsely that the Quran doesn't include the word love.
Hans Vorlander teaches at the Dresden University of Technology and surveys people attending the rallies. He says most of the demonstrators aren't radicals or extremists, but people who worry about their future.
HANS VORLANDER: It's kind of strange. We think it has to do with some kind of status anxiety, so they are feeling to lose something. And they project their status anxieties on people coming as refugees or migrants.
NELSON: He adds the rally-goers are largely from Dresden and other eastern German cities, although some come from more progressive western German states like North Rhine-Westphalia.
VORLANDER: What we are going to see is a formation of a right-wing movement in Germany.
LUTZ BACHMANN: (Speaking German).
NELSON: "The fact is we've awoken a substantial part of the population." That's rally organizer Lutz Bachmann. He's the founder of PEGIDA - a German acronym for Patriotic Europeans Against Islamization of the West. He says the protests will continue until Merkel's government passes more restrictive immigration laws, turns away refugees and answers to voters.
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NELSON: Rally-goers agreed and chanted, we are the people. But many other Germans are fighting the right-wing populism. In other cities, anti-PEGITA demonstrators far outnumber anti-Muslim protesters. Even in Dresden, they make their presence known.
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NELSON: Last night, dozens of anti-PEGITA protesters confronted the marchers, chanting, refugees are welcome here, and never again, Germany, referring to the country's Nazi past. Police in riot gear rushed in to prevent clashes and fired what sounded like stun grenades. Security guards working for PEGITA persuaded their protesters to ignore the hecklers and march on. Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson, NPR News, Dresden.
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Good morning. I'm David Greene. It was an eggs-traordinary break-in on the Isles of Scilly, just off the coast of England. Someone forced their way into a soccer club shed, damaging a door and leaving one clue - a fried egg sitting in the grass. Police hoping to crack the case went on Facebook. There's a picture of an officer crouching down with the evidence. In case you missed the salient points, the police write, low-key investigation with amicable solution if admitted and a fried egg was left at the scene. You're listening to MORNING EGG-DITION.
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OK. Cheap gas prices are helping to pad the profits of Detroit automakers. Still, falling prices at the pump also pose a big challenge to the auto industry. That's because over-reliance on sales of pickup trucks and SUVs help push U.S. automakers into bankruptcy. So the question is will Detroit be better prepared this time when gas prices go up again? NPR's Sonari Glinton reports from the Detroit Auto Show.
SONARI GLINTON, BYLINE: If you've paid a bit of attention to the auto industry in the last few years, this is the kind of stuff you expect to hear.
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UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: Ladies and gentlemen, I am very proud. It is my honor to introduce to you now the 2016 Chevrolet Volt.
GLINTON: Fuel efficiency with new technology like Chevy put into its Volt has been the mantra for all the automakers for quite some time. But now gas prices are low. Auto sales are high. And much of those high sales are based on the popularity of luxury cars, SUVs and pickup trucks - gas guzzlers. All that creates a real conundrum for Detroit. Here's GM's CEO Mary Barra.
MARRY BARRA: Obviously, that's the situation right now. But when we look at the long-term, this does not change our strategy one bit. We're going to continue creating solutions that customers are going to want.
GLINTON: How do car companies avoid falling into a trap of only giving customers what they want right now?
SERGIO MARCHIONNE: Oil prices matter to a point. They will not change our posture.
GLINTON: That's Sergio Marchionne, the head of the Fiat Chrysler Group. Chrysler certainly does benefit now from low gas prices. Sales were up for the company last year by more than 40 percent, mainly on the strength of SUVs and trucks. But remember - the car companies were reliant on trucks and SUVs the last time there was a major gas price spike. That's part of what led General Motors to the point where they needed a bailout, and Chrysler needed its second. So how do we know that Chrysler won't come back asking for more?
MARCHIONNE: I'm not going back for any third time. I guarantee you. I think we've all learned from 2009 how not to drink at the bar.
GLINTON: Part of what's keeping the Detroit carmakers from bellying-up to the bar again is that the government has set tough fuel economy standards. Here's Michigan Senator Democrat Debbie Stabenow.
SENATOR DEBBIE STABENOW: We have new fuel efficiency standards that require them to keep moving forward. The industry is meeting that, and I think we'll beat that with American ingenuity. So I'm not worried about them falling back.
GLINTON: 54.5 miles a gallon by 2025 - those fuel standards are the stick - pardon the cliche - that Congress and the president is holding over the industry. They don't just require the companies to make fuel-efficient cars but sell them as well. Car makers are trying. GM has hybrids. Chrysler has diesel options. Ford is using lighter materials. The companies are doing it in part because they have to. Ford's new CEO Mark Fields says customers may want bigger vehicles now, but...
MARK FIELDS: Customers still want great fuel economy no matter what vehicle they have because I think consumers are smart these days. They know at some point gas prices are going to go up. It's going to be really important for us to achieve the country's goals - is to have consumer acceptance around new technologies like electrification.
GLINTON: But this is the thing you hear almost everyone in the industry worrying about openly or in private.
FIELDS: The consumer acceptance of electrified vehicles is still relatively low, despite the proliferation of models that are out there. Right now, that's an issue.
GLINTON: The poet T. S. Eliot famously wrote, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. Hmm. Maybe he covered the auto industry. Sonari Glinton, NPR News, Detroit.
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Last time congressional leaders visited the White House, it was just after President Obama's party was trounced in a midterm election. The lawmakers left with a gift - a six-pack of White House Honey Ale beer. No word on whether there will be swag-bags later today when Republican and Democratic leaders head to the White House to meet the president. This will be the first such face-to-face meeting since Republicans formally took over the Senate. As NPR's Tamara Keith reports, few are holding their breath for some big announcement.
TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Back in 2010, in his State of the Union Address, President Obama set out a goal. But maybe it was more like one of those New Year's resolutions to go to the gym regularly.
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PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I'd like to begin monthly meetings with both Democratic and Republican leadership. I know you can't wait.
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KEITH: It turns out, maybe they could. According to CBS White House correspondent Mark Knoller, who is the unofficial stat keeper for all things presidential, Obama has held 24 meetings at the White House with congressional leaders since making that pledge five years ago. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest admitted yesterday the president came up short of the goal. He also declined to set up any similar, quote, "artificial standard" going forward.
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JOSH EARNEST: But I do think that you can expect the president to be in regular touch with leaders on Capitol Hill, both Democrats and Republicans.
KEITH: This White House has been criticized repeatedly for its poor relationships with lawmakers - not enough golf with the speaker, not enough whiskey with the Senate majority leader. Today's meeting probably won't go in the column of personal relationship building. Earnest says the president plans to talk about possible areas of agreement - tax reform, trade and infrastructure.
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EARNEST: This will be an opportunity for them to talk about a range of issues, most importantly the legislative agenda for 2015.
KEITH: Cory Fritz, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, says the speaker will tell the president the American people want them to work together to get the economy moving. But he added recent veto threats from the White House show the president isn't listening. So, yeah, going in, there's not even a whole lot of agreement about what they could possibly agree on.
CORY FRITZ: If everybody coming to the meeting has a different idea in their mind of what they want to accomplish, it's hard to have a successful meeting at the end.
KEITH: Bob Frisch is managing partner of the Strategic Offsites Group in Boston. He's what you might call a professional meeting designer. And he's not convinced today's meeting with congressional leaders is designed for success.
BOB FRISCH: I'm an expert in meetings. I'm not a political analyst. But it's hard for me to sit down and say, OK, I have a good sense of what the president is trying to accomplish, other than build a good relationship or some kind of 30,000-foot placeholder like that.
KEITH: In this case, the meeting will be large - at least 18 people, not counting staff or other aides - the president, the vice president, plus four Democrats and four Republicans from each chamber. Frisch says that is a good-sized meeting for brainstorming, throwing a bunch of ideas around.
FRISCH: But if you're going to have a meeting saying, let's nail down the three most important things to work on and let's get down to a set of real options that we can possibly all support, boy, I think that's going to be very, very hard to do with 17 people in the room.
KEITH: All of that said, a White House official argues there's value in getting all of those people in the same room. Just because a meeting doesn't end with a list of action items doesn't mean it's not worthwhile. Tamara Keith, NPR News, Washington.
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The novelist Robert Stone once said his subject is America and Americans. The America he captured was the country of Altamont in Vietnam, the discordant end of the 1960s, and the follies that came after. He won the National Book Award in 1975 for his novel "Dog Soldiers." Over the weekend, Robert Stone died at his home in Key West, Florida, at 77 years old. NPR's Petra Mayer has this remembrance.
PETRA MAYER, BYLINE: It'd be safe to say that Robert Stone had an unusual childhood. His father was absent, and his beloved mother suffered from schizophrenia. They wandered around the country, sometimes only a step ahead of child welfare authorities, as he told WHYY's Fresh Air in 2007.
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ROBERT STONE: Although she got things somewhat scrambled, she really did love to read. And she was much more broad-minded about a great many things than plenty of people who were nominally sane.
MAYER: Stone bounced around from a Catholic orphanage, to the Navy, to New York City and finally fetched up in Northern California in Palo Alto's bohemian Perry Lane neighborhood just as the 1960s were getting underway. He met up with Ken Kesey and the group that became the Merry Pranksters, and it was idyllic at first. He once described Perry Lane as Eden with no snakes. But he said...
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STONE: I don't think I ever quite got on the utopian way of life.
MONA SIMPSON: He's certainly not sentimental about the counter culture, or for that matter about much else.
MAYER: That's novelist Mona Simpson, who knew Robert Stone through The Paris Review. She compares Stone to writers like Herman Melville and Joseph Conrad.
SIMPSON: In a sense, Conrad, he's definitely writing about our confrontation with other cultures and what that does to the souls and psyches of the people who are doing that, who are not necessarily the people who plan to do that.
MAYER: Stone got a taste of that confrontation in the late 1960s on a brief assignment as a journalist in Vietnam. You just had to stand in the middle of Constitution Square in Saigon and look around, and you could see how wrong, wrong, wrong this was, he later told The New York Times. It was this enormous, endless, boundless, topless, bottomless mistake, he said. That experience informed his most famous novel, the award-winning "Dog Soldiers," which follows three Americans who cook up an ill-fated plan to smuggle heroin home from Vietnam. It was later made into a movie, "Who'll Stop The Rain," starring Nick Nolte.
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NICK NOLTE: (As Ray Hicks) Your husband once told somebody I was a psychopath. You think he could be right?
MAYER: Stone kept on writing about missionaries and militiamen in Central America, about miserable actors in Hollywood, about all kinds of people chasing all kinds of dreams, even and especially when those dreams let them down. We need stories, he told The Paris Review, we can't identify ourselves without them. Petra Mayer, NPR News.
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Tomorrow marks one week since an attack on the editorial offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. It is also the day that next issue comes out. The press run is normally 60,000. Tomorrow's will be 3 million.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
And a French newspaper posted what it said is an image of Charlie Hebdo cover. It's a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad with a tear on his cheek.
MONTAGNE: Meanwhile, French police say they're looking for as many as six suspects who are believed to be involved in last week's crimes. That search suggests the attacks were the work of a terror cell, rather than a few lone wolves.
GREENE: In Paris today, French President Francois Hollande gave what is the nation's highest award, the Legion of Honuor, posthumously to the three police officers killed by Islamist militants. Throughout France, thousands of soldiers and police are guarding potential terror targets, including Jewish schools.
MONTAGNE: And in Israel today, the four people killed in a kosher supermarket in Paris are being buried. The funeral is being attended by the nation's leadership.
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The Ohio State Buckeyes are champions of college football's top division. The Buckeyes won the inaugural football playoff last night, just outside of Dallas, blasting the Oregon Ducks 42-20. The win capped a stunning postseason run for Ohio State and provided a rousing finale for the new playoff system. From Dallas, NPR's Tom Goldman has our story.
TOM GOLDMAN, BYLINE: It was a day of firsts. Sure, there was that first-ever playoff championship game. But this is college, remember, and it was also the first day of spring semester at Ohio State, making last night a school night, guys - duly noted before the game by senior Seth Bullock, whose choice to be at AT&T Stadium was evident in his red face paint and the Ohio State flag draped around his shoulders.
SETH BULLOCK: I'm here for the football. We're going to win the national chairmanship tonight. School can come later. I've got, like, another 85 days of that. I've got one night for the national championship. Let's go.
GOLDMAN: It's an unexcused absence, but maybe his professors at least can mark him up for prognostication because the underdog Buckeyes did, in fact, win the national championship. And for all that went wrong for the Oregon Ducks, this is the sound that will crowd their bad dreams of last night.
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UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: Ezekiel Elliott on the carry.
GOLDMAN: Ezekiel Elliott on the carry. The PA announcer uttered those words a whopping 36 times, one for each handoff to the Ohio State sophomore running back. And talk about whopping, Elliott turned those carries into a school record 246 yards and four of these.
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GOLDMAN: This third of Elliot's four touchdowns with just under 10 minutes left in the game made the score 35 to 20 and drained the hope out of those in the stadium wearing Oregon yellow and green. The majority of the 85,689 in attendance wore Ohio State scarlet, gray and white. They were thrilled, and if they were being completely honest, a bit stunned. Even Urban Meyer, now only the second head coach to win titles at multiple schools, didn't see this coming.
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URBAN MEYER: To say that I - we had this vision back in September or even August, no, not a chance. You know, I thought this was a team that we could battle and battle and find a way to win a bunch of games and then a year later go make a run at it.
GOLDMAN: The run came a year early, and what a run it was. An early, ugly loss to Virginia Tech took the Buckeyes out of the playoff conversation. Then Ohio State lost its second quarterback to injury, leaving third-stringer Cardale Jones in charge of the offense. In his three career starts, he has now led the Buckeyes to wins in the Big 10 championship, the playoff semifinal and the title game. Despite four turnovers by the offense last night, Jones said he never worried.
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CARDALE JONES: It's hard to be flustered or nervous or down when you have them 11 guys on defense playing the way they're playing. And then definitely when you've got the guys up front blocking the way they were blocking, we felt - we really felt like we could score anytime we want.
GOLDMAN: That was Oregon's calling card all season, but too many missed opportunities, too much great Ohio State defense and not even Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Marcus Mariota could rescue the Ducks. In the end, the fourth-seeded team in the playoff proved to be number one. That improbable story combined with sky-high ratings left two winners last night - Ohio State and the new system that allowed the Buckeyes - winners of eight titles now - to be champions again. Tom Goldman, NPR News, Dallas.
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Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne, with the tale of how a rockfish languishing at the bottom of the tank is back in the swim of things, thanks to a prosthetic eye. Global News reports the fish at the Vancouver Aquarium was bullied ever since losing an eye. Other fish picked up on its blindness to aggressively steal its food, sending the weak fish into a tailspin. But after being fitted with a taxidermy eye, the copper rockfish is back, still half-blind but with brighter days ahead. It's MORNING EDITION.
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Most Americans, honestly, you really can't help but feel happy about falling gas prices - little smile. But that slide is causing anxiety for people who bet on an oil boom. We have two reports on the potential downside of falling gas prices. In Oklahoma, we'll meet some small-business owners getting ready for a bust. That's in a few moments.
But first, to New Orleans where people are worried. When the price of oil fell hard in the 1980s, it brought the local economy down with it. But as Eve Troeh from member station WWNO reports, The Big Easy seems better prepared today.
EVE TROEH, BYLINE: In downtown New Orleans, throw some Mardi Gras beads, and you'll hit a tall building built by oil, like this one, a stark, 17-story rectangle with green panels up the side.
TOM LONG: Of course this was Texaco. This building is the earliest international-style building. It was designed in 1951, and it was built and opened in '53. It was Texaco's New Orleans headquarters.
TROEH: I'm on the roof with Tom Long. He says his dad was a petroleum engineer when offshore drilling started in the Gulf of Mexico.
LONG: And he actually worked in this building. When I was born, he was working offshore and developing those first shallow water rigs.
TROEH: Those rigs launched an industry that grew to be nearly half Louisiana's economy. But Long wasn't at the building for anything oil-related. He was giving tours for the real estate developers who just gave the Texaco building a new chapter.
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TROEH: A jazz trio played as city officials cut the ribbon. After a $35-million renovation, Texaco's old headquarters is now public housing. It holds more than a hundred subsidized apartments for seniors. Jacqueline Hughes Mooney is one.
JACQUELINE HUGHES MOONEY: I'm on the 15th floor. I call it the near penthouse in the sky - not quite the penthouse but the near penthouse.
TROEH: Living downtown gives seniors like her walking access to shopping and theaters refurbished since Hurricane Katrina.
MOONEY: It's just much more vital and much more alive. There's so many things to do. It'd be impossible to be over here and be bored.
TROEH: She sees herself as part of a city in renaissance. In 2005, when Hurricane Katrina hit, New Orleans was already in a pretty bad place - a shrinking population, waning economy and high crime rate, the lingering effects of 1986 when oil fell by half and punched a hole in the city's finances.
PETER RICCHIUTI: You know, I'd say every 10th building was boarded up.
TROEH: Tulane University business Professor Peter Ricchiuti. He says the skyline of sleek, modern buildings that rose during the oil boom - the Amoco building, the Exxon building - they emptied out as oil companies cut staff and merged. That Texaco building turned into apartments? It sat empty almost 20 years. Ricchiuti says it's tempting to wait out higher oil rather than diversify.
RICCHIUTI: Oil is so attractive because when it hits, when it's good, nothing else can be as good.
TROEH: New Orleans learned not to count on oil. Those jobs mostly didn't come back, and no other big industry swooped in to replace them. Those skyscrapers have slowly filled with smaller ventures, like Victor Trahan's architecture firm in One Shell Square.
VICTOR TRAHAN: It's a well-known building in New Orleans and the South. And it had that kind of monumental, large, spatial condition that was attractive to us.
TROEH: Trahan likes its white, marble-clad columns and 18-foot windows. The iconic tower was built for Shell, which still has offices in it. From the ground floor, Trahan and staff plan projects around the world.
TRAHAN: What better, more rich, more meaningful place than New Orleans? I mean, the culture is just so powerful.
TROEH: Culture is a very different economic resource, but it's what the city's counting on to weather the storm of cheap oil this time. For NPR News, I'm Eve Troeh in New Orleans.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
The Silk Road existed on a dark, anonymous corner of the Internet for years. And today jury selection begins in the trial of Ross Ulbricht. He is the man accused of being the mastermind behind the now-defunct website the Silk Road. It allowed hundreds of thousands of drug buyers and thousands of drug dealers to find each other online anonymously. Ulbricht was arrested in San Francisco in late 2013. And we're joined now by Steve Henn from NPR's Planet Money team who's covered the case. Good morning.
STEVE HENN, BYLINE: Good morning.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
So people of course have been buying and selling illicit drugs for thousands of years. So what about the Silk Road? It was a website, but what made it special?
HENN: Well, really what made it special was that it was designed to preserve anonymity. It used bitcoin and something called the Tor network to mask everyone's identities. And the thing that actually made it work was a really old idea. Its founder, allegedly Ross Ulbricht, who online went by the name the Dread Pirate Roberts, set up escrow accounts. So if you brought drugs online, you didn't have to mail your money directly to an anonymous drug dealer. You'd send it to a trusted third party, this Dread Pirate. He'd hold the money for you until you got your drugs, and only then would it be released. It was that trust in this character online that made the Silk Road work.
MONTAGNE: Now, Ross Ulbricht denies that he's behind the persona the Dread Pirate Roberts, but what is the government's case?
HENN: Well, in court filings, the Justice Department's laid out pretty extensive evidence linking Ross Ulbricht to the online persona. A lot of it's digital evidence. They also allege that the FBI actually caught Ulbricht sitting in a public library in San Francisco with his laptop open to the administrative pages of the site. And the prosecution plans to submit into evidence Ulbricht's journal, which allegedly details how and when he came up with the idea for an anonymous online drug market.
MONTAGNE: And to all of that, what is the defense saying?
HENN: Judging from pretrial motions, the defense strategy will be to try and challenge every piece of evidence it can before it's introduced. They're going to try to create some kind of doubt that Ulbricht really was the man behind this online persona of the Dread Pirate. To do that, they're challenging how the FBI tracked down the Silk Road servers. Those servers created a cache of evidence. And they're arguing basically that the FBI searched them illegally. If they can get that evidence thrown out, then the case becomes much weaker. If they don't, I think it's going to be a tough, tough haul.
MONTAGNE: Well, there is some speculation that this wouldn't go to trial, but there might be, say, a plea deal.
HENN: There has been a lot of speculation that there could be a plea, and there might still be. But, you know, Ulbricht's family and his legal team have consistently maintained his innocence. And quite a number of supporters have rallied around this case, largely for political reasons. Ulbricht has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for his defense online. You know, and this character, the Dread Pirate Roberts, was really this eloquent advocate of a libertarian economy that was completely free of government intervention. You know, on the Silk Road site, he'd argue that the entire economy, not just drug markets, should be free of government oversight. And for some, apparently that message resonated.
MONTAGNE: Although this being the web, almost the moment the Silk Road was taken down, Silk Road 2.0 appeared.
HENN: That's right, Renee. There almost immediately was another site called the Silk Road that popped up, but it, too, has been taken down by the Feds. Although, I have to say it is still possible to find anonymous sites online that will sell illegal drugs.
MONTAGNE: Steve Henn is part of NPR's Planet Money team. Thanks.
HENN: Oh, my pleasure.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
And now the rise and possible fall of the Common Core. This year there will be plenty of debate that could determine the future of these math and reading standards. Not so long ago, 45 states embraced the Common Core, but some states are debating whether to pull back. NPR's Claudio Sanchez reports on one of them.
CLAUDIO SANCHEZ, BYLINE: North Carolina was one of many states to quietly adopt the Common Core back in 2010, but no one put the new standards in place faster. They've shaped teacher training, the curriculum, and of course instruction.
AMY CUTHBERTSON: Since this is a -15x and I'm going to move this to the other side of the equation, I have to do the opposite operation. Remember we want to be fair and balanced here, so what we do to the left-hand side of the equation, we've got to do to the right.
SANCHEZ: Amy Cuthbertson swears she's become a better teacher because of the Core. The 21-year veteran teaches at Dalton L. McMichael High School in Rockingham County. Math scores here are up, and Cuthbertson says her ninth-graders are learning how to apply things like the quadratic formula to the real world.
CUTHBERTSON: The collaboration, the teamwork, the problem-solving skills, the thinking through, the analysis that they're doing applies to everything that we do in life.
SANCHEZ: Not everybody's impressed though. State lawmakers say they've been besieged by parents who are unhappy with, or at least confused by, the homework they're seeing. Other critics say the Common Core is a Faustian bargain with Washington, which gave North Carolina $44 million to implement the new standard.
JEANNIE METCALF: North Carolina sold her soul. And that's how I feel. This was done for the money.
SANCHEZ: Jeannie Metcalf is a school board member from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and co-chair of a commission that legislators created last July to, quote, "review and replace the Common Core standards." But there's now a debate about what review and replace means. To supporters of the Core, it means the standards may need a tweak here and there. To opponents, like Metcalf, it means they must be scrapped.
METCALF: That's clearly with what we are charged with and the intent of the legislation and of the commission.
ANDRE PEEK: Do I believe that the Common Core standards need to be replaced, are not good? No, I don't believe that at all.
SANCHEZ: That's Andre Peek, a retired IBM marketing executive and, like Metcalf, co-chair of the new review commission. He was appointed by Governor Pat McCrory, a Republican and Common Core supporter. Peek insists the commission's mandate is not to repeal but to answer some basic questions.
PEEK: Is the Common Core rigorous enough? Is it understandable to the citizenry of North Carolina? And has it been implemented in a way that's going to lead to the outcomes that we hope to achieve?
SANCHEZ: So what happens next? Well, the only thing that's clear is that the Common Core will remain firmly in place, at least until the commission wraps up its review, December, 2015. By then a slew of experts will have testified for and against the new standards, giving everybody on the commission a chance to hear what they want to hear. A couple of surveys are also in the works to gauge teachers and parent support. Peek says there's still time to reach a consensus if, and only if, it's based on the educational merits of the Common Core.
PEEK: I could tell you right now that we're not going to be used as a tool for some political outcome.
METCALF: There's a chance anything could happen.
SANCHEZ: But co-chair Jeannie Metcalf does not see a consensus brewing. So it's likely that the key question - should North Carolina dump or keep the Common Core? - will remain unanswered, even after this new year has come and gone. Claudio Sanchez, NPR News.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
To understand the role of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, just listen to how it describes its own mission - quote, "to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan." It says nothing about geography, but as we've been reporting this week, for veterans, when it comes to getting the benefits they deserve, where they live matters.
Yesterday, we heard how vets in some communities don't receive all the health, disability or education benefits that vets in other communities receive. Today, we're focusing on one state - Indiana. Reporter Steve Walsh from Lakeshore Public Media in Merrillville, Indiana, has been looking for answers, and he joins us on the line. Hey, Steve.
STEVE WALSH, BYLINE: Hi, David.
GREENE: Well, let's start with some of the basics here. So vets in Indiana are really not getting the benefits that they have earned - they deserve.
WALSH: Well, David, a lot of work has been done by a man named Jim Bauerle, retired brigadier general. He's worked with veterans in Indiana for years. A couple of years ago, he came across this data put out by the Department of Veterans Affairs. He began doing some calculations himself. He found that Indiana was actually near the bottom among the states in 2012. He began pressing state lawmakers, veterans groups and the Department of Veterans Affairs. Now, Indiana is usually seen as pretty friendly to the military. But after a couple of years, Bauerle kind of came to his own conclusion. Here's what he had to say.
GENERAL JIM BAUERLE: I think that Indiana has neglected veterans. I think that veterans are uneducated as to what their benefits are, and there has been little effort undertaken to communicate and get that to veterans.
GREENE: What is going on here? Why are vets in Indiana receiving less money than vets in other states?
WALSH: Well, there could be a lot of reasons. Back in 2010, a VA survey found that, nationwide, fewer than half of veterans understood their benefits, whether it was medical care, college tuition or pension and disability payments. And vets who retire from the military tend to receive more benefits. And they often congregate around military bases, and Indiana has no active duty military base. But Bauerle believes that one of the big reasons is Indiana vets aren't getting enough help filling out the forms. And if you don't fill out the forms the right way, the VA rejects the claim.
GREENE: But filling out forms for federal benefits - isn't that really the VA's problem and not something that Indiana and the state has to worry about?
WALSH: States often try to help their vets. Indiana is one of 28 states which have county veterans service officers. They're supposed to help vets get the benefits they've earned. They're hired by counties, and they often operate on a shoestring. Here's how General Bauerle describes some of these offices.
BAUERLE: Some counties have an individual that works three days a week, part-time and doesn't even have an office or a computer to support their veteran.
WALSH: So depending on where they live, a vet might find an office with a full-time staff trained to file paperwork with the VA, while another vet might find a closed office or a VSO who can't easily navigate the system.
GREENE: Well, Steve, let me just get this straight here. I mean, we're talking about veterans. It depends on where they live whether or not they get their benefits. And that's because, in part, a lot of it depends on whether they have access to this VSO, this officer who does a lot of the work for them.
WALSH: Exactly, David. I wanted to find out actually if things were as bad, though, as the retired general was suggesting. I found Tom Nichols, who is a 29-year-old National Guard veteran.
TOM NICHOLS: I should have them around here somewhere.
WALSH: Nichols lives in a trailer in north Hammond. When I visited him, he was digging through all his papers for a letter he got from the VA about his disability claim.
NICHOLS: Here it is. Department of Veteran Affairs. We are still processing your application for compensation. We apologize for the delay. You'll be notified...
WALSH: Nichols came back from Iraq in 2010 feeling angry. He became addicted to drugs and alcohol. Eventually, he landed in treatment for PTSD.
GREENE: Well, has he tried reaching one of these veteran service officers to help him?
WALSH: No, David. The problem is he really hasn't even tried a veterans service officer. He says it's too much trouble. So he ended up filling out the paperwork himself. To some of the medical questions, he just wrote, ask my doctor.
GREENE: That does give you a window into how tough a time he was having filling all of this out. Well, did he eventually get his benefits at some point?
WALSH: I just connected with him this past weekend. The VA rejected his claim. This process took over a year. Turns out he didn't include some essential paperwork, including something called the DD2-114.
GREENE: Oh, just the name of that makes it sound complicated.
WALSH: Well, it's not really all that complicated, at least not that one form. But the whole process really can be quite daunting to people like Tom Nichols. He's re-filed his claims. He doesn't always have someone to sort of give him a ride to different places, so he hasn't gone to a VSO, though he said that's probably going to be his next move.
GREENE: So bottom line, is it really a matter of figuring out a way to get the right paperwork filled out?
WALSH: In many ways, I think it is. So I went to the VA on that point. I talked with Dave McLenachen, who is acting deputy undersecretary for disability assistance for the VA. Here's what he told me.
DAVE MCLENACHEN: It can be overwhelming for somebody to prepare a claim and submit it. VSOs are very successful at helping with the claim process.
WALSH: The VA's own data actually says that vets who give veterans service officers power of attorney receive more than double the disability benefits of veterans who file their own claims.
GREENE: So no one is denying how important these VSOs are. I mean, the VA is basically saying that. Is anything being done to help veterans get access to these officers for the help?
WALSH: Well, I can talk about the state level. They are doing some things in Indiana. Under Governor Mike Pence, the state paid for software and training so county veterans service officers know how to file claims electronically. The latest data shows that Indiana vets receive $4,935 per vet, per year. If they just receive the national average, which is $6,088 per year, that's another $1,153 available for vets like Tom Nichols who struggle to get by. I mean, as an example, he didn't even have long-distance cell service.
GREENE: This is the vet you were trying to track down for this story, and he didn't have long-distance service - couldn't afford it to call you back, which gives you an idea of how important $1,100 could be for him.
WALSH: It's a lot of money to some people. So Bob Kelley of Grant County puts it pretty plainly. He's one of the state's top-performing VSOs. He told me you never want to apply for benefits on your own, unless you have some expertise with it. And if Indiana can come up with a little more help for VSOs, advocates like Kelley are hoping no veteran will ever have to navigate the VA system on their own.
GREENE: All right, that's one of the questions we're exploring this week as we look at veterans' benefits and the reality that for veterans to get the benefits they deserve, it often depends on where they live and what type of help they can get. Steve, thanks very much.
WALSH: Thank you, David.
GREENE: That's Steve Walsh with Lakeshore Public Media. The project is a collaboration with NPR member stations called Back at Base.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
A startup of sorts has failed. The Affordable Care Act offered loans to a different type of insurer called a co-op. The co-ops are supposed to help offer low-cost insurance in places without many traditional options. One of the largest co-ops is in Iowa. It's called CoOpportunity Health. And even though it got over a hundred thousand customers in Iowa and Nebraska, it's about to go under. Iowa Public Radio's Clay Masters reports.
CLAY MASTERS, BYLINE: It was a heck of a Christmas for David Fairchild and his wife, Clara Peterson. They found out they were likely about to lose their new health insurance.
DAVID FAIRCHILD: Clara was listening to the news on Iowa Public Radio. And that's how we found out. You know, I went to their website that night, no information. We still haven't gotten a letter about it.
MASTERS: The two are just getting their day started at their home just north of Ames on this frigid late-morning in central Iowa. They are the sole employees of a cleaning service and work nights. Fairchild has chronic leukemia but treats it with expensive meds. Last year, they saved hundreds of dollars switching to CoOpportunity from their old insurer, Wellmark. Fairchild says they felt like they finally had room to breathe.
FAIRCHILD: Basically, it covered our office visits, covered exams. It covered all but $40 of the medicine every four weeks. It was just - it was marvelous. Like I say, it was probably too good to be true.
MASTERS: Was it too good to be true? Hard to tell, says Pete Damiano with the Iowa Public Policy Center. He says CoOpportunity hit kind of a perfect storm. First, they had to pay a lot more medical bills than they thought they would.
PETE DAMIANO: CoOpportunity Health's pool of people was larger than expected, was sicker than expected. And so their risk became much greater than the funds that were available.
MASTERS: The reason the co-op's customers were sicker has a lot to do with what the insurance market looked like in Iowa before Obamacare. The largest insurer by far was and still is Wellmark. They decided not to offer any plans on the exchange. Damiano says this meant many customers who flocked to CoOpportunity tended to be like Fairchild, people with expensive health problems who had trouble paying for insurance before in the market Wellmark dominated.
DAMIANO: It was always going to be a challenging market to try to reach. On top of that, the whole idea of co-ops, again, is something that was relatively new and experimental. But it was to try to create competition on that private sector approach.
MASTERS: Not only were the patients sicker, but CoOpportunity initially thought they would enroll about 12,000 people in Iowa and Nebraska. They got 10 times that many according to Nick Gerhart, Iowa's insurance commissioner. And third, Gerhart says the company thought it was going to get more federal money.
NICK GERHART: On December 16 around 4 o'clock, we were informed they were not going to get any further funding. So nothing was pulled; it just wasn't extended further.
MASTERS: Gerhart is now essentially the CEO of the co-op because the state has taken it over. He likens it to a business suddenly having its credit shut off by the bank. And even though CoOpportunity is not officially dead yet, Gerhart is telling CoOpportunity customers to switch insurers. He says it's too early to make predictions about the fate for all co-ops.
GERHART: Ours is the second-largest in the country. So you've got to look at it that way and say, if the second-largest can't make it, how viable are the other ones? I don't know. But at the end of the day, they did not have enough capital to support 120,000 members.
MASTERS: But the co-op's failure has left David Fairchild and Clara Peterson scratching their heads.
CLARA PETERSON: I mean, the whole Affordable Care Act is, you know, competition between insurance companies. And now we're back down to what?
MASTERS: One, which they've already gone on to healthcare.gov to switch to. They're now waiting for approval for a plan that will cost a lot more. For NPR News, I'm Clay Masters in Des Moines.
MONTAGNE: And that story is part of a reporting partnership with NPR Iowa Public Radio and Kaiser Health News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Looking past the Super Bowl - way, way past - the U.S. is pitching Boston to the International Olympic Committee - the IOC - for the 2024 Summer Games. Commentator Frank Deford wishes the city of baked beans and (in Boston accent) chowder would think again.
FRANK DEFORD, BYLINE: Oh, poor Boston. Where is Paul Revere when we need him to alert the citizenry? The IOC is coming. The IOC is coming. Boston, lock up your municipal bonds and your pension funds. We always thought that Beantown was (in Boston accent) wicked smart. In fact, Boston has fancied itself as the Athens of America. And be assured, if it gets the 2024 Olympics, it can pretty much count on that.
That Athens of Greece has been in financial cardiac arrest because it was conned into hosting the 2004 games. Boston, yes, you, too, can be Athens. Angela Merkel will be on your case. Grass will be growing down the middle of the Mass Pike. Faneuil Hall will be condemned. Beacon Hill, where once a team handball court so proudly stood, will now be a shantytown.
Hey, Boston, you think the Curse of the Bambino is bad just because it messed up a silly baseball team for most of a century? Hold the Olympics, and the curse of the IOC will bring down the whole city for a millennium.
Andrew Zimbalist, our premier sports economist, has appropriately a new book out - "Circus Maximus" - which details the financial disaster which comes to most every city or country that is deluded enough to host an Olympics or a soccer World Cup. Boston says it can hold the games for four-and-a-half billion dollars. Oh, sure. And they're selling six-packs of Sam Adams beer for buck and a quarter in heaven.
The IOC tells every wannabe Olympic city that the games will bring the world to its door. In fact, Zimbalist shows, it brings in a bunch of sports nuts for 17 days but in the long run, actually hurts tourism. Yes, Bostonians, the Olympics are a tourist negative. The Olympics do not improve, do not improve a city's image. It's like bidding for the chance to host an epidemic. And then, when the IOC leaves town, the sucker city is stuck with a bunch of useless real estate. Boston plans to build a temporary 60,000 seat stadium. And this is the wise city that once revolted because of tea taxes.
And so with no apologies whatsoever to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - listen my children, and you shall hear of the mid-summer crash of '24. Hardly a bank is still alive since Boston took its Olympic dive. The IOC said Beantown'd be beaming. One if by TV, two if by streaming. But after the show departed the Common, the awful message finally dawned on every high-rise and condo, cottage and home that all Boston had left was a used velodrome.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
It's that time of year in the National Football League - playoff fever. We are now down to four teams. The NFL remained popular as ever this season. But the brand sure took a hit because of what players did off the field. After Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice was seen on a video punching out his then-fiancee, the league's handling of domestic violence became a national conversation. And as NPR's Maggie Penman reports, this led to an unlikely partnership.
(SOUNDBITE OF NFL GAME)
UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: Trips - ball is on the ground.
MAGGIE PENMAN, BYLINE: If you watched any football over the weekend, chances are you caught one of these ads.
(SOUNDBITE OF ADVERTISEMENT)
ELI MANNING: No more boys will be boys.
PRINCE AMUKAMARA: No more what's the big deal?
PENMAN: Current and former NFL players like Eli Manning, John Lynch and Troy Vincent stare straight into the camera against a white background.
(SOUNDBITE OF ADVERTISEMENT)
ANTONIO GATES: No more not on this team.
UNIDENTIFIED NFL PLAYER: No more we don't talk about that.
PENMAN: No More is not just a call to action to end domestic and sexual violence. It's also the name of a group of advocacy organizations and corporate partners who joined in an effort to highlight these issues. They began their public awareness campaign way back in 2009. But last year, when stories about NFL players committing domestic violence surfaced in the news, what was a PR crisis for the league became an opportunity for No More to reach a huge new audience.
VIRGINIA WITT: Engaging both men and women has always been a key goal.
PENMAN: Virginia Witt is the director of No More. The NFL contacted her in the wake of the Ray Rice scandal.
WITT: We see the sports community as absolutely crucial to this strategy. Football is central to American life and families. It's a great way to engage men in this conversation.
PENMAN: Traffic to No More's website has increased by nearly 300 percent since the PSAs began airing during football games in October. And Witt says they've seen a remarkable response from the public on social media. So the message is really getting through to football fans, right?
PABLO TORRE: It's hard to tell.
PENMAN: Pablo Torre is a senior writer for ESPN.
TORRE: What this campaign is trying to do is actively move and shift a culture. It's hard to tell whether fans are really internalizing this and processing it just yet.
PENMAN: But Torre thinks that one particular set of ads might resonate more than others.
(SOUNDBITE OF ADVERTISEMENT)
CRIS CARTER: (Exhaling).
PENMAN: The series of ads is called Speechless. And it was an unplanned byproduct of the filming of the PSAs. While the football players were composing themselves to deliver their lines, the cameras were rolling. And while editing, the production team realized how powerful these quiet moments where to watch. Again, Virginia Witt from No More.
WITT: In totally unscripted footage, you see the very human reactions and emotions that occurred in the football players as they thought about these issues and struggled to speak about them.
PENMAN: In this ad, Hall of Fame wide receiver Cris Carter takes a deep breath. He looks around the room, collecting himself, clapping his hands, rocking on his feet. You can hear the director off-camera telling him, whenever you're ready. ESPN's Torre says these ads are able to cut through because they show football players with their guards down.
TORRE: That the most jarring part, I think - is seeing these guys who are paragons of masculinity and machoness being vulnerable and showing human emotion. That's something that you just don't see very often.
PENMAN: The players never do deliver their lines. Instead, words appear across the white screen. Domestic violence and sexual assault are hard subjects for everyone to talk about. Help us start the conversation.
(SOUNDBITE OF ADVERTISEMENT)
CARTER: All right.
UNIDENTIFIED DIRECTOR: Ready?
PENMAN: The PSAs will continue to run through the playoffs though the NFL has yet to commit to airing them during the holy grail of commercial airtime, the Super Bowl. Maggie Penman, NPR News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
President Obama's choice to be the next attorney general grew up in a state where her parents had to fight for the right to vote. Loretta Lynch is a native of North Carolina who hails from a long line of preachers. Her academic achievements propelled her into some of the country's elite institutions. Now Lynch is trying to win Senate confirmation as America's top law enforcement officer, and she's the first black woman in line to hold that job. NPR justice correspondent Carrie Johnson has this profile.
CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: Loretta Lynch was born 55 years ago in Greensboro, North Carolina, where sit-ins and protests provided a soundtrack to her youth. As a toddler, she rode on her father's shoulders to civil rights rallies. Her mother told her she picked cotton so Loretta and her brothers wouldn't have to.
ROBERT RABEN: You know, her grandparents were sharecroppers. She's from North Carolina. It's a state in which her family could not vote.
JOHNSON: That's her friend Robert Raben. Lynch eventually climbed to the top of her high school ladder, the valedictorian. And when she entered Harvard in the late 1970s, she joined a small community that included Sharon Malone.
SHARON MALONE: It was impossible for us not to know each other being two African-American Southern women at Harvard, well out of our element at that time.
JOHNSON: The two worked together to start a chapter of the storied Delta Sigma Theta sorority, a group of black women uniting to serve the community. Malone remembers Lynch as a straight arrow then and now.
MALONE: If you can find someone who knew you from when you were 18, 19 years old, and they have nothing bad to say about you and your judgment and things that you did then - my goodness. Look, there's nothing to tell.
JOHNSON: Their paths crossed again during the Obama administration. The president named Sharon Malone's husband, Eric Holder, his attorney general. And Loretta Lynch became the U.S. attorney in Brooklyn. There, she prosecuted more terrorism cases than any of her counterparts, incarcerating men who tried to blow up the New York City subway and JFK airport. Another Lynch target, former Staten Island Congressman Michael Grimm, pleaded guilty to tax evasion. Friend Robert Raben says those may be her only enemies.
RABEN: There are plenty of people who don't like her. They happen to be incarcerated.
JOHNSON: The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Iowa Republican Senator Charles Grassley, says he hasn't made up his mind yet about Loretta Lynch.
SENATOR CHARLES GRASSLEY: I'm very interested in, is she going to be political, as I think Holder has been one of the most political attorney generals that I've served under?
JOHNSON: And how might Lynch handle a room filled with senators? Friends say she often decides to listen rather than jump in and offer an opinion. But when she does talk, Lynch is a graceful speaker. And she told an audience at John Jay College in 2012 she's often mistaken for someone else.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
LORETTA LYNCH: It's always interesting when people don't know who you are. And so people will come in the office, and they'll be looking for the U.S. attorney. And they'll speak to me one way, and then when they realize that I'm the person they're looking for...
(LAUGHTER)
LYNCH: ...It may change a little bit. You know, I certainly had the experience when I was a young lawyer of going to take a deposition and being mistaken for the court reporter.
JOHNSON: And one time, she said, a white juror mistook her for the defendant she was prosecuting. Lynch also said people often wrongly expect her to be a soft touch. Not so for a woman who spends free time kickboxing with her trainer.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
LYNCH: They expect a certain amount of leniency or mercy from me because I'm a woman, and if you've ever met my mother, you should know that's not even in the cards. She's much tougher than I am. She's a retired schoolteacher, so she's seen it all.
JOHNSON: So has Lynch, as an African-American woman who spent most of her career in federal law enforcement. Friends say that will inform her work, especially in a time of high tension between police and minority communities. Lynch addressed the issue herself back in 2012, years before the controversial deaths of black men in Ferguson and Staten Island.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
LYNCH: I find that people want aggressive policing if they, as a community, feel they are part of it. They don't want aggressive policing if they feel that it's being imposed upon them and they are a target.
JOHNSON: There's one more thing about Loretta Lynch - she's the stepmother of two young adults, including one who plans to move to Washington with her if she's confirmed as attorney general, which would make her the first mom to serve as the country's highest-ranking law enforcement official. Carrie Johnson, NPR News, Washington.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Let's spend the next few minutes celebrating New Year with Portland, Oregon's Berber community. For those Berbers who have immigrated from North Africa, the New Year is starting right now. And Deena Prichep joined the party.
(SOUNDBITE OF SINGING)
DEENA PRICHEP: The back room of this Portland, Oregon bar is packed. But this isn't a regular concert. You can tell from all of the green, yellow and blue flags.
DAN SAADANI: We get this one flag all the way from North Africa to here. It's a freedom flag.
PRICHEP: Dan Saadani wrote this flag from Grande Kabile, where he grew up. It's in the north of Algeria.
SAADANI: No, it's not Algeria. We come from Grande Kabilye.
(LAUGHTER)
SAADANI: It's another country.
PRICHEP: The flag and the music - and Grande Kabilye - are part of the Berber people, indigenous to North Africa. Despite what Saadani might wish, there is no Berber country. But there are Berbers across Africa, from Egypt to Morocco, Libya to Niger. This concert of Berber music is celebrating Yennayer, the Berber New Year. It's a holiday that's not traditionally a big deal, but it's an opportunity to celebrate Berber culture, which hasn't always been easy to do.
NABIL BOUDRAA: You have waves of colonization starting with the Phoenicians, then the Romans and then the Byzantines, the Vandals and then the Arabs in the seventh century.
PRICHEP: Nabil Boudraa teaches Francophone literature at Oregon State University and has organized conferences and workshops on Berber culture.
BOUDRAA: And then you move on forward with the Spaniards and then the Ottomans and then lastly the French.
PRICHEP: Berbers make up a large part of several countries, but they don't have a political majority in any of them. Even the word Berber itself speaks to this history. It comes from the same root as barbarian.
BOUDRAA: Our history has been confiscated, has been falsified, has been modified during colonialism or even after. And therefore, people sometimes lose their landmarks.
PRICHEP: But these landmarks are being revived. There have been bloody protests, like the 1980 Berber Spring in Algeria. And political shifts, like Morocco officially adopting the Berber language after the Arab Spring protests. And even subtler actions, like setting aside the word Berber in favor of an older term, Amazigh.
BOUDRAA: It means free men. It means free men.
PRICHEP: And in both North Africa and the diaspora, celebrating Yennayer.
(SOUNDBITE OF SINGING)
GHILAIS AITEUR: We saw a poster on Facebook. It said Amazigh Yennayer. So I said, well, no matter what it is or how elaborate or how big or how small it is, we are going to go.
PRICHEP: Ghilais Aiteur and his friends drove the 12-hour round trip from Vancouver, British Columbia, just to be here in Portland for tonight. Aiteur is originally from Algeria, but he's singing along with Berbers from Morocco and some, like Ibarahim Mouhamadine, from Niger.
IBARAHIM MOUHAMADINE: The important thing is we all are Amazighen, or Berbers. So we are the same. It doesn't matter where we are from.
PRICHEP: And at this concert, their common cause takes the form of a celebration - ringing in the year 2965. For NPR News, I'm Deena Prichep in Portland, Oregon.
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South Carolina's governor, Nikki Haley, is being inaugurated for the second time today. But a long-standing tradition will be missing, a poem read by the state's poet laureate. State officials say they cut the two-minute poem for time. Here's NPR's Laura Sullivan.
LAURA SULLIVAN, BYLINE: South Carolina's poet laureate, Marjory Wentworth, describes her three previous inaugural poems as safe. There was a lot about nature and animals. This year, she says, after watching protests ignited by the deaths of unarmed black men, she didn't want to write about nature and took to Facebook to ask residents their thoughts.
MARJORY WENTWORTH: Some of them were quite beautiful.
SULLIVAN: Her Facebook question was generating some attention. Wentworth says that's when she was told second-hand officials may be cutting the poem. So she sent in what she had written. It was a poem about South Carolina, children boarding school buses, firemen, migrant farm workers, a dock where a hundred thousand Africans were sold into slavery.
WENTWORTH: Here, where the Confederate flag still flies beside the statehouse, haunted by our past, conflicted about the future. At the heart of it, we are at war with ourselves.
SULLIVAN: Wentworth says she got an email saying the poem had to be cut for time. A state official said they had not seen the poem before they cut it. Governor Nikki Haley's spokeswoman said in a statement to NPR, quote, "while we appreciate Ms. Wentworth's long service to South Carolina, scheduling constraints simply wouldn't allow a poem to be read." Wentworth says she's disappointed.
WENTWORTH: I really believe that our history is part of what's holding us back. It's kind of an unhealed wound. And we're all in this together. And I know that sounds a little like John Lennon, but I wanted people to think about some of those things.
SULLIVAN: In the meantime, officials with the state chapter of the NAACP are holding a Martin Luther King march on Monday. They told Wentworth she is welcome to read her poem to their group. Laura Sullivan, NPR News.
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Just a few years ago, the booming Brazilian economy was the darling of the business world. Then last year, Brazilians were shocked to find their country just barely avoiding a recession, especially when they started to feel the pinch at work and at home as the supercharged economy slowed. NPR's Lourdes Garcia-Navarro reports from Sao Paulo.
LOURDES GARCIA-NAVARRO, BYLINE: It was a terrible Christmas season for stores in Brazil. For the first time in over a decade, since 2003 actually, sales went down. Roberta Pimienta owns a small shop selling children's clothes at the Butanta mall in Sao Paulo. The mall is aimed squarely at middle-class shoppers who live in the area.
ROBERTA PIMIENTA: (Speaking Portuguese).
GARCIA-NAVARRO: "It was the worst drop in sales since I've had this store," she says. "In seven years, it was the worst year I've ever had," she says.
Back in the early and mid-2000s, Brazil was flying high. Part of the reason had to do with a boom in easy credit and the creation of an avid consumer class. Also global investors put their money in Brazil, running away from ailing Europe and America, regions that were going through the Great Recession. Finally, China was buying a lot of what Brazil was selling - soybeans and other commodities. Today, the story is very different. Luis Carlos Lemos is an economist at Brazil's Mackenzie University.
LUIS CARLOS LEMOS: (Speaking Portuguese).
GARCIA-NAVARRO: "Looking at the short term, the expectation is that we will have a tough economy. There won't be much consumption, much growth, no better income distribution and we will have inflation that will be exploding over our heads," he says.
China isn't buying as much, international investors are putting their money back into the recovering U.S., and people here have taken on a lot of debt. Prices are also sky-high. The IPhone 6 costs almost $1,800 in Brazil. The one bright spot had been that despite slowing growth, unemployment had remained low. But that might be changing. Let's look at car sales. They, too, fell in 2014, down 7 percent in Brazil for the year. And when sales fall, layoffs often follow.
(SOUNDBITE OF PROTEST)
GARCIA-NAVARRO: This is audio from YouTube from a march held this week in Sao Paulo where thousands of people showed up. They were protesting hundreds of firings at some of the region's biggest car factories. Workers are also on strike at Volkswagen, where jobs have just been cut. Umberto Panini is a mechanic who works at Volkswagen. He still has a job, but he admits he's worried.
UMBERTO PANINI: (Speaking Portuguese).
GARCIA-NAVARRO: "It would worry anyone," he tells me in their small townhouse close to the factory. "We feel insecure. It makes us not do certain things we might do otherwise because we are worried about money," he says.
He and his wife, Michele, have just had a daughter. Michele lost her job as a credit analyst right before giving birth, so they are living on one income about $3,000 a month, which is a pretty good salary in Brazil. When I asked them what things are different, they say this year instead of traveling abroad - in previous years, they have been to Spain and Chile - they will be vacationing inside the country.
The Brazilian currency's slide has made travel less affordable, and this is the thing. In the past decade, the economic changes here lifted millions of people out of abject poverty. Incomes rose. So did standards of living. Inequality dropped. In previous downturns, there's been hyperinflation and even real privation in Brazil. This time, Umberto Panini and his wife say they will be a little more cautious. But they own a house. They have a car. They remain optimistic about their - and Brazil's - prospects. Lourdes Garcia-Navarro, NPR News, Sao Paulo.
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And keeping America safe is important to both parties. The attacks in Paris last week gave new momentum to a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security. The House is expected to approve that bill and vote today. But that won't necessarily put an end to the effort to fund this key agency because the funding is tied into the controversial issue of immigration. NPR's Brian Naylor explains.
BRIAN NAYLOR, BYLINE: The House bill provides nearly $40 billion for homeland security, a $400 million increase over current spending levels. There would be more money for the Border Patrol, for the Secret Service, for new Coast Guard patrol ships. The catch is House Republicans are also using the bill to overturn the president's actions on immigration, among them, last month's action allowing close family members of people now in the U.S. legally to stay. His 2012 program allowing children who were brought by their parents to the U.S. illegally to stay would also be overturned. But House Speaker John Boehner maintains the Republicans' motives have nothing to do with immigration.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
REPRESENTATIVE JOHN BOEHNER: We're voting to block the president's overreach, his executive overreach, which I believe is beyond his constitutional duty and frankly violates the Constitution itself. This is not about - this is not about actually the issue of immigration. What it is, it's about the president acting lawlessly.
NAYLOR: That's not quite how the White House sees it. Spokesman Josh Earnest used some plain language to say the White House supports the funding parts of the bill but not the rest.
JOSH EARNEST: Unfortunately, Republicans have also unveiled plans to muck around with that legislation. This is legislation that funds our efforts to protect our ports and our borders. It provides aviation security. It bolsters our cybersecurity. There's never a good time for Republicans to do something like this. But right now seems like a particularly bad time for them to do so.
NAYLOR: If the House GOP bill overturning the president's executive actions on immigration reached the president's desk, it's all but certain he'll veto it. But it's highly unlikely the measure will get that far. The bill will need 60 votes to pass in the Senate, meaning some Democrats will have to support it along with nearly all Republicans, and that's not likely to happen. House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi calls the Republicans' bill frivolous.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
REPRESENTATIVE NANCY PELOSI: What are they thinking? Paris, the world is galvanized on security but not the House Republicans.
NAYLOR: Even if the White House and Congress can't agree on funding DHS, effects of a shutdown would be limited. The agency that implements the president's immigration orders doesn't rely on congressional funds but rather fees to pay its workers. The Secret Service, Boarder Patrol and TSA screeners are considered essential and would remain on their jobs but without paychecks. Congress and the White House have until the end of next month to work this all out. Brian Naylor, NPR News, Washington.
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When two countries haven't officially talked to each other for decades, restoring diplomatic relations involves, well, a lot of talking. Next week, a top state department official heads to Cuba to discuss how the U.S. and Cuba will restore diplomatic ties, and one thing that has to be worked out is the opening of embassies and consulates in both countries. Already one city has served notice that it would not welcome a Cuban consulate. That would be Miami, where NPR's Greg Allen reports.
GREG ALLEN, BYLINE: More than 800,000 Cuban-Americans call Miami-Dade County home. That's about 1 in every 3 residents. It's the largest Cuban-American population in the country and therefore might seem like a logical location for a Cuban consulate. But Miami Mayor Tomas Regalado doesn't think so. He says one thing Miami definitely doesn't need is a Cuban consulate.
MAYOR TOMAS REGALADO: A consulate here will create tensions in the community.
ALLEN: Regalado recalls a protest that occurred often at the Venezuelan consulate in Miami until it was shut down by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in 2011. He says a Cuban consulate would cause even more problems for the city and its police department.
REGALADO: It would harm the safety and the peace of the community. It would put a burden and unfounded mandate from Washington in the city of Miami, and I don't think that we want TV cameras live every day showing protests and people engaging in discussions and maybe fistfight or something like that.
ALLEN: But Miami isn't the only city in Miami-Dade County. The county mayor, Carlos Gimenez, is a bit more circumspect, saying only that it's premature at this point to discuss whether a Cuban consulate should be located in the county. The three Cuban-Americans who represent Miami-Dade County in Congress are critical of the president's Cuba proposals and have vowed to block normalization. But elsewhere in Florida, some officials see a Cuban consulate as an opportunity.
REPRESENTATIVE KATHY CASTOR: The Tampa area would welcome a consulate.
ALLEN: Congresswoman Kathy Castor represents Tampa, another city with a large Cuban-American population. It's a city with long historical ties to Cuba that go back to the 19th century when Miami was still an Indian trading post. Castor supports normalization and, along with other political and business leaders in the city, has worked to promote trade ties with Cuba.
CASTOR: In Tampa, we've been more open - our port, our airport. We've embraced the current reforms and now are looking forward to the real fall in the relationship.
ALLEN: Tampa's airport hopes to expand the number of direct flights it already offers to Cuba. The city's port recently set out a press release saying it's ready to move to, quote, "aggressively market its first-rate facilities to our Cuban neighbors." Tampa may get a boost in its bid from those most likely to use a new Cuban consulate, those who travel there or have visitors from the island. Among Cuban-Americans in Florida, a recent poll by the Miami Herald found more opposed a Cuban consulate in Miami than supported. Greg Allen, NPR News, Miami.
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Good morning. I'm David Greene with a positive commuting story for once. Jeff Young's dog, Eclipse, rides the bus with him a few times a week in Seattle. But if the bus pulls up to the stop and Jeff isn't quite done smoking his cigarette, well, Eclipse hops on without her owner. The driver lets her on, and she leaps over other passengers to grab a window seat. Jeff hitches the next bus, and they meet up a few stops later. So where does this canine commuter disembark? Well, that would be a dog park, of course. It's MORNING EDITION.
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The string of attacks in France has gotten a lot of attention in Russia. Those killings prompted official condolences from President Vladimir Putin and assurances that Russia is ready to cooperate with the West on counterterrorism issues. But the Paris attacks got very different responses from some Russian religious figures and the news media. NPR's Corey Flintoff joins us from Moscow to talk about the reaction there. And, Corey, let's begin with the reaction from some religious leaders in Russia. That's important, I think, because Russia has a strong Orthodox Christian tradition but also a big Muslim community.
COREY FLINTOFF, BYLINE: That's right, Renee. And leaders of both those groups condemned the killings in Paris. But many of them also condemned the staff of that satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo because some Russian Orthodox activists here rallied to say that the cartoonists brought the attack on themselves. They were insulting the feelings of religious believers. The officially sanctioned Muslim leadership - it's called the Russian Council of Muftis - condemned the murders. But they said the magazine had committed the sin of provocation.
MONTAGNE: And of course there's also a fear of Islamist terrorism there in Russia. Is that also at play here?
FLINTOFF: Yes it is. Russia's experienced horrific attacks by Islamist separatists. And some of those attacks were just over a year ago. So the concern is very real. I think there's a fear that if you stir up religious hatreds, it could provoke a lot more violence like that.
MONTAGNE: And we've talked before about how state-run media in Russia have been taking a very aggressive anti-Western, anti-American line. So how have the media been treating these attacks?
FLINTOFF: You know, various anti-Western conspiracy theories are pretty much a staple of the Russian mass media. There's a popular TV channel called Life News that gave a lot of play to an analyst who claims that the attacks were an American plot. He basically said this was a scheme by American intelligence agencies to frighten France and frighten Europeans about terrorism. The idea being that they would seek the protection of American counterterrorism measures. There's a popular tabloid that ran a front-page headline with the question did Americans plan the Paris terrorist attacks? That theme there was that the attacks were a warning to French President Hollande because he had recently suggested that the sanctions against Russia should be lifted.
MONTAGNE: And, Corey, in Europe, there appears to be quite a concern about the way these broadcasts can influence public opinion - not just in Russia but in the West because Russia is building up its broadcasts in European languages.
FLINTOFF: That's true. In fact, the European Union is considering starting a Russian-language TV channel that counters some of that influence. It would be a bit like the Soviet-era broadcasts from Radio Free Europe. And that's provoked a backlash from Russian officials. They're portraying it as a kind of a reverse propaganda channel. A Russian deputy foreign minister came out yesterday, claiming that the program like that would be a so-called - and I'm quoting - "an attack on free speech."
MONTAGNE: Thank you very much. NPR's Corey Flintoff in Moscow.
FLINTOFF: My pleasure, Renee.
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We will be celebrating the life of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. this Monday. This is also a time when many people stop to celebrate the accomplishments of African-Americans as a group. So NPR's Shankar Vendantam did a double take when he came by some counterintuitive new research into how feelings toward some African-Americans change on MLK Day. Shankar joins us regularly on the program to talk about social science research. He's back with us now. Hey, Shankar.
SHANKAR VEDANTAM, BYLINE: Good morning, David.
GREENE: So tell me about this double take you had.
VEDANTAM: Well, you know, like most people, David, I'd intuitively assumed that on MLK Day, most people would have an elevated view, not just of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., but of African-Americans in general and prominent Americans in our midst, people like President Obama or former Secretary of State Colin Powell. I recently spoke with Sara Konrath at Indiana University. And she told me that she and her colleagues William Chopik, Ed O'Brien and Norbert Schwarz - they decided to test this intuitive belief that I thought many of us share. They had volunteers describe their feelings about African-Americans in general and a prominent African-American like Colin Powell. She told me that she was surprised by what she found.
SARA KONRATH: People see Powell in a negative light on MLK Day compared to how they see him on days that are before or after. But on MLK Day, people actually see African-Americans, as a group, more positively.
GREENE: OK, explain what's going on here. People see African-Americans in general more positively on this holiday. But someone like Colin Powell they see more negatively. Why does that happen?
VEDANTAM: On the service, David, it makes no sense. And initially, the researchers thought maybe this has something to do with Colin Powell. So they retested the experiment, and this time they used Barack Obama. And they found again the same thing, that people dislike the president more on MLK Day compared to other days. This wasn't just white people, by the way. This included African Americans. They found the same thing did not happen to prominent white leaders. So people such as Bill Clinton or Mitt Romney, for example, were not rated more negatively on MLK Day compared to other days.
GREENE: So things President Obama, Colin Powell have in common - I mean, political leaders, luminaries in the African-American community. Is that part of what's happening?
VEDANTAM: And I think that's exactly what's happening, David. The researchers think this might be less about racial bias and more about how our minds make judgments about other people. Konrath asked me to imagine another scenario. Imagine that there's a university professor who wins a Nobel Prize. She asked me to think how this would change my views of the department where the Nobel Prize winner works and my views of individual professors at the same department. Here she is again.
KONRATH: So as a whole, people are going to rate my department as, like, very good and very prestigious. But then, the individual faculty members, who are not Nobel Prize winners, suddenly look bad compared to that Nobel Prize winner.
GREENE: OK, so what she's saying is it's not like people are going to have a negative view of all researchers in the world. But she's being compared - she's seen as in the same category somehow as this Nobel Prize in her department. It's a matter of contrast, in a way.
VEDANTAM: That's exactly right, David. So people are rating Colin Powell and Barack Obama worse on MLK Day because they're unconsciously comparing these prominent African-Americans to the Reverend King. Now, everyone would look worse compared to Dr. King. The interesting thing is how our minds choose these contrasts. And our minds choose these contrasts very selectively. Reverend King was not just a prominent African-American. He was a prominent African-American political figure and a man. So are Colin Powell and Barack Obama. And that's why the volunteers are unconsciously reaching for this contrast. When the researchers analyzed people's feelings about prominent African-Americans who are not politicians - Oprah Winfrey or Will Smith, for example - they were not affected in the same way. They were not evaluated more negatively on MLK Day. So the interesting thing, David, here, is that sometimes, being close to a star allows us to bask in reflected glory. Sometimes, if the star has many of the same characteristics that we do, we can end up looking worse by contrast.
GREENE: Shankar, interesting stuff as always. And that might explain why I feel less well-received when I'm in the studio with you.
VEDANTAM: (Laughter). Thanks so much, David.
GREENE: Thanks, Shankar. That's Shankar Vedantam. He regularly joins us to talk about social science research on the program. And you can follow him on Twitter @HiddenBrain. And you can follow this program @nprgreene, @NPRinskeep and @MorningEdition.
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We're reporting this morning on the return of Charlie Hebdo. That's the French satirical magazine whose offices were attacked in Paris last week. Twelve people were killed. This morning, a group in Yemen, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, claimed responsibility.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Despite last week's horrors and ongoing threats, Charlie has put out a new issue. Three million copies hit newsstands across France today and promptly sold out.
GREENE: And we have Lauren Frayer on the line with us. She's been reporting in Paris. And, Lauren, as I understand it you're at a newsstand, right?
LAUREN FRAYER, BYLINE: I'm a newsstand where it's pouring rain. The issue of Charlie Hebdo is completely sold out. People keep running up excited and then walking away disappointed. Before dawn, I found myself in a crowd of Parisians literally running around the city from newsstand to newsstand trying to find Charlie as trucks delivered their bundles of newspapers. Here's one man who was running alongside me.
DAMIAN CAYO: It's a hard time. It's all empty everywhere. I can't find any. I'm looking for a half an hour, and not any - not any single one. All over Paris, I'm looking.
FRAYER: That's Damian Cayo in central Paris. Later I joined a crowd of people lining up at a bookstore that also sells newspapers. We waited for two hours in the cold before sunrise, before the store opened. About 100 people were behind me in line. We could see a small stack of Charlie Hebdos inside through the store windows. But by the time the store opened at 9 a.m. they told us all the issues were claimed already, again preorders. So obviously people were very disappointed.
GREENE: OK, well, Lauren, let's get an idea for what people were trying to get their hands on. I mean, I know we've seen images of the cover. It's this cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad with a tear in his eye, holding that poster that in French says I am Charlie. But what's on the inside of this issue?
FRAYER: So I actually managed to get a PDF, an electronic copy, of the issue. So I have read through it. Now, there's a lot here people might find pretty funny. There's also a lot people are likely to find pretty offensive. There's a quite graphic cartoon of a Muslim woman lifting up her abaya, that Muslim full-body covering, to show a naked body with garter belts.
There's also a cartoon of two gunmen; this is the cartoon that pretty much everybody is talking about today. It shows two men, possibly meant to be the Kouchi brothers, the assailants in last week's attack. It shows their arrival in heaven with their automatic weapons, and they're asking, where are they, the 70 virgins? And next to them there's a gaggle of people on a fluffy cloud saying, they're with the Charlie team.
The issue also has cartoons making fun of the pope, of French politicians. So it's not just Islam. One cartoon shows an empty church altar next to crowds of people holding Je suis Charlie posters with a caption saying that there were many more people in the streets for Charlie last Sunday than at any church service.
GREENE: And I guess I wonder, I mean, there's this debate - a lot of people say this is a matter of free speech, that the magazine has a right to do this. There's some who say that because Islam forbids depictions of the prophet that this should be considered hate speech, some of these images. And as that debate goes forward, is there a concern for security and maybe more violence?
FRAYER: So there's still a heavy police presence and military presence across France. Here in Paris, the magazine is very much being celebrated by people of all walks of life. The people who were alongside me in line to buy the issue this morning, they were elderly people, college students, black, white, Arab.
But there are some concerns. Two French Muslim groups issued a statement last night on the eve of this issue's release urging calm among Muslims in France because of that prophet cartoon on the magazine's cover. It's interesting to note 3 million copies have been printed in French, but for the first time the magazine's also being translated into five other languages, including Arabic.
GREENE: All right. We've been speaking to Lauren Frayer, who is reporting in Paris. She spoke to us from a newsstand this morning. Lauren, thanks a lot.
FRAYER: You're welcome.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
The hunt for others involved in last week's attacks in Paris includes the search for one young woman whose face has been all over the news. She's Hayat Boumediene, the partner of Amedy Coulibaly, who killed four people at a kosher supermarket. Boumediene is now believed to be in Syria in territory controlled by the Islamic State, or ISIS. It's a road traveled by hundreds of women from Europe along with a few from the United States. In Paris, we reached Time magazine correspondent Vivienne Walt, who's been reporting on this trend. Good morning.
VIVIENNE WALT: Good morning.
MONTAGNE: So now, I understand you've been talking to families of other young women from the West who have joined ISIS in Syria. Is there a common thread to their stories?
WALT: You know, they begin to all sound extremely familiar. If one had to generalize, these are not women who've grown up in heavily religious families. For example, I got to know one family whose 17-year-old daughter just vanished. And a few days later, she called from Syria to say that she was marrying one of the Tunisian jihadist fighters with ISIS there. This is a really common story. These are often lower middle-class kids. They have been born and raised around Paris. So these are girls that have been radicalized at a fairly young age and fairly rapidly.
MONTAGNE: Well, since many of them are going there to marry jihadists, is there something romantic about this? Is there that element as well?
WALT: Absolutely. There is a romance, a kind of danger, in the case of the family that I knew, perhaps a tinge of teenage rebellion.
MONTAGNE: Now, how does Hayat Boumediene fit into this?
WALT: Well, Hayat is a lot older. She's 26 years old. But nonetheless, there are commonalities. The photographs of her from just a few years ago show her in a bikini. She was one of seven children who'd lost her mother as a child. Her father had struggled to raise the family alone. She then met Coulibaly in 2009. And when she became his partner with a conservative Islamic ceremony the following year, that is the point at which it appears she began wearing the niqab, the full coverall that highly conservative Muslim women wear in some traditions. And he also introduced her to a key figure called Djamel Beghal, who is a radical preacher being jailed in France. And right after that, she began shooting crossbows and essentially preparing for a life of jihad.
MONTAGNE: You've reported that at least 300 women from the West have joined ISIS. Once they reach this Islamic State, what happens to them?
WALT: Well, it seems that by and large they are married off to fighters. And it's really unclear how much fighting themselves they do. If you read the websites of ISIS and sympathizers that are geared to women, a lot of it is about having women prepare for cooking. One website tells women that before they leave for Syria, they should learn how to sew so that they can mend the fighters' uniforms. I mean, these very much sound like, you know, women from the 1950s. They're not, by any means, being trained to, you know, smash the glass ceiling on the war front.
MONTAGNE: Vivienne Walt joined us from Paris where she reports for Time magazine. Thanks very much.
WALT: You're welcome.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
And let's turn to Nigeria now, where the Islamist group Boko Haram continues its campaign of terror. Boko Haram is perhaps best known for kidnapping hundreds of girls from villages in the northeast of the country. Since early this month, the militants have also been attacking settlements in the area and have overrun a military base set up to fight terrorism. Will Ross is the BBC bureau chief in Lagos, Nigeria's largest city. Good morning.
WILL ROSS: Good morning.
MONTAGNE: Now, we've been hearing reports of a really terrible massacre in the northeast, in the city of Baga. What is known about what's happening there?
ROSS: Well, basically, on the third of this month, a large group of Boko Haram fighters attacked a military base, then went for the town and the surrounding villages, shooting people on sight. People were fleeing for their lives. Some of them were pursued into the bush, still being shot at. Now, the big question is how many people have been killed? It's far from clear. We think that several hundred have been killed. That's certainly the kind of information we're getting from the fleeing residents. But it is too dangerous for anybody to go there and count the dead, let alone bury them. So it, for now, is still an area under the control of Boko Haram.
MONTAGNE: And the government of Nigeria - whenever there's a story about Boko Haram, it comes up how Nigeria's government seems not to be in control at all.
ROSS: It's a huge challenge that the military is facing at the moment. Not only are you having these attacks like the one on Baga and those surrounding villages; you've also had suicide bombings, several of those in recent days. And in fact, just in the last few hours, another battle we understand is going on in the south of Borno State. At times, we hear success. For example, over the weekend the Nigerian military fought off the jihadist fighters from the town of Damaturu. That's in you Yobe State, also in the northeast. The extraordinary thing is after these huge attacks, there's often silence from the government, and people are just baffled at how the government can seemingly ignore what are, you know, appalling levels of violence and massacres.
MONTAGNE: Well, seemingly then, the thing to say at this moment in time is more to come.
ROSS: It looks that way. We're exactly a month away from elections. And that seems to be where the politicians are focused. The president, Goodluck Jonathan, is keen to get another term. So we're expecting Boko Haram to increase their violence - but yes, very worrying times in Nigeria. And there are people here, of course, who look at all the focus on Paris and the killings there and say, but this is on a different scale in Nigeria. And yet, you know, there isn't that same kind of focus of world attention.
MONTAGNE: Will Ross is BBC bureau chief in Lagos, Nigeria. Thanks very much.
ROSS: You're very welcome.
MONTAGNE: This is NPR news.
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Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne. China's social media is obsessed with a new Photoshopping opportunity - covering cleavage from Venus de Milo to Scarlett Johansson. This after the country's popular drama "The Empress Of China" was yanked from the airwaves briefly so sensors could cover up the low-cut bodices of the characters. The deeply cut gowns were apparently authentic to fashions of the seventh century, leaving outraged viewers, though, in the 21st. It's MORNING EDITION.
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A lot of Californians weren't even born the last time a new senator was elected, but that's about to change. California Senator Barbara Boxer's decision last week to not seek a fifth term set off a scramble among possible successors in what will be the state's first wide-open Senate race in nearly a quarter-century. As NPR's Richard Gonzales reports, it's widely assumed that another Democrat will win in this deeply blue state. And the first person to enter the race already looks like a front-runner.
RICHARD GONZALES, BYLINE: California Attorney General Kamala Harris is a young, charismatic and savvy political player. She announced her bid to succeed Boxer in a low-key, online appeal to supporters, writing on her website, I'll be a fighter for the next generation on the critical issues facing our country. As a two-time, statewide office winner, Harris will be a tough candidate to beat, says USC's Dan Schnur.
DAN SCHNUR: As attorney general, she's broadened the focus of the office considerably beyond the traditional crime and public safety measures. And, particularly, she took on a national leadership role on the issue of mortgage relief.
GONZALES: Three years ago, Harris forged an $18-billion settlement with big banks accused of unfair home foreclosures. On top of that, Harris is California's first female, first African-American and first Asian-American state attorney general. Corey Cook teaches politics at the University of San Francisco.
COREY COOK: Kamala Harris is the most well-known. She's obviously won statewide. She has very high approval ratings in California. But if it becomes a multiple candidate field, it becomes much more difficult to handicap.
GONZALES: For example, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said he's seriously considering a run. He has high name-recognition in vote-rich Southern California, but he also has personal baggage after admitting to marital infidelity. Still, if he runs, Villaraigosa would be California's first Latino Senate candidate. And 2016, a presidential year, could be a good year for him, says Mindy Romero, a political sociologist at UC Davis.
MINDY ROMERO: Those historic conditions could then bring out many more Latinos. Turnout could be much higher. That would also, therefore, impact other races - local races, congressional races. And so 2016 might have advantages for him in that sense.
GONZALES: Together, Villaraigosa and Harris cover two main voter constituencies for California Democrats - Latinos and women. Whoever runs will need about $20 million just for the primary and tens of millions more for the general election. That leads to talk about a self-financed candidate, such as billionaire and environmental activist Tom Steyer. He's backed candidates in the past and is reportedly weighing his own campaign.
On the Republican side, there's less optimism since there are no GOP statewide officeholders. And fewer than 30 percent of California voters are registered Republicans. Congressman Darrell Issa would bring name recognition and his own wealth to the table. Another party favorite is former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. USC's Dan Schnur says a Republican candidate could benefit from a crowded Democratic field.
SCHNUR: Under the rules of the top-two primary, so many Democrats run that they split each other's vote and a Republican manages to slide through.
GONZALES: And under California's top-two primary rules, it's very possible the race to replace retiring Senator Barbara Boxer will feature two Democrats. Richard Gonzales, NPR News, San Francisco.
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All this week, we've been telling stories about veterans in this country and how getting the benefits they've earned can be a hit-or-miss proposition. It's part of our project Back at Base, which is a collaboration between NPR and local stations.
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As it turns out, where a vet lives matters when it comes to getting benefits. And vets who live in remote areas, on average, get fewer benefits than others. Patricia Murphy from member station KUOW in Seattle visited one of the most remote spots in Washington state.
PATRICIA MURPHY, BYLINE: For veterans in San Juan County, VA healthcare almost always begins with an hour-long ferry ride.
(SOUNDBITE OF FERRY ANNOUNCEMENT)
UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: May I have your attention please. We will now be boarding all walk-on passengers for our scheduled 1:55 departure bound for Anacortes, Bainbridge...
MURPHY: Even routine blood work requires a three-hour trip one way. Friday Harbor is one of four island stops for this ferry and the only incorporated city in this remote county northwest of Seattle. Travel to the west side of the island, and your cell phone pings you that you're in Canada, even though you're not. Just a short walk from the ferry terminal is American Legion Post 163, were veteran service officer Peter DeLorenzi has his office.
PETER DELORENZI: It's a really convenient place to me.
MURPHY: DeLorenzi is the only VSO who serves this chain of islands in Puget Sound.
DELORENZI: I get veterans from Orcas and Lopez and besides San Juan Island. If a veteran is invalid or anything, I will go out to the house.
MURPHY: According to the VA, there are more than 1,700 veterans in San Juan County - about 1 for every 10 residents here. But many are not taking advantage of the VA benefits they've earned. VA spending here is just under $2,500 per veteran - the lowest in the state. DeLorenzi volunteers his time to help bring those numbers up. But it's not easy.
Some of the 60 or so vets a year he works with become frustrated with the process and just drop out. Even DeLorenzi gave up on applying for a VA mortgage after he was turned down on a loan for a manufactured home.
DELORENZI: Doesn't qualify - all those programs you see that they advertise, oh, this is new homes for vets and stuff like that. Well, manufactured homes are just about the only thing that most of us can afford.
MURPHY: The VA does sometimes provide loans like that, but it's complicated. Then there are the big VA benefits - health care and disability. Many of the islands vets are older. Diabetes is a problem. So is hearing loss. DeLorenzi says since some vets can be self-reliant to a fault, a little VA outreach would make a big difference.
DELORENZI: A lot of us are a little proud to seek help, and we think we can do it ourselves. Sometimes that's OK, and then sometimes we need a little help.
MURPHY: But even vets who may want help, including some who struggle with PTSD, can't get VA counseling here. A contract position for a counselor to serve the county has gone unfilled for five years, so a lot of the responsibility for reaching out to veterans who could benefit from counseling falls to a tight-knit community of local vets.
SHANNON PLUMMER: You just hear things. You hear people talking.
MURPHY: That's Shannon Plummer, the American Legion post commander.
PLUMMER: You hear that, you know, hey, I - you know, I've got a friend of mine that was in Vietnam. And he's now wanting to talk. Would you be willing to have a talk with him? We jump right to it.
MURPHY: There is a vet center on the mainland charged with providing counseling for the county. But efforts to build a better relationship have been frustrating. Plummer says last May, the county invited the rep from the Bellingham Vet Center to come visit the island.
PLUMMER: We've tried to contact the individual several times without any response. I don't know why he doesn't make himself available.
MURPHY: The Vet Center says there's always room for improvement and that it's hoping to have a counselor to serve the county sometime this year. Plummer remains puzzled by the lack of contact. He says the Vet Center needs to put in the time and build trust if it wants to help the island's vets.
PLUMMER: What you could be doing is a big time of PR relations. Unless you get out, then you don't know what you have out here.
MURPHY: What you have are hard-to-reach vets missing out on their benefits. And until recently, the burden to sign up was mostly on them. Now, last November, for the first time, two VA employees did drive a camper-sized mobile vet center 137 miles from Tacoma to this island. The visit was part of a national effort to provide outreach to rural communities. Word got around. About 20 vets showed up. Some were lined up when the doors opened. Most inquired about benefits, but none were willing to speak with the onboard counselor. Building that kind of trust takes time. For NPR News, I'm Patricia Murphy in Seattle.
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An orangutan named Tilda is providing scientists with some fresh clues about the origins of human speech. NPR's Jon Hamilton reports on a great ape who can sound remarkably human.
JON HAMILTON, BYLINE: Tilda was born in the wilds of Borneo, where orangutan calls often sound like this.
(SOUNDBITE OF ORANGUTAN CALL)
HAMILTON: For decades though, Tilda has lived around people. And one day, scientists noticed that she was making vocalizations like this.
(SOUNDBITE OF ORANGUTAN CALL)
HAMILTON: Adriano Lameira, a researcher at the University of Amsterdam, says it was unlike anything he'd ever heard from an orangutan. He says Tilda's fast-paced stream of consonants and vowels was like a cartoon approximation of a person speaking.
ADRIANO LAMEIRA: She was producing these calls repeatedly and really quick. And this is also what we observe in humans while we're speaking to each other. We are, on average, producing five consonants and five vowels per second.
HAMILTON: Lameira says an analysis done later found that Tilda had matched that pace precisely.
LAMEIRA: This was really what astonished us.
HAMILTON: The finding was an accident of sorts. Lameira had been shooting video of Tilda as part of a study of orangutans that can whistle.
LAMEIRA: Like (whistling).
HAMILTON: Another behavior not seen in the wild. Back in 2008, Lameira had co-authored a paper about one orangutan who learned to whistle the way her caretakers did. That animal, Bonnie, lives at the Smithsonian's National Zoo in Washington. Lameira says when the paper came out, his inbox began to fill up.
LAMEIRA: We started to get emails from other caretakers saying, oh, but my orangutan can whistle much better than yours.
HAMILTON: And Lameira says one of those emails lead to Tilda.
LAMEIRA: She's an old lady. She's around 50 years old. She's in the Cologne Zoo in Germany.
HAMILTON: Tilda had been captured in Borneo when she was just 2. She'd spent much of her life as a privately-owned entertainment animal. Along the way, Tilda learned to imitate people. She waves her arms and shakes her head the way we do. She also reportedly smoked cigarettes before she got to the zoo. And she whistles. So Lameira and his team went to the Cologne Zoo to film Tilda in action.
LAMEIRA: We got there, and we were waiting for the whistles. And suddenly she started to do these bizarre calls.
HAMILTON: Which the team labeled faux speech. Rob Shumaker is an orangutan researcher and a vice president at the Indianapolis Zoo. He's also a co-author of the new paper on Tilda.
ROB SHUMAKER: The results of this study clearly give us some more information about the origins of human speech.
HAMILTON: One big question has been how much speech our human ancestors were capable of before they developed a modern vocal tract and brain. Scientists agree that if orangutans and other apes could make speech-like sounds, early humans probably could, too. But there's been a debate about whether great apes have the ability to consciously control their vocalizations. Shumaker says orangutan whistling showed that great apes can learn to make new sounds. And he says Tilda's faux speech shows that at least one great ape is able to learn new rhythms and patterns.
SHUMAKER: What we have to do is discard this old idea that apes are simply incapable of doing anything remotely similar to human speech production. I think what we're finding is there's a lot more flexibility than we realized.
HAMILTON: Shumaker says it will take more examples to confirm that great apes can mimic human speech patterns.
SHUMAKER: I think as we start looking, we'll find out Tilda's not the only orangutan like this.
HAMILTON: The new research appears in the journal PLOS ONE. Jon Hamilton, NPR News.
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Roughly 10,000 Americans reach retirement age every day. Of course, not everyone who turns 62 or 65 retires right away, but enough do that some companies worry about not having enough experienced workers. NPR's Yuki Noguchi has this report on companies taking action.
YUKI NOGUCHI, BYLINE: For 33 years, Dave Tobelmann developed new products for General Mills - things like battered fish sticks and fruit snacks.
DAVE TOBELMANN: Make it look good. Make it taste good. Make sure the costs are right. Make sure we can manufacture it consistently.
NOGUCHI: Five years ago at age 57, Tobelmann decided to hang up the lab coat around the same time as a number of other colleagues.
TOBELMANN: Yeah, I went to a lot of retirement parties.
NOGUCHI: Losing veteran workers is a challenge, even for big companies like General Mills.
TOBELMANN: Let's say you have 30 people retire in a year. And the average years of experience of 30 years. So you just had a thousand years walk away. That's hard to lose.
NOGUCHI: The need is not across-the-board. Not all retirees are in demand. But the older worker brain-drain is a big concern for industries like mining and health care, which are trying to retain older employees because demand is increasing, and fewer younger workers are rising through the ranks. In a survey out this week, the Society for Human Resource Management reports a third of employers expect staffing problems in coming years. Mark Schmit is executive director of the association's research arm.
MARK SCHMIT: When you have large numbers that are leaving and a pipeline that is not entirely as wide as the exit pipeline, you'll have temporary gaps.
NOGUCHI: Take, for example, the insurance business.
SHARON EMEK: The average age is in the late-50s in this industry.
NOGUCHI: That's Sharon Emek, who sold an insurance business five years ago after three of the four partners reached retirement age. She then started Work at Home Vintage Employees, a company that contracts insurance industry retirees.
EMEK: It's a big crisis within the industry, where they're trying to recruit young talent and keep young talent. And the industry's constantly writing about the problem.
NOGUCHI: Employers are trying to hang on to older talent by offering flexible work hours, more attractive health care benefits or having retirees return to mentor younger workers. And more people are, in fact, working later either because they want to or have to. According to AARP, about 1 in 5 workers over the age of 65 works, compared to 1 in 10 three decades ago. Soon after retiring, Tobelmann, the food product developer, returned to General Mills. He worked through Your Encore, a staffing firm specializing in retiree placement. Proctor and Gamble, Boeing and other companies started Your Encore to prepare for baby boomers retiring. Tobelmann says the benefits for the company are obvious.
TOBELMANN: I already know how to speak the language. I know how the company operates. I know how the businesses operate. I know how they make money. I know how projects proceed. I know all the processes.
NOGUCHI: At Michelin North America, more than 40 percent of the workforce is approaching retirement age. Retirees have, on average, two-and-half decades of experience. Dave Stafford, who heads human resources, says last year, the company had to plan around losing most of a lab team made up entirely of older workers.
DAVE STAFFORD: If we're doing our job well, we'll know that there's a risk. We'll start to staff to compensate for the fact that that risk may come to fruition.
NOGUCHI: Michelin encourages retirees to stick around part-time, especially those in technical maintenance, where talent is chronically scarce. But it's not always easy to accommodate. Dale Sweere is HR director for Stanley Consultants, an engineering consulting firm based in Muscatine, Iowa.
DALE SWEERE: Sometimes they have a very limited number of hours that they want to work. And to try to work around their schedule sometimes can be a bit of a challenge.
NOGUCHI: But, Sweere says, the company has always offered phased retirement because experienced workers have relationships with clients that are valuable to hang on to.
SWEERE: It's kind of a running joke around here that we have their retirement party on a Friday, and they show up for work again on Monday.
NOGUCHI: Yuki Noguchi, NPR News, Washington.
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Well, Renee, it's a little early for Easter, but Cadbury is already stocking stores in England with those iconic Creme Eggs.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Those chocolate eggs filled with gooey candy whites and yolk.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD #1: I think Cadbury Eggs are amazing. I found some in my Christmas stocking. And I tried some, and it was really, really good.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD #2: They are better than normal eggs.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD #3: Yes. True.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD #4: They taste scrumptious.
MONTAGNE: In London we caught up with some candy experts, 7- and 8-year-olds, including Will Langdale, Victoria Griffen, Kate Froottit, Emily Knight.
GREENE: Also Carla Skinner, George Mahon, and Max Vonderlinden. And they were - isn't this appropriate? - walking out of a kid's production of "Charlie And The Chocolate Factory."
MONTAGNE: But earlier this week, Cadbury did the unthinkable - daring to tweak its Creme Eggs in the U.K. First, Cadbury reduced the number in a pack from six to five, without dropping the price by an Egg.
GREENE: How dare they. And they have changed the chocolate shell. What's been Cadbury's dairy milk for over four decades is now, quote, "standard cocoa mix chocolate." Our candy experts were skeptical.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD #1: What's the point of changing it anyway?
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD #5: Yeah what's the point?
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD #6: What was actually the point?
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD #1: There's no point in...
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD #5: It's already delicious.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD #7: I think of the old recipe was actually kind of better.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD #4: I like the new recipe.
MONTAGNE: (Laughter). Seems the jury's still out for the younger set. Grown-ups, on the other hand, are furious. Words like outraged, shell-shocked, abomination are all over the British press and social media.
GREENE: Which makes us wonder, what is the big deal? Our food editor at NPR, Alison Richards, says, for Brits of a certain age, this is like messing with a perfect candy time capsule.
ALISON RICHARDS, BYLINE: You know, Christmas would be over, life would be a bit dreary and gray, and then, you know, the first Cadbury's Creme Eggs would start to show up in their glittery-colored paper. And this would be like, you know, a promise of things to come. Forget daffodils, it was the Cadbury's Creme Egg.
GREENE: All about the Eggs.
RICHARDS: All about the Eggs. It was a treat.
GREENE: A seasonal treat. We tried to find some near us in Washington, D.C., but no store had them in stock yet. So to be clear...
RICHARDS: I haven't tried one of these new versions.
GREENE: OK. Full disclosure. You might end up loving it. And...
RICHARDS: I might end up loving it.
MONTAGNE: I might.
GREENE: Chocolatier Paul A. Young...
(LAUGHTER)
GREENE: ...Did not end up loving these new Cadbury Eggs, Renee, when he did do a taste test for the BBC.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PAUL A. YOUNG: It's a different texture. It's very, very pasty. It's just - they're kind of - the chocolate is now as sweet as the filling.
MONTAGNE: Well, too late. Cadbury's unlikely to backtrack. It's now owned by Mondelez, a spinoff from Kraft.
GREENE: And their U.K. office did not respond to our official request for comment, but they are quoted as saying, quote, "a range of economic factors influenced the decision to change this beloved Easter treat."
(SOUNDBITE OF THE BEATLES SONG, "SAVOY TRUFFLE")
GREENE: It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm David Greene.
MONTAGNE: And I'm Renee Montagne.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SAVOY TRUFFLE")
THE BEATLES: (Singing) But you'll have to have them all pulled out after the savoy truffle.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Now that Republicans control both chambers of Congress, the pressure is on to convey a clear message and to get things done. GOP lawmakers have decided to spend a couple days in Hershey, Pennsylvania. It's known as the sweetest place on Earth.
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It is not to get a chocolate fix. They're meeting to discuss policy. It's the first joint retreat for House and Senate Republicans in a decade.
GREENE: NPR congressional reporter Juana Summers came in to chat before leaving for Hershey to cover the Republican gathering. Hey, Juana.
JUANA SUMMERS, BYLINE: Hi. Good morning.
GREENE: So it's really that unusual for House and Senate Republicans to get together and go on a retreat?
SUMMERS: It really is, David. As you said, it's been 10 years now. And of course this comes at a time where the House has a historic Republican majority, Republicans now with control of the Senate. Despite all that, these are two chambers of Congress that look like they could be on different planets. They operate rather differently. Republicans tell us that the purpose of this retreat is to try to find some synergy and to create a unified legislative agenda, something that has been lacking and could be easier said than done.
GREENE: Synergy being something that the party has acknowledged that they kind of need now that they are - you know, are controlling all of Congress and then there's more pressure on them to have a unified message. What issues are really important if that's the goal here?
SUMMERS: You're exactly right. They're going to be under an immense amount of pressure. And this week, they will be talking about big policy issues like tax reform, budget reconciliation, health care. But the biggest issue facing Republicans that I think will really dominate conversations is immigration.
And here's one example of just how far apart members of this party are on this issue. The House voted yesterday on a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security, but House Republicans used this bill as a way to roll back several of President Obama's actions on immigration. Among those is last month's action allowing close family members of those now in the United States legally to stay, as well as the president's 2012 program allowing children brought by their parents to this country illegally to stay here. While that bill passed in the House, it's likely to have a lot of trouble in the Senate, getting opposition from Democrats and even some moderate Republicans. And frankly, even if it does reach the president's desk, it is likely to face a presidential veto. So there is no question that that will come up during the course of the retreat.
The question really is, though, just how much agreement can Republicans find? Many members and staffers that I've spoken with say they don't expect to see a big immigration takeaway. The 300 or so members that'll be there over these two days just are so far apart. But it's really important, they say, to get in the room and have that conversation and start figuring out what the path forward is.
GREENE: Well, whether there's a takeaway on issues like immigration or not, I wonder, are we going to know about it? Or is this really the party going behind closed doors at what they're calling a retreat to figure this stuff out? But, you know, we might not know exactly, you know, what they've talked about or if they've reached some sort of agreement.
SUMMERS: I've covered a couple retreats like this. And typically, as they go, we as reporters don't see a whole lot. They do a lot of their talking in small groups and conference rooms behind closed doors with maybe one or two press conferences or members who want to come by and say hello. But here's what I can tell you - members of Congress will be hearing from a roster of speakers. That includes former "Tonight Show" host Jay Leno, former Prime Minister of Britain Tony Blair, as well as American Enterprise Institute President Arthur Brooks. So maybe a couple big names will trot out - throw some details that have leaked out over the last couple weeks.
GREENE: You know, as a Pennsylvanian, when I think of Hershey, I go there for Hersheypark. I go there to think about chocolate. It's the sweetest place on Earth. Why have Republicans decided this is the spot?
SUMMERS: We've chatted with a lot of people familiar with putting together this retreat. And one of the biggest selling points for Hershey is frankly space. You're bringing in all of the Republicans in the Senate, all of the Republicans in the House, their staffs. That is a lot of people to find housing for, conference room to hold. And it's also pretty close to Washington, just a short drive up the highway.
But there is also some political significance to Hershey. This place has played host in the past to a number of organized bipartisan retreats meant to promote civility among members of Congress. Those started nearly a decade ago. As Republicans are kind of looking to find their own message, find their path, with at least one big issue, like immigration, hanging in the balance, maybe they're hoping some of the sweetness in Hershey rubs off a little bit.
GREENE: All right. NPR congressional reporter Juana Summers will be covering the GOP retreat in Hershey. Have a good trip. Thanks, Juana.
SUMMERS: Thank you.
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And the internal rules governing the Senate and House of Representatives rarely attract much outside interest. That is until the Republican-controlled House adopted a rule last week dealing with Social Security. Sponsors of the rules say they're protecting retirees. Critics say it's a backdoor attempt to completely overhaul the system. NPR's Ina Jaffe covers aging and filed this report.
INA JAFFE, BYLINE: When you think of Social Security funding, if you ever do, you think of that big pile of government money that pays out monthly retirement benefits. But there's a second Social Security fund. That's the one that pays benefits to about 9 million people who are too disabled to work, and that fund is going to run out of money next year if Congress doesn't do something.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: If we do nothing, disability recipients are looking at a 20 percent cut in their benefit.
JAFFE: But retirees stand to lose more, says Republican Congressman Tom Reed. He's one of the co-sponsors of the House rule that's causing the controversy. It would prevent House members from using money designated for retirement benefits to shore up the disability fund.
REPRESENTATIVE TOM REED: By just taking from the retiree trust fund, you are threatening retirees. And that's why we've got to stop that.
JAFFE: But moving money back and forth between the two funds has been done 11 times in the past with no big repercussions. That's one of the reasons that Democratic Senator Dick Durbin is suspicious of House Republicans.
SENATOR DICK DURBIN: You wonder what their ultimate goal is. Do they want to cut people off of disability? Do they want to force a crisis in the Social Security program? I just don't understand the thinking behind this rule.
JAFFE: So Durbin and seven other Democratic senators wrote to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, asking him to refrain from adding anything similar to rules governing the Senate.
DURBIN: If the Senate did the same thing, we wouldn't be in the business of maintaining the most important single social program in America today.
VIRGINIA RENO: It would just be unconscionable to tell people counting on disability benefits that their benefits would be cut.
JAFFE: Says Virginia Reno, a vice president at the nonpartisan National Academy of Social Insurance. As things stand now, she says, disability benefits are just enough to keep someone above the poverty line.
RENO: The average disability benefit is a little under $1,200 a month. And more than half of disability beneficiaries get three-quarters or more of their income from those benefits. So it's - they really rely heavily on them.
JAFFE: The House rule does offer a kind of escape hatch. House members could shift money from the retirement trust fund to disability, but only if the move would increase the long-term solvency of both the retirement and disability funds. That has Democrats, like Senator Durbin, concerned that the House rule could lead to a sneak attack on the whole Social Security system.
DURBIN: I can tell you the Republican Party has really stood by the privatization of Social Security. Many of us think that's a terrible idea. So I don't know if this is their way of moving towards privatization, but it's a bad idea.
JAFFE: Congressman Reed, who co-sponsored the rule, says he's only focusing on fixing the disability fund. And since he's against raising taxes, he's looking at ways to cut cost.
REED: Things like rooting out the waste, fraud and abuse.
JAFFE: Reed also wants to take a critical look at who is receiving disability benefits. Maybe, he says, some of them can be moved off the program and into jobs. At the same time...
REED: Make sure that those that are catastrophically disabled keep getting those benefits that are there.
JAFFE: The new House rule says Reed has at least succeeded in pushing the conversation about Social Security. And with the disability trust fund due to run dry next year, he expects that Congress will soon move beyond talk. Ina Jaffe, NPR News.
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OK. Many people have climbed the El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. It's the largest monolith of granite in the world. But not many have done it on the most challenging route known as the Dawn Wall. And until yesterday, no one had ever conquered the Dawn Wall using just their hands and feet. That's called a free climb. And after 19 days on the sheer granite face with only a safety rope in case of falls, climbers Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson reached the summit. NPR's Nathan Rott takes us to Yosemite.
NATHAN ROTT, BYLINE: Looking straight up from its boulder-strewn base, El Capitan looks like it goes up forever. As Jorgeson and Caldwell made their final ascent, rock climber Elle Zhu watched from the base, leaning back, looking up and up.
ELLE ZHU: I mean, it just keeps going up.
ROTT: Which made her think what everyone was thinking.
ZHU: I don't know. I can't even describe it. It's just, like, amazing that someone can climb all that.
ROTT: Just straight up.
ZHU: Yeah, just straight up it.
ROTT: Caldwell and Jorgeson summited at about 3:30 p.m., greeted by a few dozen family and friends at the top. For perspective of their feat, it helps to talk to people that know rock climbing - people who have done it.
MATT PIETRAS: It's insane. I don't know what else to say.
(LAUGHTER)
ROTT: That's Matt Pietras, a guy that's been climbing for a dozen years. He says the climbing they did compares to climbing a window pane. There are just so few grips. Then there's the time - nearly three weeks. The falls - Jorgeson fell 11 times over a seven-day stretch. And the skin...
BRIAN PUGH: After a couple days, your skin gets worn down.
ROTT: This is Brian Pugh another climber. He's camping here with Esther Kemper.
What do you think your fingers would look like after, like, three weeks of it?
PUGH: After three weeks of...
ESTHER KEMPER: Bloody stumps.
PUGH: Yeah, bloody stumps. I mean, if I were doing what - the kind of climbing they're doing, my fingers would be pretty much gone.
ROTT: Jorgeson and Caldwell had to take breaks to let their fingers heal. Caldwell even went as far as to wake himself up every four hours to put beeswax cream on his raw fingers. Watching from below, Mike Caldwell, Tommy's father, marveled at his son's achievement.
MIKE CALDWELL: He doesn't even know what he's done, (laughter) you know?
ROTT: Caldwell finished first. He waited for Jorgeson to catch up so they could summit together. Nathan Rott, NPR News, Yosemite National Park.
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In West Texas yesterday, a bus carrying prisoners slid off an interstate. The bus plunged off a bridge and crashed onto a passing train below. Ten people on the bus were killed - eight prisoners and two correctional officers. Five others were rushed to a hospital in the city of Odessa. That's an oil patch town that has seen a rise in population and traffic fatalities. From West Texas Public Radio, Tom Michael has this report.
TOM MICHAEL, BYLINE: Below the interstate overpass, a red tow truck drags a white prison bus off the railroad tracks as law enforcement officers pick through debris. Blue medical gloves, cartons of shoes and twisted train parts litter the ground. Employees from UPS create a human chain to toss shipping boxes from a broken railcar up onto the embankment. According to Sergeant Elizabeth Barney of the Texas Department of Public Safety, people - both official and unofficial - are helping to clean up the wreck.
SERGEANT ELIZABETH BARNEY: We have local tow trucks helping us. Again, it's a community effort, you know, to get this horrific traffic crash resolved.
MICHAEL: This is a community that still cringes at the memory of the fatal wreck in November 2012 in which a freight train slammed into a parade float carrying wounded veterans, killing four and injuring 16. But on this Wednesday morning, a prison bus skidded off the icy interstate, smashed through two guardrails and fell down onto an eastbound train, crushing one of the rail cars. Jason Heaton is with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
JASON HEATON: There were three correctional staff members and 12 offenders on board the bus. At approximately mile marker 103, there was a tragic accident.
MICHAEL: The prisoners were being transported almost 500 miles across West Texas from Abilene to El Paso. They were minimum-security offenders. They were lashed to each other sitting handcuffed in pairs, but according to Sergeant Barney, only the driver had to wear a seat belt.
BARNEY: The driver did have to wear their seat belt. It is not required to have the other passengers wear a safety belt. They are not equipped with safety belts.
MICHAEL: The five survivors were transported to Medical Center Hospital in Odessa. Brad Timmons is the hospital district's chief of police.
BRAD TIMMONS: You know, being five level-one traumas coming in at once, it can be a little bit of strain on our daily operations. But here in the last couple years with the growth in the population, the more accidents we're seeing, it's pretty normal.
MICHAEL: Despite the recent sag in oil prices, the sister cities of Odessa and Midland are still boom towns. And growing population means growing congestion on roads not built to handle it. In Ector County, fatal crashes more than doubled in the last two years surveyed. For NPR News I'm Tom Michael in Midland, Texas.
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Good morning. I'm David Greene. A start-up in Australia is in the business of revenge. They'll send a person who offended you an envelope full of glitter along with a note explaining what the person did to deserve it. For 10 bucks, the site promises so much glitter, your enemies will be finding it, quote, "everywhere for weeks." After the company launched, shipyourenemiesglitter.com was so swamped with orders the website crashed and the company exceeded its supply of glitter, all seven colors of it.
You're listening to MORNING EDITION.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
As brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi left the scene of their brutal killings last week, they made clear that al-Qaida had guided their mission. For Amedy Coulibaly, the gunman who attacked a kosher supermarket the next day, loyalty rested with another Islamist militant group, ISIS, the Islamic State. But behind the veneer of these apparently joint attacks is a bitter rivalry between two extremist groups vying for power, prestige and influence. For more, we reached Fawaz Gerges. He is chair of Contemporary Middle Eastern Studies at the London School of Economics, whose forthcoming book is "ISIS: A Short History."
Good morning.
FAWAZ GERGES: Good morning.
MONTAGNE: Now, the only group that has taken credit so far for the Paris attacks is al-Qaida on the Arabian Peninsula based in Yemen. And intriguingly, it made it very clear that it was behind only the massacre at the magazine Charlie Hebdo. Give us a sense of tone on that one.
GERGES: I think the claim was very clear - it was us, al-Qaida, not ISIS that was responsible. It was us. We are back. We have the ability to target the Western world. ISIS does not have the same ability against the foreign enemy, meaning the United States and its European allies.
MONTAGNE: So when al-Qaida is saying, as you say, we are back, is that in light of the Islamic State getting so much publicity in these recent months?
GERGES: Yes. But there's more to the story than just the rise of ISIS. It's not just about the political rivalry. The rivalry's about supremacy, about power, about leadership. And at this particular stage, ISIS has won the first round. So the Paris operation gives al-Qaida momentum and also I think gives al-Qaida propaganda to say we have avenged the prophet. This tells you a great deal about the strategy behind al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. It would like to convince Muslim public opinion that al-Qaida is the vanguard of the Muslim community. Anyone who insults or anyone who attacks the Muslim community, basically al-Qaida will try to counterattack.
MONTAGNE: Although from the outside, one would think their goals were the same - these two militant Islamist groups.
GERGES: The goals are the same, basically to establish a caliphate, destroy the existing secular pro-Western order, expel decadent Western influence from the heart of the Arab and Muslim world. But this is easier said than done. What we have learned in the last two years as a result of the rivalry between ISIS and the parent organization Al-Qaida is that the fight, the struggle between Ayman al-Zawahiri, who succeeded Osama bin Laden as the leader of al-Qaida, and Abu al-Baghdadi, the chief ISIS, is personal, is instinctive. This is all-out war. In fact, I would say that the fight between them is more brutal and more fierce than the fight between al-Qaida as a whole and the Western powers. And this tells you about the cleavages and the rift that has emerged within al-Qaida.
MONTAGNE: Thank you very much for joining us.
GERGES: Thank you, Renee.
MONTAGNE: Fawaz Gerges is the author of "The New Middle East: Protest And Revolution In The Arab World" and the forthcoming book "ISIS: A Short History." This is NPR News.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
The attack on a satirical magazine in Paris last week raised questions about if and when there should be limits to free speech. This morning Pope Francis weighed in. He told reporters while both freedom of religion and freedom of expression are both fundamental human rights, there are limits. As he put it, you can't provoke, you can't insult the faith of others.
The violence last week hit a country with the largest Muslim and Jewish communities in Western Europe. Many Muslims fear a backlash and many Jews fear they're still a target. Lauren Frayer spent a day in a Paris suburb where immigrant Muslims and Jews have lived together for decades.
LAUREN FRAYER, BYLINE: I've come to the Paris suburb of Sarcelles, which is famous for its Jewish and Muslim communities living more or less in harmony. But the first thing I notice off the train from Paris - there are no Je Suis Charlie signs here.
ABDEL NOUR: People think, we are not Charlie. Me, I'm not Charlie.
FRAYER: Abdel Nour is waiting at the train station to pick up his wife. He likes to say his family blends both communities in Sarcelles.
FRAYER: Are you Muslim or Jew or Christian?
NOUR: I am Muslim. My wife is a Jew - Jew from Israel, not from here.
FRAYER: And she's a Jew. How does she feel?
NOUR: She's very sad. Like me - I am sad, too.
FRAYER: Sad about the attacks in Paris. But Abdel says in this community, where nearly everyone is religious, public support for Charlie Hebdo is risky.
NOUR: It's sensitive and it's not the same in Paris as here. Paris, people live good. Here, there's too much unemployment, they're looking for a life. They're sad about Charlie, but they're looking for first a life. After, they look for Charlie.
FRAYER: A squad of French police are parked in front of Sarcelles's main synagogue. A soldier with an automatic weapon paces back and forth in front of the synagogue's gate.
NOA FITOUSSI: It's quiet and peaceful, but I'm not sure if the police wasn't there that it would be the same.
FRAYER: Noa Fitoussi and her friends chat about last week's attacks over coffee across the street from the synagogue. Noa worries Sarcelles's peace is fragile. The town saw Muslim riots last summer. Others say such strife reinforces their Jewish identity. And with that, one of the women breaks out into song.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: (Singing, in foreign language).
FRAYER: Unlike most of Sarcelles's Jews who are of Algerian origin or Tunisian descent, Maria Ribeiro is a Portuguese immigrant.
MARIA RIBEIRO: (Foreign language spoken).
FRAYER: "Muslim radicals are trying to provoke us Jews," she says. "But we won't budge - we want to live in harmony with Muslims in Sarcelles. Our neighbors are not the people who did this."
FRAYER: In halal chicken shop near a kosher cafe, Muslim men sip sweet tea and speak a mix of French and Arabic.
ABU HUSSEIN SHUKRI: (Speaking Arabic).
FRAYER: "We're all one here in Sarcelles. Not Muslim, Catholic or Jew," says one man, Abu Hussein Shukri, speaking Arabic. He's originally from Egypt. One of Abu Hussein's friends, Ali Kayta from the Ivory Coast, hangs back listening but then confides.
ALI KAYTA: Complicated, difficult - relation is difficult.
FRAYER: Ali says the truth is doubt and fear have crept in. During my day in Sarcelles, everyone I met was either an Orthodox Jew or an observant Muslim. They spoke of harmony over coffee, but I didn't find any Jews and Muslims actually sharing their coffee together.
For NPR News I'm Lauren Frayer in Sarcelles, France.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
The nominations for all 24 Oscar categories were announced this morning at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills. And NPR's Mandalit del Barco is there in the thick of it by the way. Good morning, Mandalit.
MANDALIT DEL BARCO, BYLINE: Good morning. Yes, amongst all the journalists from around the world.
MONTAGNE: Right so let us start with what movie, you know, came out the best this morning?
DEL BARCO: Well, looking purely at the numbers, "Birdman" or "The Unexpected Virtue Of Ignorance," as it's called, got nine nominations, including one for Michael Keaton as best actor. Now, you'll remember Michael Keaton, years ago, played "Batman." And in this movie, he portrays an aging actor who once played a superhero known as "Birdman."
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BIRDMAN")
MICHAEL KEATON: (As Riggin) We had it all.
(As Birdman) You were a movie star, remember?
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: (As character) Who is this guy?
UNIDENTIFIED ACTRESS: (As character) He used to be Birdman.
KEATON: (As Birdman) I liked that poster.
EDWARD NORTON: (As Mike) You wrote this adaptation?
KEATON: (As Riggin) I did, yeah.
NORTON: (As Mike) And you're directing and starring in...
KEATON: (As Riggin) Yeah.
NORTON: (As Mike) ...Your adaptation? That's ambitious.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) Are you afraid people will say you're doing this play to battle the impression that you're a washed-up, comic strip character?
KEATON: (As Riggin) Absolutely not. That's why 20 years ago I said no to Birdman 4.
MONTAGNE: All right so "Birdman," what else?
DEL BARCO: Now, the movie that got nine nominations was "The Grand Budapest Hotel," Wes Anderson's comedy. Also nominated for best picture was "American Sniper" produced by Clint Eastwood and "Whiplash," "The Imitation Game," "The Theory Of Everything," "Selma" and "Boyhood," Richard Linklater's ambitious film which was made bit by bit over 12 years. We watched the actors Ellar Coltrane and Linklater's daughter, Lorelei, grow up on screen. Ethan Hawke plays their father, Patricia Arquette their mother. They were both nominated for best actors in today - this morning. And from the beginning of the movie, these two characters are split up. And here's a clip from the movie in which Arquette talks to her son about why she remarried.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BOYHOOD")
ELLAR COLTRANE: (As Mason) Why'd you even marry him? He's such a jerk.
PATRICIA ARQUETTE: (Mom) Well, Bill has his good qualities. You know, nobody's perfect. And now we have a family.
COLTRANE: (As Mason) We already had a family.
MONTAGNE: OK, so "Boyhood" up for best picture, in other words. In terms of who was nominated among the actors and actresses, you spoke of a couple, but tell us some of the other highlights?
DEL BARCO: Here are some other ones. Benedict Cumberbatch - who's been in just about everything these days - he was nominated for his role in "The Imitation Game," Eddie Redmayne who plays Stephen Hawking in "The Theory Of Everything." And in terms of actresses, perennial Oscar winner Meryl Streep was nominated for her role in the musical "Into The Woods." She's up against Marion Cotillard in "Two Days, One Night," Felicity Jones in "The Theory Of Everything," Rosamund Pike in "Gone Girl," Reese Witherspoon in "Wild," and Julianne Moore in "Still Alice." Now, Julianne Moore is considered to be the favorite in that category.
MONTAGNE: And finally, Mandalit, it's always worth mentioning who did not get nominated. It's interesting and sometimes sad - the snubs.
DEL BARCO: Right, yes. Well, Renee, everything is not awesome for "The Lego Movie" which did not get nominated for best animated feature despite being both a critical and commercial success. Author Gillian Flynn did not get nominated for adapting her best-selling thriller "Gone Girl" into a screenplay. Jennifer Aniston got snubbed for her role in the movie "Cake." And perhaps most noteworthy is the movie "Selma." This is a clip from the movie.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "SELMA")
DAVID OYELOWO: (As Martin Luther King Jr.) Mr. President, in the South, there have been thousands of racially motivated murders. We need your help.
TOM WILKINSON: (As President Lyndon B. Johnson) Dr. King, this thing's just going to have to wait.
OYELOWO: (As Martin Luther King Jr.) It cannot wait.
WILKINSON: (As President Lyndon B. Johnson) You got one big issue, I got 101.
OYELOWO: (As Martin Luther King Jr.) Selma it is.
DEL BARCO: Now, while "Selma" did get a best picture nomination, the director, Ava DuVernay, would've been the first African-American woman to be nominated, but she was not. And neither was the star of the film, David Oyelowo. It seemed like the academy might have been moving in the direction of being more inclusive after "12 Years A Slave" was nominated for nine Oscars last year. It ultimately won three. But this year, you don't see diversity as perhaps being something the academy voters are thinking about, Renee, also interesting to consider that against the backdrop of a lot of news that's happening around the country over the past year.
MONTAGNE: And that's Mandalit del Barco with this year's Oscar nominations announced this morning in Beverly Hills. Thanks very much.
DEL BARCO: You're welcome.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
The GOP field for 2016 is shaping up, and it's getting crowded. The latest person to seriously consider throwing his hat in the ring is the man who ran last time - Mitt Romney. True, Romney has said in the past he would not run again. In September, he told Fox News that he knows he would've made a better president than Barack Obama, but...
(SOUNDBITE OF FOX NEWS INTERVIEW)
MITT ROMNEY: Let me tell you - it was a great experience running for president. I loved that. But my time has come. I have come and gone. I had that opportunity. I ran. I didn't win. And now it's time for someone else to pick up the baton.
MONTAGNE: Here to discuss what Romney's apparent change of heart means for the GOP nominating battle is NPR's national political correspondent Mara Liasson. Good morning.
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Good morning.
MONTAGNE: So did Mitt Romney come out publicly and really say, in so many words, he wants to run again?
LIASSON: He didn't come out publicly. But he did something that might've been even more important. He told a group of big donors last week that he was considering another run for president. Up until that moment, most Republicans believed or maybe hoped that he would not run again. But his announcement has been a huge development inside the Republican world of donors and operatives and grassroots activists - the people who really are the only ones paying a tremendous amount of attention to the Republican nominating contest right now.
MONTAGNE: And it - I mean, is this important now because this is where the money is?
LIASSON: Well, right now, the reason this is important is that up until now, Jeb Bush was the candidate that a lot of donors and Republican establishment figures were rallying around. Bush had been moving very aggressively and very quickly to win what could be called the invisible primary or the money primary. Someone who can raise a tremendous amount of money like Jeb Bush and assemble a team very quickly can make it harder for other candidates, particularly candidates who would be coming from the same establishment wing of the party - for them to raise money.
I'm talking about governors like Chris Christie or Scott Walker, Bobby Jindal, John Kasich. Those are just a very few of the many Republicans who are interested in being president. But if Romney got in, it would mean that there would be a big battle in that establishment lane of the Republican nominating contest. Jeb Bush would have some competition from someone who could raise a lot of money. Romney's supporters point to polls that show him in the lead. Yesterday, a poll from Iowa, for example, showed him at 21 percent and Jeb Bush at 14 percent. Although at this time in the cycle, that is probably just name recognition. The big question though is, is there a clamor inside the Republican Party for another Romney candidacy?
MONTAGNE: Ok, Mara. Is there a clamor for another Romney candidacy?
LIASSON: Well, I have been looking very, very hard, and I haven't found one. His old loyalists say that Romney would run differently this time. He's learned from experience. He'd make poverty a focus. But the pushback to another Romney run has been pretty withering. The Wall Street Journal editorial page slammed him yesterday. They said if Romney is the answer, what is the question? The editorial went on to say it's hard to see what advantages Romney would bring to the field that other governors thinking about running do not bring. And as one Republican strategist said to me, it ought to be a signal when the most important conservative newspaper in the country treats you that way after you float a trial balloon. So I guess I would say the trial balloon that Romney floated has - right now, has a lot of punctures in it.
MONTAGNE: Then let's talk finally about what else might be significant in the field right now at this very early stage.
LIASSON: It is very early. But it's really interesting. The field is absolutely humongous. There is no obvious front-runner. The establishment might be coalescing - or trying to coalesce - around Jeb Bush. But he is not a field-clearing candidate. There are a lot of mainstream Republicans, governors particularly, looking at running, as I mentioned. There are also a lot of conservative insurgents - tea party or evangelical-backed conservatives like Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, Ben Carson. There are people who are trying to straddle both wings of the party like Rick Perry and Marco Rubio.
This is going to be a very big field full of serious candidates - unlike 2012. And there is going to be a real debate about the future of the Republican Party, about issues like foreign policy and education and immigration. The other thing that really strikes me when you talk to Republicans about 2016 is how confident they are about winning. They believe Hillary Clinton can be defeated.
They say not only is history on their side - that is, the only person who's succeeded a two-term president of their own party is George H. W. Bush. But there is a very strong, widely held belief among professional Republicans that Hillary Clinton is just not a good candidate, despite the structural advantages the Democrats have in the electoral college.
MONTAGNE: That's NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson. Mara, thanks.
LIASSON: Thank you.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
It's a pretty historic moment for one of the country's biggest labor unions. For more than 25 years, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters has operated under government oversight. Its budget and finances have been closely watched. Its election of officers has been supervised by a federal watchdog. The arrangement was put in place after decades of corruption and organized crime influence, but now the arrangement is coming to an end. The Teamsters and the U.S. Attorney's Office say they've agreed to phase out the government's role and return the union to full independence. NPR national political correspondent Don Gonyea has been covering this story, well, Don, probably for pretty much your entire journalism career, I would imagine.
DON GONYEA, BYLINE: I was a dashing, young reporter in Detroit (laughter) back then, or something like that. (Laughter).
GREENE: You know this story well.
GONYEA: I know this story. And let's, you know - let's run some of the history. You talked about the size of the union. Not only big, but powerful and infamous because of its ties to organized crime. Headlines were everywhere in the '50s, '60s, '70s about indictments and Teamsters' presidents being sent to prison. Most famous among them, the legendary Jimmy Hoffa. Recall 1967, he went to prison, pardoned by President Richard Nixon in 1971. He disappeared in 1975.
Anyway, let's fast-forward a bit from there. In 1989, a U.S. attorney in New York City named Rudy Giuliani was preparing to bring a suit against the Teamsters under the RICO Act, which targets organized crime, corruption. Anyway, on the eve of that trial, a deal was struck. The Teamsters would let the feds in as monitors. They'd get to see everything - the books, they'd run the elections, all as part of the effort to clean things up.
GREENE: What - did people expect in 1989 this would be sort of, you know, maybe a 25-year process and things would get cleaned up? Or what was the expectation?
GONYEA: No, they didn't think it would be going on this long. But they also didn't think it would be easy - right? - because you not only had corruption at the highest levels, but you had stuff in pockets in different locals around the country, little fiefdoms.
So under oversight, there was a mechanism to monitor all of this and try to crack down. There were elections; there were new officers; there was a change of the guard at the top, but progress was still slow. In 1999, a new president with the very well-known name was elected - James P. Hoffa, son of Jimmy Hoffa. He pledged a corrupt-free union. There were skeptics. He would always answer, look, the mob killed my father. They don't have any role in this union. He has been in office for 15 years. Here's his videotape message to members yesterday.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JIMMY HOFFA: This is a historic day for our Teamsters. After decades of hard work and millions of dollars spent, we can finally say that corrupt elements have been driven from the Teamsters and that the government oversight can come to an end.
GREENE: Have corrupt elements really been driven from the Teamsters?
GONYEA: Well, you can't say 100 percent, obviously. There are still occasional racketeering charges that you hear about locally, but the feds feel it's not systemic. And Rudy Giuliani yesterday was quoted as saying they can operate as a normal union, that they've made the progress they need to make.
GREENE: Can they ensure that it stays that way?
GONYEA: That's the key. This will be fazed out over five years. A judge still needs to approve it. That's expected to happen. But for reformers, here is the key thing; they will still have direct election, one man, one vote - one member, one vote of the top-ranking union officials and locals as well. And that is really key.
GREENE: Big change for the Teamsters. We've been talking about it with NPR national political correspondent Don Gonyea. Don, thanks.
GONYEA: A pleasure.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Here's a combination practically designed to get a film banned in China - a documentary about a very touchy subject, Tibet, by an American filmmaker. Instead, the film called "Nowhere To Call Home" has been quietly making the rounds in China and winning praise. NPR's Frank Langfitt caught a screening this week in Shanghai and spoke with the director.
FRANK LANGFITT, BYLINE: Tibet has long held a special place in the Western imagination. In the 1930s novel "Lost Horizon," a British diplomat crash-lands in Tibet's snow-covered mountains and discovers peaceful Buddhists who never age.
Here's a clip from a radio play of the novel.
(SOUNDBITE OF RADIO PLAY, "LOST HORIZON")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) Shangri-la, it is a strange and incredible sight. A group of colored pavilions clinging to the mountainside like flower petals impaled upon a crag. It was superb and exquisite.
LANGFITT: The Tibet in "Nowhere To Call Home" is a much darker place illustrated by a poor, muddy village in southwest China's Sichuan province, where the movie's main character, a woman named Zanta, struggles against a brutal patriarchal system.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "NOWHERE TO CALL HOME")
ZANTA: (As herself, speaking Mandarin).
LANGFITT: "We have an expression," Zanta says of her community, "women aren't worth a penny. Our men are ferocious. If a woman misspeaks, they belt her." Zanta's a widow. She's battling her father-in-law for custody of her son. Zanta moves to Beijing with the boy to seek a better life, only to face discrimination in the capital because she's Tibetan. Many Chinese see Tibetans as oafish and uncivilized.
In this scene, Zanta complains to police about a landlord who refuses to rent her an apartment.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "NOWHERE TO CALL HOME")
ZANTA: (As herself, speaking Mandarin).
LANGFITT: "This is an insult to all Tibetans, I've lost faith," Zanta says.
"We are all Chinese," a cop responds. He's Han Chinese, China's dominant group.
"Chinese bullied Tibetans," Zanta replies.
JOCELYN FORD: When I started to make the film, I didn't think I had hope of high heaven of ever showing it in China.
LANGFITT: This is Jocelyn Ford. She's the movie's director and a former China correspondent for Public Radio's Marketplace. Ford met Zanta selling jewelry on the streets of Beijing nearly a decade ago and has followed her mostly ever since. She thinks Chinese can accept the movie because it's framed as a personal journey.
FORD: It is a family story. I don't use words like human rights, right? That's why - it's not politicized. The issues are the same as, I think, what many human rights groups are concerned about, but it's looked at from a human perspective that anyone can identify with.
LANGFITT: Of course, that approach meant leaving some things out, like the dozens of Tibetans from Zanta's province who self-immolated to protest Chinese rule. Tina, a Shanghai Ph.D. student who saw the film, said that that would've been too much.
TINA: I think people will feel uncomfortable about these elements because it's too radical, too political.
XIANG XING: My name is Xiang Xing. I'm a high school teacher.
LANGFITT: Xing showed the movie to her students in Beijing, who found it eye-opening.
XING: Before they saw the documentary, they never knew Tibetans' lives could be so hard in Beijing.
LANGFITT: Xing thinks the film could help improve relations between Chinese and Tibetans.
XING: Actually, we can do more like, we can be like, friendly and nicer to people like them. I hope more people can see the movie and that more Tibetan and Han and also other minorities can communicate.
LANGFITT: "Nowhere To Call Home" is available for rent on the website Vimeo. The next U.S. screening is at New York University in April.
Frank Langfitt, NPR News, Shanghai.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne with an update on one man's search for a partner for a round-the-world trip he planned with his then girlfriend. The catch, she had to be named Elizabeth Gallagher, so she could use his ex-girlfriend's paid-for ticket. Despite the hopes of readers following their travels, when it was over, the two remained just friends. No Hollywood ending here, unless you count the movie deal he says may be in the works. You're listening to MORNING EDITION.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Last week's terrorist attacks brought attention to a particular neighborhood in Paris, a place where all three of the killers were brought up and met and became radical. It is located, not in the suburbs where high-rise, cement-block housing projects reign the city, but among the regular districts of Paris. The attackers came together in the 19th arrondissement, or district. We asked Miriam Benraad, a French scholar of foreign fighters, how a neighborhood historically known for its picturesque parks and artistic community became a breeding ground for some of Europe's most militant jihadists.
MIRIAM BENRAAD: So the 19th arrondissement - district of Paris - it's always been very popular. It used to be a popular place in the 19th century. It was a place of artists, creativity and became a very mixed neighborhood following decolonization and the arrival of immigrants from North Africa and as well as immigrants from Africa more generally.
MONTAGNE: Which would've been approximately the 1960s.
BENRAAD: Exactly. But the characteristic of these neighborhoods as compared to the Parisian suburbs is that it's been a population of immigrants for some time. But they're working.
MONTAGNE: Isn't there a group of radicals who are loosely tied together by youth or knowing each other as young people being radicalized or is there actually some sort of gang? I mean, is it more coherent in the 19th district?
BENRAAD: There is clearly a gang factor. These young people have known each other since school. They were faced with the same difficulties in life - a situation of failure at school, no job, a sense of marginality because of their frank background. They had the feeling that they were not part of French society. They were hanging out in the park doing nothing with their lives, and this is how they were indoctrinated and drawn to the mosque and then to radical ideas which motivated them.
MONTAGNE: Although it is interesting when you hear about the backgrounds of these main attackers, Amedy Coulibaly and the Kouachi brothers, they don't seem to really have a very intellectual grasp of a religion that they claimed.
BENRAAD: No, they have very little knowledge of Arabic, as goes for the Kouachi brothers, who are children of Algerian immigrants. In general people - they don't speak Arabic. As regards Coulibaly, this is the same thing. And this is why they're actually easily attracted by mentors who will deliver knowledge of Islam and the Quran in French because they don't have the ability to read the text in Arabic and in any case to basically forego a moderate path. They're actually very easy targets for radical movements.
MONTAGNE: I mean, an interesting detail is that one of the leaders that radicalized them himself was not so educated himself, but he managed to convince them 'cause they knew even less.
BENRAAD: The first mentor of the group was the same age. He was also of Algerian background. He was a janitor. He had a very particular style, mixing rock 'n' roll charisma with, you know, wearing the kufi and having a long hair. And he very quickly told the guys that they didn't basically need to go to the mosque anymore, that they could come to his place, that he would himself deliver the knowledge of Islam and the Quran. He was very instrumental in the radicalization of Kouachi and others as of basically 2004, 2005.
MONTAGNE: Is there any remedy then looking at this in the near-term that can be done to stop this radicalization?
BENRAAD: It's a very tough question. My belief is that the radicalization, Islamists in particular, builds on a more systemic issue, which has to do with social conditions, the economy crisis and absence of the prospects for French youth. But I think this is a more profound issue that France will have to confront at some point.
MONTAGNE: Thank you very much for joining us.
BENRAAD: Thank you.
MONTAGNE: Miriam Benraad's book, "Iraq: The Revenge Of History" is set to be released next month in France.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
And, Renee, there is one change that has come to the neighborhood you were just talking about.
(SOUNDBITE OF GABRIEL FAURE SONG, "THE REQUIEM")
GREENE: That is the Paris Orchestra, one of France's most elite orchestras, paying tribute to the victims of last week's terrorist attacks.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
The gleaming, new 2,400-seat Philharmonie de Paris opened its doors in the 19th arrondissement yesterday. The neighborhood, as we heard, has made news for its ties to the Charlie Hebdo attackers. But last night it was humming with concert-goers, including French President Francois Hollande.
GREENE: The audience was treated to a performance of "The Requiem" by French composer Gabriel Faure.
(SOUNDBITE OF GABRIEL FAURE SONG, "THE REQUIEM")
GREENE: Doreen Carvajal is culture correspondent for The New York Times. She's based in Paris.
DOREEN CARVAJAL: It's the first time that a grand cultural institution has moved beyond the Seine River to the edges of Paris in the Northeast. And the idea of the architect, Jean Nouvel, is that this grand temple points toward the suburbs that have been scorned by the city of light.
GREENE: Carvajal adds that as the audience for classical music ages, the Paris Orchestra is trying to expand its reach.
MONTAGNE: The hall is promising a wide range of eclectic programming, like world music and hip-hop.
CARVAJAL: So they are trying to appeal to people with different musical tastes and to make them realize that music can be part of life, part of your weekend leisure activities.
MONTAGNE: Carvajal says some Parisians are not happy about having to trek to the outskirts of the city to hear the Paris Orchestra, especially since turbulence is nothing new in the neighborhood. It was the center of youth riots 10 years ago.
GREENE: At the same time, she says there are residents of the 19th arrondissement who rarely go to the city center.
CARVAJAL: There are people who have never been to the Louvre before, who have never been to the Eiffel Tower. They regard each other with wariness, and so now they have this grand concert hall that may bring people together.
(SOUNDBITE OF GABRIEL FAURE SONG)
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
We have seen over the past week the power of cartoons. Well, some believe that power can be harnessed to help curb extremism. In the Middle East Kingdom of Jordan, the government enlisted a comic book creator to do this using anti-jihadi superheroes. NPR's Alice Fordham met up with him.
SULEIMAN BAKHIT: My name is Suleiman Bakhit. I'm a Jordanian social entrepreneur and a best-selling comic book creator.
ALICE FORDHAM, BYLINE: Bakhit and I are in a bar in Jordan's capital, Amman.
Hey, cheers.
BAKHIT: Cheers.
FORDHAM: He cracks open his laptop to show me some heroes. The artwork is sophisticated, vivid, influenced by Japan. The subject matter...
BAKHIT: All right. So this is "Element Zero." It's the story of a Jordanian special forces operator. This is...
FORDHAM: Oh, wow.
BAKHIT: This is like one of the terrorists.
FORDHAM: He scrolls and the story bursts off the screen, disguises, depravity and victory against extremists. Bakhit started these comics after he met some children in the conservative area of this mostly Muslim country. He asked them about their heroes. They said they didn't really have any, though heard a lot about someone called Osama bin Laden.
BAKHIT: Talking to those kids, what it showed me is there's a huge appetite for positive role models, real heroes.
FORDHAM: He ended up funded by a royal foundation and the education ministry to produce the comics for schools. It's one way the state is trying to dispel radical views in a still stable country which worries about extremism, especially seeping in from its chaotic neighbors, Iraq and Syria. Other tactics include the minister for Muslim Affairs asking imams to keep sermons moderate. Some think despite the carrots, the government's using too much stick.
MARWAN SHEHADEH: Because they concentrate on security and military. They don't talk to these people.
FORDHAM: This is Marwan Shehadeh, a religious man himself, an academic and author. Last year, an anti-terror law was broadened. People are now being jailed for sowing discord online. When you imprison someone, he says, they look heroic. And jail hardens people.
SHEHADEH: You created an extreme person who will revenge in the future.
FORDHAM: Shehadeh reckons extremists here have grown from hundreds to thousands in recent years, and the turning point came when Jordan joined the U.S. in a coalition against ISIS in September. Radicals who admired ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi now also see him as standing up to the U.S. They despise Jordan for helping in airstrikes against someone they see as, well, kind of a hero.
SHEHADEH: It is a model of hero that he implemented Islamic state and he defeats many enemies.
FORDHAM: You often hear worries about Jordan's role in the coalition fueling extremism. Ruheil Gharaibi is a moderate Islamist with the Muslim Brotherhood and a university professor.
RUHEIL GHARAIBI: (Foreign language spoken).
FORDHAM: "I see the youth in classes," he says, "and their conversations in real life and social media. When I criticize radicalism and violence, they don't like it."
A survey by the University of Jordan last year found 10 percent of respondents consider ISIS a legitimate resistance organization. For the comic book creator Bakhit, this extremist undercurrent is very real. He has a scar across his face from an attack a few years back.
BAKHIT: I realized, actually, that their attack meant that I was doing the right thing, that I was, you know, kicking the hornets' nest, I guess.
FORDHAM: And like the cartoonists in France, he's still creating comics. Alice Fordham, NPR News.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
And let's talk about one specific work place, the New York City Police Department, which is facing criticism for allowing problem officers to stay on. WNYC's Robert Lewis reports on the NYPD's track record of policing its own.
ROBERT LEWIS, BYLINE: Darvel Elliot was arrested in August, 2010 because he matched the description of a robbery suspect. He says he was already in handcuffs when the world went black. He came to...
DARVEL ELLIOT: In the hospital, Brookdale Hospital, face stuck to the sheet like Velcro.
LEWIS: Photos show his face covered with blood-soaked bandages. The robbery charges were ultimately dismissed, and he sued. The cops never got a chance to defend themselves. The city quickly settled for $20,000, a nuisance value.
ELLIOT: You think we're the danger, but you're the danger. Like, you're supposed to protect and serve us. We're not supposed to be scared of you. We're supposed to be safe around you.
LEWIS: The Brooklyn police officer named in the lawsuit is Donald Sadowy. He's been the subject of at least 10 lawsuits, including some for excessive force, in little more than two years. An 11th lawsuit was filed against him in November. And it's not just him. While police disciplinary records are confidential in New York, it's easy to find dozens of other cops with similar records, all of which calls into question just how seriously the NYPD polices its own.
SAMUEL WALKER: I think there's been, you know, a really systematic failure of accountability on the part of the NYPD.
LEWIS: Samuel Walker is a retired criminal justice professor and police accountability expert. He says the department keeps information on things like civilian complaints and disciplinary histories for its 35,000 officers. It also monitors cops who are accused of excessive force. But Walker says it's not enough. He says the NYPD puts a lot of energy and resources into spotting crime trends. It should do the same for problem cops. The city now spends more than $100 million each year to settle lawsuits against the police.
WALKER: If you could devise a system to identify them and to identify them early, you could prevent a lot of these inappropriate actions out there on the street.
CANDACE MCCOY: Ten lawsuits is too much.
LEWIS: Candace McCoy is a criminal justice professor at the City University of New York's Graduate Center.
MCCOY: The question is, what is the cutoff? What is the exact number beyond which you take this person off the street?
LEWIS: A lot of misconduct never results in a lawsuit. On the flip side, lawsuits often name several officers, including some that may have played a minor role. So departments around the country often look for combinations of indicators to spot patterns of questionable behavior. Many, for example, also look at cops who regularly charge people with resisting arrest. Again, police accountability expert Samuel Walker.
WALKER: There's a widespread pattern in American policing where resisting arrest charges are used to - for cover. And that phrase is used - the officer's use of force. Why did the officer use force? Well, the person was resisting arrest.
LEWIS: A small number of NYPD officers account for the bulk of such charges. Sadowy, the officer with 11 lawsuits, has more resisting arrest cases than all but a handful of other cops. Civilian complaints are another red flag. Here in New York City, they're confidential. But reports from the cities Civilian Complaint Review Board show 40 percent of the 35,000 officers on the force today have never been the subject of a citizen complaint. Another 20 percent have only one. Yet, about a thousand cops have 10 or more complaints. One has been able to rack up 51.
RICHARD EMERY: But if an officer has a pattern of a lot of complaints - let alone substantiated complaints - that officer is certainly worth watching and even warning and certainly retraining.
LEWIS: That's chairman of the review board, attorney Richard Emery. He says the department has not seemed too interested in using the board's records to spot problems officers.
EMERY: They've had access to it. But they've never asked.
LEWIS: The NYPD did not respond to multiple requests for an interview, nor did NYPD Officer Sadowy. Police Commissioner William Bratton has started a massive department-wide retraining on the use of force and spoken out about the need to get rid of bad cops.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
COMMISSIONER WILLIAM BRATTON: There are some officers in the department, unfortunately, who should not be here. They're brutal. They're corrupt. And we'll work very aggressively to deal with that.
LEWIS: But in 2014, the department decided not to discipline a quarter of the cops the Civilian Complaint Review Board found committed misconduct. For NPR News, I'm Robert Lewis in New York.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
We're introducing you this morning to Invisibilia. It's the name of a new NPR program that's all about the invisible forces that shape human behavior. This week's episode focuses on fear. And to give just a taste of one of Invisibilia's co-hosts, Alix Spiegel, brings us the story of a man with a debilitating fear of rejection.
ALIX SPIEGEL, BYLINE: The evolution of Jason Comley, freelance IT guy from Cambridge, Ontario, began one sad night several years ago.
JASON COMELY: That Friday evening in my, you know, one- bedroom apartment trying to be busy. But really, I knew that I was avoiding things.
SPIEGEL: See, nine months earlier, Jason's wife had left him.
COMELY: She, my ex-wife, had found someone that was taller than I was, had money more money than I had and was better-looking than I was. So yeah, yeah, it was...
SPIEGEL: And since then, Jason had really withdrawn from life. He didn't go out, avoided talking to people, especially to women. And that Friday, he realized that this approach was taking a toll.
COMELY: I had nowhere to go and no one to hang out with. And so I just broke down and started crying. It was just something that made me realize that I'm afraid. And then I just - I asked myself, afraid of what?
SPIEGEL: And sitting there, he says, it just suddenly hit him, why he was so afraid.
COMELY: It was rejection. I thought, I'm afraid of rejection. And so this is going to sound a little bit weird, but when I realized that it was rejection, I was kind of thinking about the Spetsnaz.
SPIEGEL: The who?
COMELY: Do you know about the...
SPIEGEL: No.
COMELY: ...The Spetsnaz?
SPIEGEL: No.
The Spetsnaz, apparently, are an elite Russian military unit with a really, really intense training regime.
COMELY: You know, I heard of one situation where they were locked in a room, a windowless room, with a very angry dog, and they'd only be armed with a spade. And only one person's going to get out, either the dog or the Spetsnaz.
SPIEGEL: And then a strange thought occurred to Jason - maybe he could somehow use the rigorous approach of the Spetsnaz against his fear.
COMELY: So I thought, you know, I'm going to try to apply their training methodology to this situation.
SPIEGEL: So if you're a freelance IT guy, living in a one- bedroom apartment in Cambridge, Ontario, what is the modern equivalent of being trapped in a windowless room with a rabid dog and nothing to protect you but a single, handheld spade?
COMELY: I had to get rejected at least once every single day by someone.
SPIEGEL: He started in the parking lot of his local grocery store, went up to a total stranger and asked for a ride across town.
COMELY: And he looked at me, like, and just said, I'm not going that way, buddy. Yeah, just like - and I was like, thank you.
SPIEGEL: It felt great.
COMELY: It was like got it. I got my rejection.
SPIEGEL: Because Jason, he had totally inverted the rules of life. He took rejection and made it something that he wanted so that he would feel good when he got it.
COMELY: It was sort of like walking on my hands or living underwater or something. It was just like a different reality. The rules of life had changed.
SPIEGEL: So he kept going - went to Wal-Mart, tried to give a flyer for his Mormon church to this woman he found in the aisles.
COMELY: And she looked me squarely in the eye and sort of spoke very slowly so that I would completely understand. And she just went, no.
(LAUGHTER)
SPIEGEL: Jason eventually came up with a name for this makeshift game he'd created. He called it rejection therapy. Then one day, Jason got another idea - he wrote down all of his real-life rejection attempts...
COMELY: Ask for a ride from a stranger, even if you don't need one.
SPIEGEL: ...Had them printed up...
COMELY: Before purchasing something, ask for a discount.
SPIEGEL: ...On a deck of cards.
COMELY: Ask a stranger for a breath mint.
SPIEGEL: And he began to sell those cards online, you know, to make his game more official. And slowly, rejection therapy, it became a kind of small, cult phenomenon with people playing all over the world.
MATT RAMIS: Hi, sir, do you have any chewing gum by any chance? No? OK.
SPIEGEL: Like this guy, a student in California named Matt Ramis.
RAMIS: Hi, excuse me, do you guys have chewing gum by any chance?
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: No, I don't, sorry.
RAMIS: All right. It's all right.
SPIEGEL: ...Or this guy, Joey Chandler from San Francisco.
JOEY CHANDLER: You want to come play golf with us tomorrow night?
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: When?
CHANDLER: Tomorrow night.
MAN: I would love to. I don't know if I can.
SPIEGEL: Jason's heard from a teacher in Colorado, a massage therapist in Budapest, a computer programmer in Japan and even a widowed Russian grandmother. She's using rejection therapy to pick up men.
COMELY: It's really cool. So there's an 80-year-old babushka playing rejection therapy.
SPIEGEL: So what has Jason learned from all of this? That your fears, most of them anyway, aren't grounded in reality in the way that you think that they are. They're just a story that you tell yourself, and you can choose to stop repeating it. You can choose to stop listening.
COMELY: Don't even bother trying to be cool. Just get out there and get rejected. And sometimes it's going to get dirty, but that's OK because you're going to feel great after. You're going to feel like, wow, I disobeyed my fear. You know, I disobeyed fear.
Say hello to three people at the grocery store. Offer to pay for someone's order. Introduce yourself to a stranger. Make yourself look radically different today. Knock on a neighbor's door, request something. Ask someone out on a date. Sit beside a stranger. Strike up a conversation. Smile at every person you walk past today.
GREENE: That story came to us from Alix Spiegel. She is co-host of Invisibilia. You can hear the program on many public radio stations this weekend. The podcast is available for download at npr.org and on iTunes.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
In the world of animals that travel, the bar-headed goose stands out.
(SOUNDBITE OF BAR-HEADED GOOSE CALL)
INSKEEP: And also sounds off. Every year, this huge, white-and-black bird travels from Central to South Asia, which means flying over the Himalayan Mountains. NPR's Nell Greenfieldboyce reports that researchers recently did an unusual study to see how the birds tackle this high-altitude challenge.
NELL GREENFIELDBOYCE, BYLINE: There's one report of these geese flying over Mount Everest. That's unconfirmed, but these birds do fly high.
CHARLES BISHOP: You know, they're traveling through some of the most difficult terrain on Earth in temperatures of minus 20 or minus 30 through 500 kilometers of steep, beautiful, but ice- and snow-covered mountains.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Charles Bishop studies bird flight at Bangor University in the United Kingdom. He wanted to know how the geese do it.
BISHOP: My interest is kind of understanding how animals actually work; how much energy does it take to fly; how high do they go; how difficult are their journeys?
GREENFIELDBOYCE: To find out, a team headed to Mongolia. They captured geese on a lake and did a little bit of avian surgery. They implanted tubes filled with sensors to record the birds' altitude, how quickly they beat their wings and their heart rates. The next year, after the migration, the researchers managed to recapture some of the birds and get the data. Bishop says they had thought the geese might climb to a high altitude and then stay up there, like an airplane.
BISHOP: We know that they've been spotted occasionally at very high altitudes over 7,000 meters by climbers.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: To their surprise, the geese actually flew up and down, up and down, like a roller coaster.
BISHOP: They climb, get over an obstacle, and they go back down again. And they just seem to be tracking the terrain.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Bishop and his colleagues figured out that flying high up in thin air is really hard. The geese have to flap their wings a little faster. This makes their heart rates go way up. So they drop back down as soon as they can. Doug Altshuler is a flight researcher at the University of British Columbia.
DOUG ALTSHULER: What's so amazing about this is that they're actually able, by doing this, to transverse, you know, one of the hardest migration passages of any bird and yet do so within a physiological zone that's comfortable for them.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: The new findings appear in the journal Science. Nell Greenfieldboyce, NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
It is Friday, when we hear from StoryCorps. And today we have a story remembering a man named Max Starkloff. In his early 20s, Max was in a near-fatal car accident, leaving him quadriplegic and living in a nursing home. One day, he came across a young woman who worked at that nursing home. Her name was Colleen. And at StoryCorps, Colleen sat down with her daughter, Meaghan, to remember Max.
COLLEEN KELLY STARKLOFF: Here comes this guy into my office - drop-dead gorgeous. I was done, Meaghan, right then and there. Max was 6-feet-5, set very tall in his wheelchair. He couldn't use his fingers or his hands. But he could get his left arm around me to hug me, and that was fine with me. And I was smitten.
MEAGHAN STARKLOFF BREITENSTEIN: How long did you guys date before he proposed?
STARKLOFF: We dated for two years. And when I told Grandma and Grandpa that Dad had asked me to marry him, Grandmother said to me, you marry a person because you love them, not to be their nurse. And I said, Mom, I love him. And I won't be his nurse. I'll be his partner. I'll be the mother of his children. That blew their socks off. I knew adoption was how we were going to get you guys. But getting you wasn't very easy. I remember a social worker coming out to the house and telling us how we wouldn't be good parents. I was devastated.
BREITENSTEIN: Right.
STARKLOFF: But Dad told her how wrong she was, turned me and said, Sweetie, get her coat, she's leaving, and kicked her out of the house. And so when you came along, you changed our world because you were his little buddy. And when you were 4 years old, you were riding on Dad's footrest in his wheelchair.
BREITENSTEIN: I used to love doing that.
STARKLOFF: Yeah, you had your feet between his feet on the foot pedals, and you had your arms resting on his knees riding down the street. And who's at the gas station at the corner but the social worker? And he rode you right up next to her car and said, I'm Max Starkloff, and I want to introduce you to my daughter, Meaghan. She's 4 years old. And then he wheeled away and never gave her a chance to say one word.
BREITENSTEIN: I just feel very blessed that somebody gave you guys a chance.
STARKLOFF: Everything we did, we did together - going to your games, going to your swim meets. Your father was there. I knew when I met Dad that this was a man who I could stand with and love. He was a man among men. Your dad was a giant.
INSKEEP: Colleen Kelly Starkloff remembering her late husband, Max, with her daughter, Meaghan Starkloff Breitenstein, in St. Louis. Max, by the way, became a leader in the disability rights movement and died in 2010. Colleen and Meaghan's conversation will be archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. You can get the StoryCorps podcast on iTunes and at npr.org.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
When President Obama announced airstrikes against ISIS militants last September, he pointed to Yemen as a model for eradicating the terrorist group in Iraq.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: The strategy of taking out terrorists who threaten us while supporting partners on the front lines is one that we have successfully pursued in Yemen and Somalia for years. And it is consistent with the approach I outlined earlier this year, to use force against anyone who threatens America's core interests but to mobilize partners wherever possible to address broader challenges to international order.
GREENE: Now, despite the strategy the U.S. has pursued in Yemen, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, endures there. Evidence of the group's steady influence resurfaced last week in Paris when two men attacked the editorial offices of Charlie Hebdo. They claim that al-Qaida guided their mission, one that intelligence officials believe originated in Yemen. Now, for more background on the global security threat this porous nation in the Middle East poses, we turn to Danya Greenfield. She's deputy director of the Atlantic Council's Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East. Why has al-Qaida been able to set up shop here?
DANYA GREENFIELD: I think it's actually taking advantage of a couple different trends. There is no pervasive security infrastructure and police force that governs the entire country. The central government has never been able to really have a monopoly of force. At the same time, the sense of a lack of economic opportunity, disenfranchisement, disconnected youth from any sense of a hopeful future, is also really attracting members into the group. Part of what we've seen too is that as the Saudi intelligence forces have become more effective at rooting out their own terrorism problem, many of those operatives and those leaders went from Saudi Arabia to Yemen. So this has really become a magnet for sort of the most of nefarious characters, top-tier leadership that have come together again in this sort of ungoverned space where they've been allowed to regroup.
GREENE: We know the United States has been very active in Yemen in fighting al-Qaida and using drone strikes. I mean, I would imagine it's fair to say they haven't been completely successful because we're seeing what happened in Paris. I mean, what is the relationship right now between the United States and Yemen?
GREENFIELD: The United States and Yemen have a close partnership and a close working relationship certainly at the top level. But again, as you noted, this has not necessarily been the most successful approach. I think what's tragic, looking at Yemen, is that for the last several years, our counterterrorism and intelligence officials have noted that AQAP represents the next greatest threat to the United States. And yet, we have simply been unable to dedicate sufficient attention and resources to really look at what would it take to mitigate that threat? So what we've done is focus specifically on drone strikes and targeted assassinations, trying to take out leadership, often killing noncombatants in the process as well as training elite counterterrorism forces. But again, there is no broad-based security infrastructure in place to support this. So there's really a gap here about the way we're looking at addressing this problem.
GREENE: Which is amazing to hear you say because President Obama used his strategy in Yemen as a success story, as a model, he said, for the U.S. going after ISIS in Iraq.
GREENFIELD: Absolutely. And when President Obama made that statement, I can tell you that everyone who watches and follows Yemen let out a collective groan because I think in many ways, this was a very sad statement on the sort of arms-length away approach that we've taken to dealing with some of these issues. So the model is train and equip local forces to take on this battle and to use aerial strikes as much as possible. And I think that this has actually been a very shortsighted and potentially detrimental strategy. And until we are able to really look at the multifaceted political and social and economic factors that are at play in these countries and then develop a strategy that responds to that, we're going to continue playing this Whack-A-Mole game for years, if not decades, to come.
GREENE: Well, and that makes me want to ask you about what Americans were told after the September 11 attacks, which was the United States cannot allow al-Qaida to settle into a country with a weak government where they can plan attacks against the United States and the West. Is Yemen becoming the next Afghanistan?
GREENFIELD: I think the tragic piece here is that we've learned these very painful lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan and have done a 180, which is people looked at the investment of life, of money, of effort in these two places, seen that it was perhaps unsuccessful, maybe to put it mildly. And then the reaction is, well, we don't want to do that again in Yemen. We don't want to repeat the same mistakes. And frankly, we don't have the resources to have that kind of heavy-handed, boots on the ground approach. And so the reaction, unfortunately, has been a sort of boomerang to the other end, which was, let's try and do as little as is absolutely necessary. Unfortunately, that's not the right approach either. There has to be a middle ground where we are neither putting, you know, hundreds of thousands of troops on the ground, nor are we sort of, you know, taking this hands-off approach and trying to just use targeted assassinations from the sky to eradicate a movement that is really firmly embedded, in many ways, in Yemeni society.
GREENE: Danya, thanks so much for coming in and chatting. We appreciate it.
GREENFIELD: Thank you very much.
GREENE: That's Danya Greenfield. She's deputy director of the Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East at the Atlantic Council, where she leads the Yemen policy initiative.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
One week after they killed the Paris shooters, French police are still rounding up suspects. French media say police picked up a dozen people. They made those arrests during an especially tense moment across Europe.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
In what authorities say are unrelated cases, police in Belgium moved in on suspected militants. The police exchanged gunfire with suspects, killing two and arresting at least a dozen more.
INSKEEP: Police also made arrests in Berlin. They picked up people suspected of recruiting for ISIS, the group that controls much of Iraq and Syria.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
If you go for a drive this morning, look around at the other cars. The average car on American streets is more than a decade old. A lot of people put off new purchases during the recession and are just now getting back to buying.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
A lot has changed about cars in 10 years, as NPR's Sonari Glinton learned at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit.
SONARI GLINTON, BYLINE: So to help me explain how new new cars are, I'm here with Micah Muzio from Kelley Blue Book. Your job is just to, like, tell people about cars. So are you going to do that for us?
MICAH MUZIO: Yeah - I - we're going to do that right now in fact. We've got a really good example of a new car, which is a 2015 Hyundai Sonata. And just to make sure I have my information correct, I did a little bit of research into what the 2005 Sonata looked like. And, man, it has gotten so much better.
GLINTON: So the reason we chose a Hyundai Sonata - it's kind of a typical car...
MUZIO: Yeah.
GLINTON: It's like a very basic mid-size sedan. The average person is driving a car something like this. So what's the first thing that sort of stands out?
MUZIO: You know, the first thing is under the hood. Way back in 2005, the engine - four-cylinder - was putting out about 138 horsepower. And it got about 28 miles per gallon on the freeway. Modern times, the base Sonata, right about 180 horsepower and 37,38 miles per gallon on the freeway - so a huge jump in economy. And it's more powerful.
GLINTON: So now that we're on the outside of the car, are there any features on the outside of the car that jump out?
MUZIO: Yeah, actually - you know what? - maybe we should move to the front of the car because, you know, that 10 more miles per gallon on the freeway is really enabled by aerodynamics. So it may not look like it. In fact, this looks like a very blunt nose. But there's a lot of very clever aerodynamic work that's taking place. If you look around by the wheels...
GLINTON: He's crawling on the floor.
MUZIO: I'm crawling around on the floor. But if you look under these regions here, how air flow moves around the underside of the vehicle really enhances efficiency. So I'm going to peak my head down here. And yeah, actually, yeah, there's a lot of very smooth stuff. You used to have, you know, parts of the car hanging out. And that just disrupts air beneath the vehicle. And that just adds drag. So by closing up that area and improving aerodynamics where you can't see, you really improve the fuel economy.
GLINTON: I guess the real magilla is probably on the inside of the car. So let's get in and see...
MUZIO: Yeah, let's climb in.
(SOUNDBITE OF CAR DOOR CLOSING)
GLINTON: All right. So one of the most important places where you will see a difference in a car is the steering will.
MUZIO: Yeah, totally 'cause there's so much more stuff happening. If you go back a decade, cruise control would be kind of about it. But now you've got audio controls. On the left-hand side there, you'll see there's that green and the red button. And that picks up the phone. So phone connectivity is a thing that didn't exist a decade ago. And this one right here is really interesting.
GLINTON: So it's a little car running over a couple bumps, I'd guess.
MUZIO: That's dynamic cruise control. And what those little bars mean is that's how you control the distance between you and the vehicle in front of you. So you don't have to keep your foot on the gas at all. It'll just kind of follow the car in front of you. You do have to steer though, so do that.
GLINTON: So the things that we can't see are all the safety features - right? - that have ended up in your car. So air bags...
MUZIO: Yeah, so if you go back a decade, typically you'd have a front air bag for the driver and the passenger. But now, you know, side air bags from the seats, that's basically standard. Most cars you buy these days are going to have side curtain air bags as well. What you don't see is what's happening underneath the skin. It's not a very sexy topic, but metallurgy has changed a lot in the last decade.
GLINTON: So this car - all these cars here - we've been saying that they're better. Is there something dumb or worse about the average car like this?
MUZIO: I think maybe what you could say is that it's more complicated. And the ability for a driver that's been driving for many decades to get into a car and immediately understand all of its controls, that may be much, much harder. But if you are willing to put in just a little bit of effort and learn how the vehicle operates, I think any modern car would be many times better than its equivalents from a decade ago. And, you know, what's exciting is that in another decade, we're going to feel the same.
GLINTON: So I'll tell you what. Ten years from now, we'll do the same story.
MUZIO: Hey, I'll be here.
GLINTON: Thank you so much. I appreciate it. That's Micah Muzio of Kelley Blue Book. From the floor of the Detroit Auto Show, Sonari Glinton, NPR News.
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After more than 20 years in prison, a Chicago man is free. Illinois Governor Pat Quinn granted requests for clemency on his final day in office. They included clemency for Tyrone Hood. He'd been imprisoned for murder despite doubts about his guilt. Nicholas Schmidle brought fresh attention to this case. He's a writer for The New Yorker who reconstructed the 1993 murder of a popular student athlete.
NICHOLAS SCHMIDLE: He was going out to get a car wash apparently on the Saturday afternoon, and he never came home. His body was found approximately a week later, partially nude in the backseat of his own vehicle with a gunshot to the torso.
INSKEEP: Nicholas Schmidle's article last year showed how police faced pressure to arrest someone.
SCHMIDLE: It was what they call a heater case. And so it drew enormous media attention and pressure to solve the case.
INSKEEP: And where did that pressure lead the police?
SCHMIDLE: To Tyrone Hood. There were a couple of loose bottles that were found in the floor of the car that - Marshall Morgan Jr., the young man who was killed. And these bottles contained fingerprints that, according to the police, were Tyrone Hood's fingerprints.
INSKEEP: And they ended up questioning Tyrone Hood.
SCHMIDLE: They did, and they also questioned a number of other people from the neighborhood. And they all gave very strong statements pointing to Tyrone's guilt.
INSKEEP: Now, the justice system operated here. There was a trial. Tyrone Hood was convicted. What caused you and many other people to think that there was a problem here?
SCHMIDLE: The problems really started on the eve of the trial when Tyrone's attorney discovered that the victim's father had taken out a life insurance policy on the victim shortly before the victim was killed. The victim's father, Marshall Morgan Sr., his fiancee had also just been killed in very similar circumstances. She was found partially nude in the backseat of her own vehicle with gunshot wounds to the torso.
Tyrone's attorney tried to present an argument that Tyrone was not guilty, and the judge dismissed these efforts and said that, you know, he accused him of trying to be Perry Mason or something. Furthermore, in the time between Tyrone's arrest and his conviction and then in the years after, nearly every one of the witnesses who offered statements against Tyrone retracted those statements and said that they had been coerced from one of two detectives who have been associated with a number of false confessions.
INSKEEP: So you wrote this story in 2014. Other people have been advocating for Tyrone Hood. His lawyer then sent a clemency appeal to the outgoing governor of Illinois, mentioning your story, among other things. What happened then?
SCHMIDLE: The appeal was sent in late November. Governor's office deliberated over it, and on Monday, in one of his last acts in office, he commuted Tyrone's sentence.
INSKEEP: Commuted meaning he's not pardoned.
SCHMIDLE: He is not pardoned.
INSKEEP: But he's free.
SCHMIDLE: He is free.
INSKEEP: And Tyrone Hood is on the line with us now to talk about his experience. Mr. Hood, welcome to the program.
TYRONE HOOD: Thank you.
INSKEEP: And congratulations on your release.
HOOD: Yeah.
INSKEEP: Where are you?
HOOD: I'm at my niece house in Dolton, Illinois.
INSKEEP: So what was it like to walk out of the prison on Wednesday afternoon after...
HOOD: Oh, it was a feeling I could never describe.
INSKEEP: Did someone come to your cell and lead you out, and was there processing? What exactly happened?
SCHMIDLE: We need to stop.
HOOD: OK, we need to stop the interview for a minute. My parole officer's here.
INSKEEP: His parole officer. She just arrived at the house. So Mr. Hood stepped away to discuss the terms of his release. We stayed on the line until he was able to come back to describe that feeling of leaving prison.
HOOD: You know, I was so happy that at times, I start getting teary-eyed. I just felt like, at that time, I could just breathe life in me, in and out.
INSKEEP: And for the first time in more than 20 years, Mr. Hood was able to see a range of colors.
HOOD: The colors was very limited - dark blue, light blue shirt, gray as the bars and white ceiling. That was it. So when I seen a color red, I stared at it. I stared at it. It was a machine - pop machine or something - in front of this gas station. I just looked at that machine for a while because of the color red.
INSKEEP: Are you still working to overturn your conviction? You've received clemency, but you're still formally convicted of murder? Is that right?
HOOD: Yes. Yes, I got to because I got to clear my name. I got to walk free. Like, this ankle monitor has to be on my leg. I got to get that off. I feel like I'm still locked up but in another different location. I just got to clear my name. That's all I need, you know, far as - I'm just trying to get my life back.
INSKEEP: Nick Schmidle, what's the process he's going to be going through in the coming days?
SCHMIDLE: Tyrone has a hearing in early February, I believe, on February 9. That is the next hearing in this post-conviction process. The ball right now is in the state's attorney's office. If they determine that they are tired of fighting this or that they want to dismiss the charges at any point, Tyrone will be formally exonerated, and he will not only be a man who has his freedom, but he will be a man who has been determined to have been innocent of the crime that he's currently convicted of.
INSKEEP: That's where you want to get, Tyrone Hood?
HOOD: Yes.
INSKEEP: Was there ever a moment in this more than 20 years when you thought of just giving in, saying, OK, guilty plea. Let's try to get out of this.
HOOD: No. No. No. No. I can't do that. I can never do that. I'm not taking that to my grave and heaven, being in front of God, and he tells me, well, why did you do that? Why did you admit to something you didn't do? Plus, the mother - Marshall Morgan Jr.'s mother - needs justice. She need that.
INSKEEP: Tyrone Hood, is there anything at this moment that you would want to say to the police and the prosecutors who caused you to be imprisoned for two decades?
HOOD: I'm not holding no grudge. I'm not angry at them. This is not going to make me a better man to be angry at them. It's not.
INSKEEP: This may seem like a strange thing to ask, but did you learn anything from spending 20 years in prison?
HOOD: Yeah. I learned to just be patient, be quick to listen and slow to speak, you know. Don't judge nobody.
INSKEEP: Well, Tyrone Hood, thanks very much for taking the time to talk with us.
HOOD: I appreciate sharing what I went through with you.
INSKEEP: Tyrone Hood, at his niece's house in Dolton, Illinois on his second day of freedom. Nicholas Schmidle of The New Yorker wrote about Hood's case last year.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep. What is happening to my home state of Indiana? The Indianapolis Colts made the AFC title game led by quarterback Andrew Luck who grew a neck beard, a beard down his neck - neard. In support, The Indianapolis Star created an app so you, too, can graft a neard on your photo. Governor Mike Pence did this, appearing sort of Abe Lincolnish. Sort of. Even Luck admits it's a bad look, and his girlfriend agrees. He says he just doesn't like razor burn. It's MORNING EDITION.
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Two states executed inmates last night. Florida used lethal injection against the man convicted of leading a 1993 home invasion that led to the death of a banker. Oklahoma also conducted an execution. It was the state's first since a botched execution in April. And it went ahead despite a brief delay as the Supreme Court considered concerns about the drugs that were used. We should warn you, there are some graphic descriptions in the next three minutes. Here's Rachel Hubbard of member station KOSU.
RACHEL HUBBARD, BYLINE: Inmate Charles Warner's crime was particularly disturbing. He was convicted of raping and killing an 11-month-old girl. Last night, Associated Press reporter Sean Murphy witnessed Warner die.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
SEAN MURPHY: The shades were lifted at 7:08 p.m. Mr. Warner was strapped to the gurney with both arms - IV lines in both arms.
HUBBARD: Media witnesses did hear the inmate say, my body is on fire, and it feels like acid. But it did not appear he was in pain. Warner was supposed to die nine months ago, on the same day of the botched execution. In that one, it took 43 minutes to successfully kill another inmate, even as he talked while writhing on the gurney. Since then, Oklahoma made nearly two dozen changes to its execution procedures. Richard Dieter of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C., explains some of those changes.
RICHARD DIETER: Everything from, you know, remodeling the execution chamber, putting in a clock and communications devices and things which I think are good, but not necessarily the heart of what went wrong.
HUBBARD: What went wrong depends on who you talk to. The state says it was ineffective administration of drugs. But a lawsuit brought by Oklahoma death row inmates says the drugs are the problem. Brady Henderson is with the American Civil Liberties Union in Oklahoma.
BRADY HENDERSON: How do you actually figure out what's going to happen? You can't. You essentially have to experiment in a life-and-death situation.
HUBBARD: Oklahoma used a stronger dose of its lethal injection drug cocktail last night, similar to the one that Florida now administers. Dieter, of the Death Penalty Information Center says Arizona and Ohio have also had problems.
DIETER: This is still an experiment. It didn't work last time, and it didn't work in a number of states last year.
HUBBARD: Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court did take up the issue, but allowed Florida and Oklahoma's executions to proceed on a narrow 5-4 vote.
(SOUNDBITE OF PROTEST)
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting) One, two, three, don't kill for me.
HUBBARD: Oklahoma is a strong pro-death penalty state. But a few hours before Warner died, about 20 people stood outside the governor's mansion to protest the execution, among them, the Reverend Adam Leathers.
REVEREND ADAM LEATHERS: We viewed this just as the same as we view any other execution; it's a meaningless act of vengeance. It's not going to accomplish anything.
HUBBARD: Even though yesterday's execution appeared to have no problems, the issue might not go away. In a strongly worded eight-page opinion, Justice Sonja Sotomayor wrote that she hopes the U.S. Supreme Court will take up a future case about what she calls scientifically untested methods of execution. For NPR News, I'm Rachel Hubbard in Oklahoma City.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
President Obama's decision to normalize relations with Cuba set off a fierce debate about when former enemies are no longer enemies and about human rights on the island. But many Americans wondered if this meant they could finally go to the island. Well, today, the Obama administration is loosening some restrictions. A U.S. travel ban to Cuba is still technically in place, but experts say it's now a lot easier to get there. Here's NPR's Chris Arnold.
CHRIS ARNOLD, BYLINE: Between 1915 and 1930, Havana attracted more tourists than any other destination in the Caribbean. And the changes the Obama administration is putting into effect today suggest that more Americans will soon be making that trip again.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CUBAN CABBY")
DESI ARNAZ: (Singing) Forget the manana and come to Havana with me. I'm the Cuban cabby.
ARNOLD: That's Desi Arnaz in 1947, singing about a horse-drawn carriage driver in Havana.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CUBAN CABBY")
ARNAZ: (Singing) I'm the Cuban cabby. And I need dinero, money that is. The moon is peeping, the shadows creeping.
ARNOLD: Of course, today, Cuba is desperate for tourist money. Officially, the ban on Americans visiting Cuba as tourists remains in place unless Congress removes it. But effectively this move by the president...
JULIA SWEIG: This is the end of the travel ban as we know it.
ARNOLD: Julia Sweig is a Cuba scholar, formerly with the Council on Foreign Relations. She says it used to be that in order to travel to Cuba, you needed to formally apply for approval from the government. Now that's changed.
SWEIG: Most Americans can now go to Cuba without asking permission of their government in advance, and that's a very big deal.
ARNOLD: Now you still need to claim that you're going to Cuba for one of 12 approved purposes - for example, as a journalist or for research or for educational purposes. But it appears that nobody is really going to check. Collin Laverty is the president of Cuban Educational Travel, which is an approved tour organizer taking groups of students and others to Cuba.
COLLIN LAVERTY: It's monumental. You can expect that this will double, triple or even quadruple traffic from United States to Cuba in the coming years.
ARNOLD: To follow the rules, if you travel, say, for education, you're still supposed to be part of some legitimate educational tour group.
LAVERTY: You can't just go and kind of putz around.
ARNOLD: Still, it just got a lot easier to go Cuba. Sweig thinks pretty soon Americans can will be able to book travel with major airlines direct to Cuba much the same way we travel anywhere else. And if you do go to Cuba, you can now bring back a $100's worth of Cuban cigars legally. Chris Arnold, NPR News.
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Hollywood is still buzzing about the recent computer attacks at Sony. And now we have a new motion picture, "Blackhat," that offers a fictionalized version of cyber terrorism. Los Angeles Times and MORNING EDITION film critic Kenneth Turan has this review.
KENNETH TURAN, BYLINE: Director Michael Mann's "Blackhat" lures us in with a promise of state-of-the-art villainy. But its satisfactions are surprisingly old-school. At its heart, this is a very traditional crime story with the good guys straining every sinew to prevent evildoers from doing their worst. That war starts with an attack on a Chinese nuclear power plant. Then, a major American trade exchange is hacked. The U.S. and China cooperate to find the villain, but the Chinese side wants to use an imprisoned computer wiz, played by Chris Hemsworth. He's a sullen guy who drives a hard bargain.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BLACKHAT")
CHRIS HEMSWORTH: (As Nicholas Hathaway) I want you to commute my sentence for identification and the apprehension of the guy you're after. Those are the terms.
TURAN: Sullen or not, the hacker receives a get-out-of-jail card to pursue the bad guys. He also banters with an attractive woman on the Chinese team, played by Tang Wei.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BLACKHAT")
TANG WEI: (As Lien Chen) Open your eyes.
HEMSWORTH: (As Nicholas Hathaway) What'd you say?
WEI: (As Lien Chen) You talk like you're still in prison. But you're not in prison. Get your thinking to where you are, not where you've been.
HEMSWORTH: (As Nicholas Hathaway) What do you know about where I've been?
WEI: (As Lien Chen) No - nothing.
HEMSWORTH: (As Nicholas Hathaway) No, nothing.
TURAN: Sections of "Blackhat's" plot are standard. And Hemsworth, best known for playing Thor, is not ideal as a hacker. But Michael Mann's skill as a director holds our attention as the team follows lines of electronic breadcrumbs in pursuit of the evil one. Technology may have changed. Cybercrime may be all the rage. But the narrative song remains the same in films like this. And it's a tune this director knows by heart.
GREENE: Kenneth Turan reviews movies, both for MORNING EDITION and for The Los Angeles Times. This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm David Greene.
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And I'm Steve Inskeep.
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Leaders and thinkers in both major parties are starting a political bidding war. It's a competition to tackle inequality.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Democrats often label the problem income inequality.
INSKEEP: Republicans prefer to frame it as a lack of opportunity.
GREENE: Whatever they call it, key players on both sides seem to realize their ideas should somehow address one of the major economic trends of our time. They're offering up new proposals as well as repackaging their old ones.
INSKEEP: On this program in December, President Obama said an improving economy at last gave him a chance to tackle, quote, "long-term projects, including making sure everybody is benefiting from economic growth."
GREENE: And in next week's State of the Union speech, President Obama offers proposals including this. He wants to guarantee sick leave for workers who need it, up to seven paid days per year. NPR's Scott Horsley reports.
SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: President Obama outlined his leave proposal during a working lunch in Baltimore with a working mom, a school nurse and a small-business owner, three women with some insight into the challenges facing workers who don't enjoy paid sick leave.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: And if they've got kids or they've got an ailing parent, juggling both doing right by their families and making a living, can be tough.
HORSLEY: The president's proposal is likely to face an uphill battle in the new Republican Congress, where lawmakers are wary of imposing new costs on business. Jack Mozloom of the National Federation of Independent Business said small employers in particular have a tough time when one of their workers is out sick.
JACK MOZLOOM: If their people are not at work cutting grass and cutting hair and turning wrenches, then they're not getting paid. And if they're not getting paid, they can't pay their employees.
HORSLEY: Even if his proposal doesn't get traction in Congress, Obama plans to campaign for more generous leave policies at the state and local level, much as he did last year in pushing for a higher minimum wage. Obama is also urging lawmakers to grant paid parental leave to federal workers for the first time.
In the meantime, he's allowing new parents who work for the federal government to borrow against their future sick leave. Advocates are applauding the president's moves as good for the economy as well as workers. Vicki Shabo is vice president of the National Partnership for Women and Families.
VICKI SHABO: What businesses find is that workers are better able to take care of the family responsibilities they might have, come back to work, be more productive, be more engaged and less likely to drop out of the workforce.
HORSLEY: Voters have embraced paid leave requirements where the issue has appeared on ballots around the country. Shabo says whether they're Democrats or Republicans, workers know they get sick, and they need time off to be able to care for their families. Scott Horsley, NPR News, the White House.
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People across this country found different ways in the past year to protest against the deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of police. They stormed restaurants. They blocked interstates. They staged die-ins. And in Ferguson, Missouri, some also set things on fire. In Milwaukee, protesters are receiving training. Their goal is to find the best ways to commit civil disobedience. Here is LaToya Dennis from member station WUWM.
LATOYA DENNIS, BYLINE: There's a lot to consider if there's a chance you might be arrested.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
SHEA SCHACHAMEYER: Depending on who you are, that could be, like, who's going to pick my kids up? Is my car going to get towed when it's left at the meter?
DENNIS: That's Shea Schachameyer, a longtime activist.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
SCHACHAMEYER: The first time I was arrested in Milwaukee was 2003, at the start of the Iraq war, the big demonstration that was downtown.
DENNIS: On this night, she leads a session on a nonviolence action at All Peoples Church in Milwaukee.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting) We got the power.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Who's got the power?
PROTESTERS: (Chanting) We got the power.
DENNIS: About a hundred people are here learning new tactics.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
SCHACHAMEYER: How about the back of the room? You guys - quick - you're going to blockade that doorway or this whole section from table to table.
DENNIS: As people form lines and link arms, Schachameyer warns them.
SCHACHAMEYER: We're going to do a bunch of different scenarios. And if you need to call it off, if you're, like, getting hurt or uncomfortable in some way, just say, this is real; stop. And that's our code word, this is real.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: This is a mistake (laughter).
(LAUGHTER)
DENNIS: There is a lot of laughter as attendees try to break through the barricade. But these are serious issues. For months, people in Milwaukee have protested a fatal police shooting. Last April, a white police officer shot Dontre Hamilton 14 times. Hamilton was schizophrenic and didn't have a weapon. The officer was fired. But the district attorney didn't file charges. Now the officer wants his job back. And soon, the city's police commission will decide whether he should be rehired. Martha Davis Kipcak is one of the participants at the church. She's white and 58 years old.
MARTHA DAVIS KIPCAK: I don't think that we can just continue to have conversations with our friends and family around the dinner table. That's clearly not enough - that we have to find a way to be active and to raise our voice in solidarity against injustice.
DENNIS: Davis Kipcak says the community should be talking about race relations. Curtis Sails is co-founder of the Coalition for Justice, which organized the training. He hopes his group helps to foster that conversation.
CURTIS SAILS: Police, even though they wear a badge, even though they take an oath of office, some of them continue to brutalize and oppress and repress true freedom, true justice.
DENNIS: Sails says the U.S. is in the middle of a new civil rights era led by the people marching and protesting across the country. For NPR News, I'm LaToya Dennis in Milwaukee.
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Good morning. I'm David Greene. The Green Bay Packers, with their cheesehead fans, play the Seattle Seahawks Sunday. The winner heads to the Super Bowl. And here's a warning. If you find yourself on Bainbridge Island near Seattle, do not be caught with cheese at City Hall. The city manager has banned it today. He used executive order 12-12-12, which refers to the famous 12th man, the nickname for rabid Seahawks fans. A city spokeswoman did say there would be no cheese-related strip searches. And that's a good thing. It's MORNING EDITION.
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We now know how much oil fouled the Gulf of Mexico during the BP oil spill nearly five years ago. A New Orleans federal judge puts that figure at 3.19 million barrels. And that number is key in an upcoming trial that will determine how much the oil giant has to pay for the disaster. NPR's Debbie Elliott reports.
DEBBIE ELLIOTT, BYLINE: U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier's ruling is part of a complicated federal civil case establishing liability for the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history. The Deepwater Horizon exploded in 2010, killing 11 rig workers and sending oil gushing into the Gulf for nearly three months. The spill affected beaches, wetlands and wildlife stretching over five states. Barbier has already found that BP's gross negligence caused the disaster. His new ruling that the company discharged nearly 4 million barrels of oil sets the stage for a penalty phase of the trial that begins next week.
DAVID MUTH: It's a lot of oil.
ELLIOTT: David Muth is the Gulf restoration director for the National Wildlife Federation. He says Barbier's decision gets the coast ever closer to fixing damaged economies and ecosystems.
MUTH: And for this judge to send a very clear and powerful signal to operators in the Gulf that when you're engaging in incredibly risky business that involves human life, the health of communities and the health of ecosystems, you're just are not allowed to take chances. And you need to pay the maximum fine.
ELLIOTT: The Clean Water Act calls for fines up to $4,300 per barrel. That means BP is facing a maximum penalty that could top $13 billion. Barbier acknowledges there's no way to know with precision how much oil polluted the Gulf since, he says, there was no meter counting off each barrel of oil as it exited BP's blown-out well. His figure is less than the government's estimate but more than what BP had said spilled. BP says it's reviewing the decision and will argue for a lower penalty. Debbie Elliott, NPR News.
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Talks between Iran and the United States have resumed. The two sides are talking after extending a deadline to reach a deal over Iran's nuclear program. Several Western powers and Iranian negotiators are feeling pressure to make a deal. Many in Congress want to limit President Obama's authority to act at all. And then there are the politics of Iran, which we'll talk about with Thomas Erdbrink, who is Tehran bureau chief for The New York Times. Welcome back to the program.
THOMAS ERDBRINK: Thanks for having me, Steve.
INSKEEP: How large do these nuclear negotiations loom in Iranian conversations?
ERDBRINK: Well, just to paint a picture for you, I recently visited the shrine of Iran's national poet, Hafez, and outside of the shrine there are men who sell little poems and in those poems they are looking to see their future. And I spoke with two young ladies who just bought one of these poems and I asked them what do you think your future will be? And, of course, I expected something about love life or other things, but both of them said no. We want to see if there will be a nuclear deal in the future. A lot of people in Iran - lawyers, doctors, people who run bakeries - are looking for a nuclear deal. They're looking for an end to the situation.
INSKEEP: And why is it so central? Is it because it touches not just the diplomacy of the country, but also its economy?
ERDBRINK: Naturally, I mean, the Iranians have been sort of isolated for the past 35 years, but the row over the nuclear program has really isolated their economy as well. There have been sanctions, but now on top of those sanctions there is the huge drop in oil income, which means that Iran is scheduled to make even less money from their oil, which is the main source of their economic wealth. A lot of people are afraid that if these talks don't yield something that helps them at least lift the sanctions that the economy will go completely down the drain and make life even harder for normal people.
INSKEEP: So we've been following this from the U.S. side where President Obama's administration clearly wants a deal. But they're under increasing pressure from the new Republican Congress, and there is a sense among some analysts that the administration may have quite limited time. Let me ask how things look on the other side for Iran's president, Hassan Rouhani, who was elected saying that he wanted a deal. Is he running out of time?
ERDBRINK: Well, he's definitely also running out of time. In Iran, the president doesn't hold as much power as President Obama does in the United States. He has to deal with the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. You can, in a way, call him and his followers the Iranian version of Congress. Now, these people have been condoning the nuclear talks because they have been feeling that if they would lead to some sort of a deal that's favorable for Iran, if it would get all the sanctions lifted, as this hard-liner say, then sure, why not talk to our eternal enemy the United States and other Western powers? But if these talks are dragging on and on and turning out to be a lot more complicated than a lot of the Iranian politicians thought, they are starting to criticize President Rouhani, and, of course, the harshest criticism has come from Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
INSKEEP: Is President Rouhani, though, doing anything to push back against the hard-liners or, even in some subtle way, against his own supreme leader to make sure he has room to make a deal if he can?
ERDBRINK: If he is it is very hard for him. And the Iranian president is, in many ways, lower in hierarchy than the supreme leader. But what Rouhani has been doing, he's been giving speeches. The problem is that beyond those speeches there is really not that much that he can do. President Rouhani finds him in a spot that many Iranian presidents have found themselves in - sort of cornered; trying to reach a deal that is really complicated, even if you hold all power in the country. But he's trying to reach it with very limited power.
INSKEEP: Are there people in Iran who are beginning to see the possibility of the whole cycle of the last five or six years simply coming to an end? We've had a moment of hope. Is it possible, really, still that the two sides could walk away from all of that with nothing?
ERDBRINK: It is definitely a possibility that the two sides can walk away with nothing, but, of course, one thing has changed. The ideological goal posts have been moved. Iran would never talk directly to the United States. Now, Foreign Minister Zarif and Secretary of State John Kerry are talking all the time. They took a stroll around the lake of Geneva together discussing the nuclear case. And, of course, the interests of Iran and the United States in the region are sort of running parallel because they share now suddenly a mutual enemy - the Islamic State that is fighting in Syria and in Iraq. So Iranians have the feelings that things can never return to the bad days of more sanctions, tension, the possibility of war, but at the same time, very few people would like to think of a future with no nuclear deal.
INSKEEP: Thomas Erdbrink, of The New York Times, always a pleasure talking with you.
ERDBRINK: Thank you, Steve.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
As we heard on the program yesterday, Oscar nominations are out and to some there was an omission. Many expected Ava DuVernay to be nominated for best director. It would've been a first ever for a black woman in that category. She directed "Selma," the epic biography of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. The film was shut out of every category except best picture and best original song. Wesley Morris writes about popular culture for the online magazine Grantland, and we asked if the criticism suggesting that "Selma" and its director were snubbed is fair.
WESLEY MORRIS: Officially, yes. It seems like she was snubbed, but this is a complicated thing. Whenever these Oscar nominations come out there's always some narrative that takes hold about what exactly happened. In this case, there's any number of things that happened. Paramount sent the screeners to voters too late. The movie should've come out earlier in the year. A lot of things contributed to it only getting two nominations, and I think one of those things is the conversation around the veracity of information in the film, which is a completely...
GREENE: You're talking about the criticism that Lyndon B. Johnson, the president, was portrayed in too negative a light some people suggested.
MORRIS: Sure, the thing that I notice about what people of color get nominated for which Oscars - the Academy seems very comfortable nominating people of color who fall into a very familiar relationship to white people in movies. So I'm talking about playing slaves. I'm talking about playing housekeepers and maids and butlers and chauffeurs or famous entertainers.
GREENE: Well, that sounds like a very important point that you're making here. I mean, "Selma" was known for, you know, taking the perspective of black leadership during the civil rights era, which is unique. Are you saying that a lot of people who were voting might have been uncomfortable with that?
MORRIS: I mean, I - discomfort is kind of a strong word. I would say not used to. I would say that there is a kind of comfort with what people call a white savior narrative, where the point of view of something like the civil rights movement, the point of view belongs to a white actor. The agent of the change is white. That relationship is how Americans come to understand race in this country at the movies. I think it's really interesting to sort of breakdown how these things happen. But I'm not entirely comfortable with saying purely that racism is the answer.
GREENE: Let me just run this number by you; all 20 nominees in the four actor and actress categories - all white. And there's a Twitter hashtag out now - #OscarsSoWhite. What do you make of those numbers?
MORRIS: I mean, it's bad. But, you know, I think the thing that's interesting about this happening is it used to be 20 white actors every year. I think there are a lot of interesting things that happen with these nominations. And I think in some ways with "Selma" is just was - it just was unlucky in terms of a number of other things, too.
GREENE: Well, you say unlucky. We've talked about a lot of different factors that could have been at play. I just wonder should people look at "Selma" not getting the best director nomination, getting far fewer nominations than many expected - should they look at that and say wow, there is a problem with diversity in Hollywood?
MORRIS: Absolutely, yes. That is just a fact, and one of my favorite exercises when I get on in the subway is to look at posters and see who's on them. And more often than not it's, like, six white faces and none of color. That is changing, but it is still very much the status quo in the entertainment industry.
GREENE: We've been speaking about this with Wesley Morris. He won the Pulitzer for his film criticism with The Boston Globe. He now writes for the online magazine Grantland. Wesley, thanks a lot.
MORRIS: Thank you, David.
GREENE: It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm David Greene.
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And I'm Steve Inskeep.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
One of the most famous performers in the world was once fired because they thought she was too large to wear a little, black dress. Deborah Voigt was set to star in Richard Strauss's "Ariadne Auf Naxos" at London's Royal Opera House in 2004. It's one of her signature roles.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
DEBORAH VOIGT: (Singing).
SIMON: But producers canceled her contract. They said she wouldn't meet the theatrical demands of the role. Deborah Voigt is just fine today. She wound up using her settlement to pay for gastric bypass surgery and ultimately slimmed down and glammed up her career. But there were a lot of operatic swan-dives along the way. Deborah Voigt, who has performed with Pavarotti, Placido in auditoriums around the world, has written a memoir of her trials and triumphs onstage and off, "Call Me Debbie: True Confessions Of A Down-to-Earth Diva." She joins us from New York. Thanks so much for being with us.
VOIGT: It's a pleasure, Scott. Thank you for having me.
SIMON: Your book opens with a particularly distinguished voice telling you you're here to sing.
VOIGT: That's true. It does. It was a very special moment that I still think of very often. And I, at that time, thought it was the voice of God telling me that I was meant to sing.
SIMON: Is it fair to say your parents weren't saying the same thing?
VOIGT: My parents encouraged me to sing in church, but the idea of pursuing something professionally was certainly not on their radar.
SIMON: Did you always have what I'll term a difficult relationship with food?
VOIGT: I think the difficulty of the relationship didn't really present itself until I began to gain weight and had to look at it more seriously. I just liked to eat, like anybody else does. But I had parents who were very weight-conscious, and my mother struggled with her weight quite a bit. And the more you tell someone that they can't have something, the more they want it. And years would go by and food became, really, my best friend.
SIMON: Could you tell me about your audition for Sir Georg Solti? And it - you know, I really admired him as head of the Chicago Symphony all those years, and - I don't know - made me like him less.
VOIGT: I understand where you're coming from, and it certainly made me like him less, as well. But to a certain extent I understand where he was coming from. He was considering having me be his Isolde for a recording of "Tristan Und Isolde" that he was making, and he asked me to come and audition for him. So I went. I sang. I sang very well. Finished. He liked what I had sung. And he got up, and he walked across the room, and he said to me, why are you so fat? Is it the food? And I - my mouth fell open because I thought, well, what a question to ask because you're considering me for a recording, so what difference did it make?
We had a performance of Beethoven's "Ninth Symphony" coming up in about six months, and he said to me, Ms. Voigt, if you will lose the weight, I will take you for the recording. And I did. I went on a diet. And the next time I saw him I was down maybe 45, 50 pounds at the most. And it was enough for him to convince me - or convince himself, rather - that I could appear on this recording. And sadly, Georg Solti passed away before we were able to make this recording.
SIMON: We sketched in the by now very famous incident at the Royal Opera House. I'm intrigued by this. They knew who you were. You're one of the best-known opera stars in the world. Why did they sign you?
VOIGT: Well, that was ultimately the question. They signed the contract and engaged me in good faith. I had been there twice before. They knew it wasn't a secret that I was a big girl. So that was where the problem lie. But in opera, if, for whatever reason, when a contract is fully executed and a designer or a director decides that you're not appropriate to the part, that discussion is had, and then the opera house gives you something equivalent to that role. But in this particular case, the Royal Opera House didn't have anything else available, and that was where the problem really came to the forefront, that this was a bigger issue than just this particular director.
SIMON: So you had the surgery, as we noted, and a lot of the book is what happens thereafter. Did you discover that slimming down is not all you thought it would be?
VOIGT: Well, no, it certainly has been life-changing. And the problem was that gastric bypass is a tool to losing weight for somebody who is morbidly obese and has not had any success. But underneath that is some sort of emotional problems that have to be dealt with or the problem will reoccur. And those were never dealt with.
SIMON: Deborah, if I might call you that.
VOIGT: Why don't you call me Debbie?
SIMON: Debbie. Well, I believe that's the title of a book I read recently.
VOIGT: (Laughter) Yes.
SIMON: Debbie, what was going on as you look back on it now?
VOIGT: I think it was a feeling like I couldn't be in my own skin. And it's not for any reasons that I'm able to really define. It is what it is. And I felt the need to escape from that. For whatever reason, I have this uncomfortability when I'm with myself.
SIMON: Still?
VOIGT: Still, yes, much, much easier these days with much greater success.
SIMON: Singing all over the world - I mean, from small towns to great concert stages - do you recall a moment, maybe one night, when you thought to yourself, boy, that voice was right?
VOIGT: There have been a few. I think often about performances that I did of the role of Sieglinde from Richard Wagner's "Die Walkure," and she has a very, very difficult life. Her husband is very abusive to her, and she's very unhappy, but she has an incredible amount of hope in her. And I happened to be singing this role on stage at the Met for the first time, and my tenor was Placido Domingo. And I just remember being onstage, and when the curtain went down after the first act, and we went out to take our bows, the applause from the audience was something that was so enormous; it had an actual presence to it. It was like a sort of a rush of air over our bodies. And it was just one of the most amazing experiences of my life. That was something really, really special.
SIMON: Deborah Voigt, her new book, "Call Me Debbie: True Confessions Of A Down-To-Earth Diva." Thanks so much for being with us.
VOIGT: It's been my pleasure. So very nice to meet you.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
VOIGT: (Singing).
SIMON: This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
This is WEEKEND EDITION for NPR News. I'm Scott Simon. Alexandra Fuller's acclaimed memoir, "Don't Let's Go To The Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood" was a vivid account of growing up in Rhodesia before it was Zimbabwe, with white parents in revolutionary times in an Africa that was wild, seething and dangerous, but also electrifying, romantic and intoxicating. She wound up marrying an American man named Charlie who led safaris in Zambia, but that's a hard life for a couple, and they moved to the United States, had three children and ultimately, divorced.
Alexandra Fuller's new memoir is about the life she made for herself now with two children nearly grown, a third who is 10, in a country that's at once a more comfortable and sometimes more complicated way for her to live. Her new memoir, "Leaving Before The Rains Come." Alexandra Fuller joins us from Jackson Hole Community Radio in Wyoming.
Thanks so much for being with us.
ALEXANDRA FULLER: Thank you, Scott.
SIMON: Let's just say we met on a plane. How in the world do you describe this fascinating family you have to a stranger?
FULLER: You know, I think that what I learned when I came here was that mine is a sort of family that if we met on a plane, it's best just to pass the peanuts.
SIMON: (Laughter). Well, all right. Can I draw you out a little bit more, though?
FULLER: (Laughter). I mean, I think that the wonderful thing about growing up with parents like mine was that there was no rules from the outside. You know, my father always said those who need clear rules, you know, reveal a forbidden degree of self-doubt, fatal lack of confidence. You're supposed to know what to do without being told what to do. But given how sort of chaotic our childhood was - you know, we grew up in the civil war...
SIMON: The Rhodesian civil war.
FULLER: ...Right, and so there was so much chaos, so a few rules might've been a good idea.
SIMON: How did you fall in love with the American safari leader, Charlie?
FULLER: I think he represented for me all the adventure that I had been raised with, which I certainly didn't want to give up, but he seemed so in control of his adventure. He was a safari guide, so you, you know, go on a river for seven days and then you call in the Land Rover and you get rescued. You know, your adventure is sort of packaged. And that seemed to me the absolute best of both worlds, to have both the adventure and then a place to rest because ours was a life of unstructured and non-stop adventure.
SIMON: Did you hope he'd rescue you?
FULLER: Oh, of course. You know, our very first date, Charlie and I went canoeing. And we got charged by an elephant, and he stood his ground. And I thought, there you go, he can stand up to a charging elephant, we're going to be fine.
SIMON: I mean, that's a pretty good recommendation. It's hard to top that one. (Laughter).
And what made you decide to move to the United States? Were you just tired?
FULLER: No. I had vowed, I mean, from early on, to never leave the continent. And southern Africa seemed - with him there, I would have both the country that I loved but then I could be kept safe from the worst things that that country could throw at you, as it happened to my parents, you know, they had lost three children. And, you know, Charlie, with his sort of U.S. citizenship, which feels very unassailable when you're from somewhere like Zambia. It seemed like a perfect solution. But after we had been married for a couple of years, I contracted more or less permanent malaria. And I think that along with the corruption of the government just wore Charlie down and he wasn't prepared to stay.
SIMON: I'm touched by a section that I'd like you to read where you talk about, for lack of a better phrase, the kind of mindset that develops growing up in Africa.
FULLER: (Reading) In southern and central Africa, tragedy roared at us and we roared back. We shared our dramas publicly, bled them on the corridors of hospitals, laid our corpses on the beds of neighbors, held our sorrows up in full light. We were volume 10 about our madness and disorder, even if we were also resilient and enduring and tough. We survived magnificently and pretended to qualities of stoicism, but actually, even the most silent of us shouted the disordered history of our lives and our bodies and habits.
SIMON: So you move to the United States, where you become the wife of a guy who sells real estate.
FULLER: Right.
SIMON: That was tough?
FULLER: You know, I think that being raised the way I was where everything was so uncompromising, where, you know, we're prepared to fight to the death for the soil that you believed belonged to you - that kind of extreme engagement is very difficult to flush out of your system, or your belief system, anyway. And so to separate out what you do for a living from who you are, I didn't have the capacity to do that. To me it was all one thing. And I found it hard to believe that Charlie could believe that developing land was something that was in line with who his soul was.
SIMON: Some of the most moving section in the book describe you're in the process of trying to figure out how to dissolve your relationship, and then Charlie suffers - I think it's safe to call it - a nearly fatal accident.
FULLER: Yes.
SIMON: And you stayed with him through that.
FULLER: Yes.
SIMON: Were you tempted just to stay? I mean, it seems to make you realize you really do love him.
FULLER: I think there's a big difference between loving someone out of duty and dependency, and loving someone because you really are able to sort of grow and be whole in the context of that relationship. But on a day-to-day level our relationship really had become two solitary confinements.
SIMON: Did you marry Charlie because he seemed loving and reliable, and wind up leaving him because he seemed loving and reliable?
FULLER: Wow. You know, I don't know the answer to that. I think honestly what happened was the marriage really allowed me, I think - and this country, you know, this gift of, sort of, freedom of speech - allowed me to come into my own - you know, to use a sort of trite term. And I think a lot of women in their 40s find themselves in the situation where they no longer have this wonderful but perpetual need of their children. You know, they've become slightly or maybe very invisible to their spouse. But, you know, I think there's this real way in which I wanted to be self-realized. And the challenge of staying in love or growing in love may have been too much for him.
SIMON: Do you care what your family thinks about these memoirs?
FULLER: Yeah. Obviously, I think it feels like such a violation. But I don't think there's a point, really, to writing memoir unless you're going to aim for as much honesty as you can. I think for writer, I think it's really important to court eviction from your tribe, to expose things and to wake people up. And so I think that that can feel like a violation to the people you love the most.
SIMON: Alexandra Fuller. Her new book, "Leaving Before The Rains Come."
Thanks so much for being with us.
FULLER: Thank you, Scott.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Boonville in Northern California is known for its wineries and being a tight-knit community. And it has its own language, Boontling, created long ago as a way to gossip covertly, still alive today, but Stina Sieg reports.
STINA SIEG, BYLINE: Bahl means good. Nonch means bad. And horn of zeese - that's Boontling for a cup of coffee. It sounds kind of hard to believe, until you visit the senior center in this community of about 1,000 people nestled in a valley a few hours north of San Francisco.
WES SMOOT: You been boshin'?
DAVID KNIGHT: Just a slib.
SMOOT: Slib. You get a granny hatchet?
KNIGHT: Nope, mostly just gormin' and horse shoes.
SIEG: That's Wes Smoot asking David Knight if he's been deer hunting. Yes, Knight says, but only a little, and he hasn't bagged one yet. Instead, he's been eating barbecue and playing horseshoes.
Boontling dates back to the late 1800s, but it was still spoken widely on Boonville streets and even taught in its schools much more recently. It was so ingrained in local culture that when Smoot's great-uncle joined the military...
SMOOT: He had one terrible time understanding English because all he knew was Boontling.
SIEG: Smoot, on the other hand, enjoys being bilingual here.
SMOOT: Strangers come in on the weekends, you know, metropolitan people. And they sit down and we sit there and talk about them, the things that'd normally get your face slapped pretty bad. And they just grinning at you and they have no idea what we was talking about, you know? And that to me is a lot of fun, you know?
FAL ALLEN: Ya, I by harp a wee slib of the ling, which means yes, I speak a little bit of Boontling.
SIEG: That's one of Boontling's newer speakers, Fal Allen. He is not fluent, but he's still one of the unofficial keepers of the lingo's history. He says Boonville's always been kind of removed from the outside world - by treacherous roads, and by choice.
ALLEN: You know, it was very hard to get in and out of this valley. And so they were very isolated and they were not excited about having outsiders come in. And so the secret language for the people of the valley seemed to be - you know, make perfect sense.
SIEG: And no sense to outsiders, which was the point of this combination of nicknames, jargon and the odd foreign term. Allen says Boontling eventually reached a vocabulary of 1,600 words.
ALLEN: Who doesn't love a secret language? I mean, come on.
SIEG: Especially one that's still evolving, even as it dances on the edge of extinction. It's estimated that less than 100 people still speak it, and far fewer are fluent. Back at the senior center, Smoot describes his contribution to Boontling, a word that means old-timer. It's downstreamer - in honor of local dog salmon.
SMOOT: He's going back downstream trying to get to the ocean, but he dies before he gets to the ocean. So when you get up in our age, well, we're almost downstreamers. (Laughter). We're headed for the ocean, but I doubt if we're going to make it.
SIEG: But Boontling just might make it if enough of its younger enthusiasts keep it up. They've created a Boontling study group, it meets once a month. For NPR News I'm Stina Sieg in Boont - that's Boonville, California.
SIMON: You're listening to WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News.
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On a spring morning almost two years ago, the Rana Plaza clothing factory collapsed in Bangladesh. One thousand, one hundred and ten people were killed. It was the deadliest garment factory disaster ever, and it revealed the dire working conditions of people who labor to provide cheap clothing for the rest of the world, including for us. Ever since, Bangladesh's garment industry has been trying to improve its safety standards. Amy Yee reports from Dhaka.
AMY YEE, BYLINE: Dozens of sewing machines buzz inside a shop floor of this garment factory near Dhaka. A young woman guides blue pajama pants under a whirring needle then carefully checks the length of the drawstring. This is Optimum Fashion Wear, a factory with about 400 workers that makes clothes for companies such as Store Twenty One in the U.K. and VF Corp, owner of brands such as Wrangler and Lee. Mohammed Ridoy, a bright-eyed 22-year-old, has worked here for three years. He is from a village about six hours from Dhaka and is one of the factory's best workers.
MOHAMMED RIDOY: (Foreign language spoken).
YEE: He says, "After Rana Plaza collapsed," he felt, "so afraid."
But now his factory has made many improvements, so he feels safer. Last year Ridoy got special fire safety training and learned to use a fire extinguisher and other equipment. Thousands of factories like Optimum are urgently trying to comply with international standards after the deadly collapse of Rana Plaza in April 2013. A few months ago inspections finished at more than 1,700 garment factories. They make clothes for about 200 well-known global retailers and brands, such as H&M, Target, Walmart and Macy's. Inspections were conducted by two new international groups called the Accord for Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh and the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety. Factories were inspected for electrical, fire and structural safety. More than 30 factories were closed because of imminent risk, but they were a minority.
IAN SPAULDING: For the vast majority of others - and I'd say 98 percent - we didn't have those eminent risk.
YEE: That's Ian Spaulding, senior advisor to the alliance, which represents 26 clothing companies.
SPAULDING: But we do have other risks, such as a lack of fire doors, egress routes that were too narrow. We have inadequate water supply for sprinkler systems. We didn't have sprinklers.
YEE: Now after the inspections, the critical, more difficult work of fixing problems has begun. At Optimum, factory owners have already spent hundreds of thousands of dollars. Some improvements are simple, such as keeping aisles between sewing machines clear or moving large stacks of fabric to prevent overloading floors. Other fixes were more complicated. On the factory's second floor, a young man seals boxes of folded pajamas with packing tape. Here, nine cement pillars were reinforced or replaced. On the ground floor, the factory built a water reservoir for an imported fire hose and pump attached to a shiny red engine. Metal fire doors are completely new to garment factories in Bangladesh. So are sprinklers and comprehensive fire alarm systems. But many of the improvements are relatively simple and can make factories dramatically safer.
Brad Loewen, chief safety inspector for the Accord, says fixing something like electrical wiring has a big impact.
BRAD LOEWEN: Seventy percent of the factory fires originate from electrical causes, and it's obvious why - because the electrical systems are not well maintained.
YEE: And just cleaning electrical wires of flammable dust and lint can prevent fires from starting in the first place. Factories are also required to remove lockable gates that can trap workers inside during a fire. Some like Optimum are responding quickly. Those that don't comply are not allowed to source to the Accord and Alliance clothing brands. But there are still about 1,200 factories under a national government-backed plan that must also be inspected. For all of Bangladesh's garment factories, more hard work still lies ahead.
For NPR News I'm Amy Yee, Dhaka.
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Americans increasingly see reliably fast Internet as being a utility - more like a functioning sewer line than a luxury. A number of cities are trying to get into the Internet provider business, but laws in 19 states hamper that. President Obama announced this week that he wants to lift those restrictions. And supporters of what's known as municipal broadband can't wait. Frank Morris of member station KCUR reports.
FRANK MORRIS, BYLINE: While President Obama talked in Iowa about municipal broadband, an auditorium full of people in Kansas City, attending something called a Gigabit City Summit, cheered him on.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Leaders from 50 cities and towns across the country - it's a coalition called Next Century Cities.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHEERING)
MORRIS: It's a coalition promoting high-speed Internet. Its director, Deb Socia, says fast, dependable broadband has become a social justice issue.
DEB SOCIA: This is about people and people in communities who need resources for businesses, for e-government, for participatory democracy, for health care, for transportation, for education. Everything we do is related to our access to technology.
MORRIS: Anyone who has ever died a little waiting for a page to load or a stalled movie to resume wants faster Internet. But major Internet service providers don't face much competition in many places, so they're not that motivated to upgrade. Faced with that, some towns have gotten into the Internet service business themselves. Mikel Kline works for one of them - Chanute, Kansas.
MIKEL KLINE: They started their own municipal electric utility over a century ago, long before we had computers and toasters and microwave ovens, on the faith that this electricity thing was going to be important to the local economy. Well, today, the city fathers have that same vision about this broadband network.
MORRIS: Chanute's broadband network runs about 100 times faster than typical American Internet. Kline says it's given his remote Kansas town one of the fastest-growing junior colleges in the country and connected its hospital in high def to distant specialists. Kline, who is an engineer, says all this was feasible because Chanute already ran its own electric utility.
KLINE: They already have line workers. They already have the utility poles, the rights of way. The infrastructure is largely in place.
MORRIS: But the cable industry has a warning for towns that don't have that ready-made infrastructure, says Brian Dietz with the National Cable & Telecommunications Association
BRIAN DIETZ: So there's been several examples where government-run network have failed because they aren't able to compete effectively with private-run networks.
MORRIS: Dietz points to Provo, Utah, which spent more than $39 million building a fiber network. The system lost money, and the city wound up selling it to Google for a buck. Dietz says Internet service providers have invested more than $230 billion nationwide building networks. They've also been pretty successful at convincing state legislators that taxpayer-funded municipal broadband is a bad idea. Nineteen states now prohibit, or at least discourage, public involvement in the broadband business.
KEN HAYS: We've got the largest, citywide, robust, gigabit network in the country.
MORRIS: Ken Hays works with Chattanooga, Tennessee's, 600-square-mile gigabit network. The city built it on its publicly owned electric utility, same at Chanute. And Chattanooga wants to expand service to outlying areas where Internet speeds plunge, but it ran into one of those prohibitive state laws.
HAYS: Our electric utility actually petitioned the FCC, along with Wilson, North Carolina, to ask that the FCC to use their authority to override the legislators.
MORRIS: That's want President Obama wants in all 19 states. But Internet service providers and some Republican members of Congress say the commission has no authority to meddle in the way states regulate the Internet. For NPR News, I'm Frank Morris in Kansas City.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Fuel prices have been plunging for months, helping drivers save money - including perhaps, BJ Leiderman, who writes our theme music. By summer, those low prices could give boat owners a lift, too. Nick Castele of member station WCPN in Cleveland checks in with Great Lakes boaters.
NICK CASTELE, BYLINE: I'm standing on Whiskey Island. It's where the Cuyahoga River meets Lake Erie in Cleveland. There are chunks of ice backed up along the shore and the boats have all been hauled onto land from their marinas. Many are covered in tarps right now to protect them from the snow. But when the snow and ice thaw, people will want to hit the water again, as the boating industry is predicting another year of growth - and low fuel prices could help.
THOM DAMMRICH: We didn't actually even factor the lower oil prices when we made these projections, but I think that certainly they will provide a significant tailwind.
CASTELE: Thom Dammrich is the president of the National Marine Manufacturers Association. He says any extra money in the pockets of boaters is good for business. In fact, his organization is forecasting up to 5 percent higher sales for new powerboats this year. And there are ripples of that enthusiasm at the Mid-America Boat Show in Cleveland...
(SOUNDBITE OF SEA SHANTY SONG)
UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) I've sailed from (unintelligible) to the (unintelligible), a thousand miles, and that's enough.
CASTELE: ...Where sea shanties are playing from speakers in one corner of the convention hall. The overwhelming majority of watercraft here are powerboats - yachts, fishing boats, pontoon boats. And many people here are already boat owners. Bob and Nancy Chizmar have been boating up and down the Great Lakes for 38 years. Bob says they have changed their habits over time.
BOB CHIZMAR: We don't go out and just ride around like we used to. You know, our boat burns maybe 25 gallons an hour.
CASTELE: Gas in the Cleveland area is going for around $2 a gallon, down 40 percent from a year ago. And if those prices don't take off again, Nancy Chizmar says she might consider another adventure.
NANCY CHIZMAR: If it stayed this low, we'd probably do a last hurrah and take a nice, long trip. We've been to Niagara Falls by boat.
CASTELE: Eric Booker is serving lobster bisque to convention-goers and is hopeful a positive year for boating means more customers at his restaurant in Put-in-Bay, a popular island vacation spot in Lake Erie. He's also a boat owner himself.
ERIC BOOKER: People usually have X amount of money budgeted for their boating season. If they can make five trips on that budget, maybe this year they can make seven trips on that same budget.
CASTELE: And salespeople in other parts of the industry are gearing up to ride that wave, too. Jeff Klein sells boat lifts. He says sales have recovered in the past few years and he sees low gas prices opening up a chance for even more business.
JEFF KLEIN: Boaters, they'll go out more and be out on the water a lot more, and consequently they'll be using their boat lifts more and they'll be breaking or replacing them with new ones. So we look forward to it.
CASTELE: But it typically costs more to fill up at a marina than at a gas station. And boaters say they're waiting to see how much they'll have to pay for that marina fuel this season. Boater Jerrold Saxton says he's not convinced prices will stay low, but he accepts boating is an expensive hobby.
JERROLD SAXTON: Someone told me the definition of a boat is a hole in the water that you pour money into. And it's true it's going to be expensive, if you're a power boater.
CASTELE: But if low fuel prices hold out, boaters here are hoping that hole of money will be shallower by the time the Lake Erie ice melts. For NPR News I'm Nick Castele in Cleveland.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
When Allen Ginsberg wrote I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving, hysterical, naked 60 years ago, "Howl" wasn't immediately proclaimed a masterpiece. Some people read the explicit parts and called it just porn. Shig Murao, a clerk at the City Lights bookstore, was arrested when he sold a copy of "Howl" and other poems to an undercover San Francisco policeman. Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who published the book, was arrested, too. The men were tried for obscenity.
This week, the last surviving lawyer of the legal team that defended them in that landmark case died. Al Bendich was 85. He was then a young staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union. And just a few years later, he would also successfully defend Lenny Bruce against obscenity charges. In each case, Judge Clayton Horn ruled that the work had what he called redeeming social importance, a phrase cited even today.
"Howl" is studied in literature classes now. Lenny Bruce is admired as a social satirist. But if you read "Howl" or listen to some of Lenny Bruce's routines, there are passages that can still jolt you as you yowl or weep. I am pretty sure that's what they would have wanted. It's hard to imagine that popular entertainments today, from "The Wire," "The Sopranos," "Madmen" and "The Affair" to "Fifty Shades Of Grey" or Dr. Dre would be possible without the court cases which Al Bendich helped fight. So it was interesting to read this week what Mr. Bendich told a group of ACLU supporters in March of last year as what he saw as threats to free speech today, at a time when technology can help governments and companies monitor our keystrokes and conversations, and people propose codes - which the ACLU opposes - against hateful or offensive speech.
Police are not going through bookstores anymore looking for obscenity, he said, and they're not trying to track people who are engaging in sexual practices that they don't approve of. That has changed. The First Amendment says Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, Al Bendich reminded his audience. There's a reason for that absolute. There's a reason for that cutoff - because unless people are free to think, to form opinions, to discuss those opinions with each other - unless we have the opportunity to do that, then we are not self-governing. We have to do our homework and study some history, pay attention to what our origins are.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
New rules went into effect yesterday on U.S. travel to Cuba. Ordinary tourism remains off-limits. The Obama administration opened new opportunities in Cuba for banks, airlines, telecommunication companies and regular Americans. NPR's Greg Allen reports from Miami.
GREG ALLEN, BYLINE: Currently, a dozen flights a day leave Miami International Airport for Havana and other Cuban cities. Most on the flights are Cuban-Americans and Cubans returning home after visiting relatives, usually carrying bundles of goods hard to find on the island. Rules announced by the Obama administration now greatly expand the number of Americans who can travel to Cuba.
Armando Garcia is with Marazul Charters in Miami.
ARMANDO GARCIA: We're having hundreds of calls to all our offices.
ALLEN: For the first time in decades, under the new rules, Americans who don't have family on the island can travel to Cuba without receiving special permission from the U.S. government. But there are caveats. Americans can't travel for tourism, but they will be able to fly to Cuba to take part in performances or sporting events. Also, religious, educational and humanitarian activities. Another major change - U.S. airlines will now be allowed to offer regularly scheduled flights to Cuba, although they'll first have to negotiate with the Cuban government for landing rights and gate space. Garcia says the question now is how many U.S. visitors Cuba, a country with just 35,000 hotel rooms, will be able to accommodate.
GARCIA: They have limited hotel space for a large demand. So in that case, if they don't have that kind of possibilities they will have to limit, in a way, certain types of trips.
ALLEN: Under the new rules, U.S. companies can now ship building materials and equipment to private entrepreneurs in Cuba, a relaxation likely to give a big boost to the island's tourist sector. The rules permit U.S. banks to establish relationships with financial institutions in Cuba and allow Americans for the first time to use their credit cards there. But Peter Quinter, who heads the International Trade Law Group at GrayRobinson, says there's a potential problem. Cuba is still on the State Department's list of countries that support terrorism.
PETER QUINTER: Right now because of that listing as Cuba as a terrorist organization, technically there's an argument that banks should not or cannot do business in Cuba. So we'll see how this all works out.
ALLEN: President Obama has asked the State Department to look at whether Cuba should be taken off the list, but that decision is thought to be months away. In the meantime, the embargo on trade with Cuba remains in place and Congress appears unlikely soon to lift it.
Even so, Florida businessman John Parke Wright says this is big.
JOHN PARKE WRIGHT: This opens the door. And there's no one in Washington - I don't care what political persuasion they might happen to be - that's going to stop this train.
ALLEN: Parke Wright is a member of a prominent family in Florida that's been doing trade with Cuba since the 1850s. The Lykes family had a 15,000-acre cattle ranch on the island before the Revolution. Parke Wright right says Cuba used to be a great beef producer, but not now.
PARKE WRIGHT: There's no milk and there's no beef. That can be changed very quickly with Florida and Texas agriculture.
ALLEN: For now, the door may be open just a crack, but Parke Wright and many other U.S. businessmen are rushing to stick in their toe. Greg Allen, NPR News, Miami.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The great Katharine Hepburn once said the right actors win Oscars, but for the wrong roles. This week's Oscar nominations announcement made NPR's Neda Ulaby wonder about the Academy's history of rewarding stars for quasi-celestial performances.
NEDA ULABY, BYLINE: The nominations left a lot of people scratching their heads - over the snubs for "Selma," for example, and this nomination for Best Supporting Actor.
(SOUNDBITE OF "87TH ACADEMY AWARDS")
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Robert Duvall in "The Judge."
ALYSSA ROSENBERG: I think most people hadn't even heard of "The Judge" before that nomination.
ULABY: That's Alyssa Rosenberg, a cultural columnist for The Washington Post. She says most critics were not impressed by this movie about a judge who's aging, cranky and hates his new dependence on his criminal lawyer son.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE JUDGE")
ROBERT DUVALL: (As Judge Joseph Palmer) I put a roof over your head, money in your pocket, clothes on your back, food in your mouth. Who paid for that college education - your mother?
ULABY: Now, let's just be clear - Rosenberg loves Robert Duvall.
ROSENBERG: He is wonderful, but it's not a particularly notable performance. It's weird. It's like they woke up and said, you know who hasn't had a statue in some time?
ULABY: ...Robert Duvall since 1983 in "Tender Mercies." Rosenberg says recognizing actors because of a sense they're overdue is an Academy tradition that goes back to at least 1935.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "DANGEROUS")
BETTE DAVIS: (As Joyce Heath) You dare feel sorry for me - you with your fat, little soul and your smug face.
ULABY: 1935 was when Bette Davis won her first Oscar for a thoroughly mediocre movie called "Dangerous." The Academy ignored her incandescent performance the year before as a manipulative waitress in the film "Of Human Bondage."
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "OF HUMAN BONDAGE")
DAVIS: (As Mildred) You hounded me and drove me crazy. And after you kissed me, I always used to wipe my mouth - wipe my mouth.
ROSENBERG: It's using the awards to back up and say, we know you're good; really, we know you're good, even if we missed it before.
ULABY: That's what happened, says Rosenberg, in 1960 to a certain violet-eyed 28-year-old.
(SOUNDBITE OF "32ND ACADEMY AWARDS")
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Elizabeth Taylor.
ULABY: Taylor went unrewarded by the Academy for "National Velvet" and "Giant" and "Cat On A Hot Tin Roof" and "Suddenly, Last Summer." She won for "BUtterfield 8," a movie she herself called a stinker. But Taylor's third husband had recently died in a plane crash six months after the birth of their daughter.
ROSENBERG: People felt bad for her.
ULABY: Alyssa Rosenberg says other consolation Oscars might include Denzel Washington's in 2001 for playing a vicious cop in the movie "Training Day."
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "TRAINING DAY")
DENZEL WASHINGTON: (As Det. Alonzo Harris) You're lucky I don't have more pressing business.
ULABY: Critics preferred Washington in an earlier movie, "The Hurricane," not to mention in "Malcolm X." Or Dame Judi Dench winning not for her layered performance of Queen Victoria in the movie "Mrs. Brown" in 1997, but instead, the next year. Dame Dench had a sense of humor about accepting her Best Supporting Actress statuette for her eight-minute appearance as Queen Elizabeth in "Shakespeare In Love."
(SOUNDBITE OF "71ST ACADEMY AWARDS")
DAME JUDI DENCH: I feel for eight minutes on the screen, I should only get a little bit of him.
ULABY: Sometimes it takes a little while for a great performance to sink in. Sometimes a field is too crowded with too many great performances. And it's not just "The Oscars." Playwright Edward Albee did not win the Pulitzer Prize in 1963 for "Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?" because it was seen as too controversial. A few years later, the Pulitzer committee basically backtracked, rewarding Albee for another play, "A Delicate Balance."
ROSENBERG: If you want people to take your award ceremony seriously as an arbiter of artistic quality, these are strange decisions.
ULABY: Far better, says Alyssa Rosenberg, if the cultural horse races that are award shows were guided not by sentimentality and nostalgia, but singularity and guts. Neda Ulaby, NPR News.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Charlie Hebdo has sold out. The satirical magazine that usually sells barely 60,000 copies has had to print 7 million to meet the demand for this week's issue, the first since the terrorist attacks that killed 17 people at the offices of that magazine and at a kosher grocer in Paris.
French troops now guard synagogues and Jewish schools, as the French government and French people contemplate what's ahead amid reports that terrorist cells are actively plotting further attacks. NPR's Eleanor Beardsley joins us from Paris. Eleanor, thanks for being with us.
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: Good to be with you, Scott.
SIMON: It doesn't take long for politics to follow up on tragedy. How's President Hollande seen as handling this crisis?
BEARDSLEY: It may seem cynical to talk of popularity ratings, you know, amid such a tragedy, but you can't help but notice, Scott, because President Hollande was the most unpopular president in 50 years. He had, like, 10 percent approval. Today, 88 percent of the French approve of how he's handling this. Even conservative newspaper Le Figaro has heaped praise on him, saying he's had all the right words, his hands didn't tremble.
And, you know, there's been a lot of moving stuff going on. For example, there was a ceremony this week for the three policemen who were killed. And the nation watched as Hollande comforted the mother of one of the slain officers, and she was just crying to him. He pinned the Legion of Honor medal onto their uniforms. And so it's very powerful, very strong.
You know, I've talked to people - you know, will it last? And people say no, it won't last. They say, you know, the country wanted to be united. It came together, so it would have happened around any leader, so they say that Hollande will still be unpopular when it's all over.
SIMON: The French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has been quoted a lot in this country. I wonder if his profile has increased, too.
BEARDSLEY: Absolutely. Valls has - he's been on the front lines, he's been, you know, at every site, he's gone to funerals. He gave a powerful speech in the French Parliament, you know, where he said France is home to Jews and Muslims. He said I don't want French Jews to be scared, and I don't want French Muslims to live in shame. So he is taking a very strong stance, and his popularity rating has also gone up.
SIMON: What about the far right? I'm thinking specifically of Marine Le Pen.
BEARDSLEY: Analysts say if any politician has something to gain from this tragedy long-term it would be Marine Le Pen, who is head of the far right National Front Party. They're against immigration. They're seen as anti-foreigner. There's been a lot of talk of her wanting to capitalize on this. But I would have to say so far her response seems to have been somewhat measured.
She does say that these radical jihadists are linked to massive immigration that needs to be controlled. She spoke yesterday, and she came up with a lot of proposals. And one of them was to take away French nationality from suspected jihadists. This is hugely controversial, Scott, because the last time this was done was after World War II, when Nazi collaborators were stripped of their French nationality.
But I want to say that all politicians and parties - the whole country is in a mood of deep introspection about why this happened, how it happened. You know, is it the fault of the schools, the prisons? Is France not integrating its minorities? You know, does France need a Patriot Act like the U.S.? So everything is being examined right now.
SIMON: There's been a lot of talk about the sanctity of free speech in the French Republic. And yet, in recent days, the French government has made some decisions about speech.
BEARDSLEY: They're toughening hate laws, which are very strong. After the Holocaust, you cannot deny the Holocaust, you cannot make hate speech. They're toughening that. And I have to say, a lot of Muslims feel that there's a double standard when it comes to hate speech. They say anti-Semitism or anti-Semitic talk is treated as a crime, where you can say anything about Muslims - Islamophobia, such as these cartoons in Charlie Hebdo, they're taken very lightly, so they see that as a double standard.
SIMON: NPR's Eleanor Beardsley in Paris. Thanks so much.
BEARDSLEY: Thank you, Scott.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Police in France, Belgium and Germany have swept up more than two dozen suspected terrorists in the last couple of days as investigators search Western Europe for possible militants. The threat of hundreds of radicalized European citizens returning from Syria, Iraq and Yemen seems urgent.
Earlier this week, the head of Europol said that as many as 5,000 Europeans have traveled to Syria to join the fight there. And the challenge now is how to track these individuals, as well as what are called lone actors who might be able to evade scrutiny.
Raffaello Pantucci is the director of international security studies at the Royal United Services Institute. He joins us from London. Thanks so much for being with us.
RAFFAELLO PANTUCCI: Thank you.
SIMON: How effective are these raids as a generalization?
PANTUCCI: Well, I mean, I think, certainly, the raids that we've seen in the past week in France, Belgium and Germany in particular seem to have been targeted on very specific networks. And at least when we're looking at the Belgian case, they seem to disrupt what looked like a very active group of individuals who were plotting an atrocity.
SIMON: At the same time, do some of these raids just tip off other members of the network and they go to ground?
PANTUCCI: Well, I think the risk always is when a terrorist operation like what we saw happen in Paris happens, immediately there's a sort of pulse of concern we'll go through; both the groups of individuals are concerned, but also security services. For security services, the question of looking again at the books and reassessing maybe people you were looking at before and just making sure that you have sight of all of your networks.
On the other side of the equation, for individuals who might have been thinking of doing a terrorist act, this sort of immediate wake of a large and successful incident like what we saw in Paris is something that they will try to capitalize on.
SIMON: And Mr. Pantucci, what are security services in Europe able to arrest them for if all they're doing is planning?
PANTUCCI: I think it depends what they're planning to do. I think in those other countries now you're increasingly seeing legislation that means you can be convicted for planning to go join an organization or conduct a terrorist act abroad. And I think some of the arrests we saw take place this week were linked to that.
On the other side, if you've got people who are, you know, planning a direct terrorist act, the more complicated people are the individuals who've maybe returned from a battlefield like Syria and Iraq. And if the intelligence services know that they've been out there, but at the same time this individual hasn't got any, you know, photographic evidence or other evidence on their person that shows that they were there, then, you know, it becomes a much, much harder picture to actually know what you can exactly arrest them for.
SIMON: How do security agencies try and track someone who comes back from Syria, say?
PANTUCCI: So in a lot of cases, you know, authorities have some awareness of them because a family member might have mentioned it because the individual may have been on a sort of broader security radar, and then suddenly their telephone goes off in Turkey.
You know, so there are some indicators of people they should be watching out for. But the reality is that when you're looking at the numbers that we're seeing going back and forth and the relative ease of mobility from a lot of continental European countries to Turkey and ultimately to Syria and Iraq, it does become very difficult to know that you've caught everyone or that you're watching everyone.
SIMON: What are some European countries doing or perhaps contemplating that they figure they ought to do to disrupt terrorist networks?
PANTUCCI: I mean, a lot of what you're seeing done is, frankly, traditional counter-terrorism work. I think what's noble about what we're seeing in Syria and Iraq is the sheer volume of it and the sheer volume of potential people of concern. And that in itself is something that has really magnified an existing problem because the problem from a European security force perspective is that, you know, you not only have to deal with this huge issue of Syria and Iraq, but you've also got enduring problems from before.
As I think we're potentially seeing in Paris, where there was some sort of connection to al-Qaida in Yemen in the group. You know, there are other terrorist groups out there that are keen to try to launch attacks. And those have continued while sort of the Syria and Iraq questions has sort of grown the problem even more. And so in some ways, it's a capacity question.
SIMON: Mr. Pantucci, what keeps you up at night?
PANTUCCI: I think the biggest concern that people have increasingly started to circle around is what's described as the lone actor terrorist threats. These are the sort of terrorist threats that don't appear on existing radars. But in some ways, I think what's of greater concern is the fact that if you look at some of the recent incidents of terrorist plots we've seen that have been connected to things that happened before Syria and Iraq, you can see that you've got a community of people who are very radicalized and have maintained these sorts of violent, radical ideas in their heads for very long periods of time. And the point at which they sort of become interested in these ideas to the point at which they take action is a process that can stretch over almost a decade.
SIMON: Raffaello Pantucci is director of the international security studies at the Royal United Services Institute in London. Thanks so much for being with us.
PANTUCCI: Thank you.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Times of crisis and consternation are also times when political landscapes are rearranged. The Republican presidential field seems to get more crowded. Is the Democratic field already filled by one? Here, in the first month of 2015, to talk about 2016 is NPR's Ron Elving. Ron, thanks so much for being with us.
RON ELVING, BYLINE: Good to be with you, Scott.
SIMON: We literally can't get to everyone, but let's begin with Mitt Romney. He memorably said last year - I'm going to quote - "no, no, no, no, no, no" to the idea of running again. What may have changed his mind?
ELVING: Romney changed his mind about 2016 because of 2014. And he hopes that will help other Republicans forget about 2012. You know, Romney's been crisscrossing the country for other Republican candidates all this past year, and it felt pretty good to him. Those candidates did very well in November.
And Romney looks around, and he sees no great alternatives to Jeb Bush. And he's just not convinced that Jeb Bush can win the nomination and sell the country on another president named Bush. Of course, his own problem is selling other Republicans on another dance with a guy named Romney.
SIMON: Rand Paul is jetting around everywhere. How does he take advantage of the national network of support, particularly money that his father Ron Paul built up, while departing from his father on some national security issues? His father essentially blamed the policies of the French government for the murders in Paris.
ELVING: That's right. Rand Paul inherits a tremendous base from his father Ron Paul, but also that ceiling that you're referring to, which is largely foreign policy. Ron Paul always had great buzz. He really did. And he had some fundraising and disappointing vote totals. His persona was never enough to really attract people. And Rand Paul brings a kind of youthful freshness to libertarianism that his father never did.
SIMON: Jeb Bush resigned from more corporate boards recently than most of us have chopping boards in our kitchen. Is there a chance he won't run for president now?
ELVING: Not anymore. He's cleared his decks. As you mentioned, he's gotten a lot of financial stuff out of the way, old emails from his time in public office. The fundraising operations he's created are a clear sign, also, the team he's assembling, the social media presence. Four years ago, he said he had family issues that kept him from running. And now perhaps he feels he's resolved those. But whether he has or not, he is running.
SIMON: A question I wouldn't have projected even a few weeks ago - is there any more room for Chris Christie? And should he have stayed home and watched that Cowboys-Lions game?
ELVING: (Laughter) You're referring to the much-viewed man-hug with Cowboys' owner Jerry Jones - big YouTube story. What was the last big story about Chris Christie that actually helped him? You can say that he did a good job running the Republican Governors Association last year, and he did.
But last year in New Jersey was largely tale of woe for Chris Christie. And the bridge closure blow up is still not entirely resolved and behind him. The New Jersey economy has trailed the national recovery. There was a poll out this week by Fairleigh Dickinson University saying only one New Jerseyan in five thinks that the Chris Christie years have been good for the average citizen there.
SIMON: If Hillary Clinton is a prohibitive favorite on the Democratic side, why are they practically lined up on the Republican side to run against her?
ELVING: Because Republicans believe that Hillary Clinton will be an exceptionally vulnerable candidate, even as safe as she is in her own party. She's going to have to answer for every dollar the Clintons have ever raised, earned or spent because all the opposition research the Republican Party can mount is going to be focused on her. There's already a team working in Little Rock, Arkansas.
But look, Elizabeth Warren seems to have finally convinced most of the media she means it when she says she's really not running, and no other big-name Democrat has really shown much of an inclination to challenge the Clinton machine. And right now, the Clintons are locking up some of the operatives who beat them in 2008, so Hillary's candidacy looks inevitable, and her nomination looks highly probable.
SIMON: NPR's Ron Elving. Thanks so much
ELVING: Thank you, Scott.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
World attention has been focused on terrorism in Paris. But at the same time, the terror group Boko Haram has murdered scores of people in Nigeria just this month. There have even been reports of girls as young as 10 who've been pressed into service as suicide bombers.
Alex Perry writes for Newsweek and is the author of "The Hunt For Boko Haram." He joins us from the studios of the BBC in Southampton. Thanks very much for being with us.
ALEX PERRY: Thanks for having me.
SIMON: Amnesty International originally estimated more than 2,000 people were killed in those attacks. How do you see it?
PERRY: Well, they've dialed back a bit from that number, but they have actually released some satellite photographs of the destruction in this town Baga. And as opposed to the Nigerian military's estimate of a death toll of 150, I have to say the photographs tend to support what Amnesty is saying. The destruction is unbelievable. I mean, there are thousands and thousands of buildings that have just been laid waste like a hurricane has been through.
SIMON: Mr. Perry, I think a lot of people remember all those signs that people held up last year and all the posts on social media - bring back our girls - after young women were abducted. Did that do anything for the young women?
PERRY: What you can say that that campaign did was it put pressure on the Nigerian government in a way that that government hadn't felt pressure before. I mean, basically, the state in Nigeria didn't notice even for 19 days after those girls were kidnapped. I mean, this is a spectacularly corrupt and indifferent government. And so that did bring some pressure to bear on the Nigerian state to do something.
Having said that, it didn't actually do anything afterwards. The advisors that were sent - military advisors from around the world from the U.S., the U.K., I think France, Israel, even China - very quickly turned round to their respective capitals and said, you know, it's very difficult for us to work with these people. There's every possibility that any kind of assistance we will offer will be swallowed into corruption.
There's even a chance of us being prosecuted under things like the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act if we go into bed with people who, after all, are committing human rights abuses themselves. And there is a reasonable argument to put that - for instance, the Nigerian army is one of the bigger criminal organizations in Nigeria.
SIMON: Yeah, I'm sorry if this question sounds naive, Mr. Perry, but why would anyone in Nigeria become a part of Boko Haram?
PERRY: In northeast Nigeria, where they come from, there is genuine public grievance against, as I say, a very corrupt and indifferent government. Northeast Nigeria, in particular, stands out for deprivation and destitution so there is a genuine, well-established grievance against a government that after all, sits on some of Africa's biggest oil reserves and has for 50 years enriched itself and completely ignored its people.
However, Boko Haram has transformed itself from what was a peaceful protest - a heavily Islamic accented protest - their response to this was to try and dial back the clocks. They basically said all enlightenment, all modernization has only opened the gates to corruption and greed, and we should dial back the clock 500 years. Mohammed Yusuf, their former leader, didn't believe the world was round. He didn't believe in evolution. He didn't think water evaporated.
They were really deliberately, willfully sort of luddite and obscurantist. And when Mohammed Yusuf was killed in 2009, that was kind of a signal for Boko Haram to go through a transformation from a peaceful movement to a violent one. But they took that kind of obscurantist nihilism into violence, and violence now is the point. There is no means to an end here. The end is the killing. If you look at the videos that Boko Haram puts out, there's ritualistic beheading. They use cutlasses when they go to war. It's a death cult.
So that's a very long answer to your question is why would anybody want to join them? Right now, I don't think anybody wants to join them, but they are compelled to. You said in your earlier report, you know, there's a 10-year-old girl being used as a suicide bomber. I mean, this is - this is almost beyond comprehension here. And the point is just to outrage, and with outrage to get attention.
SIMON: Alex Perry joined us from the studios of the BBC in Southampton. Thanks so much for being with us.
PERRY: Thanks for having me.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
More than 3 million Syrians have fled their country's civil war. Many families are separated as they flee to Europe with the help of smugglers and fake papers. Joanna Kakissis tracked three siblings from Damascus as they tried to reunite in Germany.
JOANNA KAKISSIS, BYLINE: Wisam al-Aydi’s a gentle 51-year-old dad in a baseball cap, and we're talking in his family's room at a refugee camp in southern Germany. His family's originally Palestinian, but he grew up in Syria with eight siblings. The extended family shared an apartment building in Damascus. They barbecued on the roof. Their children played together, and they thrived.
WISAM AL-AYDI: (Through interpreter) In Syria, our whole family worked together. We opened a bakery, a clothing shop, a jewelry shop, two gas stations.
KAKISSIS: Wisam ran the gas stations. He was especially close to his younger brother, Mwafak, and sister, Manale. But the war would shatter that life. In 2012, with bombs destroying their neighborhood, they each paid thousands of dollars to smugglers to get them and their families out of Syria, but they were separated.
Mwafak's only option was Turkey because he had no identification. The regime had stripped him of it years ago after a jail term for political activism. Manale went to Lebanon, and Wisam flew to Egypt.
AL-AYDI: (Through interpreter) When we left after our home was first bombed, we thought maybe we can travel for a couple of years and then return when things calm down. We really thought we could build our home again in Syria.
KAKISSIS: But while they were traveling, their home was bombed again. It's now burned and gutted. Wisam shows me a cellphone photo.
AL-AYDI: (Through interpreter) This was our bedroom, and I think that might be our bed. That was our living room. This house carried all our memories - my son's violins, the children's things, all of our life. So many years of work all gone.
KAKISSIS: Since then, the siblings have been trying to get back together. They decided to reunite in Germany. One of their grown children had gotten there from Egypt, traveling by boat to Italy and then by land. Wisam made the boat trip from Egypt and passed Italy before declaring asylum in southern Germany.
Mwafak rode a small, crowded boat from Turkey to Greece, but it took him four attempts to board a plane to Germany using a fake ID. He arrived in northern Germany early last year and is working on his German.
MWAFAK AL-AYDI: (Speaking German).
KAKISSIS: Mwafak's almost 50. He studies his new language every day. He's got to learn German to get a job. He ran a jewelry store in Damascus.
MWAFAK: I don't know what I can I do in Germany.
KAKISSIS: It wasn't until October that the three siblings were all in Germany. Manale was the last to arrive. 46 years old, she had advanced cancer and was desperate for treatment. She'd paid a smuggler $15,000 for a fake Spanish passport and a plane ticket to southern Germany. But police, spotting her fake documents, detained her on arrival. A few hours later, she's at a hospital. Her brothers aren't there yet, but an officer escorts in two nephews, Wisam's sons. I'm with them. And as they go to her bed, she cries out.
MANALE AL-AYDI: (Crying).
KAKISSIS: Please, please don't leave me alone, she says, clutching the boys. I don't want to die. Later, she tells me she came to Germany to be with her brothers, her family.
MANALE: I came to Germany because I have two brothers in Germany - my family. I want to go live with my family.
KAKISSIS: Mwafak arrives the next day. He's holding fresh lemons to steep into hot tea for his sister. His eyes glisten when he sees her. She was a formidable bank manager in Damascus. Now she looks frail and scared. Mwafak is taking her to a hostel where his family is, more than 10 hours away by train.
MWAFAK: We will go to hospital with my family, and I think she will be good.
Good?
KAKISSIS: Wisam, the third sibling, is now only three hours away. His family moved cross-country from the refugee center into a subsidized apartment. I visit him at his new place. The family's settling in.
DALAA AL-AYDI: (Counting in German).
KAKISSIS: And his 4-year-old daughter, Dalaa, is dancing and counting in German. But Wisam notices she's forgetting Arabic and Syria.
Dalaa, what do you remember about Syria?
DALAA: Takh, takh. Takh, takh.
KAKISSIS: Takh, takh - that's the sound of gunfire, her only memory of Damascus. For NPR News, I'm Joanna Kakissis.
SIMON: That story was reported with help from Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting. You're listening to WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Ever since computers appeared, humans have eyed them with awe, envy and suspicion. Could these machines, created by man to think faster than man, one day outthink our species and decide that they can do without us? After all, humans can be so slow and sentimental. This is not just a storyline for science-fictions writer. Last week, a host of experts in the field signed the letter urging research to make sure that artificial intelligence has a positive, not destructive, impact on humanity. Elon Musk, the billionaire tech investor, pledged $10 million to the organization behind that letter - the Future of Life Institute.
Philosopher Nick Bostrom is among those who signed that letter, and he joins us from the studios of the BBC in Oxford. Thanks so much for being with us.
NICK BOSTROM: Thanks for inviting me.
SIMON: How could machines that we've invented, that we program, that we can turn on and off, potentially undo us?
BOSTROM: Well, right now, you'll be happy to hear I don't think there is any danger. I think the concern is that as we continue to make progress then eventually there might come a point when they are as smart as we are or even smarter. And intelligence in general is a very powerful thing. It's what makes us very powerful relative to other animals here on this planet. It's not because we are stronger muscles or sharper claws that the fate of the gorillas is now in our hands rather than in the gorilla's hands. And so similarly, if we create machines that exceed human intelligence then those machines also could be very powerful relative to us.
SIMON: Well, I was flabbergasted when I began to do some reading. Although you say it's not about to happen; it's a while away; it is possible that children listening to this broadcast in the back seat of their parents' automobile might have to confront this?
BOSTROM: Yeah, so that's why I think it's very positive that Elon Musk and some other people are not saying it's time to actually start work out the technology that we would need to keep machines safe, even if they eventually reach human level intelligence.
SIMON: I mean, what's to solve? What do you do?
BOSTROM: Well, one form of this problem is if you have a superintelligent agent, how could you construct it in such a way that it would be safe and beneficial? Ideally, we would like to align its goals with human values. Right now, what we could do with a machine - we might be able to give it a goal, such as calculate as many digits in the decimal expansion of pi as possible, or some very simple goal like that. We could program that. What we couldn't do today is to give a computer the goal of maximize beauty or justice or pleasure or love or compassion or any humanly meaningful value. So one research challenge is how could we find ways to transfer human values into machines, such as to create a goal system that would want the same kind of things that we want?
SIMON: Mr. Bostrom, if a computer gets too cheeky, can't we just pull the plug out or, you know, smash his hard drive into smithereens?
BOSTROM: Well, today, certainly that's a possibility. Although, when we become very dependent on a system, like the Internet, it's not so clear any longer, like where is the off switch to the Internet? But when you have something that eventually becomes as smart as a human being, then it will be capable of strategizing and anticipating our actions and taking countermeasures. So our great advantage is, I think, that we get to make the first move. We get to create the AI. But it's important, particularly with superintelligence, that we would get it right on the first try.
SIMON: All my life I've heard about how subtle and intricate and powerful the human brain is - so much so that we haven't begun to understand it. I'd like to think that's still true. Can't we learn as fast as the machines?
BOSTROM: Well, the human brain is as complicated as it's ever been, and nobody knows today how to actually create machines with the same type of general learning ability that humans have. But there is no reason to think that biological information, processing systems like the human brain are anywhere near the limits of what is possible. The laws of physics, it looked like they would enable much more powerful forms of information processing. Much in the way that, say, a steam shovel or a tractor outperforms human muscles, I think intelligence would also be surpassed.
SIMON: Mr. Bostrom, as I understand it, you have spent a lot of your working life dealing with nuclear war and asteroid strikes and now the prospect of superintelligent machines. How you doing?
(LAUGHTER)
BOSTROM: Well, I actually also spend some time thinking about the upside of things, like, if things go well, if humanity makes it through this century intact, I think the future for Earth originating intelligent life could be very long and very large and very bright, indeed. We might reach technological maturity in this century, and with that would come the possibility to colonize the universe and to cure cancer and to accomplish many other things that we can only vaguely dream about today. It's worth being really careful and making sure that we don't screw up along the path.
SIMON: Nick Bostrom is the founder and director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University and the author of "Superintelligence." Thanks for speaking with us, Mr. Bostrom, and I don't mind saying good luck.
(LAUGHTER)
BOSTROM: Thanks.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon. The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review lower court rulings on gay marriage, the historic decision expected by the end of June. Thirty-six states and the District of Columbia have legalized gay marriage, either by referendum, by state legislative action or on orders from a state court or lower federal court. NPR's legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg joins us.
Nina, thanks for being with us.
NINA TOTENBERG, BYLINE: My pleasure, Scott.
SIMON: The word historic is, I think, unavoidable here.
TOTENBERG: Yeah.
SIMON: This has the look and feel of a landmark decision in the making, doesn't it?
TOTENBERG: Well, the Supreme Court of the United States is either going to say gay marriage is legal in the whole country or not, and there's no way to say that isn't historic.
SIMON: Now, the court indicated on Friday that it'll entertain arguments on just two questions. What are they?
TOTENBERG: Well, first, whether the bans on gay marriage are constitutional, and second if they are constitutional, whether those states must nonetheless recognize gay marriages that are legally performed in other states. For example, some of the plaintiffs from Ohio are gay couples, legally married in other states, who've adopted a child from Ohio. But Ohio won't give them a certificate of adoption with both the names of the parents on it. And that in itself has lots of legal consequences for a child in school, in the hospital, for the parents if one parent dies. So those are some of the questions that are coming before the court.
SIMON: What about some of the other people who've been challenging the bans in Ohio, Michigan, Tennessee, Kentucky? Who are they?
TOTENBERG: Well, suffice to say, they're all poster children for the cause, the most upstanding citizens asking the court to ban what they see as unjustified discrimination against them. There are widowers, legally married in other states for instance, who can't get Ohio to list them as a surviving spouse on their mate's death certificate. There are a couple of veterinarians married legally in another state who moved to Tennessee. Now they can't qualify for benefits as a family or a spouse because they're employed at a state university.
SIMON: Nina, looking ahead to the end of June, do you have any idea where the votes may fall on this?
TOTENBERG: Well, Justice Anthony Kennedy has been the linchpin of the course decisions on gay rights. He's written three important decisions changing the status quo to favor gay rights, the last of these less than two years ago. By a 5-4 vote struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which, as you may recall, denied federal tax and other benefits to gay couples who were married in states where those unions were legal. Kennedy's now 78 years old. He's almost certainly the deciding vote in this case too, though I have to say, Scott, it wouldn't surprise me if the Chief Justice, who has dissented before, might decide that he doesn't want to be on what some would surely call the wrong side of history. On the other hand, if the case goes the other way it'll be because of Justice Kennedy's great respect for marriage as a matter for states to deal with, and not for the federal government to deal with.
SIMON: Is there a political angle for all of this? We are, after all, coming up on 2016.
TOTENBERG: Well, I think just about every Republican political pall would tell you privately that if the court rules in favor of gay marriage, it's a gift to the Republican Party because it's no longer an issue that divides the party along generational lines. Instead, the court would be the moving force and the candidates then can move on to other issues.
SIMON: NPR's Nina Totenberg. Thanks so much.
TOTENBERG: You're welcome, Scott.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon.
JOSEPH JEAN-BAPTISTE: I'm Joseph Jean-Baptiste from Miami, Florida. Gas prices have been beautiful. I've been putting Supreme - 93 - because prices are so low.
ANGIE CHISLEY: Angie Chisley, Waldorf, Maryland. I have three kids, so cheaper gas is better because it pays for the bills and gets more stuff for my children. And yeah, I save a lot of money in gas, a lot.
SIMON: Falling oil prices are great for a family budget, but they are not so great for other segments of the economy, especially banks. Lending money to energy companies is usually a pretty profitable business. But if the price of oil drops low enough, the threat of default becomes real. Indeed, it's happened before, in the 1980s. And bank defaults are not good for anyone. Charles Peabody, a banking analyst at Portales Partners, joins us from our studios in New York.
Thanks very for much for being with us.
CHARLES PEABODY: My pleasure.
SIMON: Explain to us how this relationship works out, that ties the banks to energy companies.
PEABODY: Well, there are several exposures and potential ripple effects. The first is, as energy companies cut their capital expenditure budgets, you're going to see less demands for loans. And so we expect a significant slow-down in corporate loans in the first half of 2015. Beyond that, if energy prices remain depressed, there will be problems created in the credits and potential write-offs in 2016 and beyond.
SIMON: And this creates a ripple effect in the economy?
PEABODY: It does. You know, what we saw in the '80s and what the banks underestimated was that ripple effect to Main Street. So your local Caterpillar or Deere dealer may suffer. Your local shopping mall may be hurt. Your local Main Street mom-and-pop shops may be hurt.
SIMON: What do you think bankers learned during the 1980s slow-down that might change the kind of evaluations they make today?
PEABODY: Very little. I think, you know, bankers continue to make the same mistakes decade after decade and cycle after cycle.
SIMON: Well, like what?
PEABODY: Underestimating the risk and, you know, their exposure to certain sectors. I think, in terms of the exposure to the energy industry, the banking industry has done a better job of confining that exposure. Most banks have low to mid-single-digit exposure as a percentage of their long portfolio to energy. But I think they'll underestimate the ripple effect and the volatility that we see in price corrections in various asset classes, and energy's just a symptom of that process.
SIMON: I think a lot of people remember what happened in the 1980s with falling oil prices. They saw businesses go under in unemployment. What would you project might be on the horizon this time?
PEABODY: It's going to start with a slow-down in growth, in particularly, areas like Texas, Oklahoma, Montana, North Dakota et cetera, the energy producing states. It's going to spill over into Main Street and you're going to see an increase in non-performing assets in the banking system. And most of that will start the second half of this year. And then you'll start to see significant write-offs and loan losses recording in 2016.
SIMON: There's been no secret that over the past generation, or more at this point, a lot of people in the United States are interested in making the United States, you know the phrase - energy independent.
PEABODY: Correct, and as a part of that, there's the assumption that asset prices will always rise. And the assumption is you continue to drill more, you know, holes. So what caught the bankers this time and every time is, when you get very violent corrections and asset prices, which will change collateral values, and you get very significant changes in the assumption of growth.
SIMON: And a lot of that hasn't registered yet?
PEABODY: No, there are long lead and lag times between the event and the fallout of that event.
SIMON: Charles Peabody. He is director in charge of research at Portales Partners.
Thank you so much for joining us.
PEABODY: My pleasure.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Ahoy, mateys. Time for Sports.
(MUSIC)
SIMON: The NFL playoff games this weekend will decide who goes on to the Super Bowl and who just watches from the sofa. We're joined now by Howard Bryant of espn.com and ESPN the magazine. Howard, thanks for being with us.
HOWARD BRYANT: Good morning, Scott.
SIMON: The Seahawks play the Packers in Seattle tomorrow. And I saw a story, the city manager of Bainbridge Island, Washington, has banned cheese from city hall there. It's really getting dirty.
Let me ask - doesn't any game in which Aaron Rodgers might take 50 snaps give a little edge to the pack?
BRYANT: I'd have to disagree with you on that one. I've been saying that for the majority of this football season that I'm going to stick with champions. The Seahawks are the best team. They've got an underrated quarterback, even though he won the Super Bowl last year, in Russell Wilson. Obviously Aaron Rodgers is a dynamic player, but up there the Seahawks do everything that you need to do to win a championship. They play great defense, they've got a great running back with Marshawn Lynch, they've got a great, young quarterback. And they're playing in a place that's very, very difficult for opposing teams to win. I don't see anybody beating them and I'm going to stick with it. However, if anyone can beat them, Aaron Rodgers and the Packers can because they've got a wonderful offense, they've got a fantastic offense. But, I just don't fall in love with offenses in January.
SIMON: OK. Tomorrow the Colts play the Patriots. Last week the Colts made Peyton Manning look like he'd wished he was playing shuffleboard in Fort Lauderdale, but Tom Brady's just a few months younger. He's almost never looked better. So what do you see in this game?
BRYANT: Well, I think the Patriots are going to win the game, and I think the Patriots are going to the Super Bowl, but I think the Patriots aren't as good as the Seahawks. So I think you're going to get a Patriot-Seahawk Super Bowl with a Seahawk's victory. But it's wonderful what the Patriots have done - four straight AFC Championship games. And I think that Tom Brady, at 37 years old, he really needs another championship because they've come so close. They were undefeated back in 2007 and got upset by the Giants. Then they lost to the Giants again in the rematch in 2012. And at 37, how many more chances are you going to get? And I think they recognize as a team that this is one you just can't let get away. And they've destroyed the Colts last four times they've played them. I don't see it, but anything's possible. But I think the Patriots are going to win.
SIMON: Quick question while we're in the neighborhood - the Broncos were 12 and four this season. Do you see Peyton Manning coming back despite that last game - or because of it?
BRYANT: Or because of it. You know, I always look at it, Scott, from the standpoint that if the tank - you know, you play - you only come around this way once. So you play until the tank is empty because you're not coming back. So for me, if Peyton Manning feels like he can still play, I think he can still play. I just don't think that he can carry a team anymore the way that he used to. But he's still a great football player, but he needs much more help now.
SIMON: The NCAA has ordered Penn State to pay a $60 million fine to settle the Jerry Sandusky scandal. They also restored all those team's voided wins, which makes Coach Joe Paterno again the winningest coach in college football history. Does he get his reputation back?
BRYANT: No, he doesn't. And really, this to me really doesn't mean a whole lot to me. It means a lot to Penn State fans. But I have no problem holding the Louis Freeh report accountable. I have no problem holding the NCAA accountable. But we're always talking about leadership and character, but the Joe Paterno supporters still hold no responsible for the coach. And everybody failed here, including him, and so I think the victims - we should remember exactly who the victims were in this case.
SIMON: Howard Bryant, thanks so much.
BRYANT: Thank you.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Nothing worse than being bullied in school, especially if you're a fish.
A copper rockfish with a bad eye was tormented by its classmates, who'd sneak up on the poor fellow and steal his food. But Dr. Martin Haulena from the Vancouver Aquarium performed surgery on the rockfish and implanted a prosthetic eye. Dr. Haulena joins us from the studios of the CBC in Vancouver.
Doctor, thanks for being with us.
DR. MARTIN HAULENA: Thank you.
SIMON: I'm sure it was just a tiny minority of ill-mannered rockfish, but still. What did the other rockfish start doing to him?
HAULENA: Well, I think, you know, aggression is very, very normal in many, many species. And for fish in particular, you know, it's sort of normal for them to be vying for the best spots. And unfortunately, this rockfish became more of a disadvantage than most because of that one side where he couldn't see. And I think more so that he couldn't see, but the other rockfish can figure out that he couldn't see because the eye wasn't there. And that seems to be sort of a spot that they'd kind of key on. And a lot of species do that. In fact, some species even have, you know, artificial eyes themselves on their back end to make it look like they're looking at a predator coming at them, et cetera. So I think they took a little too much advantage of him. And we started noticing in the last few months - the aquarists, the biologists noticed - that he was spending a lot more time on the bottom of his exhibit, his fin razor frayed-up, and he was getting quite beaten-up.
SIMON: So you gave him a fake eye. Do you operate under water? I mean, what do you do?
HAULENA: (Laughter). Yeah. No, fish surgery and anesthesia has come a long way, for sure. But over the last 20 years, what we do is bring the fish out of water and we put them on a kind of a circulating system. We use an anesthetic drug that's dissolved in the water and then that water is flowed over the gills through a tube that's placed in the mouth of the fish. And we sort of irrigate the surface of the fish. But we can keep them out of water for hours and do fairly complex procedures.
SIMON: So the surgery went well, I gather.
HAULENA: He's doing amazing. You know, he's, you know, right up in the water column now using a lot more of his exhibit, reacting a lot more normally towards other fish, kind of blending-in with the other fish. His prosthetic eye is quite obvious, and we did that with some purpose because it was the first one for us. You know, we wanted to keep - well, I've been using this pun a lot lately, but - keep an eye on the eye there, and monitor him as closely as we could. So if you're looking for him, he's quite visible. And there he is, and his fin rays are out and his lesions have healed and, yeah, he looks good.
SIMON: Do the other fish leave him alone, let him be?
HAULENA: Well, (laughter), everyone's still aggressive to everyone, but now it's a little bit more manageable. And they don't sort of take advantage of that perceived weakness on that one side. I think that very visible prosthetic eye keeps them thinking that he can see them, so they don't go after him as much as they did, which is very important.
SIMON: Dr. Haulena, I hope you will take a question in a kind spirit, but, after an operation like that can you ever eat rockfish when you see it on a menu?
HAULENA: You know, it's - this is the bane of the veterinary existence. And that is that sometimes our patients also become our meals. And you know, the sort of important part is once an animal is entrusted to your care - as in our case, it's part of the collection of animals at the Vancouver Aquarium, part of our, I guess, family - you do your very best. It's not that I don't support fishing and not that I don't think there's, you know, great responsible fishing out there - and I think there is, but, yeah, in our case, this particular rockfish, he is not for the plate.
SIMON: Dr. Martin Haulena is head veterinarian at the Vancouver Aquarium.
Thanks so much for being with us.
HAULENA: Thank you very, very much.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Staying in Africa for a moment - do you ever see a zebra standing against a grassy plain and ask, who do you think you're fooling? Scientists since Darwin have been trying to fathom zebra stripes. Some have suggested the stripes might be nature's bug repellent, since flies just aren't attracted to the pattern of light that reflects off those black and white stripes. There comes another theory too, from researchers in the Royal Society Open Science magazine who advance what they call the cooling eddy theory. Black stripes get hotter than white, so you get faster or slower air currents over the zebra's skin. That creates eddies, or air swirls, to cool the zebra, maybe as it runs from a lion. Think of it as air conditioning on the go. Sure enough, the study found that zebras in hotter environments tended to have more stripes than their compatriots in cooler areas. Scientists say further investigation is required, but it will not be easy. Those vivid marks even stumped the imagination of Rudyard Kipling and his "Just So Stories." Kipling explains how the leopard got his spots and the camel his hump, but not how the zebra got his stripes.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MEGHAN TRAINOR: I've never, ever, ever sang this in front of people.
(APPLAUSE)
TRAINOR: Never, ever.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Last summer, a slightly nervous 20-year-old picked up a microphone in Nashville to perform a song that she'd written for someone else. She wound up recording it herself and it's been on the top of the charts almost ever since and watched on YouTube almost half a billion times.
TRAINOR: (Singing) I'm all about that bass, about that bass, no treble. I'm all about that bass, about that bass, no treble. I'm all about that bass, about that bass, about that bass, bass, bass, bass, bass. Yeah, it's pretty clear - I ain't no size two but I can shake it, shake it, like I'm supposed to do. Because I got that boom-boom that all the boys chase - all the right junk in all the right places.
SIMON: "All About That Bass," one of the songs from Meghan Trainor's new album. It's titled "Title." Meghan Trainor joins us now from New York.
Thanks so much for being with us.
TRAINOR: Thank you for having me.
SIMON: Where does the phrase come from?
TRAINOR: My co-writer had a title "All Bass No Treble," and I told him we should say "All About That Bass." And he said, I can't compare it with anything in real life. And I said, what about like, a big bass - like, a big booty or volume? Having thickness on your body and being proud of it. And he loved the idea, and we wrote this song in 45 minutes.
SIMON: You know, this is NPR. We don't hear the word booty a whole lot on this network.
TRAINOR: (Laughter).
SIMON: No, thank you. Can you tell us who you wrote it for, or who was in mind?
TRAINOR: Well, at the time, my job - I was signed by a publishing company to be a songwriter for other pop stars. But while writing this song, we knew no one would be able to cut it because you had to be a rapper and a singer who was also not a size two. So we kind of knew right away this would probably never see the light of day. But then I got signed for it, and now it's everywhere.
SIMON: Yeah. And did you write it out of your personal experience?
TRAINOR: Absolutely. I wrote it because I was very uncomfortable with myself and I wrote it as like, I wish I was this confident. I wish I was all about the bass. And now, singing it a hundred times and seeing the reaction of the crowd, I actually am very comfortable now. And the words have helped myself, along with other fans, which is incredible.
SIMON: Let's listen to another track from your new album. This one is called "Bang Dem Sticks."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BANG DEM STICKS")
TRAINOR: (Singing) Looking so good when he bang dem sticks. He can do the favorite diddle with a little bit of samba. And all the girls, I want your drummers number. But wait a minute - what the [bleep] is going on? You' re here to see M-Train because you love my songs. But there we go again with the double stroke - and I ain't talking dirty. I ain't making no jokes.
SIMON: You've talked, I think in interviews, about the influence of Caribbean music, soca.
TRAINOR: Yes, I love soca.
SIMON: That comes from your childhood?
TRAINOR: At the age of 7, my parents - we went on a family vacation to Trinidad and Tobago. And my aunt came as our babysitter, and she fell in love with a soca star. And so since 7 years old, I had a Trinidadian uncle.
SIMON: How did you connect with that music?
TRAINOR: I noticed that it was all upbeat, all very positive. And I thought that was so cool. Like, over here, we have to do some ballads and talk about heartbreak and everything, but they can still continue with hits with just happy upbeat songs.
SIMON: Let me ask you about what I think has become my favorite track, "Dear Future Husband." Let's listen.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DEAR FUTURE HUSBAND")
TRAINOR: (Singing) Tell me everything's all right. Dear future husband, here's a few things you need to know if you want to be my one and only all my life. Dear future husband, if you want to get that special loving, tell me I'm beautiful each and every night. After every fight, just apologize...
SIMON: So were you influenced by '50s, '60s doo-wop?
TRAINOR: Yes, absolutely.
SIMON: I just wondered if this was just new to you at the age of 20.
TRAINOR: (Laughter). No, I listen to a lot of "Runaround Sue" and those old-school songs.
SIMON: Oh - "Runaround Sue." Oh, my gosh, yeah.
TRAINOR: Yeah. And then I respected the Beach Boys, how they could have big choruses that weren't like, melodically up very high. And I wanted to do a very catchy one that everyone could sing, like, the (singing) "Dear Future Husband," so that everyone could sing along to it.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DEAR FUTURE HUSBAND")
TRAINOR: (Singing) If you want to get that special loving, tell me I'm beautiful each and every night. Oh, future husband better love me right.
SIMON: I've got to tell you - you're very thoughtful, you speak from experience, and you're 21 years old, right?
TRAINOR: Yeah, I just turned 21 in December.
SIMON: How long have you been doing this?
TRAINOR: When I was 13, I got a MacBook and I was writing before then but I started producing on my own. I always listened to the top 100 songs on iTunes to see like, what's very popular, and how can I do something like that?
SIMON: So you hear what's popular and try and figure out something you can do to fit in?
TRAINOR: Yeah, but then I want to be different. So that's why I brought the old-school back and then mixed in a little urban and Caribbean.
SIMON: I want to end, if we can, where this new album starts. Let's listen to the very first song, "The Best Part."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE BEST PART")
TRAINOR: (Singing) I've got a heart for the rhythm that beats with no pain. I've got a head full of melodies stuck in my brain. But the best part of being a singer at all is singing to the world my songs, I said, singing to the world my songs.
SIMON: And that's it, right?
TRAINOR: (Laughter). Yeah. That's the best part.
SIMON: Yeah. No one ever said to you, you need another two and a half minutes?
TRAINOR: (Laughter). No, that was my cute little intro.
SIMON: You know, it's so tempting to call you an overnight sensation, but I wonder if it feels overnight to you?
TRAINOR: The crazy parts are, like, the fact that I just did "Ellen" yesterday and today I'm doing "Jimmy Fallon" and then I fly back to LA to do...
SIMON: We don't get a mention in there?
TRAINOR: ...And you (laughter), of course, and this. This is ridiculous. I listen to this all the time.
SIMON: That's all right. That's OK, go ahead.
TRAINOR: (Laughter). But the schedule, I guess is pretty crazy. But, yeah the pop star life is definitely different than the songwriting life. It's night and day.
SIMON: But you've been working at it a long time in your own way, haven't you?
TRAINOR: Yeah, I've been working in my bedroom for a very long time.
SIMON: Meghan Trainor. Her new album, "Title." The title - that's it, "Title."
It was nice talking to you. Good luck, OK?
TRAINOR: It was very nice talking to you. Thank you for having me.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LIPS ARE MOVING")
TRAINOR: (Singing) I know you lie because your lips are moving, baby, don't you know I'm done? Come on, sing. Your lips are moving. Your lips are moving.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE PRIZE")
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
What you're listening to now is some of the music from the early days of Guster. On their first album, "Parachute" from 1995, it was a paired-down sound that featured a couple of acoustic guitars and infectious grooves from a set of bongo drums.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE PRIZE")
GUSTER: (Singing) My, my how things have changed since I've been away.
MARTIN: Today, they have a decidedly bigger sound, and the group has joined us in NPR's Studio One to prove it.
(SOUNDBITE OF "WEEKEND EDITION THEME")
MARTIN: (Laughter) That was awesome. So for those out there who didn't recognize it, that was the WEEKEND EDITION theme song by Guster.
RYAN MILLER: Is this going to be like a Roots thing where we just become the house band?
MARTIN: Maybe. That would be awesome. We just had you, and you just, like, played and, like, we could riff. It was awesome. Thank you for doing that. It's great to have you guys here. I want to introduce you. We've got Ryan Miller.
MILLER: Hello.
MARTIN: Adam Gardner.
ADAM GARDNER: Hi.
MARTIN: Luke Reynolds.
LUKE REYNOLDS: Hello.
MARTIN: Brian Rosenworcel.
BRIAN ROSENWORCEL: Hi.
MARTIN: So you have a new album, which we want to talk about, "Evermotion." And we're going to launch right into the music first. Ryan, what do you want to start it off with?
MILLER: We're going to play a song called "Simple Machine."
MARTIN: Let's hear it.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SIMPLE MACHINE")
GUSTER: One, two, three, four. (Singing) Steady, steady, plastic, motion. Lights flash, beating, almost, breathing. I'll never find my way back. I'll never find my way back home.
Empty, hollow, spit and swallowed. Preachers preaching, courage, ceded. I'll never find my way back. I'll never find my way back home.
So just forget about me, I will get by on myself. I'm not a simple machine .I have become something else. I'll never find my way back. I'll never find my way back home.
Wise up, scarecrow this is treason. Coal eyes see it, straw heart beating. I'll never find my way back. I'll never find my way back home.
So just forget about me, I will get by on myself. I'm not a simple machine. I have become something else. I'll never find my way back. I'll never find my way back home.
Ever after, it gets further. Who will still be waiting? Ever after, I get further. I can feel you fading.
MARTIN: That was Guster playing "Simple Machine" here in NPR's Studio One. That was Ryan Miller on piano, Adam Gardner on guitar, Luke Reynolds on bass, Brian Rosenworcel on the drums. So let's talk about how this all began. You guys have known each other for a long time, right, at least three of you. Ryan, you and Adam and Brian began as a trio at Tufts University way back in 1992.
MILLER: Yeah. We made a four-song cassette tape (Laughter)...
MARTIN: I remember those.
MILLER: ...To enter into the Tufts battle of the bands. We didn't get in.
MARTIN: (Laughter) Oh, and you didn't even get in?
MILLER: We didn't even get to compete I don't think.
(LAUGHTER)
ROSENWORCEL: That really lit a fire underneath us.
MILLER: Yeah, it was like, we're going to get into the battle of the bands next year. And we all met, and we've all been in bands. But none of us had sort of - we didn't share any of the same musical background. I think us writing songs was sort of a way of us just being able to play music together.
MARTIN: What were those initial conversations like? I mean, I'm just imagining the three of you seeing each other on that first day - oh, you play guitar? Cool, yeah. I play guitar.
MILLER: Yeah. But you're missing the best...
MARTIN: And you're thinking to yourself, but do you really play?
MILLER: Yeah. But then you miss the best part where the guy's like I got a pair of bongos.
(LAUGHTER)
MILLER: That's that the best part about this story is that there's a dude who brought his bongo drums to his dorm room.
ROSENWORCEL: I mean, I was shocked then and I'm shocked now that you guys let me in the band. I just had bongos.
(LAUGHTER)
MARTIN: I do want to talk a little bit about the bongos, mostly because I have a personal obsession with them. And they were a big part of your early sound. Is that just because, Brian, you were really into the bongos and you said, if you take me, you take my drums, you take my bongos?
ROSENWORCEL: I mean, I wasn't even into the bongos. I literally brought them and put them on the shelf of my dorm room. And I became friends with these guys, and I was like, yeah, I play. And then they let me in their band. And I kind of grew the percussion kit as we wrote songs together. Do you want a bongo lesson?
MARTIN: Kind of. It's so odd that you would ask.
(LAUGHTER)
MARTIN: It's so weird. It's like you could read my mind (laughter).
ROSENWORCEL: I've never given or received a bongo lesson.
(LAUGHTER)
ROSENWORCEL: But this will be my first one.
MARTIN: You and me both my friend.
ROSENWORCEL: OK, it's pretty simple. There's a little one and the big one. You don't want to, like, hit with a flat hand. You don't want to pancake the bongo. You want to hit it with the fingertips and let the tone project. So repeat after me. We'll do like a Simon says, OK.
(SOUNDBITE OF BONGO DRUMS)
ROSENWORCEL: Oh, you totally know how to play the bongos.
MARTIN: OK, give me something hard.
ROSENWORCEL: OK. I'll do a little Flintstones.
(SOUNDBITE OF BONGO DRUMS)
ROSENWORCEL: Want me to do that slower?
MARTIN: Yeah.
(SOUNDBITE OF BONGO DRUMS)
MARTIN: One, two, three, four, five.
(SOUNDBITE OF BONGO DRUMS)
ROSENWORCEL: Yeah.
(SOUNDBITE OF BONGO DRUMS)
MARTIN: Yay. I actually took real drum lessons in high school.
ROSENWORCEL: Oh, you did?
MARTIN: Yeah. I really do like to drum. Anyways, so that was just, like, a personal indulgence so thank you. It's been two decades. How have you guys seen your music change? I imagine it just inevitably does over that period of time?
MILLER: I mean, honestly for me, it paralleled my musical education. We were sort of listening to Toad the Wet Sprocket when we started, you know, really, honestly. And so now it's like our influences are so much deeper. And obviously there was bootstrapping that happened with certain producers that we worked with. I think our first producer, Mike Deneen, actually helped us a lot at just what it was like to be a band. I think Steve Lillywhite, who we made our third record with, worked. So we've been really proactive about trying to be better songwriters and tunesmiths and players and arrangers and singers.
MARTIN: Let's play a track actually off the album, and then we can talk a little bit more about it. We're going to play something off the first track called "Long Night."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LONG NIGHT")
GUSTER: (Singing) Was it always this magnificent 'cause it feels so different in the morning light.
Like the first word from your first born landscape transformed by the virgin light.
How many times I've wished for change. Gave up, gave in, and called it fate repeating all of the same mistakes wasn't ready for what I'd find.
MARTIN: This album was produced by the Shins' keyboard Richard Swift. How did he shape what this ended up being?
MILLER: Well, swift sort of came on our radar a few years ago. And there was pretty much, like, two names on our list. And he was the top one. He seemed like he was a little bit of a madman.
MARTIN: How did he push you into some uncomfortable places?
ROSENWORCEL: Well, I mean, one of the first conversations we had with him we explained, well, our last couple records we got stuck and they took like a year each from front to end to record. And he's like, I've never taken more than nine days to make a record.
MARTIN: Wow.
ROSENWORCEL: So there was a little bit of, like, well, what's going to happen.
MARTIN: Did you end up doing it faster? Did you record - was the process shorter?
MILLER: The whole thing was three weeks. We kind of just, like, let go, and he sort of steered the ship. And it was totally against everything I'd ever learned about how to make a record. And we never want to make a record another way again.
(SOUNDBITE OF GUSTER SONG)
MARTIN: Can I end by asking kind of a big picture, though, serious, philosophical question?
MILLER: I'm clearly willing to go there.
MARTIN: Clearly you can go there. It's hard to make music for five years. It's really hard to make music for 20 years. How do you fight monotony? How do you keep creativity going? And are there lulls, and when they come, do you just accept them?
MILLER: We're brothers. We all met when we were 18. We spent - I'm 42 - we spent 24 years, you know, more than half my life in a band, in a business. I'd never - none of us planned to go to Tufts University and be in a band. You know, this was - like, the fact that we graduated from college and bought a van and went - you know, started traveling as soon as we graduated and were able to support ourselves right away was just a farce.
And so I think it was sort of like, well, let's pour gas on this as much as possible. But yeah, it's been, like, pretty amazing journey and feeling like now we're still so excited to, like, go play music again is nuts. OK, it's nuts. Let's do it. Say yes.
MARTIN: Well, it was great to talk with you guys.
ROSENWORCEL: You too.
MARTIN: Thank you so much for coming in. Before I let you go, your choice. Play us out on something from the new album.
MILLER: I got a song. I know a song we can play. It's called "Lazy Love." It's from our forthcoming album "Evermotion."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LAZY LOVE")
GUSTER: (Singing) Come on up. Let's not get lazy love. We're always so lazy love. Wasting our time. We came up. We were amazing love. We were amazing love. We were divine.
MARTIN: That's Guster playing "Lazy Love" in NPR's Studio One. You can hear the full song plus a few extras on our website, npr.org.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
One of rock and roll's great svengalis has died. Kim Fowley was the infamous first manager and producer of the all-girl band The Runaways. Fowley died late last week in Los Angeles after a long battle with cancer.
NPR's Neda Ulaby has this remembrance.
NEDA ULABY, BYLINE: Checkered barely begins to describe Kim Fowley's long, crazy career in music.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "PAPA-OOM-MOW-MOW")
THE RIVINGTONS: (Singing) Papapapa-oom-mow-mow-mow.
ULABY: He was a songwriter, manager, producer, promoter and scenester. Back in the early 1960s, he helped put together this novelty song for the R&B group the Rivingtons tends.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "PAPA-OOM-MOW-MOW")
THE RIVINGTONS: (Singing) The greatest sound I ever heard.
ULABY: Fowley wrote or producer or popped up on songs for Cat Stevens, Frank Zappa, The Birds and his own, weird late 1960s album called "Outrageous.
(SOUNDBITE OF ALBUM, "OUTRAGEOUS")
KIM FOWLEY: (Singing) I'm the devil. I'm vulgar.
ULABY: Kim Fowley was an orphan of Hollywood. His mother, a struggling actress, abandoned him to foster homes repeatedly. He suffered from polio as a child, and the disease marked him physically and emotionally. But by the 1970s, he was known for arranging and producing songs for the movie "American Graffiti" and writing for Alice Cooper, Helen Reddy and Kiss.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DO YOU LOVE ME")
KISS: (Singing) Do you love me.
ULABY: Kim Fowley was over six feet tall with freakishly long arms and legs. He was a flamboyant king of the Sunset Strip, then a louche intersection where glam and hair metal crashed into punk. Rock stars cavorted with underage groupies in the parking lots of nightclubs. Fowley trolled the scene in peach-colored jumpsuits and kabuki-style makeup.
EVELYN MCDONNELL: He was probably a predator.
ULABY: Rock critic Evelyn McDonnell wrote a book called "Queens Of Noise" about The Runaways.
MCDONNELL: You know, he was looking for talent, and he was looking for prey.
ULABY: One night, Fowley met a 14-year-old who wanted to be in an all-girl band. Fowley loved the idea. In 1975, he helped assemble a group of 15-, 16- and 17-year-old musicians. In a documentary about The Runaways called "Edgeplay," Fowley, who liked to call himself the band's pimp, fondly described his vision.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "EDGEPLAY")
FOWLEY: Runaways were strong. They were the Amazon culture. Runaways were not T and A. Runaways were a sports team with musical instruments and teenage lyrics.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CHERRY BOMB")
THE RUNAWAYS: (Singing) Can't stay at home, can't stay at school.
ULABY: Still, Fowley was not above having the 15-year-old lead singer perform in fishnets and a bustier.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CHERRY BOMB")
THE RUNAWAYS: (Singing) Hello, daddy. Hello, mom. I'm your ch-ch-ch-ch-cherry bomb.
ULABY: That song was co-written on the fly by Fowley and guitarist Joan Jett as an audition number for lead singer Cherie Currie. Fowley handpicked her for her blonde, baby Brigette Bardot looks. Bassist Jackie Fox remembered the drama that engulfed the band as it toured relentlessly in the mid-1970s.
JACKIE FOX: He really abused Cherie mercilessly - much worse than the rest of us. But he would set us off against each other so we could never gang up, figure out what he was doing and replace him.
ULABY: By the time The Runaways finally replaced Fowley after fewer than two years, the band had imploded in a storm of rivalrie,s financial mismanagement, libidinal dramas and drugs.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I LOVE PLAYING WITH FIRE")
THE RUNAWAYS: (Singing) That's why I love playing with fire.
ULABY: It was a tragedy to Kim Fowley that partly drove his hustle, his jive and the emotional wreckage he created. And it shadowed his terrific ambitions for the all-girl band he described in the documentary "Edgeplay."
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "EDGEPLAY")
FOWLEY: I was trying to capture noise. I didn't break it down to fingernail polish or cup size. I'm looking for magic and noise. I want authentic slime. I want the golden garbage, and I succeeded and so did they.
ULABY: The Runaways, a pivotal band of the 1970s, did succeed because of and in spite of Kim Fowley. His outsized character dwarfed his legacy. It could've been so much greater. Neda Ulaby, NPR News.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
In 1971, 10-year-old Allen Kurzweil was a new student, the youngest at a boarding school in Switzerland. And he had a problem named Cesar Augustus.
ALLEN KURZWEIL: Almost at once, he dominated my life
MARTIN: Cesar Augustus was Allen Kurzweil's 12-year-old bully. Kurzweil says Cesar started tormenting him soon after they met and it culminated in one particularly brutal incident.
KURZWEIL: He tied me up to a bedpost and whipped me to the soundtrack of a song in "Jesus Christ Superstar."
MARTIN: Allen Kurzweil left that school after a year, but the memory of the abuse haunted him well into adulthood. In his new memoir, "Whipping Boy," the novelist revisited the episode and detailed his decades-long quest to confront his bully.
KURZWEIL: For a long time, I would tell this story with an almost frivolous quality. I tried to subliminate the anguish to man-up, to not confront the anguish I felt. And that didn't work. It was one of the reasons I decided to seek Cesar out.
MARTIN: So fast-forward decades. You discovered Cesar to be part of this group of people that had devised this fraud. And it landed him in federal prison for his role. But can you just - it's really complicated and crazy in so many ways. But can you just give us a thumbnail sketch of how this scam worked and his role in it?
KURZWEIL: Thumbnail is impossible.
MARTIN: (Laughter).
KURZWEIL: It's just not possible. I mean, one of the reasons it took me so long to write the book is I had to juggle how I'm going to describe a scam in which a man, who goes by Prince Robert and who wears a cape and a monocle in conjunction with the Colonel, who in point of fact was a former assistant store manager from RadioShack, claim to be the overseers of an international bank based in Switzerland. Everything seems to go back to Switzerland.
MARTIN: (Laughter) That is a weird coincidence.
KURZWEIL: And they had assets of - in excess of $60 billion. And as I discovered, proof of the worth of their bank took the form of a single-page special deed of trust from the Kingdom of Mombessa. For the benefit of the listeners, I should point out that there is no Kingdom of Mombessa. And the crazy thing is I know all of this because I was given access to all of the criminal proceedings and the court records, the discovery materials. Why? Because all of them, without exception, had Cesars in their past. This was their opportunity to redress their own childhood injustices.
MARTIN: You end up finding him. You find Cesar. In some ways, you found - well, in many ways, he was a diminished figure when held up to the memory of who he was to you when you were a child. This was not the super villain that you remembered, was he?
KURZWEIL: No. He was more Eeyore rather than Dr. Evil. I was traveling cross country to talk to a man who had just spent a considerable amount of time in a federal penitentiary and had no visible means of support. But I also realized I was talking to a man who had made many people's lives miserable. We joke about the dirty-rotten-scoundrel-dom of the scam, but at the other end of this scheme, there were dozens of people who were devastated by the money that was stolen from them. There was a fellow who started crying when he recalled the fact that he squandered the last three months of his wife's life. She was, at that point, dying of multiple myeloma, being pulled by the nose by Cesar and these other scoundrels.
MARTIN: When did you make it clear that what had brought you to that meeting was that you felt harmed as a kid and you wanted him to own it?
KURZWEIL: Well, that - that was the hardest question to ask of all. And I had to be strong-armed by my wife, by my editors to ask those questions, to say, hey, you did a number on me. And I don't think I'm giving too much away to say that he denied all culpability.
MARTIN: He just said he didn't remember a lot of it.
KURZWEIL: More than that - he didn't remember me. He didn't remember rooming with me. In fact, he denied rooming with me in the same way that he stood before the sentencing judge and said he had done nothing wrong. But he left me a halfhearted apology after our last meeting.
MARTIN: So what did you think when you heard that message?
KURZWEIL: I was liberated when I heard it. I have to say I felt 30 pounds lighter.
MARTIN: So had you healed? You had healed in this process without knowing it?
KURZWEIL: No. I healed in this process and knew it. I healed, as so many writers do, by writing through that anguish, confronting him but confronting myself as well.
MARTIN: Allen Kurzweil. His new memoir is called "Whipping Boy: The Forty-Year Search For My 12-Year-Old Bully." He spoke with us from Rhode Island Public Radio in Providence. Allen, thanks so much for talking with us and sharing this story.
KURZWEIL: Thank you, Rachel.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
It is awards season. And if you're in the hunt for that highest of honors, the golden lapel pin, you have tuned into the right place because it is time to play the puzzle. Joining me is WEEKEND EDITION's puzzle master, Will Shortz. Hey, Will.
WILL SHORTZ, BYLINE: Good morning, Rachel. Of course, that's a faux gold pin.
MARTIN: Of course.
SHORTZ: But valuable nonetheless.
MARTIN: (Laughter) Exactly. OK, what was last week's challenge, Will?
SHORTZ: Yes, it came from listener Steve Baggish of Arlington, Massachusetts. I said, think of a U.S. city whose name has nine letters. I said, remove the three letters from the start and the three letters from the end, and only two will remain. How is this possible? And what city is it?
Well, my intended answer - or our intended answer - was Fort Worth, Texas. Get rid of the F-O-R and the R-O-T-H, and you're left with two - T-W-O - kind of tricky. We got a lot of other answers. There's a little town in Kentucky named Flatwoods - works the same way - and a village in North Carolina, Wentworth. And then my favorite answer was Pontoosuc, Illinois.
MARTIN: Wow.
SHORTZ: It's a village of under 200 on the Mississippi River - P-O-N-T-O-O-S-U-C. Get rid of those outside letters and you're left with T-O-O, which is too. And since we're on the radio, and this is an oral puzzle, you know, that works just as well.
MARTIN: Yeah sure. More than 1,600 of you got one of the right answers, and our winner this week is Amy Cox of Los Angeles, California. Congratulations, Amy.
AMY COX: Thanks.
MARTIN: Are you an avid puzzler, Amy? Do you play with us a lot?
COX: Actually, my parents play each week. And, you know, they've never won. They keep playing. They're so excited to win some day. And, of course, this is the first time I've entered. And, you know, the puzzles are actually really hard usually.
MARTIN: Yeah, tell me about it.
COX: This is, like, one of the first I actually got.
MARTIN: So have you told them that you won?
COX: I am keeping it a secret.
MARTIN: Oh, I love it.
COX: I want to see their reaction. And we're going to be together on Sunday because Sunday is my birthday.
MARTIN: I love it. OK. So as many listeners might know, we do pre-tape the puzzle. So you're saying that on Sunday when this airs, you are going to be gathered around the radio or computer or however you listen to us with your parents, and then they'll find out.
COX: Hopefully I'll be able to videotape their reaction, too.
MARTIN: Oh, very cool. You should share that with us. OK, so let's do it, Will.
SHORTZ: All right, Amy and Rachel. Well, last Tuesday I was in Sun Valley, Idaho, for a speaking engagement, and there were a lot of NPR listeners in the audience. So here's an expanded version of one of the puzzles I gave. Every answer is a familiar two-word phrase or name with the initials SV. For example, if I said noted Idaho ski resort, you would say Sun Valley.
MARTIN: OK.
SHORTZ: Number one - who is honored on February 14?
COX: Saint Valentine.
MARTIN: Yes.
SHORTZ: Saint Valentine is it. Number two - its capital was Saigon.
COX: Eastern Asia... not...
MARTIN: Yeah, you know this.
COX: South Vietnam.
MARTIN: Yes.
SHORTZ: South Vietnam, yes. All right. Here's your next one - an Italian phrase meaning under the breath or said privately.
COX: Oh, Italian.
SHORTZ: It means literally under the breath.
COX: Under the breath. I think I've got nothing on this.
SHORTZ: Yeah? Do you know, Rachel?
MARTIN: (Speaking Italian) Sotto Voce.
SHORTZ: Yep, you got it. Here's your next one - a ship or boat.
COX: Ship or boat. The schooner? Let me think. What else is an S? A something - a sea vessel.
MARTIN: Yes.
SHORTZ: OK, sailing vessel, too. That works. How about bass guitarist and vocalist for The Sex Pistols.
COX: Oh, I am terrible with names of really anyone famous.
(LAUGHTER)
SHORTZ: OK.
MARTIN: I don't know this one either.
SHORTZ: I'm just going to tell you this one. It's Sid Vicious.
MARTIN: Oh, I knew that.
COX: Oh, I do recognize that name.
SHORTZ: Sid Vicious. All right. Lettuce, carrot or cucumber as part of a dinner starter.
COX: A salad vegetable? Or...
SHORTZ: Yes, salad vegetable. Good, you got it.
COX: Oh, OK.
SHORTZ: Here's your last one - as a group, they are listed as chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, patience, kindness and humility.
COX: They are some sort of values. They are...
SHORTZ: Not quite values, no. First of all, how many are there? Chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, patience...
COX: Seven?
MARTIN: Yeah.
SHORTZ: Yes, there's your S. These are all good things to have.
COX: Virtues, virtues.
MARTIN: Yes.
SHORTZ: Seven virtues is it.
COX: There it is.
MARTIN: Are you OK, Amy?
COX: I survived.
(LAUGHTER)
MARTIN: You did a fine job. For playing our puzzle today, Amy, you get a WEEKEND EDITION lapel pin and puzzle books and games. You can read all about your prizes at npr.org/puzzle. And before we let you go, where do you hear us? What's your public radio station, Amy?
COX: KCRW in Santa Monica.
MARTIN: Amy Cox of Los Angeles, California, thanks much for playing the puzzle, Amy.
COX: Thank you.
MARTIN: And Will, what's the challenge for next week?
SHORTZ: Yes. Name two animals - both mammals, one of them domestic, the other wild. Put their letters together and rearrange the result to name another mammal - this one wild and not seen naturally around North America. So again, two animals - one domestic, one wild. Put their letters together, rearrange them and you'll name another mammal. This one's wild, and you don't see it in North America. What mammal is it?
MARTIN: All right. When you've got the answer, go to our website, npr.org/puzzle, and click on the submit your answer link. Just one entry per person, please, and your answers need to be in by Thursday, January 22 at 3 p.m. Eastern time.
Please include a phone number where we can reach you at about that time. And if you're the winner, we will give you a call, and you will get to play on the air with the puzzle editor of the New York Times and WEEKEND EDITION's puzzle master, Will Shortz. Thanks so much, Will.
SHORTZ: Thanks, Rachel.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
It is only January, but some college kids are already focused on this summer, especially students who want jobs in the tech industry. That's true for a group of college students in California's Salinas Valley. Most of them are the children of farm workers or are immigrants themselves.
Krista Almanzan of member station KAZU first met the group of students about a year ago and caught up with them recently on campus.
DANIEL DIAZ: Oh, OK, so what you're saying is if they click it...
KRISTA ALMANZAN, BYLINE: About an hour south of Silicon Valley, in a classroom at Hartnell Community College, Daniel Diaz and Brian De Anda stand at a whiteboard, mapping out ideas on how to reduce the size of a mobile app their team is building.
DIAZ: So if we do this, how much space are we going to knock out?
BRIAN DE ANDA: We don't know yet.
ALMANZAN: This isn't a class, and the app they're building - an informational guide for a drug rehab center - isn't even a school project. But this is what it takes to have a chance at an elite summer internship, says Daniel Diaz.
DIAZ: What you're taught at school is not enough, especially in today's competitive society. I think you need to do more outside learning.
ALMANZAN: So these students are working on other apps, doing hackathons and learning additional programming languages outside of class because there's a thought - perhaps a reality - that hangs over them. They're underdogs. Elias Ramirez is also on the team.
ELIAS RAMIREZ: Given the region it's in, it's majorly farmworkers. So given that, you don't think that many bright students can come from here.
ALMANZAN: They're all part of the inaugural class of CSIT-In-3, an intensive, accelerated computer science degree program targeted at students from the agricultural Salinas Valley. They are about halfway through the three-year program, where they've done much of their coursework at the community college, and will soon be doing the majority at Cal State Monterey Bay, where they will ultimately earn their degree. Joe Welch is one of the program's co-founders.
JOE WELCH: We're going to bring a population that's not fully representative in Silicon Valley right now.
ALMANZAN: Welch is referring to diversity numbers that some major tech companies released last year, showing that when it comes to U.S.-based tech workers, the number of Hispanics or blacks doesn't even come close to 5 percent. Women fare better, but still less than 20 percent. In the CSIT-In-3 program, 90 percent of the students are Latino and nearly half are women.
WELCH: If they don't do anything to change the hiring processes that they've historically done, they'll be very challenged to get those trend lines to change at all, whether for women or for underrepresented minorities.
ALMANZAN: So Welch and his co-founder have been pitching Silicon Valley companies this - become our partner, we'll send you our best students, you'll give them internships. It's proving a hard sell to companies that have long-standing relationships with top-tier schools, like nearby Stanford and UC Berkeley, but they've made some inroads.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Let's finish up and transition to our second group, which would be (unintelligible).
ALMANZAN: At a networking event in the ballroom of Cal State Monterey Bay, Welch watches as the students mingle with representatives from local companies and a few from Silicon Valley, including Google, Twitter and Salesforce.
WELCH: So next group, fire away.
ALMANZAN: About 10 students gather around Pat Patterson's table. He's with Salesforce. Patterson's interest in this program goes beyond this networking event. He also taught a course in the program this past semester. He says he's optimistic about CSIT-In-3 both for its potential to quickly get graduates into the workforce and diversify the industry.
PAT PATTERSON: If your employees are almost a monoculture, they're going to be building products and taking into account the needs of that monoculture. So by having more diversity in tech, we can actually build better products that better serve the needs of the wider community.
ALMANZAN: And as students like Elias Ramirez will tell you, they also bring grit. When his parents first came to the U.S. from Mexico, they worked in the fields before moving on to better jobs. And that hard work has inspired him.
RAMIREZ: The idea that there might be someone better than me is what actually might keep me competitive.
ALMANZAN: So far, the CSIT-In-3 students are getting interviews, and one of the 28 has secured an internship with Apple. For NPR News, I'm Krista Almanzan in Salinas, California.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
With the economy expected to dominate the president's State of the Union address, White House correspondent Tamara Keith got to thinking about his past speeches - in particular, the rhetoric this president has used to talk about the economy and how Republicans have responded.
TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: When you're president of the United States, what you say about the economy matters a lot, because the economy isn't just about numbers and widgets. It's about people's lives and hopes. The health of the economy is intertwined with the national psyche.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I know that for many Americans watching right now, the state of our economy is a concern that rises above all others.
KEITH: In February 2009, President Obama addressed a joint session of Congress and a nation in the throes of the worst recession in generations. Obama used the word crisis 11 times.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
OBAMA: You don't need to hear another list of statistics to know that our economy is in crisis because you live it every day. It's the worry you wake up with and the source of sleepless nights.
KEITH: The month before, the economy shed nearly 800,000 jobs. And the situation would get worse before it got better. But in that first address, President Obama and his speechwriters figured the American people weren't simply looking to him for sympathy and an accounting of economic doom. Obama ran on a message of hope. And he needed to offer some.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
OBAMA: Tonight, I want every American to know this - we will rebuild. We will recover. And the United States of America will emerge stronger than before.
(APPLAUSE)
KEITH: But since then, Obama has had a hard time hitting the right note when talking about the economy. In that first speech, he was an outsider. But in the years that followed, it was his economy. In 2010, he reframed, saying the worst of the storm had passed.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
OBAMA: And after two years of recession, the economy is growing again. Retirement funds have started to gain back some of their value. Businesses are beginning to invest again.
KEITH: But just barely. The recession was technically over, but there was a huge disconnect between Obama's words and what Americans were experiencing. One in ten people still couldn't find work. In 2011, it was the same story - an optimistic Obama talking to an unconvinced American public.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
OBAMA: The stock market has come roaring back. Corporate profits are up. The economy is growing again.
KEITH: And so it went, year after year. Obama described green shoots and good news that economists say were real. But many people watching at home simply didn't feel. And each year, Republicans in their official response had no problem finding very real pain to highlight. The contrast between Obama's assessment and the GOP response was never starker than in 2012.
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OBAMA: The state of our union is getting stronger. And we've come too far to turn back now.
KEITH: And here's then-Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels with the GOP response.
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MITCH DANIELS: The president did not cause the economic and fiscal crises that continue in America tonight. But he was elected on a promise to fix them, and he cannot claim that the last three years have made things anything but worse.
KEITH: The economy wasn't actually worse. The unemployment rate was no longer rising. It was coming down. And that trend has continued. In 2014, U.S. businesses added more jobs than in any year since the go-go 90s. This time, when President Obama stands at the front of the House chamber and talks up the economy, polls, consumer confidence surveys and $2-a-gallon gas all indicate the American public is more likely to agree with his assessment. Tamara Keith, NPR News.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
When we last talked to Eddie Huang, it was about two years ago, right when his memoir, "Fresh Off The Boat," came out. Eddie is a kind of renaissance guy with a string of careers: lawyer, TV host, restaurateur. His book is raw and funny and sometimes profane - a really honest story about life as an Asian-American kid reconciling two cultures. Now that book is going to be a TV show, a network show on ABC, also called "Fresh Off The Boat," and it has retained at least some of that raw sensibility.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "FRESH OFF THE BOAT")
EDDIE HUANG: (As himself) I was blow-drying my hair, and I figured it out - how the restaurant can attract bigger crowds.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTRESS: (As character) Well, how?
HUANG: (As himself) I need to hire a white host. Instead of people coming in and seeing a Chinese face and saying, huh, I thought this was an Old West steakhouse, they see a white face and say, oh, hello white friend; I am comfortable.
MARTIN: That's a clip from the pilot, which airs in February. But getting to that creative place was difficult. Eddie Huang recently wrote about turning his book into a sitcom in New York Magazine. We invited him back and asked him why he chose to put his stories so intense and nuanced on network television.
HUANG: We all knew that, you know, this is going to be tough. It's going to be a fight. But I talked to my team, my agent, and I was like, if we go on cable somewhere - whether it's HBO, AMC - we're preaching to the choir. These people, they've already seen "The Wire," they've already seen "Breaking Bad," and a lot of these things have been said to people that understand it. But there's a real challenge, and there's a real benefit, to saying this to people on a platform that usually does not allow these voices to be heard.
MARTIN: What was the first compromise you had to make in making this story something that was going to work on network TV?
HUANG: Well, I wasn't able to write it, so that was the hardest one to swallow. And I held off signing my contract all the way until they were shooting the pilot. But my lawyer told me, he was like, if you don't sign, man, you're never coming back from this, and all the work we've done is for nothing. No one's going to work with you again. And he's like, you came for a reason. We decided to do this. Don't go back now.
MARTIN: So was there a point in the process that you said to yourself, this - no way, like, this - absolutely I will not compromise on?
HUANG: Yeah, yeah, there was a day I went in the writers' room - and, you know, it was always contentious when I went in the writers' room because I'm not one of the writers.
MARTIN: (Laughter) I imagine it was a little tense.
HUANG: Yeah, and the first few times, I'd show up and then they'd stop writing. And it was like show and tell. Eddie, tell us stories about your family. We'll take notes, and we'll use it. And it was OK. Then I just started feeling, you know, I don't want to just be the guy coming in, telling stories and then leaving an hour later.
MARTIN: And having no control over how it's interpreted.
HUANG: And having no control.
MARTIN: Yeah.
HUANG: So I started just - when I was at the studio for other meetings, I'd just walk in and park myself. And it got weird. It got really weird. But I was like, who cares? This is my story. And there was one time they had a joke in the script. They were trying to portray the Asian work ethic - telling young Eddie, you know, your grandfather worked so hard. He used to castrate hogs with a stick. And I was like, wait a second, who came up with the idea that my grandfather castrates hogs with a stick? And they're like, it's funny. It's, like, Asian. Like, you guys would slaughter pigs, and its savage. And I was like, this is yellow peril. I was like, my grandfather sold buns on the street. And my Gua Bao that I made in New York in 2009 is derivative of that. And there is a link between our two generations - three generations. And I was like, if you need to talk about him working hard, talk about him selling buns on the street with his entire family on a blanket.
And I said, we stand for something. And we're proud of it. And my families - they need to be respected. And it turned the room over. And it was one writer, and I was like, why don't you just tell a joke about how the buns are so hot, it burned the fingerprints off his hands. And, I mean, it's not my style of joke. It's not the voice of the book, but I was like, fine, at least it's not offensive. You know, you have people going out, talking about how proud they are of this show, and it's heartbreaking to sit in sometimes and see what people's first instincts and intuitions of you are.
MARTIN: You did write this long piece where if you didn't read the whole thing, you started to think that you were abandoning the process, that you were completely dismayed by what the network had done with your story. But in the end, it is a reflection on your own compromise and what we've been talking about. Could you describe the moment that you write about in the piece when you were at home, watching a football game and you saw the first promo for the series.
HUANG: Man, I lost it. I was watching the game on TiVo, and I was getting a few texts from people like, oh, shoot, you know - expletives, all expletives, just from my friends, all expletives, you know.
MARTIN: Because they were all watching the same football game.
HUANG: Yeah, yeah, we all watch the game. All of a sudden - I was under the influence, as well.
(LAUGHTER)
HUANG: So I'm there in the massage chair, totally relaxed, and the logo comes across, and I was just like, oh, my God. This is happening. When you see it in the context of the Ohio State-Michigan game, a game you grew up watching the day after Thanksgiving, it's totally insane. And the only other time I can remember really feeling like, whoa, I'm part of America was when about Obama got elected in '08. You know, when I saw that, I was like, for all I've said about never having a chance and never fitting in and everything, it was worth it. It was worth it because it was enough of who we really were. And I still want to push more. And I will never forget, like, where I want us to get. But as a milestone, as a kind of like the quarter-mile mark, I was like, this is crazy. And it gave me hope and promise for how much further we can go.
MARTIN: Before I let you go, what motivated you to write that piece? Were you trying in some way to preempt some kind of criticism you were anticipating about the show maybe not going far enough?
HUANG: No, I want to encourage criticism. I really encourage it. And I think I'm pretty clear in the article telling people you have to come, you have to talk about this, because the article, the conversation, Asians coming out - when the voices are heard, they have to adjust, you know, because it's a business, and they are trying to sell to these markets. And when the markets are explicit about what they want and how they want to be represented and not represented, the studio and network will acquiesce. They're not on a mission to not represent us. They just don't know how to.
MARTIN: Eddie Huang, he's the author of the memoir "Fresh Off The Boat." That book has been turned into a network television sitcom also called "Fresh Off The Boat." His article appeared in New York Magazine. It was great to talk with you again, Eddie. Thanks so much.
HUANG: Thanks for having me. It's always fun.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
We begin this morning with a string of terrorism arrests across Europe. Police in Greece detained at least two men yesterday on suspected ties to terrorism. In Belgium, for the first time in three decades, there are paratroopers guarding buildings, just days after a raid in which two suspected terrorists died and one was wounded. And in France, where it all began less than two weeks ago with the attack on the offices of a satirical magazine and the siege of a kosher deli, officials there are looking for more suspects. NPR's counterterrorism correspondent Dina Temple-Raston is just back from Paris where she has been reporting on all this. She joins us now. Dina, what is the latest on the aftermath of the attacks in France?
DINA TEMPLE-RASTON, BYLINE: Well, the two brothers who were at the center of the attacks, Cherif and Said Kouachi, are being very quietly buried. French officials haven't announced when their burials will take place out of concern that there will be some sort of civil arrest, either from supporters, who might turn their graves into jihadi shrines, or from right-wingers, who have been agitating to stage anti-Islamist demonstration, which, so far, officials have banned. And the mood in Paris is pretty dark. Troops are still guarding key government sites. There are armed guards around Jewish neighborhoods and around some mosques. I mean, Paris officials think there was a cell of jihadis that was behind this attack, and they haven't just put a number on how many they might be looking for.
MARTIN: We've known for some time that law enforcement officials in Europe have been really concerned that people who had gone to fight in Syria and Iraq would then return to their home countries to carry out attacks. Is there any way to know how big this problem is?
TEMPLE-RASTON: Well, it's a big problem. While I was in Paris, the numbers for France alone were all over the place. Newspapers were saying there were as many as 5,000 jihadis there, which is just a crazy number. The numbers French officials use internally are 800-1,000, and that's people they believe have traveled to Syria and Iraq. Some of those people might be working in hospitals, some might be fighting with moderate forces, some might be with al-Qaida's arm there or with the so-called Islamic State. I mean, to give you comparable numbers for the U.S., U.S. intelligence officials say there are about 150 Americans who have traveled to Syria and Iraq in the past couple of years, and they say at least 12 are with the Islamic State, also known as ISIS. A handful of those 12 are back in America, and officials think they have a pretty good handle on where they are.
MARTIN: So the number of people going to fight with ISIS and returning is higher in Europe than it is in America, right?
TEMPLE-RASTON: Yeah, the French problem is about 10 times worse than the U.S. one. The French will tell you they just don't have the manpower to follow that many people. The rule of thumb is that it takes about 10 people for every one person they track around the clock. So you can see how difficult the problem is. I mean, I was talking to one expert in Paris who said that he thinks that France and U.S. and other governments are really good at this point at identifying people who are dangerous. What they can't predict is which of those people are actually going to strike out an attack.
MARTIN: Like the Kouachi brothers, the men thought to be behind the magazine attack, they were being watched by authorities, but they didn't think they were a threat.
TEMPLE-RASTON: Yeah, they weren't particularly religious, but their radicalization was almost textbook. They started out as young hoods in the tough suburbs of Paris. Cherif ended up in prison. He followed a radical imam that he met there when he was behind bars. I mean, one of the amazing numbers I heard when I was there is Muslims make up between 50 and 75 percent of the French prison population. And I spoke to an investigating judge who prosecuted Cherif Kouachi, and he said he clearly hated Jews, but he didn't seem violent. Now, we'll have more on this as a part of a series we're doing later this week.
MARTIN: NPR counterterrorism correspondent Dina Temple-Raston. Thanks so much, Dina.
TEMPLE-RASTON: You're welcome.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
President Obama will deliver his State of the Union address this Tuesday, his first before a Republican-led Congress. And it's a fair bet many in the chamber will not be happy. The president is expected to talk about plans to impose higher taxes on the wealthy. To preview what's ahead, joining us is national political correspondent Mara Liasson. Good morning, Mara.
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Good morning, Rachel.
MARTIN: So last night the White House released a list of tax changes the president intends to push through Congress. Can you lay them out for us?
LIASSON: Yes, the president has a package of new tax cuts and credits for the middle class, including tripling the child care tax credit, adding a new $500 second earner tax credit. And he's going to pay for them by raising taxes on the wealthy by closing big tax loopholes - one of them the White House calls the trust-fund loophole. He's also going to raise fees on the biggest banks. Now that the Congress is controlled completely by Republicans, as opposed to the divided Congress we had in the last couple of years, they are going to start passing things. And the president is going to veto them. There are going to be some big fights. There are going to be negotiations. And Tuesday night is the first big chance the president gets to frame those debates the way he wants to, and that tax proposal is the first salvo in that debate.
MARTIN: All right. Besides the tax proposals, what are you going to be looking for, Mara?
LIASSON: The most important thing I'm going to be listening for is his tone - first of all, his tone on the economy. As Tam just explained, the economy is doing better now, and it might be easier for the president to give an optimistic message about the economy. The other thing I'm listening for is, what is his attitude toward the Republicans? Does he upbraid them the way he did the Supreme Court in a State of the Union address after the Citizens United ruling, or does he reach out to his old golf buddy John Boehner to make some deals? I will be listening to how he approaches his own Democrats. Does he challenge them on trade? And also, I'm interested in how the president describes the things that he's planning to do on his own - all of those executive actions that he's been rolling out bit by bit.
MARTIN: Republican leaders have vowed to dismantle the health care law, undo immigration reforms that the president has pushed through unilaterally. They oppose his negotiations Iran. Are the next two years likely to be one, big fight?
LIASSON: There will be a lot of big fights in the next two years. They'll be big, clarifying fights, and they're going to set the table for the 2016 presidential elections. However, in terms of the fights over the things that the president has pushed through unilaterally, the Republicans will try. And every one of these things is by definition potentially temporary since a new president could overturn them. However, all of these things the president has done - the health care law, the immigration reforms, the reestablishment of diplomatic relations with Cuba - they establish facts on the ground that are going to be very, very hard to reverse. And I think this is the way the president is hoping to be a not-so-lame-lame duck. It turns out that every second-term president - any president who has been constitutionally barred from running again - has not had control of Congress. They've all - all five of them - have had an opposition Congress. The ones that have been successful are the ones that moved aggressively to act on their own either in foreign-policy or using executive actions, and that certainly is what the president hopes he can do, too.
MARTIN: Mara Liasson, NPR's national political correspondent. Thank so much, Mara.
LIASSON: Thank you.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Alice Fordham is NPR's Middle East correspondent. And in that role, she often covers events that can be quite grim about war or political struggle. But on a recent trip to Jordan, a very different kind of story caught her eye. Jordanian kids are going crazy for skateboarding. And while the hilly streets of the capital city, Amman, are perfect to try to catch some air, skateboarders there have dreamed of a skate park of their own. So they asked the international community for help, and they got it.
ALICE FORDHAM, BYLINE: When I arrive at Amman's brand-new skateboarding park, I meet a half-dozen little boys helping sweep it. And once they're done, they run to a storehouse to fetch skateboards and practice as the Friday call to prayer rings out nearby.
SALEM ABU TALIB: (Foreign language spoken).
FORDHAM: Salem Abu Talib is 11. "It's nice," he says. The first time he tried, he fell over a lot, but now he's doing fine. This, the 7Hills Skate Park, is just a month old, and it's the dream come true of a skateboarding entrepreneur.
MOHAMMAD ZAKKARIA: My name is Mohammad Zakkaria. I've been skating in Jordan for a while - 12 years maybe.
FORDHAM: Zakkaria is an apple-cheeked 28-year-old with a fluffy beard. Growing up, it was hard to find boards or skaters. He had his aunt bring him a board from the U.S., learned tricks from YouTube and eventually met other skateboarders - at first online, then they'd meet up in a downtown street.
ZAKKARIA: And it has, like, marble ledges, a lot of benches, stairs, so it was like the perfect setting for us to start skating.
FORDHAM: He set up a business, calling it Philadelphia, an ancient name for Amman, and selling skateboards. The skaters had a community but not a home.
ZAKKARIA: So we've always had the idea about that we need a skate park.
FORDHAM: So he called on Make Life Skate Life, a nonprofit and kind of international fairy godmother of skateboard communities. They crowdfunded $20,000 and called for volunteers.
ZAKKARIA: It actually was really freaking cool. We had, like, volunteers from Belgium. We had volunteers from the U.K.
FORDHAM: They finished in 18 days flat. Some of them are still here. Harry Gerrard’s from just south of London.
HARRY GERRARD: These kids are already way better than me - way better. They've been skating for, like, three weeks.
FORDHAM: They are skaters, so they don't have, like, a fixed plan. But Zakkaria says he wants to partner up with NGOs working with refugees. For now, though, he says it's incredible just to be chilling here. Alice Fordham, NPR News.
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RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
You've probably heard of dusting for fingerprints at the scene of a robbery or a murder. But now investigators can do the same thing for a different kind of crime - killing birds of prey. In Britain and in other parts of Europe, these large birds are under threat from landowners and gamekeepers who trap, shoot and poison them. But until now, there was no good way to catch the perpetrators. Scientists at Abertay University say they have now come up with a breakthrough. Investigators can now lift human fingerprints from the feathers and eggs of those birds. The findings were made public by the journal Science & Justice. Joining us now is the lead researcher of that study, Dennis Gentles, in Dundee, Scotland. Welcome to the program.
DENNIS GENTLES: Well, thank you.
MARTIN: So what is new about this particular fingerprinting technique?
GENTLES: Actually, there's probably nothing new in it, Rachel. But we've put together a combination of things that's actually made it come together. With a machine called a quasar, which is a quasi-laser, we can fire light of particular wavelengths over this magnetic fluorescent powder, and it will fluoresce, which makes it stand out from the background. And that's why it's so handy to us for detecting finger marks on birds of prey.
MARTIN: This study, as I understand it, was actually inspired - is this right? - by an episode of "CSI"?
GENTLES: Yes.
MARTIN: Really?
GENTLES: Yes, it is. And as a former scenes of crime officer myself, we always sort of look down upon "CSI" and say, no, no, they can't do that.
MARTIN: Right?
GENTLES: That's impossible. But one of my former colleagues, his friend had said to him, I see you can now get fingerprints off feathers, and Malcolm (ph) had turned around and said, don't talk rubbish. But Malcolm, being the inquisitive type, decided to go out one day, and he found a couple of feathers lying on the ground, and he picked them up, put his own finger marks onto the feathers and tried dusting them with the various types of powders he's got. Nothing was happening. And down the bottom of his case, he had this box of red powder that sat there. He thought, I'll give that a try. And, of course, it gave it enough contrast to the sort of shades of gray feathers that he had picked up.
MARTIN: So we're talking about these large birds of prey. Why are these birds being targeted, and how will this particular technology prevent that?
GENTLES: Well, these have been targeted by probably landowners who are likely to lose some income to their land because birds of prey will take the grouse on pheasants that they've raised upon that land. And other people will be taking the Peregrine falcon's eggs, which are status symbols in areas like the Middle East, and incubate them. Or they'll take chicks that have actually been hatched and rear them themselves. And then, of course, it becomes a lucrative trade. So there's been over 2,5000 cases since 2006 of birds of prey being taken or killed illegally in the UK alone.
MARTIN: And how do you think this new technology - being able to dust for fingerprints on feathers - do think it'll slow the targeting of these birds?
GENTLES: Well, I hope it does, because, you know, now we're able to actually obtain a fingerprint from the flight feathers of birds of prey. And even if we can't get a recognizable fingerprint, we can actually focus on the area where we can see a mark where someone has handled that bird. And that allows the forensic scientists who focus on the area which can lead to a DNA trace, and if we don't get the fingerprints, we can get hopefully the perpetrators by way of their DNA.
MARTIN: Dennis Gentles is a forensic scientist at Abertay University in Scotland. Thank you so much for talking with us and sharing your research.
GENTLES: Much appreciated.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Rachel Martin. And this is For The Record.
Paris is still reeling after the recent terror attacks on its soil. Meanwhile, U.S. officials are focusing on the possibility of home-grown terrorism here. Here's Republican Senator Marco Rubio.
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SENATOR MARCO RUBIO: There are thousands of people around the world plotting to kill Americans both here in the homeland and abroad. It's not a question of if but when.
MARTIN: And then on Wednesday, as if on cue...
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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: The FBI announced tonight it is arresting an armed ISIS sympathizer in Ohio who told an informant he was headed to Washington to blow up the U.S. capital and kill members of Congress.
MARTIN: After the Paris attacks, the White House set a date for a long-delayed conference on countering violent extremism. It'll happen next month. Here's President Obama on Friday.
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PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: This is a problem that causes great heartache and tragedy and destruction. But it is one that ultimately we're going to defeat.
MARTIN: One of the key strategies the U.S. government is using to combat the threat of violent extremism is outreach - strengthening the relationship between law enforcement and Muslim communities. We're going to focus in on how those efforts have been going in one city in particular - Los Angeles, which federal officials point to as a success story. It is complicated, though, and not everyone is convinced the relationship is moving in the right direction. We'll give you three perspectives on what's working and what's not. First, Officer Jim Buck.
OFFICER JIM BUCK: I'm currently assigned to LAPD's Counter-Terrorism and Special Operations Bureau, their liaison unit.
MARTIN: That means it is his job to build relationships between the police department and LA's Muslim community. It was a sharp learning curve for a beat cop at first.
BUCK: Oh, I didn't know what I was walking into. No, I'm a Christian, white male. And I'm thinking what? I don't know anything about Islam. I just walked in like any other person would try to you know create a friendship.
MARTIN: And he says there were difficult moments.
BUCK: I go into their neighborhoods. I go into their mosque. I go into their businesses. And they want to know - what are you doing here? Are you here to spy on us? And I got to be honest, I come in there - really 90 percent of the time, I'm in uniform with a tie, a shiny badge, and I walk in there. And they are a little cautious at first. And this is like eight years ago. And that has morphed into an unbelievable relationship where they almost get upset now when I don't attend one of their events or even their Friday prayers.
MARTIN: How do you know that those relationships are paying off? Are you looking for people to be able to tell you when they see signs that perhaps someone has been radicalized?
BUCK: Yes. Absolutely I am. At the end of the day, that is I want them to be, you know, good Americans.
AMEENA MIRZAQAZI: It seems that we are often treated as suspects than as partners.
MARTIN: That's Ameena Mirza Qazi. She's a Muslim community activist and a civil rights lawyer in LA. I asked Qazi what she thinks about the fact that the police outreach program is part of the counterterrorism division of the LAPD.
QAZI: That offends me. It seems to say that all we the Muslim community have to offer is to counter violent extremism. That our youth engagement efforts, our civic engagement efforts, our civil rights efforts are all just to counter violent extremism.
MARTIN: And her advice to Muslims who are approached by law enforcement...
QAZI: Don't be naive. Know that a person in plain clothes or in uniform may be there for more than what they're saying at the outset.
SALAM AL-MARAYATI: The options that people have - they can protest, they can litigate, or they can engage. And what we've decided to do is to engage.
MARTIN: That our third voice, Salam Al-Marayati. He's the executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council. He too is a community leader in LA. But unlike Ameena Mirza Qazi, he thinks partnering with law enforcement is crucial.
AL-MARAYATI: After 9/11, it's not just about arresting and convicting those who commit acts of terrorism. It's about how do we work together to prevent it from even happening?
MARTIN: But Qazi says if American Muslims are supposed to be in partnership with law enforcement, they're not being treated as equals. She points to an FBI operation that was meant to glean information about possible Islamist sympathizers.
QAZI: Several years ago, there was a famous incident of a man who supposedly converted to Islam. He stood in front of the Friday congregation next to the Imam and took our most sacred oath and said he was Muslim and infiltrated the community that way.
MARTIN: Do you differentiate between the LAPD and the FBI? Is one proven to be more trustworthy than the other?
QAZI: You know, several years ago, I would've said that there's a huge difference between the LAPD and the FBI, but the two are becoming more and more alike in terms of the increasing militarization and procurement of surveillance technology.
MARTIN: I asked Salam Al-Marayati about this - the idea that the government might be reaching out publicly but privately running intelligence gathering operations on his community. Do you accept that some of that is going to happen?
AL-MARAYATI: No, I don't, but the point is what are you going to do about it? If we want to push surveillance out of our mosques, then we need to replace surveillance programs with community partnership programs.
MARTIN: In other words, he hopes that by cooperating with law enforcement, inviting them to Friday prayers, developing trust, federal and local officials will find less reason to watch Muslims when they're not looking.
The White House has yet to announce the guest list for February's summit. And Muslim leaders like Salam Al-Marayati are skeptical about whether they'll make the cut.
AL-MARAYATI: The fear of political backlash for inviting Muslims to any public event is always a concern. We've been through this too many times where a congressman or senator will invite us and then has to deal with right-wing blogs on why he invited Muslims to his office.
MARTIN: So you're fighting still just get a seat at the table.
AL-MARAYATI: To get a seat at the table and, yes, to define our own narrative. People talk about us; they never talk to us.
MARTIN: When those chosen to attend do sit down, Salam says honesty and transparency are key in a war where lines have been redrawn by the Islamic State and al-Qaida.
We turn now to a key battlefield in the fight against violent extremism - the digital word world. Salam Al-Marayati explains.
AL-MARAYATI: Most of these cases that involve radicalization don't happen in the mosque. They actually happen in the bedroom or living room of somebody while there viewing YouTube videos of al-Qaida and ISIS on their laptops.
MARTIN: The U.S. government has tried to meet these groups on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube without a whole lot of success. Our next guest has spent a lot of time thinking about that issue. His name is Patrick Skinner. He's with national security consultants The Soufan Group, and he was formerly a CIA case officer in Iraq and Syria. Skinner says the extremist message works perfectly on social media platforms.
PATRICK SKINNER: Let's take Twitter. In 140 characters or less, you cannot explain a logical argument. You can't talk about the merits of being a good citizen. But you can certainly show an image of a beheading, or you could say jihad is fun because their target audience are teenagers who have bad impulse control to begin with. And social media amplifies that.
MARTIN: The U.S. State Department has tried to meet them where they are when it comes to the social media propaganda, to counter their messaging by developing their own Twitter handle. The State Department has a Twitter handle called Think Again Turn Away where they're putting out videos and memes and messages. What's your impression of that effort?
SKINNER: I think the effort is well-intended, but it's relatively ineffective, basically because the target audience is not even in their sphere of influence. I did a study this summer that showed the people that were paying attention to Think Again Turn Away were academics or people that are listening to the show or myself; people that don't need convincing. And then the ISIS supporter - you know, not the actual member, but the supporter, the people we're going after - they're not even in the same - it's not a Venn diagram. It's two circles that aren't touching.
MARTIN: Aren't they using an ISIS hashtag to try to insert themselves in the conversation that's happening between ISIS and potential recruits?
SKINNER: Yeah. And that's - I mean, that's exactly what ISIS does. And it's a smart move, but the message has a U.S. Department seal on it. And therefore, it's immediately dismissed. It's understood as government propaganda because that's exactly what it is. And it's ripe for parody.
MARTIN: So what's the answer? I mean is the U.S. government supposed to just not engage on social media to try to counter extremism in a different way, to surrender that space?
SKINNER: Yeah. And see, that's the argument for going into that space. We don't want to surrender it. But I would say that there's other ways to fight that. You could empower local, credible voices. There are people all over who are very good that have small but growing followers that somehow can express messages that the government can't. I would just suggest that you find these people, and you somehow amplify their voice.
MARTIN: I mean, if we talk about the main vehicle for this being the Internet, is there any role for the government in this?
SKINNER: I would argue that the best way to counter online cyber extremism is anything that isn't online. The more they reach down literally to somebody sitting at a computer, get really involved in communities, but the best way to do it is to the kid away from the message in the first place.
MARTIN: Although that's such a huge task. I mean, how in the world would you ever be able to identify every troubled teen in the United States who might be vulnerable to this kind of messaging? Is that beyond the scope of what the government can monitor?
SKINNER: Sure. And it's beyond the scope of anybody, but it's what communities do every single day. Break it down further, it's what families do every day. But they need help. I think that's probably the more effective way.
MARTIN: How vulnerable is the United States to an attack like we saw in Paris?
SKINNER: I think America's exceedingly vulnerable. The problem is we need to become more resilient. We need to understand that bad things are going to happen, especially because we have so many weapons in this country already. No one's going to ask how did they get weapons like they did in France. It's how did they not have weapons here. I would suggest that in 2015, the risk of that kind of attack - I think it's likely.
MARTIN: Former CIA case officer Patrick Skinner of the national security consultants The Soufan Group.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: 52.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: 11:52.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: 25.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #3: 6.1125
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #4: 25,856.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Time for some number crunching from our data expert Mona Chalabi from fivethirtyeight.com. She has given us this number of the week.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #5: 1,274.
MARTIN: That is the total number of incidents that were either racist, anti-Semitic or anti-Islamic reported in France in the year 2013. Mona Chalabi joins us from our studios in New York to talk more about this number. Hey, Mona.
MONA CHALABI: Hello, Rachel.
MARTIN: So in the days since the terrorist attacks in Paris, first on the offices of Charlie Hebdo, then on the Jewish supermarket, the French government has repeatedly called for unity amid real fears that minorities in the country might be targeted. Based on the data that you have seen, who is most vulnerable?
CHALABI: So the most recent numbers on this are from 2013. And it's those 1,274 incidents that were mentioned. And they were recorded by the French Ministry of the Interior. Half of those were categorized as racist acts or threats of violence, a third were anti-Semitic in nature and the rest were labeled as anti-Islamic. But it's not always clear to me on what basis those incidents get categorized.
So let me give you an example. We know that in the five days after the attacks, 54 Islamophobic incidents were reported in France. Some of those are pretty unambiguous, like in Corsica where a boar's head and entrails were left outside a Muslim prayer room with a note saying next time it will be your heads. But in the city of Poitiers, someone graffitied the words death to Arabs on the main entrance to a mosque. Now I'm not 100 percent sure that's Islamophobic. Was the target of hatred there a race, was it a religion, or was it just Arab culture? And I don't know how the government will record an incident like that in the statistics.
MARTIN: Do we know how many people are affected by it? Do we know how this breaks down within these communities?
CHALABI: I'm afraid it's going to be a be difficult here as well. We can actually work out victimization rates because the French government calls itself a secular state, and so it won't collect any statistics on religion.
MARTIN: OK, so you just said it - France doesn't collect information on religious identity in its population data. So what does that mean for trying to understand victimization rates in France? Are there other stats that you point to?
CHALABI: Yeah. I looked at some of the surveys that have asked French people about their attitudes towards minority groups. In fact, it's actually the government that comes up with those surveys. In December 2013, they asked the question - do you see the following group as a part of French society? More than half of respondents said they didn't see Muslims as part of French society and 31 percent said the same about Jews.
MARTIN: Wow. I mean, that seems like a problem for a country that prides itself on the idea of fraternity or brotherhood.
CHALABI: I wouldn't necessarily say that. I mean, some of those respondents might just think that Muslims don't see themselves as part of French society. They might be wrong to assume that, but it's not necessarily Islamophobic.
But there is other research that kind of gets to your question more directly. So last year, a survey from Pew asked French adults whether they had a favorable opinion of certain groups in their country. One in 10 respondents described their opinion of Jews in France as unfavorable, and one in four said the same about Muslims in the country.
MARTIN: Any idea how that compares to other countries, in Europe in particular?
CHALABI: Yeah. So Pew asked that in several countries, and there were even more unfavorable opinions of Muslims in other European countries like Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland and Spain. And the trend is basically the same for Jews. France actually does well compared to its neighbors with the exception of Germany, where only five percent of respondents said they have an unfavorable opinion of Jews.
MARTIN: The reports that we're hearing now about Jews leaving France over fears of anti-Semitism, is that in some way being overplayed in the media?
CHALABI: As far as French migration to Israel is concerned, it's true. There has been a real rise in numbers in recent years. But this statistics don't look at why. And there are a range of factors that might influence people's choices, including a stagnant French economy and the prospects of work in Israel.
And this goes back to this issue of an information gap that I mentioned earlier. To really understand victimization rates and to really understand where the anti-Semitism or Islamophobia is worse in France, the French government has to collect better information about specific religious groups, which basically means it would have to acknowledge the country's divisions in its statistics no matter how much it wants to emphasize unity.
MARTIN: Mona Chalabi of fivethirtyeight.com. Thanks so much, Mona.
CHALABI: Thanks, Rachel.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
It has been a month since more than 130 children were murdered in an attack on a school in Pakistan. The government has responded with draconian measures; this includes victimizing the large number of Afghans living in Pakistan.
But as NPR's Philip Reeves reports, the massacre was carried out by members of the Pakistani Taliban.
PHILIP REEVES, BYLINE: Ihsan Ullah's family fled Afghanistan when the Soviets invaded 35 years ago. His father died fighting the Russians. Ihsan spent his entire life in Pakistan. He lives here in a cluster of mud huts just outside Pakistan's capital Islamabad where he works in a vegetable market. Children and goats wander around amid trash and open drains choked with sewage. Though born in Pakistan, Ihsan says the authorities still consider him an Afghan.
IHSAN ULLAH: (Through interpreter) I can't get Pakistani documents. They wouldn't give them to me.
REEVES: Every recent war in Afghanistan has sent people pouring into neighboring Pakistan. Many have gone back, but about 1.5 million registered refugees remain plus an unknown but very large number of undocumented migrants. The massacre at an army-run school in the city of Peshawar is causing lasting outage.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED CHILDREN: (Singing in foreign language).
REEVES: Again and again, TV channels play a song performed by kids lambasting the Pakistani Taliban for targeting children. The government's drafted a national action plan to crack down on extremism including introducing military courts for terrorism cases. It's also stepping up pressure on Afghans to go home.
The largest number of Afghans in Pakistan lives in the Northwest in the province of Khyber Paktunkhwa where the school massacre happened. The provincial government there recently held a cabinet meeting. Spokesman Mushtaq Ghani says the cabinet discussed Afghan refugees who were in Pakistan legally and also illegal Afghan migrants.
MUSHTAQ GHANI: We decided that the illegals should be removed immediately to be dispatched to their country. And those who are legal should be restricted to their camps.
REEVES: What he's talking about is a plan to deport or confine to refugee camps many hundreds of thousands of people. Ghani says the provincial authorities want to do this because they believe Afghans in Pakistan harbor Islamist militants. Most Afghans here are Pashtuns, like the Taliban. The plan has been greeted with considerable alarm.
MAYA AMERATUNGA: We think it's impossible to implement and that it will have counterproductive impacts.
REEVES: Maya Ameratunga is from the U.N. refugee agency the UNHCR. The Peshawar school massacre was an act of mass murder that's touched Pakistanis to the course, she says. But she also cautions against a xenophobic backlash. Remember, she says, Afghan refugees fled their home country because they were victims of war and persecution.
AMERATUNGA: So let's not victimize them anymore by blaming them collectively for something that there's no evidence that they had any connection with.
REEVES: Whether the provincial authorities plan to intern Afghan refugees will turn into reality isn't clear. Pakistan's federal government has not agreed to it. Sohail Qadeer Siddiqui, a top official in the ministry responsible for Afghan refugees ,thinks it's a bad idea.
SOHAIL QADEER SIDDIQUI: That is not a realistic plan at all because they are living in the urban areas. They have their business, transport, properties, jobs, everything.
REEVES: Hosting so many refugees for so long has placed a heavy burden on Pakistan. And in the aftermath of the Peshawar attack, the federal government is now pushing forward with an earlier plan to repatriate all Afghan refugees by the end of this year.
Meanwhile, U.N. staff say Afghan refugees are now increasingly vulnerable. There have been reports of Afghans being kicked out of jobs and homes and of Pakistani officials going into Afghan neighborhoods with bullhorns telling people they must soon move to camps. For Ihsan Ullah and his mud village on the edge of Islamabad, these are worrying times.
ULLAH: (Speaking Pashtu).
REEVES: Ishan says being confined to a camp would be a real injustice. As for going to Afghanistan...
ULLAH: (Speaking Pashtu).
REEVES: "We won't go," he says. "Afghanistan is too unstable. We're staying here." Philip Reeves, NPR's News, Islamabad.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The internment camps where Japanese-Americans were sent during World War II are a well-documented part of American history. One lesser-known camp was called Crystal City in southern Texas. And there, thousands of Japanese immigrants were detained along with many people of German and Italian descent. Hundreds of these Americans were then sent back to their countries of origin in exchange for Americans who were caught behind enemy lines when the war broke out.
Jan Jarboe Russell writes about these secret trade arrangements in a new book called "The Train To Crystal City: FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange Program And America's Only Family Interment Camp During World War II." Russell writes about the families who came to Crystal City to be with their loved ones who have been detained.
JAN JARBOE RUSSELL: You had wives and fathers and children living in tiny huts in this 290-acre internment camp. It had schools. It had a swimming pool. Of course, it was an internment camp. It had barbed wire fences. It was under constant armed guard. All of the mail in and out of the camp was censored. But most heartbreaking is that President Roosevelt set up a division within the Department of State called the Special War Problems Division.
MARTIN: And this is where we get to the subtitle of your book "The Secret Prisoner Exchange Program."
RUSSELL: In the run-up to the war, the president realized that Americans would be tracked behind enemy lines in Germany and in Japan, especially. And he charged the Special War Problems Division with creating pools of people that he could trade for important Americans - soldiers, diplomats, businessmen, journalists, missionaries.
MARTIN: As you say, these were all Americans who happened to be living abroad when World War II breaks out. And the Roosevelt administration is trying to figure a way to get them home. And they think they have leverage by repatriating German-Americans, Italian-Americans, Japanese-Americans. Many of these people were born in America.
RUSSELL: Well, that was the tragedy of Crystal city, not the way the internees were treated. In about the 50 children of the camp that I spent time with and interviewed, some of them say that as hard as it was, those were the best years of their life because they were with their parents and their siblings. And so they aren't resentful about the Crystal City camp or their treatment. What they are resentful about it is that thousands of internees in Crystal City, including their American-born children, were exchanged into war for more important Americans.
MARTIN: You trace the story in the book of two young girls - Ingrid Eiserloh and Sumi Utsushigawa. What happened to those girls? What happened to their families when they were sent back to Germany and Japan?
RUSSELL: They went with their family. They all went together. The, you know - Sumi's father, who was a photographer in Los Angeles, and her mother went to Japan. And Ingrid and her brothers and sisters and her parents went to Germany. And they saw, of course, devastated lands, and they encountered unimaginable trouble while they were in Germany and Japan. The Germans thought that these American-born kids were spies. And despite all of that, these people - Ingrid and Sumi and a lot of other kids that were in the Crystal City camp traded with their families into war became astonishingly resilience American loyalists and made their way back to the United States after the war was over, even though their country had betrayed them.
MARTIN: In the end, you write about how Ingrid discovers that it wasn't just Americans who were exchanged for other Americans. She was sent back to Germany in exchange for the freedom of some European Jews.
RUSSELL: None of these people ever knew really who was getting out of the war. And I learned from a document at the National Holocaust Museum that a handful of Jews - 136 Jews in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp were on the train coming out of Germany. And one of them is named Irene Hasenberg, who is roughly the same age as Ingrid. And I tell the story about when I was able to tell Ingrid this is who was on that train coming out. She said everything that happened to my family now makes sense to me. At least Irene and her brother and her mother got out.
MARTIN: The book is called "The Train To Crystal City." It is written by Jan Jarboe Russell. Thanks so much for talking with us, Jan.
RUSSELL: Thank you, Rachel.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Many American churches are doing everything they can to attract new generations of parishioners. And often, that means less traditional organ music and Christian hymns. But the organist at the West Auburn Congregational Church in Auburn, Maine, is as popular as ever.
His name is Charles Marshall, and he celebrates his 70th year on the keyboards with the release of his new CD at the age of 86. Since World War II, Mr. Marshall has rarely missed a service. And as Maine Public Radio's Susan Sharon reports, he has no intention of retiring anytime soon.
(SOUNDBITE OF ORGAN MUSIC)
SUSAN SHARON, BYLINE: Every Sunday morning, several dozen parishioners settle into wooden pews in their 200-year-old church as Charles Marshall opens worship with a musical prelude. And every week, it's a different selection.
(SOUNDBITE OF ORGAN MUSIC)
SHARON: Marshall was a pianist for his high school chorus in 1945 when his music teacher asked him to play the organ for an upcoming concert at a church that had no piano.
CHARLES MARSHALL: I says, I can't play the organ. I've never tried it, never even seen one, hardly. He says, you go up and practice. And he says, we'll have the concert, and we did.
SHARON: Despite his initial reluctance, Marshall's been playing the organ in this same church ever since. He estimates he's outlasted 30 ministers, played the organ at hundreds of weddings and funerals and memorized almost as many hymns.
(SOUNDBITE OF ORGAN MUSIC)
MARY BUKER: He's excellent. And if he makes a mistake, he doesn't like it at all.
SHARON: Mary Buker has been a member of the church for more than 60 years. Years ago, she sang with Marshall in the choir and knows how seriously he takes his role. Sometimes, says Buker, it's as if the music comes to him from God.
BUKER: One day, he just ate a little mistake, and he started crying. And then he said he didn't know if that was going to be it or not. And we're going no, please. And we just love to have him here.
SHARON: The church choir may be gone, but parishioners like Richard Creighton and others are often called upon to sing.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHURCH SERVICE)
RICHARD CREIGHTON: (Singing) Go tell it on the Mountain.
SHARON: At the West Auburn Congregational Church, Reverend John Williams says music is as important as the spoken word. Williams has also been coming to this church since he was a young boy.
REVEREND JOHN WILLIAMS: You know, the more music people hear, the more inspired they are, the more passionate they are. And I think people embrace that.
SHARON: For Charles Marshall, that passion is traditional Christian music, even as much of the rest of the world is now embracing a more contemporary style.
MARSHALL: The type of music today in most churches is they want to get an orchestra or a band or something like that and follow the ways of the world. I don't think that should be any part of worship.
SHARON: After 70 years of playing the church organ, Marshall says he's occasionally considered retirement. But the close-knit congregation, who are mostly elderly themselves, won't hear of it.
MARSHALL: (Laughter) It's true. I'd like to slow down, but they won't let me.
(SOUNDBITE OF ORGAN MUSIC)
SHARON: For most of his life, there's only one thing that Marshall has loved more than playing church music and that's his wife, June. They've been married for 60 years, and Marshall says his music wouldn't be possible without June as his muse. For NPR News, I'm Susan Sharon in Auburn, Maine.
(SOUNDBITE OF ORGAN MUSIC)
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Rachel Martin. Travel can mean all sorts of things. Exploring countries overseas, just going into the city or to the next town over means new experiences.
On this week's Winging It, we talked to Anise Hayes. She's the executive director of Atlantic Impact. It is a nonprofit based in Detroit, Michigan, that's making those experiences available to students who have never left the country or even the city before. Anise, welcome to the program.
ANISE HAYES: Hi, thank you so much for having me.
MARTIN: Thanks for being here. So just tell me how this whole idea began.
HAYES: So this idea actually began in Armenia. I was working with a program, and I had the opportunity to travel throughout the country. And the program director kind of talked about the experience of travel and why travel is meaningful. And I really thought to myself, this is an experience that I would like to provide for youth or for students who otherwise don't have the opportunity to travel.
MARTIN: It's more than just travel, though, right?
HAYES: It is.
MARTIN: Students are part of an actual class. There's a curriculum to teach them about all kinds of aspects of exploring another culture. Can you tell me about that?
HAYES: So we actually operate now as a class during the school day. We have teachers that work with us to teach this class. So once a month, they go out and explore different historical sites in Detroit. And then that helps prepare them for their international travel opportunity that they have during the summer.
MARTIN: How do you decide where to go?
HAYES: So we base a lot of the history that we talk about around the legacy of the transatlantic slave trade. It's a history that has a lot of personal connections to our students. So our first year of doing the program we went to England. And we went to Bristol, England, which was one of the largest slave trade ports. And then last year, we went to Barbados, and we explored that entire country. It's not very big so it's pretty easy to do. And then again this year, we will be going to Barbados.
MARTIN: What kind of feedback to get from the kids?
HAYES: The students that we worked with never really believed that they would ever be traveling anywhere. So even getting them to kind of see what an opportunity that travel is for them is a pretty big obstacle. Seeing a kid who's never been anywhere get on a plane for the first time and hold onto the armrest out of a little bit of concern...
(LAUGHTER)
HAYES: ...It's a pretty powerful experience for youth who grew up in pretty challenging circumstances.
MARTIN: So I have to ask - private donations or how are you being funded?
HAYES: So our schools provide funding for the class that we put in each school. So they support the class and some of the staffing that goes along with that. And that really has provided a catalyst for people to help pay for the international travel experience. So we received foundation support and also individual donations because they see that the schools are supporting this through funding so they want to actually support that as well.
MARTIN: So all expenses paid?
HAYES: Yeah. We pay for everything. They're required to pay for their own passports so they have a challenge in paying for that oftentimes. So we do not want the overall travel experience to be a burden for them.
MARTIN: And lastly, how do you decide what students get to participate? I mean, I can imagine that demand would be pretty high.
HAYES: Shockingly, that's not always the case. In our communities that we work in, travel is something that's very fearful. We're actually in an application cycle right now, and I was talking to one of our teachers. And we pass out over 100 applications, and we got one back so far.
MARTIN: Wow.
HAYES: So travel is something that we really have to push as an opportunity. We are trying to help people in our communities understand that exploring new things and going to new places and having new opportunities is vitally important and helps our students get into college. It helps them really understand the world around them. So at the end of the day, that's really, you know, what we try to push is the opportunity through travel.
MARTIN: Anise Hayes. She is the executive director of the Detroit nonprofit Atlantic Impact. Thanks so much for talking with us, Anise.
HAYES: Thank you for having me.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
I'm David Greene with a tale of a quirky band that rose to the top of the charts and then sort of disappeared, like the sailors in one of their famous songs.
COLIN MELOY: We need you, at a certain point of this song, to all collectively scream like you're being swallowed by a whale.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE MARINER'S REVENGE SONG")
THE DECEMBERISTS: (Singing) We are two mariners, our ship's sole survivors, in this belly of a whale.
GREENE: It's The Decemberists. They're known for being jaunty, mischievous, sometimes dark. We spoke with their lead singer and songwriter Colin Meloy.
I heard an interview where you said when you start played, you tried to be provocative, to scuttle your own ship, as you put it. What does that mean?
MELOY: (Laughter) I don't know, but that's funny. OK, I'm going to try to unpack that. I guess...
GREENE: (Laughter) OK.
MELOY: I would've meant, you know, I feel like the early days of The Decemberists, or my first days of when I had moved to Portland after college, there were so few people paying attention, playing little happy hours in basement bars on summer days.
GREENE: No one wants to be in a basement bar on a summer day (laughter). I guess that's the best answer...
MELOY: No (laughter) and I would be playing to nobody.
GREENE: (Laughter).
MELOY: Literally, sometimes the bartender would be, you know, at the bar and then he would leave to go get something and then I would be still playing, and it's kind of like I didn't really care what people thought 'cause nobody was thinking about it.
GREENE: (Laughter).
MELOY: There was no audience to not care about. And so I think it led me to a lot of experimentation. And then I think once there was an audience, maybe there was something about missing that, not ever taking yourself so seriously. It seemed to me a really important part about good music.
GREENE: And that's really the journey The Decemberists have been on. They became so popular their last album debuted at number one on the Billboard charts. After that unexpected success, the band took a four-year hiatus. Now they're back with a new album, and The Decemberists' feel is still there.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "PHILOMENA")
THE DECEMBERISTS: (Singing) Oh, Philomena, are you in a tawdry gown? Lean to your window, let's slip a ribbon down. A cure to your boredom if only you'd let me go down, down, down.
GREENE: OK, so what's this song about?
MELOY: Well, that song is clearly about kind of juvenile sexual fumblings.
GREENE: (Laughter).
MELOY: I think the chord progression and the melody came first and it was so sweet and so treacly that it needed some kind of caustic - something to rub against it. And so I thought it being - making a really dirty song out of it was just the way to go.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "PHILOMENA")
THE DECEMBERISTS: (Singing) All I ever wanted in the world was just to live to see a naked girl, but I found I quickly bored. I wanted more, oh, so much more.
GREENE: But listen to this whole album and you do get the sense that Colin Meloy is changing a little. And it's almost like he wants to warn his fans. He has a song called "The Singer Addresses His Audience."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE SINGER ADDRESSES HIS AUDIENCE")
THE DECEMBERISTS: (Singing) We know, we know, we belong to you. We know you built your life around us, and would we change? We had to change some.
GREENE: What are you telling your fans here? How have you changed?
MELOY: Well, you know, I think that that song is as much a kind of message to listeners of the record as it is just an exploration of the relationship between the singer or the entertainer and an audience. There's this funny back-and-forth, you know, of expectations of one to the other. You know, to me, almost the I in that song, I don't think of it as being me. When I'd written it, I'd imagined it as, like, a lead singer of a boy band, you know, who's maybe getting on a little bit. So maybe he's like 25 or 26, but all he's ever known is celebrity.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE SINGER ADDRESSES HIS AUDIENCE")
THE DECEMBERISTS: (Singing) We're aware that you cut your hair in the style that our drummer wore in the video.
MELOY: I'm just kind of trying to come to terms with what is it to change or not change, and who are you making art for? Are you making it for yourself or for your audience?
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE SINGER ADDRESSES HIS AUDIENCE")
THE DECEMBERISTS: (Singing) We did it all for you.
GREENE: In the four years leading to this new album, Meloy, who's now 40, took time for himself and his family. He worked on children's novels with his wife, who's an illustrator. The couple had a second son. All of this put the music in perspective.
MELOY: The music suddenly became something that it had been, you know, prior to The Decemberists, where it was something that I had done in between my shifts at the restaurant that I worked at. And in some respects, it was nice to get back to that. There was no deadline. There were no record label people calling me and wondering when the record was going to happen, and it was very refreshing.
GREENE: He was writing songs when he felt like it - exploring relationships, fatherhood, one song is about the tragic school shooting at Newtown, Connecticut, that killed 20 young children. His son, Hank, was in first grade at the time.
MELOY: And I remember picking him up at school and just seeing how everybody was just so in shock, and you can only help but imagine where you would be if you weren't in that position and knowing that there were people out there, you know, suffering. Finally, something in me kind of burst and I needed to do something, you know, even if it was something as incidental, you know, as writing a song, just getting something out.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "12-17-12")
THE DECEMBERISTS: (Singing) What a gift, what a gift you've been givin' me. Here with my heart so whole while others may be grieving, to think of their grieving.
GREENE: Here with my heart so whole while others may be grieving.
MELOY: Yes. I think it's just trying to make sense of the riches that you might have and sometimes that you might kind of take for granted while you know that others might be so devastated.
GREENE: There's another lyric in the song and it's the name of the album actually - "What A Terrible World, What A Beautiful World." And, wow, I just hear that and I think about some of the events that we've been covering around the world in the last few weeks and months.
MELOY: Yeah. It is just trying to figure out how do these two things go together? It's absurd. You know, how can things be so beautiful and yet so horrible at the same time? And the song and the record, to a certain extent, is me trying to make sense of that.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "12-17-12")
THE DECEMBERISTS: (Singing) What a terrible world, what a beautiful world, what a world do we make here?
GREENE: Colin Meloy, thanks so much for spending some time with us. We really appreciate it.
MELOY: Yeah, I got really heavy really quickly. I'm sorry.
GREENE: No apologies. I really enjoyed the conversation with you. That was singer Colin Meloy from The Decemberists.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
And I'm David Greene. Good morning. Today in Your Health, a new procedure to help maintain weight loss, but first - wearable technology; maybe some of you have been trying it out. These are gadgets that collect health information, everything from how much exercise we're getting to how stressed we are to how many calories we're consuming. The aim of these products is to transform health care in much the same way Amazon took on traditional book publishing. So let's hear how doctors are reacting. Here's Amy Standen, from member station KQED, in San Francisco.
AMY STANDEN, BYLINE: Let's be clear here that Dr. Paul Abramson is no technophobe. There's the hydraulic standing desk from Denmark and the stethoscope with a data screen.
PAUL ABRAMSON: I'm both an engineer and I'm in health care and I like gadgets.
STANDEN: Abramson is a primary care doctor in San Francisco, where he sees patients from the tech industry. And more and more, he says, people are coming in with data collected from consumer medical devices; sometimes, a lot of data.
ABRAMSON: Everything from heart rate to symptoms to medications to a variety of things.
STANDEN: Like the patient who came in with pages and pages of Excel spreadsheets.
ABRAMSON: The thought of going through it and trying to analyze it or extract meaning from it was not really feasible.
STANDEN: To Anderson, the spreadsheets just didn't say all that much.
ABRAMSON: I get information from watching people's body language, from observing their minor tics and their tone of their voice.
STANDEN: Subtleties you just can't get from a Fitbit or some kind of health app, but despite any reluctance on the part of doctors, technology startups are actively trying to insert their products into the doctor's office. Michael Blum, a cardiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, says he gets pitches from entrepreneurs almost daily.
MICHAEL BLUM: Their perspective is, you know, you old doctors have kept things the same as they are for 50 years. We've got new technology and it's going to disrupt health care.
STANDEN: Don't get him wrong here - Blum says health care needs a high-tech update, for sure. Doctors can benefit from more granular data about how their patients are doing. The problem is just because a device looks shiny and new doesn't mean it works. Fitbits and Apple Watches aren't regulated by the FDA.
BLUM: We can't make the leap that just because this data's coming in digitally it's accurate. We can't make that leap. We have to do the validation studies.
STANDEN: And often that task falls to doctors and hospitals. At UCSF, Blum now heads an entire new department created to sort out which technologies are game changing and which are dead ends, and other health care groups are following suit. It means running pilot studies, giving devices to people with illnesses and seeing whether they help.
BRET PARKER: When I heard that there was a trial that involved a wearable that would help me better manage my symptoms and my condition, I said to myself, well, that's a pretty cool thing. I've got to try that.
STANDEN: Bret Parker, who lives in New York City, has Parkinson's disease, and because there is no cure for Parkinson's, his attitude, for a long time, was to ignore it.
PARKER: My feeling was don't worry about things that you can't control and that aren't affecting you that badly. I'd rather just, in a sense, just live my life and not think about it.
STANDEN: But as his disease has progressed, that's changed. It's become important to pay attention to small details, like are the tremors worse when Parker gets less sleep or eats differently or takes his medicine at a certain time of day? So the pilot study he's taking part in looks at whether a wearable activity tracker, made by Intel, can answer those kinds of questions by picking up and creating a digital diary of his tremors day and night.
PARKER: This is going to be a battle between me and the Parkinson's over the years to come. And as it advances it means I've got to be better and smarter at my role in it. You know, it's one thing to be passive when it's not a big deal. I'm going to have to be more active is the condition gets worse.
STANDEN: The results of this Parkinson's pilot are due later this year. It's one in a slew of studies to see whether consumer health tools will amount to more than just trendy gadgets. For NPR News, I'm Amy Standen in San Francisco.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Larry Wilmore became known as the senior black correspondent. That was his role on "The Daily Show." Now it's on to "The Nightly Show," that's the name of Wilmore's own program, which debuts tonight on Comedy Central. It's replacing "The Colbert Report." Wilmore becomes late-night TV's only African-American host. NPR TV critic Eric Deggans tells us about his plans.
ERIC DEGGANS, BYLINE: Larry Wilmore has a theory about why he can joke about race in ways his white counterparts can't.
LARRY WILMORE: There's a top-dog-underdog rule. Underdog gets to make fun of top dog, but top dog can't make fun of underdog. It happens in gender, race, class - every situation. If you're underdog, you get to make fun of top dog. Top dog, you can't make fun of underdog. But guess what? You get to be top dog. Congratulations.
DEGGANS: That approach shines through in his work on "The Daily Show," criticizing top-dog, conservative pundits commenting on rioting in Ferguson, Missouri.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE DAILY SHOW")
WILMORE: You know, I have a dream, Jon, that one day the actions of a few [bleep] white people will been seen as discrediting their entire race.
(LAUGHTER)
DEGGANS: Here he is discussing his new "Nightly Show" with "Daily Show" host Jon Stewart. "The Nightly Show" was Stewart's idea.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE DAILY SHOW")
JON STEWART: I'm excited about "The Nightly Show."
WILMORE: Oh, thank you.
STEWART: I'm excited - I'm excited about that.
WILMORE: "The Nightly Show," when does that start?
STEWART: I believe actually January 19.
WILMORE: Oh, yes, Martin Luther King Day. I have a job.
(LAUGHTER)
DEGGANS: Wilmore's one of the few TV writers who can deftly joke about race with white audiences. And he isn't disappointed his new show had to change its name from the original title, "The Minority Report," after Fox decided to make a scripted TV series with the same name. Wilmore says the new title also reflects an important idea, that non-white hosts don't have to primarily talk about race.
WILMORE: I may be talking about Obama's boring budget speech, you know? (Laughter) Now I get to talk about that, so the show's not marginalized where I can only talk about a black thing or "The Minority Report" thing.
DEGGANS: Of course explaining what the show is before it debuts may be Wilmore's toughest job, and there's a lot of that going around right now. Over at CBS, British comic James Corden will start hosting "The Late, Late Show" in March. He told NPR last week he still has no idea what his show will look like.
There's probably some strategy here, too. No one wants to tip the competition or spoil the surprise for audiences. Wilmore does reveal how his show will start - with him sitting behind a desk commenting on the day's news, perhaps featuring field reports from contributors, before moving on to an unscripted panel discussion. Tonight's panel features Senator Cory Booker and rapper Talib Kweli.
WILMORE: I look at it as, who do I want in my barbershop talking [bleep] with? That's the big group of people we're collecting for the show, who you'll see on the show. Who's our Andrew Sullivan? Who's our, you know, that type of person that is going to be our "Nightly Show"-type of guest?
DEGGANS: Having a panel makes "The Nightly Show" a loose parody of "Meet The Press" or "This Week," in the same way "The Daily Show" is a loose parody of a daily newscasts.
WILMORE: Where "The Daily Show," its cousin is the nightly news, it's going to be reporting on things and reporting and reporting. So that's why they have the senior White House correspondent reporting on something, Jon, reporting.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE DAILY SHOW")
STEWART: For more, we turn to senior White House correspondent Jordan Klepper.
WILMORE: Ours - our cousin is a discussion show. So we're going to have a conversation about something. So my relationship with the audience is I'm opening up this conversation. I'm looking at this in a different way.
DEGGANS: And how Wilmore manages that role as a moderator will be what distinguishes his program. A talk show basically has two parts, the format or structure of the program and the way in which the host slowly inhabits that format. Former "Daily Show" correspondent John Oliver's HBO show began as a clone of his old employer, but it evolved as Oliver expanded his newsy rants and added original reporting.
The real thrill of watching a new show like "The Nightly Show" is seeing how Wilmore turns its format into a uniquely personal program, as he begins the tough task of succeeding Stephen Colbert. Looks like the underdog gets a shot at being top dog after all. I'm Eric Deggans.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Let's look next at weight loss. For extremely overweight people, bariatric surgery is highly effective. It reduces appetite by reducing the size of the stomach, but it is not always a lifelong cure. As NPR's Patti Neighmond reports, a new procedure could help patients maintain their weight loss.
PATTI NEIGHMOND, BYLINE: For most of her life, Fran Friedman struggled with compulsive eating. By the time she arrived at UCLA, she was 360 pounds at just 5 foot 2.
FRAN FRIEDMAN: So I opted to have the bariatric surgery.
NEIGHMOND: And lost 175 pounds.
FRIEDMAN: And maintained that for almost 10 years - the first time in my life that I've ever lost a lot of weight and was able to maintain.
NEIGHMOND: It was a miracle, says Friedman, not to feel hungry. The surgery reduces the stomach to about the size of an egg and people feel full from very little food.
FRIEDMAN: I thought that I was cured. I thought that I could eat like regular people.
NEIGHMOND: But 10 years after the surgery, Friedman started gaining weight again. She felt confused and depressed. UCLA gastroenterologist Rabindra Watson says she's not alone. About 1 in 3 patients regain significant amounts of weight a few years after surgery to reduce the size of the stomach pouch.
RABINDRA WATSON: And then over time what we found is that the pouch can dilate and stretch, and when that pouch stretches patients are able to eat more at one sitting and they feel hungrier more often.
NEIGHMOND: At the same time, hormonal changes that reduce appetite and take affect pretty much immediately after surgery begin to decline.
WATSON: The body again adapts to that change in physiology, and we think that possibly those changes are being reversed over time, that we don't have enough evidence to prove it.
NEIGHMOND: These hormonal changes and a stretched out stomach pouch mean people feel more hungry and are inclined to eat more. For Fran Friedman it meant a 20-pound weight gain.
FRIEDMAN: And then reality hits. Do I want to go back to where I was or do I want to maintain this level of quality of life?
NEIGHMOND: And this may be the hardest part of life after bariatric surgery - understanding that the surgery doesn't mean patients no longer have to pay attention to what they eat or whether they exercise. Gastroenterologist Watson says that's still a lifelong commitment. And for some patients, like Fran Friedman, a new, less invasive procedure can make the stomach smaller again and that can make a major difference.
WATSON: By reducing the size of the pouch what we found is that patients report improvement in their satiety and decrease in their hunger and, ultimately, greater control over how they're eating.
NEIGHMOND: And for Friedman that did the trick. She's lost 30 pounds since that second surgery. And now, with the help of a support group, she's committed to watching what she eats and how much she exercises. Patti Neighmond, NPR News.
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Throughout this program, many NPR stations are adding local traffic reports for you, and we want you to have the fullest possible information, so NPR science correspondent Joe Palca now has an ant traffic report.
JOE PALCA, BYLINE: Good morning, everyone. Looks like another no-hassle day on the ant highways. Traffic is moving smoothly on Jungle Route 17 near the split. Ants are traveling at speed coming in on 95 through the savanna, heavy volume but no slowdowns on Parkside Drive near the picnic basket.
Now, you may have noticed something a little surprising about this traffic report - no traffic jams. Physicist Apoorva Nagar at the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology says it turns out, for the most part, ants don't have traffic jams. Nagar wanted to know why that was and whether human traffic engineers could learn a thing or two from ants about how to avoid jams. I reached Nagar via Skype in his office in Kerala, India. He says there are basically three reasons ants don't jam up when running together in a single direction. Number one, ants don't have egos. They don't show off by zooming past slowpokes.
APOORVA NAGAR: They do not want to overtake each other.
PALCA: No aggressive drivers on an ant highway.
NAGAR: The second thing is that they do not mind a few accidents or collisions.
PALCA: So unless there's a serious pileup, they just keep going. And the third reason?
NAGAR: Ants seem to get more disciplined as the density increases.
PALCA: More discipline means no rubbernecking or distracted driving. Nagar felt this kind of behavior could be explained by something called the Langevin equation, an equation physicists use when describing the movement of liquids or how individual atoms behave in a lattice. I wasn't entirely familiar with the Langevin equation, so I turned to Thomas Donnelly, a physics professor at Harvey Mudd College.
THOMAS DONNELLY: This is basically a reworking of Newton's famous F=MA equation.
PALCA: Oh, yes, of course. Force equals mass times acceleration.
DONNELLY: So it's all Newton, but they're using a sort of special description of the forces, which includes a random component.
PALCA: OK, I think that's as far as I'm going to go in explaining that. But the bottom line is when Nagar made a mathematical model of the ants' traffic patterns using the Langevin equation and compared what his model predicted with what experiments with ants running in a line showed...
NAGAR: And they sort of seemed to fit very well with the experiment.
PALCA: So he wrote up his results, and they will appear in an upcoming issue of the journal Physical Review E. Nagar is not sure how relevant his model will be for human traffic engineers. After all, he agrees allowing cars to bump into each other at 60 miles an hour may be a nonstarter. Although greater discipline and less ego should help keep traffic flowing smoothly.
There's one other tiny problem. Nagar is a physicist, not an ant man. I've talked with ant researchers who say when the volume of ants is high enough, ants do jam up. But I suppose you could solve that problem by building more ant highways. Joe Palca, NPR News.
INSKEEP: Traffic is traffic, no matter how small. This ant traffic report comes to us from Joe Palca's project Joe's Big Idea which we hear on MORNING EDITION from NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Let's recall someone who once won the Nobel Peace Prize. It is the holiday to honor Martin Luther King, and on this day we've been hearing of his legacy through the voices of young people. Our colleague, Joanne Levine, heard her 5-year-old son talking about King's life-and-death, so she began asking other parents in her son's class what their children were saying. This is what she found.
CAROLYN BARNHARDT: Good morning boys and girls.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILDREN: Good morning, Miss Barnhardt.
JOANNE LEVINE, BYLINE: This is a classroom at John Eaton Elementary School. It's a diverse public school in Washington, D.C., where my two children happen to go. For the last two weeks, one teacher has been telling her class about Martin Luther King, Jr.
BARNHARDT: Let's start with the poem about Dr. King that we learned - wait a minute, wait a minute - let's start together. Are you ready?
UNIDENTIFIED CHILDREN: Yes.
BARNHARDT: OK, so here we go. When...
UNIDENTIFIED CHILDREN: Dr. King was little, he learned the golden rule.
LEVINE: Her name is Carolyn Barnhardt, and she teaches prekindergarten.
BARNHARDT: I am a part of the Dr. Martin Luther King era. I know just about everything there is to know about him because I experienced it, and I have brought that with me to the children.
LEVINE: Barnhardt came of age in 1950's South Carolina.
BARNHARDT: I experienced the white-only water fountains, the colored section in the bus station, the lunch counters. I remember not being able to sit there to eat lunch, and I went to the colored-only schools. It was all - everything was segregated. I was 6 years old when the Rosa Parks episode happened, and so I kind of sort of remember the beginning of the civil rights movement as a little girl.
LEVINE: A little girl about the same age as the students she's teaching. They're black, white, Asian and Arab, and they sit shoulder to shoulder every day.
EMIL: My name is Emil. I know about Dr. King. He changed the laws so everybody with that skin could go everywhere they want.
GRACIELA: My name is Graciela and when Dr. King was little, he learned a golden rule from how to treat another.
JONAH: My name is Jonah and Rosa Parks was sitting on the front of the bus, and the police came and she - took her to jail.
LEVINE: I spoke with Jonah's mother, Andrea Hack.
ANDREA HACK: Jonah, just out of the blue, started talking to me about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and he told me how this Dr. King had a dream that changed the world. And I asked him, well, what was that dream? And he said it wasn't one where he was asleep. It was something he just hoped for.
LEVINE: Andrea Hack has lots of hopes for her son, Jonah. She's white. Jonah is black. His sisters, 6-month-old twins, are also white.
HACK: It has come up a few times. When the babies were born, he did mention he was wondering what color they were going to be.
LEVINE: Hack says learning about Dr. King has made her son recognize things about himself.
HACK: And he said and I'm a brown person. And I just - I got tears in my eyes 'cause I thought this is - now when - my son now realizes about racism, and how do you talk to your child about that?
LEVINE: She knows that this is the beginning of a long conversation.
HACK: This is my son, you know, I don't - I don't want him to have any hardships, you know, but, of course, he will. And, unfortunately, the color of his skin and the fact that we have different colors of skin is going to be a hardship. It's - whether it's a minor hardship or a major one is, you know, yet to be seen, but it is - it's there. People see it.
LEVINE: Joanne Levine, NPR News, Washington.
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John Cruden served with U.S. Special Forces in Vietnam. He took his law school aptitude test while still in Saigon, and he later became a government lawyer. Now he's the new chief of the environmental division at the Justice Department. He gave his first interview to NPR justice correspondent Carrie Johnson.
CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: For John Cruden, the new role means coming home to a place where he worked as a career lawyer for 20 years. Cruden's been around long enough to have supervised the Exxon Valdez spill case, a record setter until the Deepwater Horizon exploded in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.
JOHN CRUDEN: In most of our minds are those nearly three months of watching the impact of the spill, but also a gigantic economic effect.
JOHNSON: This week, Cruden heads to New Orleans to oversee the next phase of the case against BP.
CRUDEN: It clearly ranks up there as one of the most significant environmental disasters of our lifetime and deserves all of our energy to try to make sure nothing like this happens again.
JOHNSON: The portfolio is sweeping, not just BP, but also defending court challenges to the administration's actions on climate change, a huge source of contention with many Republicans in Congress. Another priority, Cruden says, is to stop illegal trafficking of animals.
CRUDEN: We should be fighting for the survival of some of the world's most protected and iconic species and then working across the government and across the planet to end the illegal trade in wildlife.
JOHNSON: This month, his prosecutors convicted an auction house in Florida for selling rhino horn, elephant ivory and coral objects smuggled into China. He sees a symbol of that work every day in front of his office.
CRUDEN: The huge bear that we have, that was actually a trial exhibit in one of our cases, an endangered species. And so when the trial was over, we brought it here and it's now famous.
JOHNSON: Carrie Johnson, NPR News, Washington.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Negotiators over Iran's nuclear program believe a clock is ticking. They don't know exactly when it runs down to zero. As we heard on the program last week, the president of the United States and Iran both want a deal, but they're under increasing pressure from skeptics at home. It's in this moment that diplomats conducted another round of talks that wrapped up last night. NPR's Peter Kenyon was tracking them.
PETER KENYON, BYLINE: As the diplomats trickled out into a frigid Geneva Sunday evening, descriptions of the talks trickled out with them. Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi called them good, serious and businesslike, but refused to calculate the progress so far.
ABBAS ARAGCHI: Well, it's too soon to say if we are able to any progress or not. We are still trying to bridge the gaps between the two sides. We try our best, and as I have always said, as diplomats we are always hopeful.
KENYON: Chinese negotiator Wang Qun was the most positive after his delegations one-on-one with the Iranians.
WANG QUN: Very pragmatic and in-depth with existing consensus expanded.
KENYON: Western diplomats exited the building tight-lipped, perhaps reflecting the long distance left to go and the dwindling time to get there. Negotiators set themselves a March 1 deadline to come up with a political agreement, a framework giving some detail on what a final deal will look like come July 1. In order to produce a real framework, painful decisions need to be made. Iran has to decide whether it will roll back its ability to enrich uranium, which can be used to produce electricity or to fuel a nuclear warhead. The West has to decide which sanctions can be lifted when, and it all has to be sellable to hawkish domestic audiences in Tehran and Washington. Jim Walsh, with MIT's Security Studies Program, says Capitol Hill will be the focus of efforts to derail this diplomacy.
JIM WALSH: The bad news is that members of Congress - more so on the Republican side, but some Democrats as well - are going to attempt to kill the negotiations, and they're going to do that by trying to pass sanctions. How do we know that this is the case? Because they tried to do it a year ago.
KENYON: On the Iranian side, Tehran is entangled in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere, and oil revenues are plummeting. Shahram Chubin, with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, says the pressure is mounting on Iranian leaders, but it can only push them so far.
SHAHRAM CHUBIN: And I think here there's often a mistake in Washington. The Iranians are not about to give up. They're not on their last legs. They're not about to throw everything away in order to get an agreement that they don't want.
KENYON: Talks resume in just a few weeks; the time and venue still to be determined. Peter Kenyon, NPR News, Geneva.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Let's note two recent events in Europe, both involving men known to authorities. Anti-terror agencies had records on the men who attacked the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris. They still carried out their attack.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Two suspects in Belgium failed to carry out their apparent plan. They were killed in a police raid before they could try. Sometimes the system works. Sometimes it does not. And arrests have continued over the weekend, including in Greece.
INSKEEP: So let's ask how European security agencies are meeting the challenge of extremists. Peter Neumann of King's College London directs its International Center for the Study of Radicalization. How anxious were European security agencies before the Paris attacks?
PETER NEUMANN: For about two years, you've had security agencies, especially in the larger European countries, warning about the conflict in Syria, how it was producing more extremists than ever before and how many people were traveling to Syria. So there has been a great deal of concern.
INSKEEP: And when you say Syria, that's because some of the suspects who've been arrested recently have had some connection to Syria.
NEUMANN: Yes. What you have seen across Europe is that the Syrian conflict and the consequences of the Syrian conflict have really rejuvenated a lot of extremist networks.
INSKEEP: How well do European security agencies share information and collaborate?
NEUMANN: Well, that's difficult to say. There is an agency called Europol. The Europol is not like the FBI. It is a sort of switchboard of counterterrorism cooperation, but it doesn't conduct investigation of its own. And typically when larger countries, especially want to cooperate across borders, they go to these countries directly.
INSKEEP: One other layer of this I want to get at - of course, in the United States since 9/11, there's been a debate well over a decade long over how to balance security with civil liberties. Is a similar debate developing in Europe?
NEUMANN: There is a similar debate, and there has been, for example, in Britain, a debate for over 10 years since the London attacks. There are similar debates in Germany, even though they're always about different issues. So, for example, in Germany, there's a huge debate about surveillance and people don't like that at all, whereas in Britain, it is completely accepted to be on camera on average in a city like London 400 times a day, whereas the Brits, for example, get very agitated about the idea of national identity cards, whereas in Germany, for example, that is completely accepted. So, yes, there is a debate, but the debate is about different issues in each country.
INSKEEP: Germans were very angry in the last couple of years because of revelations about national security agency spying from the agency in the United States, including spying on the German chancellor, Angela Merkel. Have the recent attacks changed German attitudes about the value of surveillance?
NEUMANN: Not fundamentally because I don't think a lot of Germans understand how dependent German security agency and in fact all European security agencies are on information and intelligence coming from American sources, especially the NSA.
Only today in the city of Dresden, where a lot of anti-Islamic marches were taking place, those marches were being called off because of piece of intelligence about a planned attack on these marches. And it was reported in newspapers that that piece of intelligence was coming from foreign intelligence services, which almost certainly were United States intelligence services. So the German public wasn't as happy to take that information, does not always appreciate where it is coming from.
INSKEEP: What other role does the United States play in Europe right now?
NEUMANN: Well after 9/11, the United States, especially CIA, has become almost like a broker of intelligence. After 9/11, European Union countries were not collaborating that much. The CIA came in and said, look, we have a lot of information to offer. But in return, we want you to work together. And as a result, there have been reports that essentially the CIA station in Paris has become an almost quasi-Europol that facilitates information exchange through American offices for European countries.
INSKEEP: Peter Neumann of King's College London. He has also advised the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations on extremist issues. Thanks very much.
NEUMANN: Thank you.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Now let's hear about a European company that is back in U.S. court this week. The oil giant BP will find out how many billions of dollars it must pay for the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. A federal judge in New Orleans has already found that BP's gross negligence led to the disaster. Here's NPR's Debbie Elliott.
DEBBIE ELLIOTT, BYLINE: It's been nearly five years since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded. Eleven workers were killed, and oil spewed into the Gulf of Mexico for three months, fouling beaches, wetlands and wildlife from Texas to Florida. U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier has ruled that BP's profit-driven decisions and willful misconduct are to blame for the disaster. Now he's set to calculate what BP should pay in civil fines for polluting the Gulf, a figure that will be unprecedented, says University of Michigan law professor David Uhlmann, a former chief of the Justice Department's Environmental Crimes Section.
DAVID UHLMANN: BP faces the largest civil penalty ever imposed under the Clean Water Act.
ELLIOTT: With the gross negligence finding, the Clean Water Act allows for fines up to $4,300 per barrel of oil discharged. Judge Barbier last week set that figure at 3.19 million barrels. So if you do the math, that means it's within the judge's discretion to fine BP as much as $13.7 billion. The federal government argues if ever there was a case that merits the maximum fine, this is it. University of Alabama law professor Montre Carodine has been following the case.
MONTRE CARODINE: When he's thinking about how much money ultimately to impose, he's going to be thinking about that testimony that led him to believe that BP acted with gross negligence.
ELLIOTT: Barbier will hear testimony on a number of factors, including the seriousness of the violation, BP's degree of culpability, the company's history of prior violations and what efforts it made to mitigate the spill. In a statement, attorney J. Andrew Langan says BP will show the judge why it should get a lower fine. Ed Sherman, a professor at Tulane Law School, expects BP to focus on what it has already spent - some $42 billion.
ED SHERMAN: BP argues, well, we've already been punished enough.
ELLIOTT: For instance, BP paid $4 billion to settle federal criminal charges. It also cut a deal with private oil spill victims. That's exceeding its initial cost estimate of about $9 billion. Then, there's the $14 billion the company spent on response and cleanup.
SHERMAN: BP is arguing in their briefs that they expended extraordinary effort for the cleanup. In fact, they say that BP mounted the largest and most effective response in history, sparing no expense.
ELLIOTT: On the Gulf Coast where the effects of the spill linger, officials want to see the maximum fine against BP. State and local governments stand to receive 80 percent of the penalty under a special federal law. Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange.
LUTHER STRANGE: This was the most catastrophic environmental disaster the United States has suffered. And so what's at stake is money that will go towards restoring and preserving the damaged Gulf Coastline for this generation and for future generations.
ELLIOTT: Environmental groups are also calling for a high penalty. Cynthia Sarthou with the Gulf Restoration Network says the BP fine should be a message for the oil and gas industry.
CYNTHIA SARTHOU: They're moving into deeper waters faster and faster with more and more uncertainty. And I think that what we need is sort of a speed bump that says to them, maybe you need to be a little more cautious because you could really, really be financially hurt if you are negligent or grossly negligent in what you're doing.
ELLIOTT: The penalty phase of the trial starts Tuesday in New Orleans federal court. Debbie Elliott, NPR News.
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Usually the contents of a president's State of the Union speech are a pretty big secret, but the Obama White House has been dropping spoilers for most of the month. And tomorrow night, President Obama is expected to offer a number of ideas that cost money. Over the weekend, the White House rolled out a tax proposal that could cover some of the cost. Let's hear about it from NPR White House correspondent Tamara Keith.
TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: The economy is finally indisputably better. Unemployment is down, corporate profits are up, but wages for the middle class and working poor haven't kept pace. And that, says Obama adviser Dan Pfeiffer, is the focus of this year's State of the Union address. He appeared on CBS's "Face The Nation."
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "FACE THE NATION")
DAN PFEIFFER: Now that the economy's in a stronger place than it's been in a very long time, we need to double down on our efforts to deal with wage stagnation and declining economic mobility. And so the simple proposition that we should ask the wealthy to pay a little more and invest more in the middle class, give the middle class a raise.
KEITH: But the Obama administration's proposals to help the middle class cost money, and so they're looking to something White House officials call the trust fund loophole. Chuck Marr is director of federal tax policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning think tank.
CHUCK MARR: Wealthy people actually can hold their assets for their entire life, and then the tax liability that they owe is just erased.
KEITH: When they die, their heirs don't owe any capital gains taxes. Marr uses this example; let's say someone bought $100,000 of stock, and it gains value over the course of their life and is now worth $1 million. That's $900,000 of capital gains.
MARR: If the person had sold the stock, you know, a week before they died, they'd owed 24 percent on the 900,000, but if their heirs sell it the day after they died, they would owe zero.
KEITH: That's the loophole. The conservative group Americans for Tax Reform says what Obama is proposing would be a second death tax. Obama's plan would also raise the top tax rate on capital gains, and it would add a new fee for the nation's largest banks. Over a decade, administration officials say this would raise $320 billion, which would be used to fund a series of tax credits aimed at working families and programs to help pay for college. Edward Kleinbard is a professor of tax law at USC. He says the proposal is cleverly targeted.
EDWARD KLEINBARD: What the president is doing is making a very large investment in working- and middle-class Americans. And the source of the funds for the investment are coming from the most affluent Americans.
KEITH: The White House says the vast majority of the tax increase will come from the wealthiest one-tenth of 1 percent. There are protections built-in for small businesses, homes and surviving spouses. But this seems like a good place to pause and talk about political reality for a moment.
REPRESENTATIVE JASON CHAFFETZ: It's a nonstarter. We're not just one good tax increase away from prosperity in this nation.
KEITH: That splash of cold water comes from Republican Congressman from Utah Jason Chaffetz, who appeared yesterday on CNN's "State Of The Union."
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "STATE OF THE UNION")
CHAFFETZ: More government, a 300-plus-billion-dollar tax bill from Barack Obama is not the formula for this country to succeed.
KEITH: And he was far from the only Republican trashing the president's plan. A spokesman for the chairman of the House tax writing committee said the plan wasn't serious. But for the White House, seeing this proposal become a reality isn't the only goal. They want these ideas to be part of the political conversation for the next two years. Tamara Keith, NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep with the latest chapter in the Mideast conflict, which took place at the Miss Universe pageant. Miss Israel took a selfie that captured other women including Miss Lebanon. Miss Lebanon smiled but is now under criticism. Lebanon's Daily Star says some Lebanese want their queen dethroned because she was seen with an Israeli. Miss Lebanon insists she did not pose for the photo; she was just next to Miss Israel, sort of way Israel is next to Lebanon. It's MORNING EDITION.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The vast majority of Americans were not yet born on the day Martin Luther King was killed in 1968. Most of us know him through history, not memory. And this morning, we're going to listen to what some young people know and also how they think King relates to their lives today. They are students in middle and high school.
MIRANDA: My name is Miranda Quinonez, and I'm in seventh grade in Los Angeles. I am Latina. If it wasn't for Dr. King's speech, I would have been in a different school just for my race. I want to be a teacher when I get older, and I would teach my students that Dr. King was a good man and that he gave up his own life just so other people can be together.
YOSHOUA: My name is Yoshoua Bartlett. I'm in eighth grade here at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. School Number 9. I am from Rochester, New York. I feel that progress is being made, but Dr. King's dream is still not yet fulfilled. In my community, schools are pretty segregated.
ROSANNY: My name is this Rosanny Espinol. I'm in 11th grade, and I'm from Camden, New Jersey. I think Dr. King's dream has been fulfilled. We're not segregated anymore.
TYMIER: My name is Tymier Branch, and I'm from Camden, New Jersey. I'm an 11th-grade student. Right now, the world is segregated. Like, in high schools, there's cliques. You've got the cool kids, the smart kids, the geek kids. But how come they all just can't be one student body and just be one powerful unison? It's going to take time. It's going to take a lot of progress. But I believe that one day, we will get there to where every race will accept each race for who they are.
DONNIA: My name is Donnia Crisom. I'm currently in the 11th grade, and I go to MetEast High School. When I grow up, I want to be pediatric anesthesiologist/oncologist. With the things that have been going on in Ferguson, I know that the people are hurt, but I've also heard about their protests being very violent and how they burned down businesses. And they're kind of hurting their own city. So I feel that Dr. King was about positive protest, and that's not what they're showing. And I think that, as people, we should come together and do positive acts.
DARIAN: My name is Darian Pinder. I'm a sophomore at McCluer South Berkeley School in Ferguson, Missouri. I am a dishwasher. I aspire to be a neurosurgeon. Dr. Martin Luther King's dream means to me that equality is something that is very important, especially seeing the reactions of what was going on in Ferguson. It should've been a healing process for everyone and every race coming out and actually standing up and telling everyone that it's time for all this chaos and all of this friction to come to a halt. I see me actually bringing Dr. King's dream alive by taking each and every event that is brought upon me and learning from it, not holding it against me or blaming that for what I am today.
INSKEEP: Darian Pinder of Ferguson, Missouri. We also heard Miranda Quinonez, Yoshoua Bartlett, Rosanny Espinol and Tymier Branch. Our colleagues from NPR's Code Switch team got on the phone with those students and at the end of one conversation, Darian Pinder of Ferguson turned the question around.
DARIAN: I actually did have one question for you. What do you actually feel needs to be done for Dr. King's dream to be implemented today?
INSKEEP: So that's the question on the table. Offer your own answers by tweeting us @MorningEdition.
This is NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
We're about to play some words of Martin Luther King that have rarely been heard before.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Almost every American has grown up knowing the cadence of King's voice. You can't watch TV long without seeing that moment in 1963 when he spoke of a dream that this nation will rise up and live out the meaning of its creed.
INSKEEP: Years ago in a used record store, I found a cassette of King's speeches published like a record album, and you can find several such albums on iTunes today. But until now, almost nobody has heard the speech he gave at UCLA in 1965. Cue the tape.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
MARTIN LUTHER KING: I also want to thank you for the support that you've given our struggle in the South and all over this country.
INSKEEP: A recent grad student and his professor found it in a cabinet while gathering tapes of old speeches. And on this Martin Luther King holiday, let's listen to a bit of this talk from April 1965.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
KING: Not only we've come a long, long way, but we have a long, long way to go before the problem of racial injustice is solved. I don't think I have to stay on this point too long. We need only turn on our televisions and open our newspapers and look around in our communities. We know that no section of our country can boast of clean hands in the area of brotherhood.
INSKEEP: Little bit of a rediscovered speech by Martin Luther King which we're hearing, thanks to our friends at KPCC. King spoke at UCLA in California. It was soon after the famous march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965, and it was soon before the passage of the Voting Rights Act.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
And one speech that will be getting a good bit of attention this week is President Obama's State of the Union address tomorrow night. This comes as the president begins his seventh year in office. He's battling lame-duck status, and we'll hear about that in a moment, but let's preview the speech first.
The White House has already begun revealing some of the proposals in it. The president wants to provide free community college tuitions, paid family care time for workers, a tripling of the child tax credit among other things. And over the weekend, we learned how he plans to pay for all this; it's a tax proposal. Cokie Roberts is with us as she is most Mondays. Hey, Cokie.
COKIE ROBERTS, BYLINE: Hi, David.
GREENE: So tell us about this tax plan.
ROBERTS: Well, it does have, as you said, a credit for child care but it's got a lot of other credits in it for middle-class families. It's got something for two-earner families; it's got something for parents; it's got something for college students; it's got something for retirees. And it's got something for low-income people. So paying for all of that, which is going to cost apparently $175 billion over 10 years, the president plans to do that with a big increase in the capital gains tax and extending that capital gains tax to inheritance taxes, closing what the administration calls the trust fund loophole. They claim that will raise $210 billion over 10 years - and impose fees on banks to discourage them from risky borrowing. And they say that that will also raise another $110 billion over 10 years - so great, big taxes on banks and on people who have capital gains.
GREENE: Essentially making the argument that we have heard before that banks and wealthy Americans should carry some of the burden to be able to ease the burden on middle-class Americans. I mean, Cokie, these are types of proposals that Republicans have fought very hard before, suggesting that they are not good for the economy. The Republicans now control both chambers of Congress. I mean, any realistic chance that the president could actually get this passed?
ROBERTS: Probably not. Now, the White House says that some Republicans have been behind many of these proposals, but, look, this is designed to embarrass Republicans into looking like they're protecting the rich, which is what the president's after. It's not an economic speech; it's a political speech. And it's hitting all the themes that many Democrats think should've been hit in the last campaign but weren't because Democratic candidates chose to focus on things like culture wars. And it's a way for the president to reset the Democratic agenda to what many have thought that it should've been anyway, and it comes at a good time for the president. His approval ratings are up because people are feeling much better about the economy.
GREENE: Not to get too philosophical, but, I mean, when people talk about, you know, term limits, they argue that a person who can't run again is not thinking about politics. I mean, they're thinking about legacy and policy. If that were true, I mean, President Obama - wouldn't he be focusing on actually things that could get done rather than kind of laying down political markers for the next election?
ROBERTS: Well, he has another legacy which he needs to erase, and that's in his own party. Almost 70 Democrats in the Congress have lost since Obama was elected and countless numbers in the states. He wants to turn around that image that he's bad for the party. And he also wants to make it easier for a successor in the White House to be a Democrat, which flies in the face of history to have a third term. So now the fact that he's a lame duck with a Republican Congress that has to show it can govern, in some ways, freeze the president to propose all of these things that everybody knows will never pass in order to say on the campaign trail, look, Democrats tried to do this, but the bad, old Republicans stopped them.
Now there's the question of what it means for the country, and the White House I think would say, look, these Republicans have made it clear you can't work with them, so why not just go for it and make proposals that the people want and leave it up to the Republicans to figure it out?
GREENE: All right. Cokie Roberts joins us most Mondays on the program. Cokie, always good to talk to you.
ROBERTS: Thank you, David.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
And NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson has been reporting on the challenges of a president beginning his seventh year in office.
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: President Obama has made it clear he doesn't want to be a lame duck. And Tuesday night's State of the Union speech is his first chance to show why he won't be one, but that will be hard, says presidential historian H.W. Brands.
H.W. BRANDS: The shelf life of a seventh-year State of the Union address is about five minutes. Presidents can propose stuff. They're probably not likely to get it done.
LIASSON: Addressing a legislature controlled completely by the opposition party sounds daunting, but Mr. Obama is in good company. He's 1 of only 5 lame-duck presidents in history, that is, second-term leaders constitutionally barred from running again. And, says Yale law professor Ian Ayres...
IAN AYRES: All five of these lame-duck presidents, starting with Dwight D. Eisenhower, their last two years have been confronting both a House and a Senate controlled by the opposition party.
LIASSON: But, Ayres says, President Obama is in the running for the title of least lame-duck president because he's aggressively using unilateral executive actions, many of which he'll talk about tomorrow night. All of them, including his ambitious moves to reopen diplomatic relations with Cuba, regulate greenhouse gases or offer deportation relief to millions of immigrants here illegally, can be overturned by a future president. But as a practical matter, they will be hard to reverse.
The architect of President Obama's strategy for the final two years is John Podesta, back for his second tour of duty in the White House. Podesta, who was chief of staff for President Clinton's final two years, says there's no secret sauce to being a successful lame duck.
JOHN PODESTA: You have to be disciplined about what you think you can get done. And you have to be disciplined about what is unacceptable. And you have to make that clear to be open to working with Republicans where we can, but not to be driven by some need to change our priorities because they're now in charge. We'll just have to work that through each and every day.
LIASSON: Michael Waldman, who also worked in the Clinton White House, says President Obama, facing a Congress totally controlled by Republicans, has new opportunities, opportunities he never had when Congress was divided and Democrats controlled the Senate.
MICHAEL WALDMAN: Barack Obama in his seventh year, in a way, is more relevant right now to domestic decisions than when Congress couldn't decide what to order for lunch.
LIASSON: Because, says Waldman, Congress is now going to start actually passing things.
WALDMAN: And he's going to veto them or sign them. And you're going to actually have negotiations. You're going to actually have lines drawn and battles joined and arguments made about the role of government, about proper economic policy, about immigration and other things as opposed to this kind of cacophony of people yelling at each other but nothing happening.
LIASSON: The same pen that signs executive orders, says Waldman, also signs laws or veto messages. Members of both parties will be listening carefully tomorrow night to see how Mr. Obama lays out the battle lines. To what extent will he challenge Republicans on issues like immigration, climate change and tax reform or his own Democrats on trade?
The other thing to listen for is the tone the president strikes. Successful lame ducks have said some memorable things in their final years in office - think Eisenhower warning about the military-industrial complex or Reagan telling Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. Waldman says tomorrow night offers Mr. Obama an opportunity to rewrite the narrative of his own presidency after a year that was full of crises, but ended with an accelerating economy.
WALDMAN: One of the puzzlements about Barack Obama's rhetorical presidency has been his reluctance to tell a coherent, long-term story about the success from his eyes of what he's been doing. A jolt of optimism and positive analysis of the country, of its direction and of the economy would be something people haven't heard and I think would really mark the tone.
LIASSON: And, says H.W. Brands, if Barack Obama starts retelling the story of his presidency tomorrow night, it will be the first step toward becoming a not-so-lame lame duck.
BRANDS: You might say presidents are drafting the first chapter of their memoirs in these seventh-year State of the Union addresses. They're trying to get the public and the media to think about their presidencies in the way that they would like to have them thought of.
LIASSON: Mara Liasson, NPR News, Washington.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Good morning. I'm David Greene. As we've reported, China has a major smog problem. And now one environmental official thinks he's figured out the cause - breakfast, specifically bacon. The official says smoking, the traditional method used to preserve pork, is polluting the air. As local residents smoke delicious meat products in preparation for the Chinese New Year, the smog has increased. Still, this claim was met with some skepticism. Some say that at most, the air might smell like bacon. You're listening to MORNING EDITION.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
People who are risking their lives to confront the Ebola epidemic will tell you they take signs of progress with great caution. Margaret Chan, head of the World Health Organization, said on this program in the fall that her organization was caught off guard by the enormity of this outbreak and that much uncertainty remained.
Still, today, the WHO is taking note of what it says is important progress. Liberia has registered its lowest weekly total of cases since June. Sierra Leone has reported a decline for the second week running, and in Guinea, where the epidemic began, the number of cases has also fallen. Schools in Guinea are set to reopen today after being closed since the summer. From Guinea's capital, here's Ofeibea Quist-Arcton.
OFEIBEA QUIST-ARCTON, BYLINE: Music, fanfare and Guinea-style cheerleaders with pom-poms welcome government officials and hundreds of participants for the launch of the Zero Ebola Cases in 60 days campaign at the People's Palace in Conakry. Guinea's Ebola czar and the prime minister, Mohamed Said Fofana, kicked off the new government initiative.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRIME MINISTER MOHAMED SAID FOFANA: (Through interpreter) Guineans talk too much. People resist even the idea that Ebola exists. This disease kills. How do we overcome denial that Ebola exists? Why do we refuse to accept what others have accepted? We really must get a grip on the situation.
QUIST-ARCTON: Days earlier, the prime minister warned that those who continue to hide patients sick with Ebola, or try to hold secret burials of Ebola victims, could face prosecution. He said the stubbornness of some Guineans, coupled with resistance about Ebola's existence, had slowed efforts to eradicate the virus. Ebola chief Sakoba Keita echoed the same theme.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
SAKOBA KEITA: (Through interpreter) No to denial, no to rumors causing the loss of life, no to hidden Ebola patients, no to secret and insecure burials. Examine your conscience. We must the chain of transmission. If we respect these guidelines, we will finish with Ebola. We must mobilize.
QUIST-ARCTON: In September, eight members of a team trying to raise awareness about Ebola were killed by villagers in Guinea's Southwest. Periodic attacks on health teams continue. Suspicion and fear persist in Guinea, where the Ebola epidemic began just over a year ago.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
KEITA: (Foreign language spoken).
(APPLAUSE)
QUIST-ARCTON: There was loud applause when the Ebola czar announced there were no more reported cases in Gueckedou, the original epicenter of the outbreak in the forest region. But pockets of transmission remain all over the country. Leading the team for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Guinea is Benjamin Dahl. He says there's been progress.
BENJAMIN DAHL: We've seen certain communities declared Ebola-free for the past 21 days here in Guinea in an area that was completely on fire months ago, so we know it's possible. And we just need to make sure that those best practices are applied here in Guinea, in Conakry and in every last area where we have cases.
(SOUNDBITE OF BUGLE)
QUIST-ARCTON: A moment's silence, and the bugle sounds a solemn tattoo for the almost 2,000 people who've died of Ebola in Guinea.
(SOUNDBITE OF BUGLE)
QUIST-ARCTON: Community leaders, including the head of the road sweepers in a Conakry neighborhood, Hadja Adama Camara, pledged to make the zero cases within two months target a reality.
ADJA ADAMA CAMARA: (Foreign language spoken).
QUIST-ARCTON: Camara says schools are reopening, and they want their children to be safe and not to be infected with Ebola, so she says they're to fight harder than ever to end the virus within 30, rather than the government's goal of 60 days.
But Guinea and neighboring Sierra Leone and Liberia must all hit zero before the region can say it has shaken off the Ebola epidemic. Ofeibea Quist- Arcton, NPR News, Conakry.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
In a year-ending talk on this program, President Obama said he wanted to avoid spending too much money overseas. Rather than spend another trillion dollars in Iraq, he said he wanted to tend to the sources of American strength, like education and infrastructure. His State of the Union speech tomorrow is expected to highlight a plan to fix roads, bridges and water systems. That plan relies in part on public-private partnerships. NPR's David Schaper reports this specific plan avoids increasing taxes, but eventually, the public will pay.
DAVID SCHAPER, BYLINE: Every one of us could probably point to something on our morning commute that needs to be fixed, whether it's a road full of potholes or an old bridge that is too narrow. And it's not just the nation's highways and transit systems that are in great need, but ports, water and sewer systems, even rural broadband all could use billions of dollars in upgrades. The problem?
JOHN SCHMIDT: We don't have enough money, to put it bluntly.
SCHAPER: John Schmidt is a partner with the law firm Mayer Brown in Chicago, and he works on putting together private financing packages for public infrastructure projects. Public-private partnerships are nothing new. They're used to build and operate toll roads, tunnels and bridges. Schmidt says the president is proposing to expand that kind of financing to build or repair airports, shipping ports, mass transit systems and other vital pieces of infrastructure.
SCHMIDT: It's a technical change, but would significantly enable public entities, states, cities, counties, whoever to involve private parties in helping to finance and then build and operate big infrastructure.
SCHAPER: At a time when the Highway Trust Fund is drying up and increasing the federal gas tax is a long-shot, Schmidt says creating more public-private partnerships is critical.
SCHMIDT: There's no question this is the wave of the future. The rest of the world has, in this area, been ahead of us.
SCHAPER: But Joseph Schofer, transportation professor at Northwestern University, says it's important to note that a public-private partnership is not new money. It's just a different way of borrowing from private investors who are looking for profit.
JOSEPH SCHOFER: They are expecting to get the money back.
SCHAPER: And Schofer says that will mean either higher taxes on something like gasoline, or more tolls or some other kinds of user fees because there's no such thing as a free ride. David Schaper, NPR News, Chicago.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Fans of Sleater-Kinney were thrilled last fall when the band released a new song, declaring its eight-year hiatus over. The trio first formed 20 years ago on the wave of the feminist riot girl movement. And Sleater-Kinney emerged as what some critics deemed one of America's best rock bands. Their new album is out today. It's called "No Cities To Love." NPR's Leah Scarpelli talked to them.
LEAH SCARPELLI, BYLINE: Drummer Janet Weiss describes the feeling of being back in the studio with Sleater-Kinney after almost a decade apart.
JANET WEISS: I heard Corin's voice through the monitors for the first time in all those years. I think the hair on my neck stood up. It made it all - it just made sense.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FANGLESS")
SLEATER-KINNEY: (Singing) Sharp teeth in a broken jaw. Hungry, but I'll hunger on.
SCARPELLI: Corin Tucker, Carrie Brownstein and Janet Weiss make up an all-female rock band that never wanted to be just be an all-female rock band.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I WANNA BE YOUR JOEY RAMONE")
SLEATER-KINNEY: (Singing) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I want to be your Joey Ramone.
SCARPELLI: This was the riot-girl attitude. In the early '90s, women in Olympia, Washington, were forming punk bands, printing zines, coming together to make a place for themselves in a mostly male music scene. Singer and guitarist Corin Tucker had moved to Olympia to attend the Evergreen State College.
CORIN TUCKER: I saw right after I got there, Bikini Kill and Bratmobile played their first show, and I was like, that's it. I mean, it literally was that night I was like, I'm starting a band today.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WORDS AND GUITAR")
SLEATER-KINNEY: (Singing) Words and guitar, I got it. Words and guitar, I want it.
SCARPELLI: Lead guitarist and singer Carrie Brownstein also went to Evergreen and says Olympia was progressive and inclusive, but that wasn't always the story on the road.
CARRIE BROWNSTEIN: Someone made a sign in Houston that said sexist Kinney go home, because we had requested that one of the opening bands, maybe they could have some women in them. We kept that sign. We took a lot of pictures with it. It came with us in the van.
SCARPELLI: But Janet Weiss says one question they couldn't stand...
WEISS: What does it feel like to be a woman in rock? And I'm not exactly sure why people are so compelled to ask it.
SCARPELLI: Brownstein says the band only got stronger.
BROWNSTEIN: That static, like, putting all these modifiers in front of the word band kind of fell away because all we wanted to prove was that we could make good records.
SCARPELLI: Woven through their eight albums are personal takes on love and rock 'n' roll, alongside highly charged stories about war, gender roles, inequality.
BROWNSTEIN: That's a really strong part of our songwriting is being able to find a particular voice for each song and create a whole story from that viewpoint.
SCARPELLI: You hear it in the new song "Price Tag."
BROWNSTEIN: It felt like a woman who was working a job that she was giving everything she had to, that was never going to be enough money for her to take care of her family.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "PRICE TAG")
SLEATER-KINNEY: (Singing) We never really checked, we never really checked the price tag. And the cost comes in...
SCARPELLI: During those eight years away from Sleater-Kinney, all three members pursued other music projects. Carrie Brownstein wrote for NPR Music and started the sketch comedy show "Portlandia." But the three friends say the reunion feels right. Lead singer, Corin Tucker.
TUCKER: I wrote the song "Surface Envy" about that moment where we were like, are we going to be a band again? And everyone was like, yes, for real.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SURFACE ENVY")
SLEATER-KINNEY: (Singing) We win. We lose. Only together do we break the rules.
SCARPELLI: Leah Scarpelli, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SURFACE ENVY")
SLEATER-KINNEY: (Singing) We win. We lose. Only together do we make the rules. I'm breaking the...
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
We're pretty excited about our new book club. It's called Morning Reads, and our colleague David Greene is getting the conversation started with a story of survival that took place in 2010.
DAVID GREENE, BYLINE: That's when 33 miners were trapped beneath the ground in Chile for 69 days. They battled starvation. They were isolated. They didn't know if they would live.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
MELISSA BLOCK, BYLINE: Tonight is the night at the San Jose Mine. Rescue efforts are set to begin for 33 men who've been trapped...
GREENE: Somehow they were rescued, all of them. One by one, they were brought to the surface through a narrow hole that had been drilled. Their country was elated.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
GREENE: Their story is captured in a book by journalist Hector Tobar, and it's the first pick for Morning Reads, the book club we're holding for the first time today. A few weeks ago, we were joined by Ann Patchett, author and owner of an independent bookstore in Nashville, and we asked Ann to choose our first book. This was it - it's called "Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories Of 33 Men Buried In A Chilean Mine, And The Miracle That Set Them Free."
ANN PATCHETT: The subtitle says it all. It's a riveting story. It was an amazing story in the news. A mine in Chile collapsed, trapping these 33 men, and there was a heroic effort, kind of a miracle of tenacity and science that rescued these men. But the real reason that I chose the book was because of Hector and his writing. He just did such an astonishing job - hands-down my favorite book of the year.
GREENE: And there's a pretty amazing story behind the book. The 33 miners, while fighting for their lives underground, decided to make a pact - if they lived, they'd work together and recount the events to just one person. They were eventually put in touch with Hector Tobar, a Pulitzer prize-winning Latin American writer.
HECTOR TOBAR: I spent my whole life as a writer talking to just the average guy in Los Angeles and Latin America, talking to working people. And I thought, man, these guys must have an epic story to tell. It never occurred to me, however, that somehow this story would end up in my lap. It was just the journalistic project of my life.
GREENE: And today we have Hector Tobar and Ann Patchett with us. Welcome both of you to our book club.
PATCHETT: Thank you.
TOBAR: Thanks.
GREENE: And you're with us as well, even if you haven't read the book. Over the past month, some of you submitted questions to us, including about the miners' privacy under the media glare. The world learned that one miner had a mistress. She and his wife would come to the mine, praying for his survival. And that made listener Kelli Delaney from Billings, Montana, wonder...
KELLI DELANEY: Mr. Tobar, do we need to know everything about the miners the public wants to know? But is it our right to know everything?
GREENE: Did you feel, Hector, that you included too much about their personal stories in some cases?
TOBAR: Well, in the case of the married miner with the mistress, Yonni Barrios, already that story had been out in public for years. It was not a good thing for Yonni Barrios to be subjected to this media onslaught. It was terrible, actually contributed to Yonni's post-traumatic stress after getting out of the mine. But on the other hand, the book is about these men with these complicated lives. Now that we can stand back several years later and tell their story, it's really about the complete person who went in, and they were flawed individuals.
GREENE: Ann Patchett, if Hector had held back, not given so many personal details, could this have been the same book?
PATCHETT: It would've been the Encyclopedia Britannica if he hadn't.
(LAUGHTER)
PATCHETT: As somebody who is a writer, Hector did hold back, I'm sure, more than we can possibly imagine.
GREENE: Is that true, Hector?
TOBAR: There some things I did not put in, yeah.
PATCHETT: I mean, there's such restraint in this book. It's not a long book.
GREENE: Well, let's get to another question.
RICK HUDSON: My name is Rick Hudson (ph). I'm from Charlotte, North Carolina. My question really was that, you know, when you have 33 different people you're getting interviews from, and then on top of that you got all these families, and you've got the politicians and the mine owners - how do you take all that information and weave that story together?
GREENE: Hector?
TOBAR: Well, you know, when I was in Chile, I would do seven to 10 hours of interviews in a day. And at the end of each day, I would make a list of the best stories I heard that day, the most colorful images, the most emotional moments - Mario sees the devil, Yonni's mistress feels his presence in their home - all those moments together, they became the heart of the book.
GREENE: I think, Ann, you have a question from Luis Lee (ph) in Sacramento, right? You want to read that for us?
PATCHETT: Sure. And she asked on Facebook, number one, is the San Jose Mine still open for business? That's a good question. And, two, have the safety requirements for mines and miners changed for the better in Chile and for the rest of the mining communities worldwide after this incident?
GREENE: That's a good question. Hector?
TOBAR: The San Jose Mine is closed and will remain closed for the rest of eternity. All the things that the men left behind are in this time capsule that may actually never be opened because it's a very dangerous place.
GREENE: Hector, what's it like to go to that mine - the San Jose Mine - now that it's closed?
TOBAR: Well, you know, it's about an hour outside of the town of Copiapo, so no one really ever goes there. It's really desolate and lonely. The mouth of the mine looks like the mouth of a monster. So it's a very haunting, dark place. As far as mining safety, as a result of the accident, the mining safety agency in Chile had a thorough housecleaning. They fired the top three officials. So mining safety in Chile has definitely improve; however, mining continues to be an extremely dangerous activity.
GREENE: OK. Let's take a listen here to our last listener question.
AMY ABANDRAPH: Hi. I'm Amy Abandraph (ph) from Missoula, Montana. I'm wondering about the lives of the miners now. Have those groups that jelled together inside the mine remained close?
TOBAR: Well, in some ways the miners will always be united because they're the only 33 people on Earth who know exactly what they went through - to be trapped, buried alive, to see death, and to feel that your death is imminent. And then to be transported into this media circus and to have the world call you a hero and to visit Jerusalem and Disney World just after you've been trapped, no one else has been through that. So they will always be united by that. And they have reunions every once in a while.
At the same time, they are definitely still divided in many ways, and there are still many strong personality clashes. But still, I think that they are joined in this brotherhood that will last for the rest of their lives.
GREENE: Hector Tobar, thanks so much for bringing your book to our book club and for joining us. We really appreciate it.
TOBAR: Thanks so much for having me.
GREENE: And Ann Patchett, thank you for picking such a great book for our first read.
PATCHETT: It's such a pleasure.
GREENE: We will have the next pick for Morning Reads soon, so stay tuned.
MONTAGNE: And it's clear MORNING EDITION knows how to pick them. Yesterday "Deep Down Dark" was named as one of the five finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award in nonfiction. This is NPR News.
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On this day, President Obama launches the final phase of his presidency. We're going to hear a voice from the beginning. He's a man who lives in a place the president visited early in his first term. By returning to that place, we can see what's changed in the economy in six years for better and for worse. Elkhart County, Indiana, suggests why the economic recovery doesn't always feel as good as the numbers indicate. On the morning of the State of the Union speech, here's NPR's Tamara Keith.
TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Elkhart County, Indiana - recreational vehicle capital of the world, except when no one was buying RVs. In February, 2009, the unemployment rate in Elkhart bumped up against 20 percent. President Obama picked it for his first big trip in office.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
AUDIENCE: (Chanting) Obama. Obama. Obama.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Thank you, everybody. Thank you so much. Thank you.
KEITH: Obama took the stage at Concord High School and turned to a very nervous man in a borrowed suit and said, go ahead.
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ED NEUFELDT: Good afternoon, everyone.
OBAMA: Good afternoon.
NEUFELDT: My name is Ed Neufeldt.
KEITH: If Elkhart was the symbol of the recession, then Ed Neufeldt became the face of the unemployed worker.
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NEUFELDT: On September the 17, 2008, all of the employees of Monaco Coach were informed that, due to the economy, they would be closing their doors.
KEITH: Neufeldt was suddenly unemployed after 32 years working in the RV industry.
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NEUFELDT: I am hoping and praying and believing that President Obama will put the people in Elkhart County and the country back to work.
(APPLAUSE)
KEITH: Obama was there to promote the $800 billion Recovery Act. $170 million in stimulus money would go to Elkhart County, according to ProPublica. Six years later, Neufeldt is behind the wheel of a Kia, showing me around Elkhart County.
NEUFELDT: Now, I'm going to turn right here and show you some of the plants that were closed down. The one over there - in 2009, there was nobody in that building.
KEITH: Before the crash, Neufeldt and thousands of others reported for work before dawn in these big warehouses, building RVs. As the recession hit, a number of major employers went bankrupt.
GUS FEILER: We lost 75 percent of our volume overnight. It was not a recession. It was a damn depression.
KEITH: Gus Feiler's company, Williamsburg Furniture, makes couches and sleeper sofas and captain's chairs for RVs. He went from 140 employees to 40. And the ones that were left took huge pay cuts. Feiler says he refinanced everything he could just to keep the doors open. And now?
FEILER: Those of us that were lucky enough to survive - we're back.
(SOUNDBITE OF SEWING MACHINE)
KEITH: Filer shows me around his three massive, interconnected buildings. More than a dozen women rapidly sew upholstery. There are saws buzzing and nail guns firing. Captain's chairs for high-end motor coaches are flying out the door again.
FEILER: It is good to hear that noise again. 2009, 2010 were very silent - turn your stomach.
KEITH: Feiler says his big problem now is finding employees. He'd hire 30 more today if he could. As Neufeldt draws me by those once-abandoned warehouses, it's clear from the smokestacks and the parking lots full of pickup trucks, they're humming again, too.
NEUFELDT: Evidently, by the looks of the cars there, they've got people working at all these buildings.
KEITH: Today, the unemployment rate in Elkhart County, Indiana is right around 5 percent. That's a bit better than the national average and almost back to what it was before the recession. The saying is if you can pass a drug test, you can get a job in Elkhart. Ed Neufeldt - he has three jobs - all part-time.
NEUFELDT: Yeah, everybody's working that wants to work. But you could probably - really, I drew more on unemployment than I'm making working these three jobs now.
KEITH: His main job - stocking shelves for a local bread company, going store to store, moving the older loaves to the front.
NEUFELDT: Got to make everything look pretty.
KEITH: He also works at a grocery store. And in the evenings, he cleans a doctor's office. Neufeldt remembers before the recession hit his wife telling him he had it made.
NEUFELDT: I was 62 at the time. She said, just work about three more years. We've got a great 401k going. And I think I lost maybe $50,000 when we had that crash.
KEITH: If Neufeldt was the face of the unemployed worker six years ago, today he's the face of a recovery that left some people behind.
MAYOR LARRY THOMPSON: Ed is a survivor. You know, he was going to do whatever it took.
KEITH: Larry Thompson is the longtime mayor of Nappanee, Indiana, at the southern end of Elkhart County.
THOMPSON: I'm a small-town Republican mayor.
KEITH: Thompson stood in abandoned RV factories and wondered if his community would ever come back. And now it is.
THOMPSON: Whatever full employment is, we're close.
KEITH: Mayor Thompson gladly competed to bring stimulus money to his county. The so-called green jobs didn't last. But the upgrades to the sewer plant made a lasting difference. Ultimately, he has mixed feelings about the Recovery Act.
THOMPSON: But it gave us hope that if we just hang in there and work hard and all work together, this thing will come back.
KEITH: It gave Ed Neufeldt hope, too. He believed in that guy he introduced in the high school gym, even though he never voted for him. But now Neufeldt gets upset when he thinks about how divided the country is.
NEUFELDT: If we go out somewhere, which is not very often, they'll say, oh, did you know Ed introduced President Obama? And I used to - years ago, I was kind of proud. Now I say, shh, don't tell anybody.
KEITH: And this is the President's challenge. The economy is back though it is far from perfect. And when you ask people in Elkhart County where the credit goes, they don't talk about President Obama or his policies. They talk about the free-enterprise system and a community that stuck together. Tamara Keith, NPR News.
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The U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments today in a case that tests whether an election for a judge is just like any other election. The question is whether judicial elections can have special rules, as many do. Many states try to preserve judicial impartiality by barring judicial candidates from personally soliciting campaign contributions. Here's NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg.
NINA TOTENBERG, BYLINE: There was a time when judicial elections were a pretty tame affair with relatively little money spent and candidates in most states limited in how they could campaign - not anymore. Special interest money is pouring into judicial elections, and a new conservative Supreme Court majority has repeatedly struck down rules long in place to limit campaign fundraising.
Now comes the first challenge to limits specifically aimed at fundraising by judicial candidates. Thirty-nine states elect some or all their judges and most bar judicial candidates from personally soliciting campaign contributions. Today's case tests that personal soliciting ban in a case from Florida, where all judicial election fundraising is supposed to be done by candidate committees and not the candidates themselves.
Lanell Williams-Yulee ran for the trial bench in Hillsborough County, Florida, in 2009. She sent out a signed a letter to potential contributors seeking money for her campaign. And she posted a signed appeal on her website. For this, she was reprimanded and fined. She then challenged the personal solicitation ban as a violation of her First Amendment right to free speech, appealing all the way to the Supreme Court. In the High Court today, lawyers representing the Florida Bar will defend the ban as necessary to protect two important constitutional values - the impartiality and integrity of the courts and also the constitutional right to due process of law, guaranteed for those who come before the courts seeking justice. Several former chief justices of the Florida Supreme Court have filed briefs supporting the personal solicitation ban, among them Harry Lee Anstead.
HARRY LEE ANSTEAD: The image created is a judge in their robes, holding their hand out to a lawyer or to a private company, and cash being passed from one hand to the other.
ANDREW PINCUS: This is not a contribution going from the hand of a lawyer to the hand of the judge.
TOTENBERG: Andrew Pincus is the lawyer for Williams-Yulee. While challenging the whole ban on personal solicitation, he's at the same time trying to parse it in this case.
PINCUS: This is mass solicitation via a post on an Internet site and via a letter.
TOTENBERG: The personal solicitation ban, he says, doesn't really protect the integrity of the judicial system in a state where contributions are publicly known.
PINCUS: It's a phony protection because the judge is going to know who gave and who didn't. So in a way, the prohibition creates an illusion of insulation when there isn't any real insulation.
TOTENBERG: Gregory Coleman, president of the Florida Bar, counters that you can't parse the rule so easily.
GREGORY COLEMAN: What they're saying is a judge or a judicial candidate should be able to, under the First Amendment, ask for money from a contributor. It does not look right. It doesn't smell right. It doesn't feel right.
TOTENBERG: Indeed, how would you draw the line, asks Barry Richard, who will represent the Florida Bar in the Supreme Court today.
BARRY RICHARD: When does it become a mass mailing?
TOTENBERG: And similarly, when would a group be big enough that you could make it in-person appeal? Former Chief Justice Anstead says that striking down any portion of the personal solicitation ban would be disastrous in Florida, which is just one generation removed from the worst judicial corruption scandal in the state's history.
In the 1970s, state Supreme Court justices were caught fixing cases on behalf of campaign donors, and even permitting a lobbyist to ghost-write the opinion of the Florida Supreme Court in a public utility's case. In the end, 4 of 7 justices were forced to resign and the state adopted a raft of reforms, including the ban on personal solicitation. Andrew Pincus, however, contends that making judicial candidates do their fundraising through committees stacks the deck for those with connections.
PINCUS: That favors the legal establishment. If you're someone who is not a well-connected lawyer, you may not have well-connected people to put on a committee to do the soliciting for you. You may have to send out letters yourself. And why should that be prohibited?
TOTENBERG: The Bar Association replies that there's nothing in the rule that prevents a candidate from raising money, just from doing it personally. Pincus counters that if the purpose is to prevent corruption, then why are candidates for legislative and executive office permitted to personally solicit campaign contributions? Because they are different, says the Bar's Barry Richard.
RICHARD: They're policymakers and people vote for them and contribute money to them because of the policies they stand for. In the case of the judicial candidate, you have an entirely different concern, which is a requirement for impartiality.
TOTENBERG: Finally, those challenging the personal solicitation ban argue that if a donation does cause the appearance of impropriety or the reality, judges can recuse themselves. In practice, however, most experts say that's a nonstarter, since recusal is largely left to individual judges and can produce unintended consequences. Florida Bar President Coleman.
COLEMAN: Trust me, in rural communitiesm they're all getting their contributions from the same pool, so you could theoretically run through three, four, five, six judges before you could find one that the lawyer did not contribute to. So it could create, literally, chaos within the system.
TOTENBERG: Just what role does money play in judicial elections and decisions? Polls show astonishing majorities of the public, as high as 70 or 80 percent or more, think money influences judges. And scholars have found that there is a relationship between campaign contributions and judicial voting.
TRACEY GEORGE: That is money biases, whether consciously or subconsciously, the recipient's subsequent actions.
TOTENBERG: Tracey George is a law and political science professor at Vanderbilt University. She's among scholars who filed a brief serving the data.
GEORGE: Donors have given to judges who face no opposition. So these donors clearly think there's an impact.
TOTENBERG: Of course, a ban on personal solicitation may not solve that problem.
ANSTEAD: It's true that it is not a perfect way of dealing with it.
TOTENBERG: Former Chief Justice Anstead.
ANSTEAD: We are limited to what we can do because of the great value we place in the First Amendment. But at least we're doing something.
TOTENBERG: The question now is whether the Supreme Court thinks that something is constitutional. Or whether judicial candidates will soon be just like all other candidates in the personal scramble for campaign cash. Nina Totenberg, NPR News, Washington.
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Now, the trouble in Europe affects American travelers there. Deflation and the falling euro mean visitors to Berlin pay less for currywurst. It also affects Americans at home, as is apparent to anyone who takes a drive through the Southeast. From WABE in Atlanta, Susanna Capelouto reports.
SUSANNA CAPELOUTO, BYLINE: Interstate 85, from Spartanburg, South Carolina, to Atlanta, has a German nickname.
CHRISTOPH SANDER: We have come to call this the Autobahn because that's the focus of German investment to the region.
CAPELOUTO: Christoph Sander represents Germany as a consul in six Southern states. I-85 is a road he travels a lot to visit German businesses.
SANDER: Two-hundred fifty companies around the Atlanta metro region, about 200 companies in the Charlotte region - and then we have 130 or so between Spartanburg and Greenville.
CAPELOUTO: German car brands like BMW, Volkswagen and Porsche have brought thousands of jobs to the region. And last week, Governor Nathan Deal used his State of the State address to thank Mercedes for moving its U.S. headquarters from New Jersey to Atlanta.
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GOVERNOR NATHAN DEAL: The Mercedes-Benz slogan is the best or nothing. The company that accepts nothing but the best chose Georgia. I'll take that.
CAPELOUTO: Mercedes also got more than $23 million in tax incentives to come to Atlanta. But Germans aren't the only ones bringing jobs. Plenty of French, British, Dutch and Irish firms have a strong presence in the South. And that's why the region should pay attention to what happens in Europe, says Jeff Rosensweig. He teaches international business at Emory University.
JEFF ROSENSWEIG: In America, we forget how close our ties are.
CAPELOUTO: European firms bring investment to the U.S., which could dry up if Europe's economy does poorly. Rosensweig also points out U.S. companies get big profits from European subsidiaries. But now, he says, there's this...
ROSENSWEIG: Accumulating fear that Europe, you know, one of the great potential engines of the world economy, is an engine that's stuttering.
CAPELOUTO: The euro has already taken a hit against the dollar, making it more expensive for Europeans to travel. That could hurt another big European connection to the south - Florida tourism.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WHEN YOU WISH UPON A STAR")
UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) When you wish upon a star.
CAPELOUTO: Many Europeans visit Disney World, and Naples is very popular, too. Europeans, drawn to its beautiful beaches and shops, pumped $216 million into the local economy last year. JoNell Mody is with the convention and visitors bureau there.
JONELL MODY: Well, they come, and they stay longer, and they typically spend more money than a U.S. visitor. And they also like to come when they have the bulk of their vacation time, which is the summer, which is our slower season. So they're a very, very important part of helping us stabilize our tourism economy.
CAPELOUTO: Economists like Rosensweig want the European Central Bank to pull out all the stops, much like the U.S. Federal Reserve did during the U.S. recession, and help stabilize European markets.
ROSENSWEIG: When Europe does well, we do well. And the reverse is true also. I don't want either of us to sneeze because the other one might catch cold.
CAPELOUTO: The European Central Bank will meet Thursday to decide on a policy to help Europe's economy fight off a recession. For NPR News, I'm Susanna Capelouto in Atlanta.
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This is the season when your employer or your bank will mail you income statements so you can do your taxes. Many of us, of course, will wait until April to get started. But if you think you might need to call the IRS to ask a question at some point, budget extra time. Calls to the agency may involve extra time on hold. NPR's Brian Naylor reports.
BRIAN NAYLOR, BYLINE: Taxpayer service is poor and getting worse. That's the blunt headline of a report written by the Taxpayer Advocate Service, an independent office within the IRS. It calls the declining quality of service the top problem for taxpayers. How bad? The IRS is predicting it will only be able to answer half of the 100 million calls it expects from taxpayers this year. And those who do get through can expect to wait a half-hour to hear a live voice.
(SOUNDBITE OF IRS AUTOMATED TELEPHONE SERVICE)
COMPUTER-GENERATED SPEECH: For questions about your refund or to check the status of your form 1040X, press or say one.
NINA OLSON: You're going to need to be patient.
NAYLOR: Nina Olson is the national taxpayer advocate.
OLSON: I've joked, you know, bring your knitting. Have some projects that you could do while you're waiting on the phone. And you may have to call a number of times if you need to get through to the IRS.
NAYLOR: Olson says it's worse than she's ever seen it. More individuals and businesses are filing tax returns than ever before. Over 150 million individual returns came into the IRS last year. This year, things will be more complicated for many taxpayers because of the Affordable Care Act, meaning more taxpayers are likely to seek assistance. In the meantime, the IRS' budget has been reduced.
OLSON: If you look at it in terms of inflation, we have estimated it's about a 17-and-a-half percent decrease from 2010 levels.
NAYLOR: The reduced budgets and increased responsibilities mean the IRS is supposed to do way more with a lot less. Olson says it's taxpayers who are losing out.
OLSON: We can't get through to the IRS to get answers to our tax law questions. It increases our burden because we have to pay tax professionals to get answers to our questions. And this is all for the privilege of paying taxes, which is not a painless thing for people. So why are we putting more pain on taxpayers?
NAYLOR: Republicans, who now control Congress and who led the effort to reduce the IRS budget, don't seem too concerned about the agency's woes. It goes back to GOP charges that the agency targeted conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status for extra scrutiny. Republican Senator John Thune of South Dakota.
SENATOR JOHN THUNE: I don't think that, based on the IRS' record over the last couple years, there's a whole lot of sympathy for the complaints that they're now making about not having enough funding. Obviously, they have a job to do. It's an important job. We want to make sure that they have the resources to do that job, to collect the taxes. But wasting resources targeting conservative groups and other things like that obviously is something that we take great issue with.
NAYLOR: IRS Commissioner John Koskinen says the agency's budget is so lean, it may have to close down for two days and furlough employees. Colleen Kelly, president of the NTEU, the union which represents IRS employees, says lawmakers are doing harm and not just to IRS workers.
COLLEEN KELLY: You don't starve them to try to set them up to fail. You especially don't do that to an agency that impacts the entire country, the entire U.S. economy. And it also opens it wide open for tax cheats.
NAYLOR: The IRS says the budget cuts will also mean fewer audits. And while that may sound like good news, it also means about $2 billion less for the treasury than would've been collected. Brian Naylor, NPR News, Washington.
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Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne. In China, inventing stuff is a very good way of spending time in jail. That's because a law allows certain prison terms to be commuted for convicts who come up with serious technical innovations, which The Beijing Youth Daily reports has led to a brisk business in getting-out-of-jail patents. For as little as $1,100, wealthier inmates are buying patents, leading one Weibo-it (ph) to dub prisons China's Nobel Prize centers. It's MORNING EDITION.
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Maybe you didn't realize it's an anniversary week. Tomorrow is the fifth anniversary of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision. That controversial case undid decades of campaign-finance law, and American politics continues to absorb ever-increasing sums of money. NPR's Peter Overby reports.
PETER OVERBY, BYLINE: Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy delivered the ruling on January 21, 2010.
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JUSTICE ANTHONY KENNEDY: The government cannot limit corporate expenditures - corporate independent expenditures.
OVERBY: With that, the Supreme Court majority uncorked a torrent of money going from wealthy donors to independent political groups, more than $500 million in last year's midterm elections, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. But Justice Kennedy's opinion had one big assumption, that donors' names would be out in the open.
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KENNEDY: The resulting transparency enables the electorate to make informed decisions and give proper weight to different speakers and different messages.
OVERBY: That assumption was wrong then, and it's wrong now. The Center for Responsive Politics counts nearly $120 million last cycle from secret donors, and a lot of money never gets counted. Citizens United was controversial from the get-go. President Obama attacked it just days after it was announced. He was giving his State of the Union address to Congress, with several Supreme Court justices sitting right below him.
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PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests, including foreign corporations, to spend without limit in our elections.
(APPLAUSE)
OVERBY: Strong language, but soon enough, Obama and the Democrats plunged into the new world of superPACs and secret money political groups, just as the Republicans had. Liberal advocacy groups are as outraged now as they were five years ago, and perhaps better organized. Lisa Gilbert of the group Public Citizen spoke last week at a gathering of organizations working to roll back the effects of Citizens United.
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LISA GILBERT: Americans and the public interest organizations that represent them understand that special interests are truly hijacking our elections. And the outrage they feel about this is really fueling a movement.
OVERBY: But conservatives see a different reality. Here's Brad Smith of the anti-regulation group Center for Competitive Politics earlier this month at a conference of the American Association of Law Schools.
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BRAD SMITH: We do not have foreigners running our elections. We are not more oligarchical, right? We don't have these kinds of problems. Corporate money is not swamping the system, and elections are more competitive.
OVERBY: And as the debate goes on, Citizens United becomes more deeply entrenched in American politics. Peter Overby, NPR News, Washington.
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Those of you who are sports fans will hear the letters SEC and think football. It is the Southeastern Conference, home to Alabama, Georgia and Ole Miss - 14 schools in all. It is, many argue, the nation's best college football conference. We won't settle that here. It's fast-paced with strong characters and even stronger regional flavor. But this story is not about sports. It's about politics and a drive to bring the SEC brand to next year's presidential race in the form of a big, Southern primary. NPR's Don Gonyea reports.
DON GONYEA, BYLINE: This is college football SEC style.
(SOUNDBITE OF COLLEGE FOOTBALL GAME)
ROD BRAMBLETT: And Chris Davis takes it in the back of the end zone. He'll run it out to the 10, 15, 20...
GONYEA: It's hard to deny that they know how to put on a show.
(SOUNDBITE OF COLLEGE FOOTBALL GAME)
BRAMBLETT: Forty-five, 50, 45 - here goes Davis.
UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: Oh, my gosh.
BRAMBLETT: Davis is going to run it all the way back. Auburn's going to win the football game. Auburn's going to win the football game.
GONYEA: That's Auburn announcer Rod Bramblett with an epic call of his team's upset of top-ranked Alabama in 2013. Georgia is also an SEC state. And at the risk of making a mere politician follow that play-by-play, we now go to Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who thinks it's time the South gets off the sidelines when it comes to presidential primary campaigns.
BRIAN KEMP: I think I was just riding down the road one day thinking about presidential politics, and I just kind of came up with this idea about us having a regional primary in the South.
GONYEA: Other than South Carolina, which goes very early, and Florida, which votes soon after that, the rest of the South has generally been a bystander, too late to really influence the process. Kemp says no more.
KEMP: I thought it'd be a good idea just to call it, quote, "the SEC primary" to raise awareness to what we were trying to do down here. And that's really where the whole idea came from.
GONYEA: The date for this SEC primary would be March 1, likely putting it in the first month of voting. Big, multi-state primary days are nothing new. Each election season seems to have a Super Tuesday with a huge pile of delegates at stake. This one might not be as big, but the focus would very much be the South.
The lineup is still fluid - Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi seem sure things. The final mix could include Tennessee and maybe Arkansas and maybe even Florida and Texas. The University of Arkansas's Janine Parry notes that her state is used to going very late in the process.
JANINE PARRY: The consequence has been that, at least when it comes to the presidential nomination process, we simply haven't mattered much.
GONYEA: That's because the nomination is locked up by the time of the Arkansas primary. But Parry adds going earlier carries no guarantee of instant clout. She says in 2008, Arkansas did that. But...
PARRY: The minute we moved, of course, lots of other states moved, so we weren't as consequential as we'd hoped. And we also put out an extra $2 million for the primary.
GONYEA: One thing a so-called SEC primary would do, at least on the Republican side, is put the focus on the most conservative region of the country. That could be good for family values conservatives, perhaps Rick Santorum, the former senator who did well in the South four years ago. Or maybe it'd help former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, should he get in the race. Here's Brian Kemp.
KEMP: You know, and I'm not really sold on the fact that it's going to help a certain person.
GONYEA: Getting back to football for a moment, the Georgia secretary of state even suggests other regions might think about following suit.
KEMP: I mean, there's nothing that would keep Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, some of those Midwest states, to band together right now and say, hey, let's go a week after the Southern primary. I mean, you're talking about a gauntlet of having the SEC primary and then go to the Big 10 primary. I mean, that'd be a pretty neat run to watch.
GONYEA: But for now, the SEC primary is still taking shape. And we won't know till game day 2016 if it lives up to the hype.
(SOUNDBITE OF COLLEGE FOOTBALL GAME)
BRAMBLETT: There goes Davis.
UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: Oh, my gosh.
BRAMBLETT: Davis is going to run it all the way back. Auburn's going to win the football game. Auburn's going to win the football game. He ran the missed field goal back. He ran it back 109 yards. They're not going to keep them off the field tonight. Holy cow.
GONYEA: Don Gonyea NPR News.
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Jury selection is set to begin today in the Aurora, Colorado, theater shooting trial. The death penalty case has taken two and a half years to come to this moment. James Holmes's legal team admits he was the shooter. The real question here is whether he was legally insane. Colorado Public Radio's Ben Marcus reports.
BEN MARCUS, BYLINE: On an icy morning in the Denver suburb of Centennial, Tom Sullivan sits at his dining room table, a look of sadness in his eyes as he nurses a cup of coffee. His son, Alex, was among 12 people killed in 2012 when a gunman stormed the midnight screening of "The Dark Knight Rises." For others, the beginning of the trial may help bring closure.
TOM SULLIVAN: I'm not quite sure what that word means. I don't know that there's any closure for us because it is an open wound that, you know, I live with every day.
MARCUS: Sullivan says he knew early on that the trial would be a long process. The gunman is facing the death penalty, and he's pled not guilty by reason of insanity - two issues that make this one of the most complex criminal trials in Colorado history.
CRAIG SILVERMAN: I have never seen a trial like this anywhere, let alone in Colorado.
MARCUS: Craig Silverman was a prosecuting attorney for 16 years in the Denver DA's office. He's tried and won a death penalty case, and he's not surprised that the defendant's attorneys delayed the trial for more than two years.
SILVERMAN: Right. Delay is always the natural ally of a death penalty defendant. The longer the case takes to come to trial, the longer the client will necessarily live.
MARCUS: Defense attorneys argued they needed more time to sift through the enormous amount of physical evidence and psychological testimony, but the judge, having grown impatient, has denied further attempts at delay. So jury selection is starting today. Nine thousand summons have gone out, more than three times the number for the Boston Marathon bombing trial, making this one of the largest jury pools ever. Karen Steinhauser is a defense attorney, law professor and former prosecutor.
KAREN STEINHAUSER: It's going to take months to find, not only the right jury, but jurors who are able to sit in a trial that we're talking may be six, seven months.
MARCUS: The pool of jurors is so large partly because finding someone who wasn't in some way affected will be a challenge. And, Steinhauser says, in Colorado jurors on death penalty cases must be death qualified, meaning they can't be opposed to capital punishment. Then there's the critical question of sanity. Former prosecutor Craig Silverman says this isn't a whodunit kind of trial.
SILVERMAN: It really looks like this is going to come down to a battle of the experts.
MARCUS: Psychological experts, who likely have competing views of Holmes' sanity at the time of the attack. When the actual trial begins, you can likely watch that play out yourself. It'll be televised. And Dave Hoover, whose nephew AJ Boik was killed in the theater, is expecting the trial to bring more intense media coverage.
DAVE HOOVER: It's something that continues to bring the issue up and put it in the forefront and right in your face so that you can't get away from it.
MARCUS: Hoover says he'll attend opening statements and closing arguments, but he can't bring himself to attend the rest of the trial.
HOOVER: I don't know if my heart could take it, you know. It's not healthy, you know, at least for me.
MARCUS: If jury selection runs smoothly, opening statements in the trial could begin as early as May. For NPR News, I'm Ben Marcus in Denver.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Over the next few minutes, we're going to hear about the first memoir ever written by a man still imprisoned in Guantanamo. It's published today, after years spent getting it declassified and then heavily redacted. In "Guantnamo Diary," Mohamedou Ould Slahi traces his journey after 9-11, seized in his home country of Mauritania, sent to a prison in Jordan and eventually flown to Guantanamo. In this excerpt from the memoir read by the narrator of the audiobook, Slahi is leaving Jordan in chains and about to be stripped naked.
UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: (Reading) Now, my hands were shackled in front of me. Somebody started to rip my clothes with something like scissors. I was, like, what the heck is going on? Many thoughts went quickly through my head. The optimistic thoughts suggested, maybe you're in the hands of Americans, but don't worry. They just want to take you home and to make sure that everything goes in secrecy. The pessimistic ones went, you screwed up. The Americans managed to pin some [bleep] on you, and they're taking you to U.S. prisons for the rest of your life.
MONTAGNE: The Pentagon has confirmed to NPR that for a brief time, at Guantanamo in 2003, a, quote, "special interrogation plan" was designed just for Mohamedou Slahi, approved by then-defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld because it was outside the military's own standard interrogation procedures. As Slahi tells the story, he came to the attention of the U.S. after fighting briefly with the mujahideen in Afghanistan. That led to a web of friendships which he says became a net that caught him up. To talk more about the book, we turn to the editor, Larry Siems, and Slahi's attorney, Nancy Hollander. Good morning to both of you.
NANCY HOLLANDER: Good morning.
LARRY SIEMS: Good morning.
MONTAGNE: Give us a thumbnail, please, to begin with, with what U.S. authorities thought he had done.
HOLLANDER: The United States thought he was involved with what was called the millennium bombing. They had figured out that it had nothing to do with Mohamedou. Later, they decided that he was one of the recruiters to the pilots at 9-11. That wasn't true. And the government actually admitted in court that there was no way he could've known about 9-11.
MONTAGNE: He did have some reason - that you would imagine - why the U.S. would be interested in him. It's something he freely admitted - was that he had sworn an oath of loyalty to al-Qaida while he was in Afghanistan, back in the very early-'90s, to fight with the mujahideen against the communist government there. I mean, he admitted that. He admitted a connection to al-Qaida.
HOLLANDER: He admitted that. But let me remind you that the United States also was involved in that war. The United States provided billions of dollars and Stinger missiles. This is all in a movie called "Charlie Wilson's War." And that al-Qaida was not the same al-Qaida that, years later, came and bombed the United States. And in fact, the judge found that specifically.
MONTAGNE: Larry Siems, you edited this memoir. If you had to describe, in brief, the litany of the sorts of tortures that he experienced, how would it go?
SIEMS: Extreme isolation, sleep deprivation, subjection to extremes of temperature, sexual abuse, stress positions, a fake kidnapping in which he was shackled and dragged onto a boat and sent out into the Caribbean and beaten, and ice was put in his clothes to sort of disguise the beating and also to further the physical suffering - dragged back into a complete isolation cell in Guantanamo that had been blacked out. And he was not allowed to see the sun or know the time of day for months while the interrogation continued. And, you know, the most kind of awful threats to family members as well.
MONTAGNE: Was there one that stuck out for you?
SIEMS: Well, I was, you know - during some of the most physically abusive scenes, he has this interesting capacity of kind of being able to disengage. He talks about drowning in his dreams often. It's kind of a repeated phrase. You know, he kind of seeks a refuge in his mind and in his imagination. The physical intensity of it - you know, the reaction to it - to find a kind of a psychological refuge.
MONTAGNE: Well, there is one passage - and I think this suggests how he wrote - with a lot of black humor. He writes about, early on, when one of his guards was a kind of a nice guard after a really mean guard had been sort of working him over verbally. So this guard talked to him about American history and how in Puritan times, innocents used to be punished by drowning. And then when Mohamedou says, well, I'm innocent, the guard says - he's sympathetic - he says, well, that's really too bad. I mean, that's the shame. So why don't you, the guard suggests, just think about all of this like you have cancer. It's so dark, but it's - you start just to laugh. I mean, you actually kind of laugh.
SIEMS: Well, I think, you know - what I think one of the most amazing things about the book for me is how it opened up a world to me of the American servicemen and servicewomen and intelligence agents that we put in these situations. And that's a kind of an amazing example. Mohamedou, you know, his most impressive ethic as he wrote this book was that he treats every single person he writes about as an individual.
MONTAGNE: He does apply his ability to describe things in a way that makes you stop and think. There was one passage where he talks about being tied up, restrained so tightly, that it hurt so bad, that it was a relief when someone kicked him.
HOLLANDER: And then he also describes the relief of sitting next to another prisoner on the way to the airplane - just the warmth of another body.
SIEMS: Yeah, I think that's very true. It's those little brushstrokes, you know. I mean, at this point, I think the American people should have a good idea about the kinds of things that have gone on in Guantanamo like the things that have gone on in the CIA black sites. But I think what we don't know, what we haven't thought about, what we haven't let ourselves think about is what it felt like to be in that place and to experience those things. And I think that's part of the narrative that's been, you know, systematically denied to the American people. We have been denied access to the voices of the people who have lived inside of Guantanamo - the prisoners and the jailers.
MONTAGNE: Thank you both for joining us.
HOLLANDER: Thank you very much, Renee.
SIEMS: Thank you.
MONTAGNE: Larry Siems is the editor of the new memoir "Guantanamo Diary" by detainee Mohamedou Ould Slahi. Nancy Hollander is Slahi's attorney. He has never been charged. Five years ago, a federal judge ordered him freed, but an appeals court blocked that decision. Mohamedou Slahi remains at Guantanamo.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
President Obama will use his State of the Union speech to press for higher taxes. Those would be higher taxes on the wealthy.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The president would use the money to finance infrastructure and tax cuts for the middle class if the new Republican Congress approved, which many Republicans already say they will not. That last point is where we start our talk with Denis McDonough. He is President Obama's chief of staff, and he's on the line. Welcome to the program, sir.
DENIS MCDONOUGH: Thanks so much, Steve. It's good to be with you.
INSKEEP: A Democrat for tax hikes can, from the outside, sound a little bit like Republicans voting again against Obamacare - seems like it's going nowhere. What makes you think this Congress would embrace higher taxes?
MCDONOUGH: Well, I think that one of the things the president wants to do in the speech tonight is just underscore that our economy works best when it's growing from the middle out. And he'll outline a series of things that now that we've come through the crisis that we've come through, we have an opportunity to really focus on the kind of opportunities, like education, that will increase wages in this country for the first time in some time.
So the question the president will be asking for the Republicans is these are our ideas, this is how we would do it, and we'd like to hear their ideas if these are not the ones that they would support. What exactly will they put on the table to make sure that we as a country are focused on the middle-class families and the wages that they need?
INSKEEP: Would you see this then as the start of a negotiation over tax reform, which Republicans have talked about? Some taxes would go up; some would go down.
MCDONOUGH: We do, in fact, and what we're saying is that let's be serious about tax reform. And let's make sure that the middle class benefits from it for the first time in some time, and that's a bottom line for us.
INSKEEP: Let me just ask you, Mr. McDonough. Many Republicans in and out of Congress have said they want to focus more on people who are struggling. Mitt Romney, the former presidential candidate, pointed out correctly the other day - correctly - that income inequality has actually increased during this presidency. Are you ready - is the president ready to have a meaningful debate with Republicans over what to do about that?
MCDONOUGH: Look, I think what we've seen is some very good progress - unemployment going from 10 percent, which it was at the end of the Bush administration, down to 5.6 percent. We've reduced the deficit by two-thirds. More than 10 million Americans now have health care coverage for the first time. And we've reduced $60 billion in needless subsidies to big banks, so we're making up a series of very important gains here. But the challenge for us now is are we going to use this time we have now in this positive period to focus on middle-class families and the wages that they need? So we welcome that debate.
If Governor Romney has some new ideas in that space, we'll welcome his ideas on that as well and that the bottom line for the president is we have to take this opportunity to focus on making sure that the economy works for the middle class, it grows from the middle out, not with a kind of trickle-down economics that we've seen from Governor Romney and from the Republicans on Capitol Hill.
INSKEEP: Is part of the bottom line also the 2016 - the presidential election is looming, and if deals are not made now, the president is setting the debate for the campaign to follow at least the Democratic side of that debate?
MCDONOUGH: Well, we've - the president said he's run his last campaign. This is about focusing on middle-class families and making sure that they have the access that they need to the kind of wages that they deserve and the kind of opportunities - education and training - that will boost those wages. And the kinds of things that he talked about last week to include paid sick leave. And you heard him talk, too, about the challenges that working families face with two spouses in the workforce. So we're going to do everything that we can to help them succeed.
This has nothing to do with the campaign. This has to do with making sure that Washington gets out of these back-and-forth political games and focus on the next campaign and get them focused on middle-class families.
INSKEEP: We're talking with Denis McDonough. He is President Obama's chief of staff. And, Mr. McDonough, I want to ask about Iran. The president, of course, will be speaking to Republicans as well as many Democrats who have said they want new sanctions on Iran. Of course, the president has said he would veto those sanctions while talks over Iran's nuclear program are still going on. But given that people in both parties want to act, is there anything Congress can do that the president would accept?
MCDONOUGH: I think what Congress should do is give us some time to see if these negotiations can work. I think in looking back at the last year under the agreement - the temporary agreement that we and the rest of the world struck with the Iranians - we've seen their program frozen in important ways and even rolled back in very important ways. So we've seen good progress against an elicit Iranian nuclear program as a result of these negotiations. So if Congress wants to act later in the year, we could consider that. But at the moment, they ought to give us the space to let these negotiations work.
INSKEEP: In an interview that we broadcast on New Year's Day, Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican of Florida, talked of something less dramatic than immediate sections on Iran. He talked about passing a bill that might, for example, impose sanctions on Iran if they back away from negotiations. Is there something like that Congress could do that would actually help you and strengthen your hand?
MCDONOUGH: We think that the most important thing Congress can do now is give us some space to see if these negotiations can work. We have a lot of audiences who are watching how the United States acts in this effort. And if we give the Iranians a reason to walk away from these negotiations, it will splinter the international coalition that we built and that has been very effective on putting pressure on the Iranians. We think it's a mistake for Congress to do that. And we'll continue to ask them to hold off.
INSKEEP: Well, that leads to another thing. You've mentioned time; you've mentioned needing space. We spoke with a reporter from Tehran the other day who pointed out that Iran's president, President Rouhani, may be seen as running out of time because he's under pressure from his own domestic political constituencies. As you think about the possibility for a nuclear deal with Iran, is President Obama also running short of time here?
MCDONOUGH: I think that the important thing is for us to focus on what the national interest demands. What we do not want to see is a nuclear-armed Iran that would lead to an arms race in the heart of the world's most volatile region. So that's what we're focused on. We ought not lose the time that we have to make that happen. The president's very focused on that now.
INSKEEP: But do you think it's weeks? Is it weeks? Is it months? Is time getting short here? That's what I'm wondering.
MCDONOUGH: Yeah, there's no question that time is getting short, Steve, and this is why we've been focused on this since day one of this administration. We've seen now, as a result of these negotiations over the last year, an actual freeze in the program, if not a rollback of several key parts of that program for the first time in the last decade. That's good progress, and we ought to let it continue to work.
INSKEEP: Denis McDonough, White House chief of staff. Thanks very much for taking the time this morning.
MCDONOUGH: Thanks for having me, Steve.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
We have some economic news. A study finds consumers would benefit from a change in U.S. oil policy. The study examines the effects of ending the decade-long ban on exporting U.S. crude oil. There's been a ban since the Arab oil embargo of 1970s. NPR's John Ydstie reports.
JOHN YDSTIE, BYLINE: Jason Bordoff is a co-author of the study. He's a former energy adviser in the Obama White House and now directs the Columbia University Center on Global Energy Policy. He says convincing consumers and politicians to end the export ban on crude is not an easy sell.
JASON BORDOFF: People worry that allowing oil exports may lead to higher pump prices. Kind of intuitively, you might think we're sending our oil overseas, there's less for us or we'll have to pay more for it.
YDSTIE: But Bordoff says evidence and economic theory suggest that ending the export ban would put downward pressure on gasoline prices. The reason is that U.S. consumers haven't been getting the full benefit of low U.S. crude prices.
BORDOFF: Because the price consumers are paying for gasoline is being set by the world price of oil, not by the U.S. price.
YDSTIE: And during most of the past few years, the world price has been well above the U.S. price - as much as $20 a barrel higher. That happened partly because of a 60 percent surge in U.S. oil production that led to an oversupply of crude on the U.S. market that couldn't be exported. So a gap opened between the price of U.S. crude and the global price of oil. But U.S. consumers didn't see much benefit according to Bordoff.
BORDOFF: To the extent there's any discount on the U.S. price compared to the world price that is a benefit that accrues to refiners, not to consumers.
YDSTIE: So not surprisingly, says Bordoff, refiners are lobbying hard to continue the export ban.
BORDOFF: I think if you were a refiner, you'd rather buy your crude cheaper if you could.
YDSTIE: And independent oil refiners take issue with the collusion of Bordoff's study. Jay Hauck is the executive director of the organization called CRUDE.
JAY HAUCK: The oil export ban benefits consumers. It benefits businesses in the United States. It has very broad and deep support, and it also has a very strong national security component.
YDSTIE: Hauck points to a study by Barclays that argues that refiners did pass to consumers most of the savings they enjoyed from processing lower-cost U.S. crude in recent years. And Hauck says the export ban protects U.S. energy security.
HAUCK: It helps insulate the United States from volatility and unpredictable global crude markets.
YDSTIE: Including market manipulation by OPEC.
HAUCK: For us to simply unilaterally disarm seems unwise.
YDSTIE: But Bordoff argues that by lifting the export ban and becoming a bigger player in the oil market, the U.S. will gain influence over global prices. He also says lifting the ban would give the U.S. more credibility on global trade issues.
BORDOFF: Allowing traded energy is consistent with our past and our present U.S. trade policy priorities.
YDSTIE: The U.S. already allows exports of products like gasoline. And the Obama administration recently loosened the crude export ban a bit by allowing exports of lightly processed crude called condensate. But opposition from environmentalists who say lifting the ban would promote more fossil fuel use is constraining further White House action. Big oil producers have lobbied hard to eliminate the ban, but they're concerned they don't yet have enough support in the Congress to win. So a vote on lifting the ban on crude oil exports could be a ways off. John Ydstie, NPR News, Washington.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep. The mountains that loom over Tehran look different almost every day. Partly, it's the weather. Partly, it's the smog. You can choke on the air in that giant city. But on Monday, commuters were gasping with surprise. Hassan Rouhani rode the subway. The president of the oil-rich state took mass transit to work. He brought along the foreign minister, taking a moment off from nuclear negotiations. They were together marking Iran's national clean air day. It's MORNING EDITION.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
The U.S. economy is improving, finally. The European economy is not. Yesterday, the International Monetary Fund predicted that the U.S. economy will do better this year and next than it had previously forecast. It now expects Europe's economy to do worse. To take a closer look at Europe ahead of a pivotal meeting this week of the European Central Bank, we turn, as we often do, to David Wessel. He's director of the Hutchins Center at the Brookings Institution and a contributing correspondent to the Wall Street Journal. Good morning.
DAVID WESSEL, BYLINE: Good morning, Renee.
MONTAGNE: So, David, what is the problem in the eurozone?
WESSEL: Well, there are many of them - too much unemployment, too little economic growth, too much rigid regulation, too much debt and not enough inflation. And that's just for starters. You mention the IMF forecasts. The IMF expects the U.S. economy to grow 3.6 percent this year. But the 19 countries that share the currency called the euro are supposed to grow only 1.2 percent. Unemployment's over 11 percent. The eurozone is flirting with deflation, or falling prices. And that's particularly pernicious for economies with a lot of debt. Everyone in Europe agrees there's a big problem, but there's lots of disagreement about the right remedies and a real absence political leadership to find some kind of compromise that could get them out of this funk.
MONTAGNE: Why, though, isn't Europe doing what has what has proved helpful to the U.S. economy - some combination of cutting taxes, upping spending, lowering interest rates?
WESSEL: Well, on the tax and spending front, there are two kinds of countries in Europe. One group - Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland - has so much debt that borrowing more to cut taxes and increase spending is very hard, perhaps even impossible. Some of them can't even go to the market to borrow money. And those countries that have the capacity to borrow more, Germany in particular, simply refuse to do so. So they're kind of stuck.
MONTAGNE: OK. Then what about interest rates? And that gets us to the next move the European Central Bank.
WESSEL: Exactly. So the European Central Bank has already moved its interest rates to zero. In fact, the ECB and a couple of other European central banks are trying negative interest rates. That is, they charge banks a fee for depositing money at the central bank instead of paying them interest in an effort to prod them to lend more. That's really extraordinary, but it hasn't been sufficient. So on Thursday, the ECB is expected to launch what's called in the trade quantitative easing - printing money to buy a lot of government bonds, as the fed has done. But unfortunately, nothing is ever simple in Europe.
MONTAGNE: Which is true of a lot of countries. But how so in this case?
WESSEL: Well, when the fed wanted to buy government bonds to lower long-term interest rates like the ones mortgages and give the economy some juice, it could buy U.S. treasury bonds. And no one much worried whether it bought bonds from investors in New York or investors in California - all big, one country. But there is no one European government that issues bonds for the ECB to buy. It has to choose among the bonds of 19 sovereign governments which vary wildly in their financial and economic health. And that's created a huge political problem. The Germans feel they'll be on the hook if the ECB buys bonds from, say, Italy, and Italy doesn't pay back all the money. So Thursday's decision, I think, is going to be an intricate compromise. And that's one that could dilute the effectiveness of the ECB's quantitative easing because one of the ways quantitative easing works is by a big psychological shock that says, we'll do whatever it takes.
MONTAGNE: David, thanks very much as always.
WESSEL: You're welcome.
MONTAGNE: David Wessel is director of the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Who wants to think about tax day this early? Well, your friendly neighborhood tax preparers are doing just that. The commissioner of the IRS has said this tax season will be one of the most complicated ever in part because of the subsidies and penalties in the Affordable Care Act. Let's hear from two parts of the country now. In a moment, Jeff Cohen of WNPR will bring us a story of a tax preparer in Connecticut. But first, April Dembosky from KQED in San Francisco takes us to an H&R Block office in that city.
APRIL DEMBOSKY, BYLINE: Most days in early January, this H&R Block office in San Francisco is dead.
SUE ELLEN SMITH: Hi. I'm Sue Ellen Smith.
DEMBOSKY: But the office manager here is expecting things to pick up fast.
SMITH: This year, taxes and health care intersect in a brand new way.
DEMBOSKY: Smith and her team have been training for months, running through a range of hypothetical scenarios. She introduces me to Ray and Vicky. They're a fictional couple from an H&R Block flyer. Together, they earned $65,000 a year. Neither has health insurance.
SMITH: The biggest misconception I hear is people say, oh, the penalty's only $95. That's easy.
DEMBOSKY: Smith says a lot of people like Ray and Vicky are in for a surprise this year.
SMITH: In this situation, it's almost $450.
DEMBOSKY: That's because the penalty for being uninsured is $95 or 1 percent of income, whichever is greater. Next year, it's 2 percent. Smith says there's some relief for people who come in before February 15. That's the deadline to enroll in a health plan.
SMITH: That's the smartest move.
DEMBOSKY: But a lot of folks won't file their taxes until April. For them, it will be too late to do anything about next year's penalty.
MARK STEBER: So they're kind of stuck.
DEMBOSKY: Mark Steber is the chief tax officer for Jackson Hewitt Tax Services. They're also role playing with tax advisers to prepare them for delivering bad news in case taxpayers want to blame the messenger.
STEBER: Quite frankly, that's a very difficult discussion.
DEMBOSKY: Steber says Jackson Hewitt has been trying to get the government to align the health insurance enrollment deadline with the tax deadline so people aren't caught off guard. Back at the H&R Block office, Sue Ellen Smith has another couple for me to meet, Dan and Lucy. They did sign up for health insurance last year, and they even got a subsidy to help them pay their premiums.
SMITH: They were entitled to, say, a $1,500 subsidy.
DEMBOSKY: But then, Lucy got a part-time job. That means they have to pay most of that subsidy back.
SMITH: So that would come out of any potential refund.
DEMBOSKY: On the other hand, some people who lost a job could see their subsidy and their refund go up. In San Francisco, I'm April Dembosky.
JEFF COHEN, BYLINE: And I'm Jeff Cohen. Lou Graham sits in his H&R Block office in Hartford, Connecticut, 3,000 miles away from San Francisco but with the same concerns. He's also bracing to tell some people who got a subsidy all year long that it was actually too generous. Maybe they made more money than they originally estimated, and soon they'll have to pay the government back.
LOU GRAHAM: I'm going to tell a client that, aw, I'm sorry, but $300 of your return's not going to be yours. Well, that will send them right through the roof.
COHEN: So you haven't had to tell somebody that yet?
GRAHAM: Not yet. No. Not yet.
COHEN: Are you looking forward to it?
GRAHAM: Oh, absolutely not.
COHEN: Other things concern him, too. Like his colleague Smith in California. Graham's afraid some people may be completely unaware of the penalty for not having insurance. That means he may have to deliver two pieces of bad news. First, he'll tell them they owe a penalty for 2014, and then he'll tell them it's too late to sign up for 2015.
GRAHAM: So they're going to get stymied twice.
COHEN: Graham says he also hopes to guide people to some good news. A lot of people may not know that they're able to get an exemption from the law's mandate to get insurance. And it's his job to pull it out of them.
GRAHAM: You know, I didn't have insurance for six months. But, you know what? I had got a notice that my electricity was going to be shut off. Well, you fall into a hardship case. Those things need to be explored and not many people want to bring that forward.
COHEN: And bringing it forward's important. Tax preparers like Graham can only help if tax filers seek them out. And most people don't, not yet anyway.
GRAHAM: It's real early. People don't really start thinking about tax work until they get their W-2s in their hands. You need to be proactive with tax work.
COHEN: But this year's a real crunch. Most people won't get those W-2s until the end of January. And when the April 15 tax deadline is the only deadline out there, that's not a problem. But this year, it isn't. For those Americans who still have to get insurance for this year, the deadline is February 15. And that leaves just a few weeks before the Obamacare clock runs out. For NPR News, I'm Jeff Cohen in Hartford.
GREENE: That story is part of a reporting partnership with NPR, local member stations and Kaiser Health News.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Now a moment that revolutionized sports. We'll jump back in time, which seems to be the appropriate way to honor a man named Tony Verna. He died this week after a long career producing and directing live television events like the Super Bowl and the Olympics. But his most important achievement lasted only a few seconds. NPR's Jacob Pinter takes a look back.
JACOB PINTER, BYLINE: For sports fans in the 21st century, there's a phrase that gets used all the time.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPORTING EVENT)
UNIDENTIFIED REFEREE: After further review...
PINTER: Not only does instant replay change how we watch sports, it can also impact a game's outcome. Today, we take instant replay for granted. But its beginnings were much more uncertain. Let's rewind all the way back to 1963.
(SOUNDBITE OF RECORDING REWINDING)
PINTER: It's the Army-Navy game. And back then, pre-Super Bowl, this was the big televised football game. And CBS sports director Tony Verna picked that moment to try something that had never before been done on live TV, as he told NPR back in 2003.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
TONY VERNA: Here I am, a young director. And I can really be committing professional suicide if I mess up by attempting to showcase a new device.
PINTER: That new device, instant replay, involved tape decks the size of refrigerators housed in a giant truck. And Verna was so unsure this would work, he didn't even tell his broadcast crew about it until just before game time. Jack Ford is a correspondent for CBS News who produced a documentary about that game.
JACK FORD: He said he waited till they were driving over to say, hey guys, we got something we might be utilizing here. We're going to have to see what happens.
PINTER: That moment came in the fourth quarter, when fans watching on TV saw Army quarterback Rollie Stichweh punch in a one-yard touchdown run. And a few seconds later, they saw Stichweh do it again - the first instant replay. Verna said announcer Lindsey Nelson worried this new visual effect might confuse people.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
VERNA: He said, ladies and gentlemen, Army has not scored again.
PINTER: Verna only tried instant replay once in that game. And it clearly had an impact, says CBS's Jack Ford.
FORD: He was the first one to understand and to utilize the ability not just to capture the moment, but to repeat the moment.
PINTER: Broadcast pioneer Tony Verna died Sunday at the age of 81. Jacob Pinter, NPR News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Basketball fans have every reason to feel dazed and confused as the NBA season reaches its halfway point. The way our commentator Frank Deford tells it...
FRANK DEFORD, BYLINE: Even with free agency, our professional leagues show a reliable sort of sameness from year to year. Oh, sure, at each season there's a few teams that surprise. But mostly, changes in the standings are evolutionary. That said, I don't believe I've ever seen a league that looks so cockeyed as the NBA has this year.First of all, it's just plain weird to see the two historically glamorous franchises, the Celtics and the Lakers, both down near the bottom of the standings while up top are teams that previously were nondescript also-rans. Golden State, for example, which sounds more like an insurance company than a team, has the best record. Atlanta is way ahead in the oft-least. Other current contenders include Washington, Toronto, Portland and Memphis, the equivalent of those indie films which no one has ever heard of until the insiders nominate them for various Academy Awards. You see, what makes this topsy-turvyness even more bizarre is that basketball, more than any other sport, features its name players. It's virtually a given that the finals are not played between two teams but between two superstars who've brought along a bunch of guys to sing backup. But how many of you within the sound of my voice can even name a player on the Hawks? The league's best player is a skinny little guy on the Warriors named Stephen Curry, who's been overlooked his whole career. Meanwhile, LeBron James, who nobly returned to Cleveland to finally give that benighted sports town a championship, resides in the wishy-washy land of 500. Other superstars, like Kevin Durant, Kobe Bryant, Carmelo Anthony and Kevin Love are likewise on teams that drift in the horse latitudes of the standings.It's also disconcerting that an inordinate amount of attention is being paid to who's on worst because the more you conspire to lose, the better your chances of getting the pick of the litter in the draft. Presently, New York, which hired a coach as the executive who makes all the personnel decisions and then a player for a coach - your Peter Principle at work - the Knicks are demonstrating the greater gift for defeat. They're so awful, it makes New York yearn already for the spring and the return of the heroic Alex Rodriguez and the glorious mediocrity of the Yankees. Oh, yes, but pay attention now. Golden State and Atlanta lead the league in assists. That is, the players pass the ball to one another. They play basketball, not superstar ball. It may only be, shall we say, a passing fancy. But it's a delightful change for connoisseurs of the game.
MONTAGNE: Commentator Frank Deford can be heard here every Wednesday on MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
And I'm David Greene.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
We're covering President Obama's State of the Union speech this morning, and our own Steve Inskeep joined colleagues from a range of beats to check some of the facts and add some context.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
And we begin with the president's upbeat assessment of the economy last night. He said the economy is creating jobs at the fastest pace since 1999.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Our unemployment rate is now lower than it was before the financial crisis.
INSKEEP: NPR White House correspondent Scott Horsley was listening in. And, Scott, is that the full picture?
SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Well, it was certainly the most full-throated defense of the economy we've heard from President Obama. He's usually been very careful about describing the economic turnaround. He doesn't want to seem out of touch with people who are still struggling, and he doesn't want to be caught short if there's another slowdown as has happened in years past. So this was the time when I think he really put caution aside and said, hey, the economy is really coming back.
INSKEEP: He said that, and the unemployment rate is much lower than it was. But he went on to say wages are starting to rise again. How much improvement has there been, and how good are these jobs?
HORSLEY: That's kind of been the missing piece, the wage piece. In November, we saw really strong wage growth, outpacing inflation by a large margin. And one of the things that was happening is the jobs that were being added most quickly were the jobs that tend to pay more, like construction and manufacturing. Unfortunately, those trends reversed in December. So what we have is wages that are just barely staying ahead of inflation. In theory, as the job market gets tighter, wages will pick up. But there's still a lot of slack out there, and this is a decades-old problem.
INSKEEP: Scott Horsley, stay with us. We're going to move on to check some facts on education here. Again, the president said the news was good.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
OBAMA: We believed we could prepare our kids for a more competitive world. And today, our younger students have earned the highest math and reading scores on record. Our high school graduation rate has hit an all-time high. More Americans finished college than ever before.
INSKEEP: Claudio Sanchez is part of NPR's Ed team, has been listening along with us. Claudio, is the news really that good?
CLAUDIO SANCHEZ, BYLINE: Steve, what the president said is true. But according to the international data and comparisons of U.S. kids to the rest of the world, they're not doing very well at all, especially in mathematics. I mean, there's been improvement but not nearly enough. American 15-year-olds, for example, are still doing very poorly in math and science. Even nations like Vietnam have higher average scores than U.S. kids.
As for the data on college completion, again, the president is saying yeah, those are pretty high these days. But we have very high dropout rates, especially in community colleges where it's up to 60 percent at the very time that the president is proposing two years tuition-free community college.
INSKEEP: OK, let's talk about something that was barely in this speech, immigration. The president only had a few phrases, and we're going to check one of them. He said no one benefits when a hard-working mom is snatched from her child, talking about family separation there. NPR's John Burnett covers the border for us. John, how does that sentiment compare with the president's record?
JOHN BURNETT, BYLINE: Well, his new focus is on deporting felons, not families. That's the catchword of the administration, and so Immigration Customs Enforcement is looking more at deporting immigrants who they say threaten national security and public safety. And they're trying not to separate families. And there have been fewer deportations overall in this last fiscal year compared to years past. So Obama's trying to shake that criticism of being the deporter-in-chief.
But in fact, the administration has been heatedly criticized for deporting mothers and children. Central American women and their kids have been coming across the border in south Texas. We heard about the humanitarian crisis last summer. And so now they're actually being detained in the so-called family-friendly detention centers in south Texas and being hurried through the asylum process, according to immigrant advocates, and then sent back home very quickly. And so there's really a lot of people up in arms about what they say is an inhumane policy.
INSKEEP: The speech also included a long section on elevating American politics. That's something that the president said he wanted - elevating the discourse and focusing on things where the two parties agree.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
OBAMA: We may go at it in campaign season, but surely we can agree that the right to vote is sacred.
INSKEEP: OK, reference to voting rights there. Everybody does agree in theory, I suppose. NPR's justice correspondent Carrie Johnson's covering the issues. Carrie, how deep is that agreement when you get down to the question of how to ensure the right to vote?
CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: Republicans in Congress say the right to vote is very important to them. But they differ substantially with President Obama and members of the Democratic Party on Capitol Hill about what to do in response to a 2013 Supreme Court decision that upended the system, that had policed states mostly in the South and election changes they would make. The old system required the federal government or a federal judge to approve any election changes, and now that the Supreme Court has acted, that system has been thrown into chaos.
The president and many members of his party on Capitol Hill want new legislation to beef up those provisions. But just last week, Congressman Bob Goodlatte, who runs the House Judiciary Committee, a Republican from Virginia, told me he thinks there's already substantial protection, and it's not necessary to make any of those changes moving forward.
INSKEEP: Meaning nothing is needed, according to Republicans.
JOHNSON: He does want to enforce the existing law in the books. But he doesn't feel the need to go back in and tinker. It's important, Steve, because President Obama is making a big push on this. We already know he's going in March to Selma for the 50th anniversary of that march on the bridge.
INSKEEP: OK. That's NPR's Carrie Johnson. The president spoke relatively little in the state of the union address last night about foreign policy. But as we continue to check our facts here, he did mention a major threat in the Middle East.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
OBAMA: In Iraq and Syria, American leadership, including our military power, is stopping ISIL's advance.
INSKEEP: He went on to say the U.S. is still working on degrading and destroying that group, which is also called Islamic State or ISIS. NPR's Dina Temple-Raston has been covering this story. Are they stopping ISIS's advance?
DINA TEMPLE-RASTON, BYLINE: Well, the advance hasn't been stopped, but it has been stalled. And it's basically been stalled since September because coalition airstrikes put the group back on its heels.
INSKEEP: What about destroying ISIS, the next step here?
TEMPLE-RASTON: Well, that really requires armed rebel groups and that part of the equation has barely happened. The Pentagon suggested this week that some trainers could make their way to Syria by spring. But so far, that's more talk than it is action.
INSKEEP: Wait a minute because the administration has been talking for a couple of years about training rebels. And you're saying - now they're saying that maybe in a few more months, they would get a larger presence there.
TEMPLE-RASTON: That's exactly right. The administration's been saying it's a very complicated issue. They want to make sure they don't arm the wrong people. So there's been a very glacial process.
INSKEEP: OK. Thanks, Dina. Now the president also spoke, as he has many times, of his determination to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, where many people gathered up in the last several years have been kept. NPR's David Welna covers the Pentagon. Is the president getting to that goal?
DAVID WELNA, BYLINE: Well, Steve, shutting down Guantanamo is actually a task that Obama set for himself at the beginning of his presidency. And I think it's fair to say he has made some progress, especially in the last couple of months. The president said he's reduced the prison population there by half. And that's true. What Obama did not say last night was something he has said elsewhere, and that is that even he thinks that a few dozen men being held there are too dangerous to release but that there is just insufficient evidence to convict them in a constitutional court of law. He did not mention them, much less say what their fate should be. But that's a real intractable problem of Guantanamo.
INSKEEP: One more thing to talk about here as we go through the state of the union speech, and that is energy. Our correspondent Scott Horsley is still with us. And, Scott, let's listen to a statement the president made.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
OBAMA: Every three weeks, we bring online as much solar power as we did in all of 2008.
INSKEEP: Eye-popping statistic there on solar power, which the president has promoted and been criticized for promoting. It sounds great. Is it true?
HORSLEY: It is true. Of course, solar power is still a very small piece of our overall electric pie, but it is growing rapidly. You have to remember the reason the Solyndra company failed was because solar panels were getting very cheap. And that means they're getting popular.
INSKEEP: Now, while we're on energy, Scott, I want to mention the Republican response, Senator Joni Ernst, newly elected senator, mostly tried to focus on what Republicans want to do now that they control both Houses of Congress. But she referred along the way to an energy project, which she did not actually call an energy project. This is what she said.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
SENATOR JONI ERNST: One you've probably heard about is the Keystone jobs bill.
INSKEEP: Scott Horsley, what is the Keystone jobs bill?
HORSLEY: She's talking, of course, about the Keystone XL oil pipeline that would carry oil from the Canadian tar sands down to the U.S. Gulf Coast. It would create some jobs. The State Department estimates it would create something like 4,000 construction jobs for a couple of years. After that, there'd only be about 50 jobs to operate the pipeline. But it would have some economic impact. It would boost our GDP by about two one-hundredths of one percent.
INSKEEP: Now, President Obama also talked about job creation through infrastructure, although he says he's going much bigger, more than one project. How real are his ideas?
HORSLEY: Obama has long been a fan of public works projects as a way to put construction workers back on the job and also build things that pay long-term dividends for the country. But the challenge is paying for that. He has floated the idea of doing so through corporate tax reform. The president has opposed the idea of raising the gasoline tax, which is the way we've traditionally paid for most transportation public works in this country. Some supporters say if ever there were a time to raise the gasoline tax, it's now when gas is selling for just over $2 a gallon.
INSKEEP: Scott, thanks as always.
HORSLEY: My pleasure.
INSKEEP: And thanks also to our colleagues who helped with our fact check of the state of the union, NPR's Claudio Sanchez, Carrie Johnson, John Burnett, David Welna and Dina Temple-Raston.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
President Obama's surprise announcement that the U.S. and Cuba have agreed to restore full diplomatic relations moved a little closer to reality today. Assistant Secretary of State Roberta Jacobson is meeting with her Cuban counterpart in Havana. It's the highest-level U.S. delegation to the island in nearly half a century. NPR's Carrie Kahn is in Havana covering those talks and joins us now. Good morning.
CARRIE KAHN, BYLINE: Good morning, Renee.
MONTAGNE: What is on the agenda?
KAHN: Well, today it's about migration and issues of mutual interest like cracking down on visa fraud and search and rescue missions for stranded migrants. These talks aren't new. Cuban and U.S. officials hold them every six months. The tough talks really begin tomorrow, when the two sides sit down and start discussing, you know, how they're going to reestablish diplomatic relations. A senior State Department official says the U.S. is under no illusions that this will be easy after so many decades of hostilities between the two countries. And for its part, a high-ranking Cuban official told reporters yesterday that although the U.S. has taken the right steps recently, the path toward full diplomatic relations - it's going to be long and slow.
MONTAGNE: Well, Carrie, the U.S. already has what's known as an interest section there. How much more will a full embassy in Havana be able to do?
KAHN: Definitely it will be much different. On the diplomatic level, an embassy has greater influence and more diplomatic perks. You know, when you get down to it, that's what the U.S. delegation is looking for, basic guarantees that they would get with this new status. They want the Cubans to lift the cap on the number of U.S. diplomats allowed in the country. They also want an easing of travel restrictions put on U.S. diplomats. They can't leave the capital without special permission. It's the same for Cuban personnel in Washington. The U.S. negotiators also are looking for assurances that they could get diplomatic deliveries. It's very mundane sort of stuff. And they also want Cubans who would come to a U.S. embassy in Havana to be able to do so without any repercussions from the Cuban government.
MONTAGNE: Which, I presume, would have been a barrier for Cubans there.
KAHN: Right. They say that they're harassed, that there are repercussions when they come to the interest section right now. And they're asking the Cubans for free access to what would be an embassy.
MONTAGNE: Now, you spoke just a moment ago about hurdles to a done deal. Tell us a couple of those.
KAHN: It seems like there are many in the path right now - topping the list, years, decades of mistrust and tensions between the two countries. One thing that could be helpful in these talks is that both the delegations are led by women. On the U.S. side is the assistant secretary of state for the hemisphere, Roberta Jacobson. She's fluent in Spanish. She's well-known. Her counterpart here, Josefina Vidal, is also well-known in Washington circles and well-respected. But, you know, there are so many roadblocks. One, of course, is the decades-long embargo that the U.S. has against Cuba. But also what really irks the Cubans is their placement on the U.S. State Department's list of state-sponsored terrorism. President Obama said the U.S. has already begun the process of reevaluating that designation. He said that the same day that he announced the historic warming of relations between the countries. But that process could take up to six months. And also, the Cubans get very upset when U.S. officials come here and speak to dissidents and civil society. That always seems to irk them. There's many roadblocks that are in the way of this confidence-building that needs to occur.
MONTAGNE: All right, so in a line, what are we talking about in terms of a timetable here? When will the U.S. have an embassy?
KAHN: Everybody's saying the process is moving in the right direction. But predictions of President Obama or Secretary of State John Kerry coming to the island in 2015 are pretty rosy and not likely to occur. On Tuesday, a Russian intelligence-gathering ship docked in the Havana marina just miles from the U.S. Interest Section. So these things still keep occurring. And we don't expect there - to see the American flag rising above the building any time soon.
MONTAGNE: NPR's Carrie Kahn, speaking to us from Havana. Thanks very much.
KAHN: You're welcome.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Good morning. I'm David Greene. The oldest woman in Scotland says she knows the secret to living a long life - eating a nice warm bowl of porridge every day and avoiding men. 109-year-old Jessie Gallan never married and says men are just more trouble than they're worth. Not convinced? Well, the oldest living person in the world celebrated her 116th birthday last March. And the Japanese woman - yes - has been a widow for 83 years. I really hope that my wife is not listening to this. You're listening to MORNING EDITION.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
President Obama laid out a broad vision for his final two years in office in last night's state of the union address. He highlighted some areas where he and the Republican-controlled Congress could work together. He also defiantly vowed to move ahead with policies that have faced opposition. NPR's Juana Summers spoke with a number of Republicans who say President Obama is not serious about working with them.
JUANA SUMMERS, BYLINE: Don't expect Republicans and Democrats to join hands around the campfire anytime soon. In the hours after President Obama's State of Union address, Republicans rejected the proposals at the core of his speech and said the president did little to show that he actually wanted to work with them. Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina.
SENATOR TIM SCOTT: Well, he knew before he started the state of the union that most of what he was going to say would be rejected by the Congress and/or not taken up at all. But I think what he's done is he's pivoted to the left as opposed to looking for common ground and moving forward on some of the most important issues.
SUMMERS: Arizona Congressman Matt Salmon put it this way.
REPRESENTATIVE MATT SALMON: The president is pulling out the same old playbook - pit one American against another American. And frankly, I find it trite and old. And I wish he'd come up with something new.
SUMMERS: Republicans pointed to the president's proposals to raise taxes and fees on the wealthiest Americans and biggest financial institutions and the actions he recently took to protect millions of illegal immigrants from deportation. But it wasn't just what the president said, it was also the way he said it. Congressman Carlos Curbelo of Florida.
REPRESENTATIVE CARLOS CURBELO: I didn't come here tonight to listen to a lecture. I came here tonight to figure out ways in which we can work together now. Despite what I thought was a professorial tone, I am going to try to find ways to work with the White House on immigration reform, on education reform because I owe that to my district.
SUMMERS: Also fresh in the rearview mirror were two new veto threats from the White House - one on a bill that would ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy and a second bill that would require a decision on pipeline construction within 12 months. House Speaker John Boehner said that the threats, along with what he called un-serious proposals, made for good political theater but that Republicans would continue to press their agenda. Some Republicans said they thought the president's speech was crafted with the upcoming 2016 campaigns in mind. At one point, the president even broke with his prepared text to remind Republicans that he won both of his last campaigns. Texas Senator Ted Cruz.
SENATOR TED CRUZ: The White House's early teasing was, this speech sets the stage for the 2016 presidential election. And one of the saddest things about the Obama presidency is at every stage, the president has made the decision to be the campaigner-in-chief. Everything is politics. Everything is partisan. Everything is warfare.
SUMMERS: Republicans are focused on an election, too - the most recent one that gave them control of the Senate and a widened majority in the House. They say the president needs to listen to the message of voters. Iowa Senator Joni Ernst, who took office just two weeks ago following those victories, gave the official Republican response.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
SENATOR JONI ERNST: We heard the message you sent in November loud and clear. And now we're getting to work to change the direction Washington has been taking our country.
SUMMERS: With the big speech finished, Congress now turns to the debates over the Keystone XL pipeline and the Department of Homeland Security funding bill. Both are test cases for the working relationship between the new Republican majority and the president. Juana Summers, NPR News, the Capitol.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
In his state of the union address last night, the president spoke about confronting Islamic extremism; that often means going after al-Qaida. One important ally in that fight is Yemen's president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi. But his rule is now being challenged by a rebel group, the Houthi. It is a chaotic scene right now in Yemen, and we spoke earlier with Reuters correspondent Yara Bayoumy in the capital, Sana'a.
YARA BAYOUMY: This whole thing started back in September, when the Houthi fighters came and took over Sana'a. And basically what happened in the last couple of days - it's been, like, sort of a reinforcement of this takeover. So, yes, what they have done is they've surrounded President Hadi's presidential palace. They have also surrounded his home.
When I went past President Hadi's home this morning, we first saw that the sentry posts, where presidential guard units would normally be, were completely empty. And at the entrance of his home, there were a number of Houthi fighters with a military vehicle hanging around. About an hour later, we saw, slowly, a few presidential guards sort of coming out. But in general, it would be accurate to say that the Houthis are in control of all of the major institutions in the capital.
GREENE: Well, let me just find out a little bit more about who they are. These are rebels who come from a particular religious and ethnic group, the Houthi. I mean, what exactly do they want? And tell me a little bit more about them.
BAYOUMY: They're a Shiite group, but they're also of a strand of Shi'ism that is very close to the Sunni strand of Islam, which is what most of Yemen is. For years they have been fighting the government up in the North for more autonomy, and they've been doing that for the last decade now. And they fought several wars with the central government. But it's only in the last year that that war has kind of left its confined area in the North and has expanded across the country. And really in September, when they took over the capital, no one - I mean, it really took everyone by surprise. And I spoke to a diplomatic source, and he told me if they were in control at 60 or 70 percent back in September, they are now 100 percent.
GREENE: Well, Yara, you know, we have spoken about - on this program recently - how important Yemen is in the fight against terrorism and in the fight against al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, which, you know, is in Yemen, and active in Yemen. If the Houthi do actually control the country, I mean, what sort of relationship do they have with the West?
BAYOUMY: Well, they make their relationship pretty clear. If you go around Sana'a, you will see many, many checkpoints that they've set up with their signposts that are very ubiquitous right now in green and red that say, death to America, death to Israel. So that gives you an idea of how they feel about the United States at least. Since they've taken over the capital in Sana'a, they have also expanded their battles in areas - in other parts of Yemen, in central Yemen, where they have also been fighting al-Qaida.
You know, yesterday the Houthi leader, when he spoke, he also spoke of al-Qaida as a conspiracy that is being imposed on Yemen. So while they're also fighting al-Qaida on the ground in some parts of Yemen, it's still not really clear what kind of comprehensive strategy they might have to fight this group. But I will also say that this is a criticism that has been levied against the government itself, which at the best of times haven't also been able to control many parts of the country, and has also had a very hard time fighting al-Qaida here.
GREENE: All right. We've been speaking to Reuters correspondent Yara Bayoumy, who is in the Yemeni capital, Sana'a, describing a very uncertain situation at this point. Yara, thanks very much.
BAYOUMY: Thank you very much, David.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
At the U.S. Supreme Court, two prisoners have won important victories. In one case, the court decided a religious rights question for prisoners. In the other, the court took the rear step of reversing the lower courts in a case involving the death penalty. For all practical purposes, that decision is giving the defendant a chance to have his conviction and death sentence reviewed by the federal courts. Here's NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg.
NINA TOTENBERG, BYLINE: In 1999, Mark Christeson was convicted and sentenced to death for committing three brutal murders. By 2014, the Missouri Supreme Court was about to set an execution date when Christeson's court-appointed lawyers contacted death penalty experts for help with a federal appeal. But by then, it was too late, way too late.
Years earlier, the lawyers had missed the filing deadline for a federal appeal. The death penalty experts who'd been contacted then sought to replace the court-appointed lawyers because the only possible argument for an appeal at that late date was that the court-appointed lawyers, by blowing the deadline, had failed to adequately represent their client. The original lawyers, however, refused to step aside, and the lower courts refused to request to substitute the new lawyers.
Yesterday, in an unsigned opinion, the Supreme Court ruled that the lower courts should have acknowledged that the original court-appointed lawyers had a conflict of interest and could not have been expected to make a legal argument which threatened their professional reputations and livelihoods. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented.
Jessica Merrigan is one of the new lawyers who will now be able to ask to be substituted as Christeson's lawyer and who likely will get the chance to persuade the federal courts that he was wrongly convicted and sentenced to death. She contends that his court-appointed appellate lawyers took advantage of his low IQ and intentionally misled him about his prospects, even when the state Supreme Court was about to set an execution date. [POST-BROADCAST CORRECTION: We incorrectly identify Mark Christeson's attorney as Jessica Merrigan. She is Jennifer Merrigan.]
JENNIFER MERRIGAN: His lawyers never interviewed a single witness about his case. They never talked to a single doctor to look at his deficits. We will be investigating Mark's life. We will be investigating the crime. There were serious constitutional errors at his trial, and those have never been looked into.
TOTENBERG: In a second U.S. Supreme Court decision yesterday, the justices ruled that an Arkansas prisoner must be allowed to wear a short beard in accordance with his religious tenets. Federal law bars public institutions like prisons from imposing a substantial and unjustified burden on the free exercise of religion. In this case, the prisoner who converted to Islam sought permission to grow a half-inch beard. State prison officials refused, however, citing security concerns that the beard, for instance, could be used to hide contraband.
Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the unanimous court, called those justifications hard to swallow. He noted that prison systems in the vast majority of states and the federal system all allow prisoners to grow beards, and he pointed to the fact that prisoners in Arkansas are allowed to grow hair on their heads and wear clothes, all more plausible places to hide contraband. When so many prisons offer an accommodation, the court said, a prison must at minimum offer persuasive reasons why it believes that it must take a different course. And Arkansas failed to make that showing here. Nina Totenberg, NPR News, Washington.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Let's talk about a cousin of marijuana, hemp. It's grown throughout the world for its oil and fiber, which show up in everything from beauty products to rope. And scientists are studying how hemp might be used in the electronic, medical and manufacturing industries. But the fact that the plant's been illegal in the U.S. for decades makes it more difficult to do research on it, as Luke Runyon from member station KUNC reports.
LUKE RUNYON, BYLINE: Nolan Kane walks through tall rows of plants at the University of Colorado Boulder.
NOLAN KANE: So we're at one of the greenhouses on campus.
RUNYON: Kane is an evolutionary biologist. And right now, he has permission to grow industrial hemp here. It's been tough to secure seed, so it's not in the ground quite yet.
KANE: I am told that it is not the first cannabis that has been grown on campus, however, just the first legal cannabis. (Laughter).
RUNYON: Humans have been growing hemp for centuries. And Kane says the plant holds tremendous potential.
KANE: It's one of those things that when you talk to people, it's hard to believe all the different uses because it really gets a little bit ridiculous all the different things that people use it for.
RUNYON: But it's difficult to get a handle on all those uses because of an enormous knowledge gap. Kane says there are tons of unanswered questions about the plant's basic science. His current project is to create a genetic map of cannabis.
KANE: What formal research is there has been good. But there just isn't enough of it - right? - because there aren't that many people that have been able to get funding and permission to do this anywhere, really.
RUNYON: That permission is rare because even though hemp has little to no psychoactive properties, under federal law it's still in the same class of illegal drugs as heroin and LSD. The list of potential uses for hemp is long. But what might be the plant's most magical property, it can actually get members of Congress to work together. Here's Colorado Democratic Representative Jared Polis.
REPRESENTATIVE JARED POLIS: We were able to pass an amendment to the farm bill showing that there are a majority of Democrats and Republicans that felt that this is an important crop.
RUNYON: The farm bill that passed last year included an amendment giving a green light to researchers to study hemp. Nineteen states, including California, Illinois and Vermont, have pilot programs in the works. But it hasn't been a free-for-all for scientists.
PATRICK O'ROURKE: Higher education is a fairly regulated environment.
RUNYON: That's Patrick O'Rourke, the University of Colorado's lead attorney. It's his job to make sure cannabis research doesn't put the school's federal funding at risk.
O'ROURKE: The message that we've tried to say is, we support your ability to do any type of research that you want to do, as long as you're going through the right steps to have it approved.
RUNYON: While public universities figure out their place in cannabis research, private companies are attempting to pick up the slack.
JOHN MCKAY: So this is the greenhouse warehouse.
RUNYON: John McKay is a plant geneticist at Colorado State University. Instead of waiting for all the federal approvals, he started his own business, working out of a small greenhouse he rents off campus. He says the conflicts in federal and state law just make everything move so slowly.
MCKAY: Nothing is completely spelled out in law. And then what little has been spelled out, then agencies and universities are trying to use to make plans. And by the time we make them, then maybe the laws change again.
RUNYON: While those laws keep changing, McKay says scientists, both public and private, will be doing whatever work they can to fill the research gap in hemp. For NPR News, I'm Luke Runyon in Fort Collins, Colorado.
GREENE: And Luke's story came to us from Harvest Public Media, a reporting collaboration that focuses on agriculture.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
President Obama laid out an ambitious agenda in his State of the Union address last night. He seemed undeterred by the big losses his party suffered at the polls in November. The president challenged Republicans, who now control both chambers of Congress, to embrace what he called middle-class economics. And he offered a series of populist proposals that would help working families afford childcare, education and retirement, paid for by raising taxes and fees on big banks and wealthy Americans. NPR's national political correspondent Mara Liasson reports.
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: A smiling Barack Obama entered the house chamber looking like a man who had nothing left to lose. He told Congress - for the first time in his presidency controlled completely by Republicans - that although it was still a hard time for many, it had been a breakthrough year for America. Economic growth is strong. Unemployment is down. College graduations are up. And the war in Afghanistan is over.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: The shadow of crisis has past. And the state of the union is strong.
LIASSON: After Democrats lost control of the House in 2010, Mr. Obama moved to meet the Republicans in the middle. But this time, he didn't acknowledge the repudiation he and his party suffered in November. His attitude was election? What election? He barely nodded to Republican concerns about the deficit or the size of government. Instead, he challenged them to work on his priorities, addressing stagnant middle-class incomes and growing inequality.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
OBAMA: Will we accept an economy where only a few of us do spectacularly well? Or will we commit ourselves to an economy that generates rising incomes and chances for everyone who makes the effort?
LIASSON: With consumer confidence at an 11-year high and his own approval ratings improving, the president was able to take some credit. He poked Republicans who had warned for years that his policies would tank the economy.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
OBAMA: At every step, we were told our goals were misguided or too ambitious, that we would crush jobs and explode deficits. Instead, we've seen the fastest economic growth in over a decade, our deficits cut by two-thirds, a stock market that has doubled and health care inflation at its lowest rate in 50 years.
(APPLAUSE)
LIASSON: Since the election, the president has moved aggressively to define the policy agenda with a series of unilateral actions on immigration, climate change and foreign-policy. He warned Republicans not to try to overturn them.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
OBAMA: We can't put the security of families at risk by taking away their health insurance or unraveling the new rules on Wall Street or re-fighting past battles on immigration when we got to fix a broken system. And if a bill comes to my desk that tries to do any of these things, I will veto it.
LIASSON: He also mocked Republicans on climate change, pointing out that 14 of the last 15 years were the warmest on record.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
OBAMA: I've heard some folks try to dodge the evidence by saying they're not scientists, that we don't have enough information to act. Well, I'm not a scientist either. But you know what? I know a lot of really good scientists at NASA and at NOAA and at our major universities. And the best scientists in the world are all telling us that our activities are changing the climate.
LIASSON: The centerpiece of the president's speech was a populist agenda he called middle-class economics.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
OBAMA: That means helping folks afford childcare, college, health care, a home, retirement. And my budget will address each of these issues, lowering the taxes of working families and putting thousands of dollars back into their pockets each year.
LIASSON: Mr. Obama would pay for all this by raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans and imposing fees on the biggest banks. Republicans won't vote for that. But they might vote for new trade bills. On trade, the president's toughest audience was his own party. He told Democrats that he was the first to admit that past trade deals haven't always lived up to the hype. But he promised them that the ones he is negotiating will be different. And he grounded his argument in nationalism, not globalism.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
OBAMA: But as we speak, China wants to write the rules for the world's fastest-growing region. That would put our workers and our businesses at a disadvantage.
LIASSON: A year ago, the president said that America must move off a permanent war footing. But the world has not cooperated. Last night, he asked Congress for new authority to fight the terrorist group known as the Islamic State and what he said was its bankrupt ideology of violent extremism.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
OBAMA: Now, this effort will take time. It will require focus. But we will succeed. And tonight, I call on this Congress to show the world that we are united in this mission by passing a resolution to authorize the use of force against ISIL.
LIASSON: Republicans dismissed most of the president's ideas, saying they were dead on arrival. House Speaker John Boehner said the president was offering more taxes, more government and more bureaucracy. But the White House is counting on the fact that most of Mr. Obama's plans have broad public support. And even if they don't get passed by Congress, he can use them to frame the debates of the next two years and set the stage for the 2016 elections. Mara Liasson, NPR News, Washington.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
And for some reaction to the president's speech, we're joined now by Republican Senator Cory Gardner of Colorado. Good morning.
SENATOR CORY GARDNER: Good morning.
MONTAGNE: Now, the president laid out a lot of objectively good news for the country. The economy is stronger. Deficits are shrinking - restrained health care cost. He said both parties could use this moment to build trust and also to work together. So, for you, what are the areas you see as where, in fact, you and the Republican Party can work with the president?
GARDNER: I do think the president listed some areas last night that where we can work together. Trade is an area where we will be able to work together. The president talked about making college more affordable. We can work together on those areas. Now, the details of his plan, the cost of his plan - those are things that we're going to have to determine and figure out a little bit more as we move forward. But I do believe last night's speech really almost was written by two different speechwriters because the first half issued significant veto threat and talked about areas that you know Republicans will not support - increasing taxes on America's business creators. And then he turned around at the end of the speech and talked about how we ought to work together. And so his insistence on bipartisanship was - which is a good thing - seemed to have significant loopholes.
MONTAGNE: As you suggest, the Republicans will not be looking kindly on the president's desire to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans. Although the way he put it - closing loopholes for those who are unfairly favored by the tax system - would have appeal to the middle class.
GARDNER: Again, I think the president wants to divide this country. He had an opportunity to come to Congress last night to talk about areas where we could work together. And make no doubt about it. When you're adding hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes on America's job creators, you're hurting the middle class. Look, we have a very veneered economy right now. It looks good. The numbers look good. The president mentioned the numbers look good - corporate earnings, stocks, the indexes.
But when you scratch that surface and you get to what's underneath, you see people who are hurting across this country - people who aren't in the kind of jobs that they're looking for, whose median household has declined. That's the real problem for this country. And unfortunately, last night, the president laid out more taxes and bigger government - something that he's been talking about for six years that has led to the conditions that we see today. And so I think the president missed a real opportunity to work together last night.
MONTAGNE: Well, Senator Gardner, you just used the expression veneered economy, suggesting that this uptick in our economy is fragile or thin. But, you know, one of the loudest cheers the president got, at least from the Democratic side of the chamber, was on raising the minimum wage. And this went on the ballot in many states last November. It even passed in several conservative states. It seems to be quite a popular issue. Has that changed the political calculus in a Republican-controlled Congress about passing a federal minimum wage hike?
GARDNER: Well, in fact, I think that in many ways, you answered part of the question yourself. And the question, which is the states did pass minimum-wage increases - Colorado - we have a minimum wage that's indexed to inflation. And so I think that is something that is best left to the determination of the states. Colorado knows better than Washington, DC, what the people of that state need. But more importantly, we need to grow the economy. We need to make sure that we are actually getting government out of the way to let America work - reducing regulations, not increasing the tax burden on small businesses, not increasing the regulatory burden on businesses so that they are able to increase wages, that people are able to find the kind of jobs that they are looking for. Now look, the president did admit that the deficit is increasing. By the sheer fact that we are increasing the deficit, even if it's $1, that means we are still adding to what is a historically high, unacceptable debt.
MONTAGNE: Senator, we just have one minute left. Let me turn to immigration. You've warned your fellow Republicans against blocking President Obama's actions on immigration without offering other solutions. The Latino population of Colorado is already an important voting bloc. What do you see ahead for immigration policy? Any action on that?
GARDNER: Well, I look forward to the Republicans and Democrats coming together with a policy that will work to reform our broken immigration system. I believe that starts with a - securing our borders. I believe that starts with a workable guest-worker program. I do think the president has overreached. Two years ago, the president said he lacked the kind of authority that he has now asserted. He himself said he lacked that authority. And so I do think we have to have a solution, though. We can't just simply back and say no to these ideas. We have to come up with an alternative. But I look forward to putting forward that Republican alternative to make sure that we combat the president's overreach.
MONTAGNE: Thank you very much for joining us.
GARDNER: Thank you for having me.
MONTAGNE: That was Senator Cory Gardner. He's a Republican of Colorado and reacting to the president's State of the Union speech last night. And throughout the program, we will be bringing you reactions from both Republicans and Democrats.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
And it's budget time in many states. Most are now projecting strong growth, even surpluses - not, however, the state of Illinois. There, a gaping budget hole appears to be even bigger than previously thought, as NPR's David Schaper reports.
DAVID SCHAPER, BYLINE: Republican Governor Bruce Rauner knew the job would come with at least a $2- to $3-billion state budget deficit. But after winning the office last fall, he got a look at the books and found it's even worse.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
GOVERNOR BRUCE RAUNER: Our financial condition here in Illinois is dire. And every time we look under the hood and look in different departments, look in different issues, the problem is the deficits, the overspending, is more significant than has been discussed.
SCHAPER: And a new report suggests Illinois's budget hole is much, much bigger than projected, closer to $6 billion this year. And...
RICHARD DYE: Looking ahead to next fiscal year, we estimate that the state's budget gap, the deficit, is on the order of $10 billion.
SCHAPER: That's Richard Dye of the University of Illinois's Institute of Government and Public Affairs and co-author of a study of the state's finances called, alarmingly, "Apocalypse Now."
DYE: The problem is so big that it's hard to think of it being fixed.
SCHAPER: And so far new Governor Rauner has offered no way to dig Illinois out of its huge budget hole, but he'll have to soon. He's scheduled to deliver his budget address next month. David Schaper, NPR News, Chicago.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
President Obama made some history last night and caused quite a buzz online when he used some new words in his state of the union address.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
According to observers, it was the first time a president used the words lesbian, transgender and bisexual in a state of the union speech.
GREENE: And another first came when he mentioned Instagram, the popular image-sharing social network.
MONTAGNE: But perhaps nothing set off social media more than this...
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I have no more campaigns to run.
(APPLAUSE)
OBAMA: My only agenda...
GREENE: Those cheers are from Republicans.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
OBAMA: I know 'cause I won both of them.
(APPLAUSE)
GREENE: And that round of applause of course came from Democrats. Even as the president was talking about rising above politics, just a little bit of political gloating from both sides of the aisle.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Good morning, I'm Renee Montagne. Some states, like Georgia, don't look kindly on enjoying a double quarter-pound cheeseburger behind the wheel. Madison Turner was ticketed for distracted driving. He says the officer told him, you just can't go down the road eating a hamburger. You might want to consider moving north to New Hampshire, which seems to have a friendlier relationship with meat. The state just released scratch-and-sniff lottery tickets that smell like bacon. It's MORNING EDITION.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
All this morning we've been hearing reaction to President Obama's State of the Union address last night. And next, we'll hear from Congresswoman Yvette Clarke. She's a Democrat from New York and a board member of the Congressional Black Caucus. She's on the line with us. Congresswoman, good morning.
REPRESENTATIVE YVETTE CLARKE: Good morning, how are you?
GREENE: I'm well, thank you very much. Thanks for coming on. I know it was a late evening for you, listening to a speech. And I wanted to ask you - I mean, the president sounded very optimistic about the economy last night. But a few things come to mind. I mean, looking through numbers, inequality has expanded on his watch. In terms of wealth, the gap between rich and poor is higher than ever by some estimates. The gap between white Americans and minorities is growing. I mean, was this speech in some ways too optimistic?
CLARKE: No, I mean, it was a leadership speech. Clearly, you know, we've been navigated through some extremely harsh waters with respect to rebuilding after a recession. And now we have an opportunity to do a reset. And he's going to need a bipartisan support to really address this inequality. He spoke very forcefully about the need to address the tax code, one way of addressing sort of the lack of revenue in our federal budget to really expand upon opportunity for Americans. And so I know that he clearly has his sights set on what has become a very vexing problem across our nation, and it's the widening gap that exists and the stagnant wages that exist in our nation at this time.
GREENE: Well, Congresswoman, another vexing problem this country has faced recently has been racial tensions. I mean, we've all followed the events in Ferguson, the Eric Garner case in New York. The president brought both of those up last night, didn't go into much detail. Did you hear what you wanted to hear on that last night?
CLARKE: Well, I'm just really happy that he mentioned it. At one point, I was a bit concerned about whether that had made it into his address. And I think he signaled to the nation, particularly with respect to the criminal justice system, a need to really engage in reform so that - you know, again that there's a reset in America about how - the disparities in the way in which justice is kneaded out in this nation. And clearly, you know, there's a lot that needs to be done. And if we can start there, we can begin to repair some of the risks that currently exist.
GREENE: We have just about a minute left. And let me just ask you about that rift. I mean, polls have shown that Americans see more racial division in the country since President Obama took office. And I just wonder, I mean, given that, are we going to look back at Barack Obama's time in office as a period when we came together as a country or were pulled apart?
CLARKE: Well, I'll say this. People are seeing what they want to see now. These are issues that are rooted in inequalities that have existed for quite some time, going back to, you know, the civil rights movement. You know, it was the Supreme Court that did the rollback on voting rights; it wasn't President Obama.
GREENE: Much more to talk about on this topic of course. Thanks very much for joining us this morning.
CLARKE: Thank you for having me, and I look forward to the discussion.
GREENE: Congresswoman Yvette Clarke of New York.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
From time to time, our Planet Money Podcast profiles people with unusual jobs. David Kestenbaum has this story about a man who realized he was the only person in the world with his job. It was a job selling something almost no one wanted.
DAVID KESTENBAUM, BYLINE: In the 1990s, Tim Worstall found himself in Moscow. It was just after the fall of the Soviet Union, a time when things that had been hidden were now out in the open.
TIM WORSTALL: Just, you know, one of the flood of people who went over there just to see if there was any way to make money out of the entire collapse of a civilization.
KESTENBAUM: Maybe video games, he thought. Tetris had been written by a Russian programmer. But then he came across something much more elemental.
WORSTALL: I just bumped into somebody at a party.
KESTENBAUM: The guy said this. I'm having trouble selling my scandium. What's scandium, Tim asked. They drank some vodka, and the guy explained. Scandium was a metal with remarkable properties, one of the so-called rare earths. You can find it on the periodic table, the little box with an SC on it and the number 21.
WORSTALL: It's usually classed as one of the lanthanides, that funny strip of rare earths along the bottom of the periodic table that we all forgot in high school chemistry class. [POST-BROADCAST CORRECTION: In this report, scandium is referred to "as one of the lanthanides." In fact, it is not a lanthanide. But scandium is often grouped with the lanthanides as one of the rare earth elements.]
KESTENBAUM: Add a dash of scandium to other metals; you get something very strong and very light. The guy explained that the Soviet military used to love it. But now no one seemed to want it. So Tim did some research. He tried to. There was almost nothing written about scandium. Eventually, he called the U.S. government, the U.S. Geological Survey.
WORSTALL: And I said, hello, I want to know about scandium. And the man at the other end of the phone line said, well, that's good because I am our scandium expert.
KESTENBAUM: Finally, someone else on the planet who knew about scandium. The man told Tim there were some people who might need scandium. It was used in small amounts in certain high-intensity light bulbs, metal halide bulbs, the kind used to light sports stadiums. Scandium was added to the gas inside the bulb to give the light a nice daylight color. So Tim tracked down a manufacturer in the U.S. and picked up the phone again. You called up, and you said, hey, I have - I'm in Russia, and I have scandium? And...
WORSTALL: Yes.
KESTENBAUM: (Laughter). What did they say?
WORSTALL: Well, that's great. We buy scandium from Russia. What's your price?
KESTENBAUM: Oh, did you have a price?
WORSTALL: Yes, which was significantly lower than what they were already paying for it - and so there we go.
KESTENBAUM: He had it sent over through the regular mail in a powdered form called scandium oxide. Tim was, as far as he could tell, the only person on the planet with this job, a scandium middleman, a rare guy selling a rare element. How was it being a monopolist?
WORSTALL: Not as profitable as people think running a global monopoly will be.
KESTENBAUM: Tim is trained as an economist. And this, he explains, is a classic example of what's called a contestable monopoly, meaning it's easy for someone else to get into the business. So even though you don't have any competitors, the simple fact that it would be easy for someone else to get into the game forces you to keep your fees low.
WORSTALL: I don't live in a mansion. I'm not a multimillionaire. But I've had a lot of fun, done a lot of traveling and made a good living.
KESTENBAUM: Five or six years after his first deal, other scandium middlemen started popping up, people arranging deals for anyone who wanted to buy some. Scandium is now used in some lightweight baseball bats and bicycle frames. Airlines are experimenting with it. But it's expensive, something like $2,000 a pound. The total amount bought and sold in a single year could fit on the back of a truck. David Kestenbaum, NPR News.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
On New Year's Eve in mainland China's showcase city Shanghai, three dozen people died in a stampede. Today, four local officials were fired for failing to prevent that. Investigators say that instead of monitoring crowds that night, officials enjoyed an opulent banquet at a Japanese restaurant. NPR's Frank Langfitt has the latest on Shanghai's biggest tragedy in years.
FRANK LANGFITT, BYLINE: The Communist Party chief and director of Shanghai's Huangpu district were both sacked, as were the two top police officials in the district where the stampede occurred. Investigators say that as huge crowds packed Shanghai's riverfront, the district's top officials were busy chowing down at a banquet. Shanghai's vice mayor, Zhou Bo, spoke at a news conference today.
(SOUNDBITE OF PRESS CONFERENCE)
ZHOU BO: (Through interpreter) We are extremely pained, guilty and we blame ourselves.
LANGFITT: Investigators described a series of blunders that led to the crush, which also injured 49 people. District officials canceled the popular New Year's Eve light show, but only announced the change the day before and in a way that only confused people. Then police failed to deploy anywhere near enough officers. Again, Vice Mayor Zhou.
(SOUNDBITE OF PRESS CONFERENCE)
BO: (Through interpreter) It happened at Shanghai's important landmark, the Bund. The party and people gave such an important city to us to manage. We should use all our efforts, hearts and energy to protect citizens' lives and property.
LANGFITT: The Bund is Shanghai's colonial-era waterfront. It sits across from a stretch of futuristic skyscrapers that are often featured in Hollywood movies, like the James Bond film "Skyfall" and "Mission Impossible II." But on New Year's Eve, crowds there spun out of control, as captured on this cell phone video.
(SOUNDBITE OF CELL PHONE VIDEO)
LANGFITT: People surged up the staircase to the promenade to see a light show they didn't know had been canceled, while another crowd tried to push down the same staircase. Lu Zhenyu, who works for a sports company here, was caught in the middle and nearly crushed to death.
LU ZHENYU: (Through interpreter) I saw with my own eyes a girl in front of me who was shouting, stop pushing, stop moving. Later, she became completely motionless. She appeared to have stopped breathing.
LANGFITT: Lu, 26, said there were few police around. After 10 minutes, the crush subsided, leaving dozens lying on the ground, some bleeding from the mouth and nose.
ZHENYU: (Through interpreter) There was a girl whose face was trampled. Her entire face was beyond recognition. Though she was still able to stand, there were scars all over her face as if she'd been beaten up.
LANGFITT: Lu says the girl survived. Many victims' family members have been holed up in local hotels, waiting for answers and compensation. Shanghai officials have told them not to talk to the news media. But one, surnamed Wu, did today. He said he was disappointed with the news conference.
WU: (Through interpreter) Did they give any details? No. Actual questions including compensation to victims' families? Nothing has been discussed. Nothing is different from the day when the tragedy happened. I'm totally unsatisfied with what they said.
LANGFITT: Among the dead New Year's Eve was Li Xiang, who was 26 years old. The son of a banana farmer, he graduated from Xiamen University, one of the country's finest. Li moved to the city of more than 24 million people a couple of years ago to work in the paper pulp business. His cousin, also named Li, said Shanghai hasn't lived up to its reputation.
LI: (Foreign language spoken).
LANGFITT: "The speed with which they handled this has been too slow and too inefficient," he told me. "Shanghai is an international metropolis, but the way they've managed this is even slower than our local government."
Frank Langfitt, NPR News, Shanghai.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
All morning, we're hearing reaction to President Obama's State of the Union address. We're joined now by Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota. Welcome to the program.
SENATOR HEIDI HEITKAMP: Good morning, Renee.
MONTAGNE: Let's begin with the question of spending. President Obama laid out a number of economic proposals last night, including spending on child care, on infrastructure, universal community college. You are a Democrat from a conservative, rural state who has argued to reduce spending. And given that, will you support those initiatives?
HEITKAMP: Well, I already am a huge proponent of making sure that our kids get a good start with early childhood learning. I am over the moon that he talked about broadband, about the need to bring broadband to all communities 'cause, as you know, rural communities are frequently left behind in infrastructure. And then no one who looks at our crumbling infrastructure and looks at what we're leaving behind for the next generation thinks we shouldn't spend. Now the trick, obviously, is how you find resources to not add to the deficit - not add to the debt - but actually pay-as-you-go because that's the challenge that we have. And I think there's going to be a broader discussion here as we move forward and as more members are willing to talk about governing and not just doing politics.
MONTAGNE: Well, what did you hear from the president that - not just that you liked, as you just mentioned - some initiatives - but that you, as a Democrat from a rural, conservative state, feel you can sell across the aisle to Republicans from other rural, conservative states?
HEITKAMP: Well, obviously, I think infrastructure. Most states, like North Dakota, are heavily dependent on federal funding to keep our interstate highways moving and to keep our transportation system going. And I think everybody from a rural state believes that we need to invest in infrastructure because we're part of the overall network. I was disappointed - I will tell you - that there isn't more discussion about the contributions that agriculture makes and rural America makes. You know, as we look, I think, frequently, if you're sitting there from Bowbells and you're listening, not much of that seems to apply to you. And I think given that we not only feed this country but feed the world, I think it would have been a nice shout-out to say thank you to American ag producers.
MONTAGNE: Well, yes.
(LAUGHTER)
HEITKAMP: Right?
MONTAGNE: Right, egg producers. Well, let me tell you - let me ask about something the president did not touch on and I know concerns you, coming from a state that has been having a big oil boom. That's the Keystone XL pipeline - runs near North Dakota. As a Democrat from that state, would you have wanted to hear about, and would you...
HEITKAMP: I think he's made his position on Keystone very clear. I think it's our responsibility now, as a Congress, to say this process hasn't worked and to basically move ahead with our plans to approve the Keystone XL pipeline. With that said, we don't know what the president's going to do. Secretary Kerry has set a pretty hard, firm date of February 2. I think we'll see what happens in terms of comments that come in to the State Department. State Department, I think, ought to be if they're not, embarrassed by a six-year delay on this. And we'll see if they're going to expedite this. And then we'll know what the president's actual position on the pipeline is. But the veto threat really comes as a result of expediting the process. And I don't think six years is expediting the process, but that's the way the president sees it.
MONTAGNE: Well, lots to talk about. Thank you very much for joining us this morning.
HEITKAMP: You bet.
MONTAGNE: North Dakota's Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
And let's bring in another voice now. Tom Cole is a Republican congressman from Oklahoma. He's on the line with us. Congressman, thank you as always for coming on the program.
REPRESENTATIVE TOM COLE: Thank you.
GREENE: I want to ask you, to start off, about taxes, if I can. The president laid out a compelling narrative last night. Put a little more of the burden on the wealthiest Americans and on banks to, you know, as he suggests, ease the burden on the middle class. If you can, just briefly give me the few sentences that sum up the Republican approach to taxes.
COLE: Well, first of all, we think that they ought to lower the rates for every American and get rid of loopholes so that everybody enjoys some advantage here. Frankly, the president failed to point out that on upper-income people, he's already raised capital gains twice. He did it in Obamacare, did it again in the fiscal cliff crisis. So now he wants to do it yet a third time. And we think this is very much a - you know, a redistributionist approach, if you will. You're literally taking money from one group to give it to another.
Now, if the president wanted to talk about some of the long-term structural deficit problems we have and the entitlement programs or the fact that Social Security disability fund will go bankrupt by 2016 on his watch or the transportation fund, then that's another matter, and that's a place where - probably going to have to be some give and take. But this one was clearly much more of a political ploy than a substantive proposal.
GREENE: Well, why - I wonder why call it a political ploy so quickly? I mean, when we had the president's chief of staff, Denis McDonough, on the program ahead of the speech, he said, you know, this is the opening salvo in a negotiation. I mean, is your party on the same page with that? You know, let's have a negotiation on tax reform with open minds this year, and see where a back-and-forth leads.
COLE: Well, we certainly are open-minded on that. I think Chairman Ryan at Ways and Means is - made that clear, and he's actually negotiated deals across the aisle. So he's got considerable credibility.
But again, this wasn't a systemic overhaul of the tax system. This was a few rifle shots at politically popular targets. It was meant for a partisan advantage and it fell on very deaf ears. I mean, I think, you know, if you're going to make a proposal, it ought to be at least something the other side might consider. This one was DOA, the president knew it. And again, it was more about politics than working with and finding common ground with Congress.
GREENE: Congressman, I read your statement in response to the speech last night. You said the speech represented another missed opportunity for the president to unite and lead the country. And there's been similar criticism from your colleagues in the Republican Party. I just wonder, could you see some as looking at this and saying, here was a missed opportunity for the GOP to back away from the instant criticism and just say, OK, that's your argument, you know, whatever you think of it, we'll take it seriously. Let's now start talking.
COLE: Well, remember, we haven't issued seven veto threats and we haven't, you know, taken controversial executive actions. I think the president's been pretty provocative since the elections. The only time I've seen him act differently - and I applaud him for doing so - was during the omnibus or CRomnibus negotiations. Where he worked with a majority of the majority, a minority of the minority and we actually got federal spending set from now until September 30. If he'll take that approach, I think he'll find willing partners in a number of area.
Look, we clearly support him on trade when his own party doesn't. I think we clearly agree with him that there's a need for new authorization on ISIL, although he hasn't sent one up. We clearly agree on cybersecurity.
GREENE: He said he would last night, though.
COLE: So there's areas to work together.
GREENE: OK, Tom Cole's a Republican congressman from the state of Oklahoma. Congressman, thanks so much as always for coming on the program. We appreciate it.
COLE: Hey, thank you.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Now, as communities go through this difficult process, here's one model they might turn to. Monterey, on California's central coast, has developed a relationship with the Army that eases the financial burden on the military. Krista Almanzan from member station KAZU reports.
KRISTA ALMANZAN, BYLINE: George Helms is taking me on a driving tour on the Presidio of Monterey. It's home to the Defense Language Institute.
So we're now on the Army's installation in Presidio of Monterey?
GEORGE HELMS: That's correct.
ALMANZAN: And looking over here, just, like, on the right, you can see how close the city is to the presidio.
HELMS: Very, very close.
ALMANZAN: So close that houses and streets of the outside community dead end at the presidio's gate.
HELMS: If you think about it, the presidio sits inside the City of Monterey's boundaries. So it makes it pretty convenient for us.
ALMANZAN: Helms is the city's general services superintendent. His department is based right on the installation, where it handles everything from building remodels to street and sewer maintenance for both the city and the Army. He drives past the schools where the military teaches nearly two dozen languages, including Pashto, Hebrew and Korean. Helms says the main goal of this partnership known as the Monterey Model is to keep the base in the community by keeping the costs down for the Army.
HELMS: Most of the good ideas come from the line staff who see things happening every day and then come back to me and say, let's try this. I think we can make it more efficient.
ALMANZAN: We stop by a dorm, where one member of that line staff, Bob Tuscany, is fixing a door lock.
BOB TUSCANY: Basically, what we have going on here is the card key is not working and opening the door lock.
ALMANZAN: It used to be when things went wrong with these card key locks, the Army had to replace them at a cost of $700 apiece. But Helms' staff figured out a way to fix them for just $70.
HELMS: The day that you become complacent is the day it becomes too expensive to operate this installation. And then we become very susceptible to a BRAC action.
ALMANZAN: BRAC - base realignment and closure. And that gets to the heart of what motivated this unique partnership. Twenty years ago, the nearby Fort Ord Army base closed and resulted in a $500 million loss to the region. And city officials worried other area military installations like the Presidio of Monterey would be future targets of the unpredictable BRAC process.
HANS USLAR: It's so complex. I think no one can tell you what really the rationale is.
ALMANZAN: Hans Uslar was part of the team that worked on the city's first contract to provide lower-cost services to the Army back 1998. He's now Monterey's assistant city manager and says while the city can't exactly BRAC-proof itself, there are some things it can control.
USLAR: One of those elements is cost of operating a base. So we hope that we contribute to that by having a lower cost for military base.
ALMANZAN: As a contractor, the city saves the federal government money by not adding a profit to the services it provides. It also shares equipment. And economies of scale means lower prices on everything, from resurfacing streets to purchasing lamp posts. It all adds up to a savings of roughly $2 million a year for the Army.
TIM FORD: There's an evolution in the military happening on how we look at installations.
ALMANZAN: Tim Ford is CEO of the Association of Defense Communities, a DC-based nonprofit.
FORD: I think we're starting to move away from this idea that a base has to be a city unto itself. It has to provide all of these services separate from the community.
ALMANZAN: Ford says partnerships being developed elsewhere include the sharing of everything, from garbage collection to plowing snow. Back at the presidio, superintendent George Helms says it just makes sense.
HELMS: Why would you stop at the gate? Why would you have a fence line separate your maintenance?
ALMANZAN: Since the Monterey Model started about 15 years ago, it has inspired other partnerships in the Army. And now the Air Force is exploring the idea, too. For NPR News, I'm Krista Almanzan.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
And these days, something that's been vexing many American students, parents and educators is standardized testing in schools.
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SENATOR LAMAR ALEXANDER: Are there too many tests? Are they the right tests? Are the stakes for failing them too high? What should Washington, D.C., have to do with all of this?
MONTAGNE: That's Senator Lamar Alexander, chair of the Senate Education Committee, speaking at hearings underway about standardized testing. Once seen as the way to improve America's failing schools, standardized tests are now widely seen as part of the problem.
For a closer look at the issue, our colleague Steve Inskeep spoke with NPR education reporter Anya Kamenetz. She's also the author of the new book "The Test: Why Our Schools Are Obsessed With Standardized Testing - But You Don't Have To Be."
STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: How much more widespread are standardized tests than they were 10 or 15 or 20 years ago?
ANYA KAMENETZ, BYLINE: Well, since No Child Left Behind became federal law in 2002, every state has been required to test every child, every year in third through eighth grades in math and reading, plus once in high school. And districts have added on many tests to follow on to those tests that are state mandated.
INSKEEP: Why would districts be adding tests?
KAMENETZ: Well, the deal with the No Child Left Behind tests is that they are tied to consequences for districts, for schools, increasingly for teachers. And so when you make a test high-stakes, districts really care about the outcome. And so what they're doing is adding in practice tests, interim tests and that's how we get these multiplying and ballooning requirements.
INSKEEP: This is helping to explain something that I heard from an elementary school teacher that I know. She was describing a situation where she felt like she wasn't doing anything other than preparing for tests and administering tests.
KAMENETZ: You know, I hear that from teachers all over the country. And, you know, I've walked into lower-income schools where the students' test scores are posted right in the front entryway. And the message is very, very clear that, you know, we care about you as a person and everything, but what really matters is the score that you post in April.
INSKEEP: But this is, in some ways, an old debate, Anya. We've heard about it for more than a decade since No Child Left Behind. People complained about the amount of standardized tests even before. But we're in this data-driven world where people want information, and they want accountability for schools. And how do you get the argument beyond that, that question of what would you do other than test?
KAMENETZ: You know, I talk about a couple of different approaches in the book. One of them is very simple, and the idea is statistical sampling. So instead of testing every student every year, as we're doing now, we could follow the PISA exam - the famous international test - which tests a statistical sample of students. And that would give us a reliable indicator of how students are doing without having tests be so dominating,
INSKEEP: And is that valid? Can it work for this situation?
KAMENETZ: If what you're looking for is accountability on a district level or a state level, absolutely, it can work. You know, sampling obviously doesn't provide information about every single student or every single school. So, you know, that's why people who object to it say, well, we need these tests for different reasons. We need them to get information about students.
INSKEEP: OK, so that's one idea. What's another?
KAMENETZ: Well, you mentioned big data, and the fact is that technology provides us the ability to get much more broad-based information about how students are performing. All states now pretty much have statewide longitudinal data systems. They're tracking students from kindergarten all the way through the workforce in some cases. And so they have really good long-term indicators of what works well where it really matters, which is ensuring that students are able to succeed in college and beyond.
INSKEEP: So now, Anya, you're talking about something that will remind people of what Google does with your search data or Facebook might do with information that it gathers on you. It's just quietly gathering information about you and acting accordingly, and you never even know the information is being gathered about you.
KAMENETZ: Well, exactly. So on an individual basis every single day, more and more students in schools are using software to learn. And while the software is, you know, giving them the math problems or the English problems to answer, it's getting incredibly fine-grained information about the students' performances, how they think, how they approach difficult problems. Do they try really hard? Do they give up easily? And many people who, you know, run testing companies and software companies believe that that kind of information could replace the activity of stopping and testing.
INSKEEP: Wait, even the people who are making money creating the tests think there might be a better way to measure school performance than their own tests?
KAMENETZ: Oh, absolutely. I mean, I talked to chief research scientist at Pearson and ETS who said you know, we believe that this invisible integrated assessment is really the future because stopping and testing is this clunky kind of a way of going about it.
Businesses in the 1970s used to have to shut down at the end of the year and do inventory for three weeks. And that's kind of how we do it in schools today. We spend eight days taking tests. And so how could schools possibly use data in that same sort of agile, just-in-time way?
INSKEEP: Anya Kamenetz, thanks very much.
KAMENETZ: Thank you.
MONTAGNE: Anya is NPR's education reporter speaking there with Steve Inskeep. On MORNING EDITION from NPR News, I'm Renee Montagne
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And I'm David Greene.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Here's something to think about when taking a puff of an e-cigarette - formaldehyde. New research is raising more concern about the safety of electronic cigarettes, finding the vapor they produce contains more formaldehyde than previously reported. NPR's Rob Stein has this story.
ROB STEIN, BYLINE: E-cigarettes work by heating up a liquid that contains nicotine. That makes a vapor that users inhale. It's called vaping. E-cigarettes are generally considered safer than tobacco cigarettes, but David Peyton of Portland State University and his colleagues decided to take a closer look at what's in that vapor.
DAVID PEYTON: We simulated vaping by drawing the vapor - the aerosol - into a syringe sort of simulating the lungs.
STEIN: To do a detailed chemical analysis of what might be hiding in the vapor. And they report what they found in this week's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
PEYTON: To our surprise, we found a form of formaldehyde in e-cigarette vapor.
STEIN: A form that might make it easier for formaldehyde to slip into someone's lungs. And they didn't just find a little formaldehyde, they found a lot.
PEYTON: We found this form of formaldehyde at significantly higher concentrations than even regular cigarettes - between five and 15 fold higher concentration of formaldehyde than in cigarettes.
STEIN: And formaldehyde can be nasty.
PEYTON: Long-term exposure is recognized as contributing to lung cancer and so we would like to minimize, to the extent one can, contact with formaldehyde, especially delicate tissues like lungs.
STEIN: For their part, companies that make e-cigarettes are dismissing the study. Gregory Conley of the American Vaping Association says the researchers only found formaldehyde when the e-cigarettes were cranked up really high.
GREGORY CONLEY: No real-life human is ever going to vape at that setting throughout the day because after a couple puffs, they'd be unable to puff anymore. They would take the vapor product and take a puff for one second and it would burn. Not burn like, a third-degree burn, but it would feel extremely unpleasant in your lungs.
STEIN: Because the vapor would be so hot. Conley compares it to over-cooking a steak.
CONLEY: I can take a steak and I can cook it on the grill for the next 18 hours and that steak will be absolutely packed full of carcinogens. But the steak will also be charcoal, so no one will eat it.
STEIN: Peyton, the researcher, acknowledges that he found no formaldehyde when the e-cigarettes were set low. But he says he thinks plenty of people are using the high settings.
PEYTON: As I walk around town and look at people using these electronic cigarette devices, it's not difficult to tell what sort of setting they're using. You can see how much of the aerosol they're blowing out. It's not small amounts. It's pretty clear to me that at least some of the users are using the high levels.
STEIN: Peyton hopes the government will limit the sale of these devices, especially to kids. The Food and Drug Administration is in the final stages of trying to decide how strictly the agency will regulate electronic cigarettes.
Rob Stein, NPR News.
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MONTAGNE: You're listening to MORNING EDITION from NPR News.
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Now a radical idea about changing the relationship between cities and water. We're really talking about the city as a sponge. It's part of the NPR Cities Project.
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UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: Becoming world-class city.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: More unified community.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: We have to make sure that our cities are safe.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: If other cities can do it, we can do it.
GREENE: For thousands of years, city engineers have tried to corral water - think aqueducts.
DAVID SEDLAK: That's really the core of modern water infrastructure, and it's the ancient idea that the Romans gave us.
GREENE: That's David Sedlak. He's author of the book "Water 4.0."
SEDLAK: Collecting water somewhere on the outskirts of the city, sending it with gravity into the city, and then when we're done with it, we put it back underground in a sewer and send it on its way.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
That's the way most cities are designed. You could hear the echoes of that ancient plumbing all around Los Angeles last month.
(SOUNDBITE OF FALLING RAIN)
MONTAGNE: Rain, precious rain - answered prayer amid an epic drought, just pouring off a roof, through a downspout and straight into the sewer.
GREENE: Now some urban designers want to change this. They say in this age of climate uncertainty and drought, a downpour should be captured - used for drinking water or for irrigation. But most of the time, it's banished to a river and on out to the ocean, which is where we find Amy Standen from member station KQED.
AMY STANDEN, BYLINE: If you were to follow a drop of rain from the sky and onto an LA sidewalk, eventually you'd end up here, at the mouth of the Los Angeles River. I'm putting air quotes around the word river here because in the 1940s, engineers turned the LA River into a narrow, concrete channel. Today, it's more like a 51-mile-long bathtub that empties out here, at the port of Long Beach.
STANDEN: Does any part of this to you look like a river?
STEVE APPLETON: Um...
STANDEN: Kind of, says my kayak guide Steve Appleton. Look at all these shorebirds dive-bombing for supper around us.
APPLETON: Those were pelicans - all those kerplunks.
STANDEN: But he says this is a river in name only. Really, it's a flood control channel, which is why we turn our kayaks around at a sign that specifically prohibits against anything that might be construed as recreational.
APPLETON: (Reading sign) Warning, danger, no swimming, diving, waterskiing, jet skiing, sail boarding or other water contact sports prohibited - LA County flood control channel north of Ocean Boulevard bridge.
STANDEN: In a rainstorm, all that runoff from the sewers could surge through the channel and right at us. Of course, this river was once dangerous to more than just kayakers. Before it was channelized, the LA River could flood disastrously. Entire towns were wiped out. In 1938, a flood killed more than a hundred people. With the river caged by concrete...
APPLETON: It stabilized this constant threat.
STANDEN: The city could develop right up to the river's edge, paving over the floodplain in the process. The problem today is the city needs that rain. It can't afford to just send it out into the ocean anymore. Almost 80 percent of California is an extreme drought. That's a technical term, by the way - just one not shy of exceptional drought. And so there's a call now to build cities like sponges, which brings us to Elmer Avenue, a working-class neighborhood, where Rick Martin is out on his morning constitutional.
RICK MARTIN: On a, you know, walking regimen here. I can't really stop.
STANDEN: Oh, can I walk with you for a minute?
MARTIN: Sure, sure. Go ahead.
STANDEN: Martin walks on Elmer Avenue because this is the most beautiful block in the neighborhood, thanks to a $3 million makeover with permeable driveways and snazzy, drought-tolerant landscaping.
MARTIN: I'd like all the blocks to look like this. But I can't imagine they would spend this kind of money for the whole city.
STANDEN: Hadley Arnold would love it if they did. She's my guide today and cofounder of the Arid Lands Institute, a nonprofit in Burbank dedicated to the decidedly non-ancient Roman idea that cities should, wherever possible, soak up every raindrop.
HADLEY ARNOLD: Most of our neighborhoods in Los Angeles - we are required to send some storm water off of our properties as fast as possible - get it into a storm drain, get it out to sea.
STANDEN: Treating it like waste?
ARNOLD: Treat it like waste. Exactly.
STANDEN: Elmer Avenue is an experimental block that soaks it up...
ARNOLD: To treat it as a precious resource.
STANDEN: Here's how it works. Along each sidewalk is what's called a bioswale, a sort of gully filled with drought-resistant plants. When it rains, the water collects and filters down into cisterns buried below the street.
ARNOLD: In an average rain-year, this block puts enough water for approximately 30 families for a year into the ground.
STANDEN: That's amazing.
ARNOLD: Yes it is.
STANDEN: Arnold's organization would like to scale this up. They've mapped the region to help developers find the best spots for water to percolate down. To Arnold, this is part of a grand urban design challenge. She points up at the peaked roofs that most houses on Elmer Avenue have. Look at those, she says. They're designed for snow and ice, not the desert. Roofs here should look different.
ARNOLD: Roofs that are like a wide mouth open to the sky, roofs that are like a cup or a bowl or an umbrella turned upside down.
STANDEN: To catch as much rain as possible. And plumbing should be smarter, she says. We shouldn't be flushing our toilets with water that we could drink.
ARNOLD: In the future, we will be using water multiple times, and we will probably have multiple grade waters.
STANDEN: As we leave Elmer Avenue, we imagine an entire city designed like this - like a sponge. What would William Mulholland have thought of that? Mulholland is the engineer born in 1855 who masterminded California's water system. And he's memorialized, appropriately, with a big Roman-style fountain. Hadley Arnold and I are the only ones here. Cars zip by. And today, the fountain happens to be turned off. It makes us wonder what the monuments of a much drier future might look like.
ARNOLD: The ace in our species' pocket is the ability to innovate. And I think the single biggest question in front of us right now is the rate at which we do it. Can we do it fast enough, given the urgency?
STANDEN: Standing in about eight inches of rather gunky water at the William Mulholland memorial fountain, this is Amy Standen for the NPR Cities Project.
GREENE: And you can follow the NPR Cities Project on Twitter @NPRcities. You can follow us @MorningEdition.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
There were some shocking images in Kenya earlier this week. Police there fired tear gas at elementary school kids. The kids were protesting the illegal seizure of their playground by a private developer. They were doing something ordinary Kenyans can rarely do - defend disappearing public spaces. Here's NPR's Gregory Warner.
GREGORY WARNER, BYLINE: It's known here as land-grabbing. A fence suddenly appears overnight around a parcel of government property. Those who protest are warded off, sometimes violently, by police. In time, a new high-rise or hotel appears, owned by, often, a politically-connected magnate. But this time the land in question was next to an elementary school used by the kids to play soccer, and the protesters were kids, as young as 8. They broke down the new fence separating their school from their playground, and that's when heavily armed police fired the tear gas.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILDREN: Yes.
WARNER: Tell me about it.
KEVIN: The tear gas was so bad. Our eyes were...
UNIDENTIFIED BOY #1: It was so painful. Our eyes were red.
WARNER: OK. And you were coughing.
CHILDREN: Yes.
WARNER: In full disclosure, I cannot be sure that 10-year-old Kevin Sande and these particular classmates of his at Langata Primary School were actually the kids that got tear gassed. In the disturbing photos from that day, it's hard to make out the faces on the green uniforms engulfed in white smoke. But the deeper question for Kenyans - besides how could police do this - was who were they doing it for? Who was trying to snatch the kids' playground? No one, not even the government, would say.
Nairobi is one of the fastest growing real estate markets in the world, driven by a growing Kenyan economy and an unbalanced one - all the good jobs are in the capital. But the registration of titles and deeds in this city is often murky, and the illegal transfer of public lands is something that ordinary Kenyans are usually powerless to prevent, except for this time.
RAHAB MWIKALI: I stopped and I didn't understand whether we are in Kenya or we are in Gaza Strip. And I said what could this be?
WARNER: Rahab Mwikali, a women's rights activist, came to the school to express sympathy, but this time the activists weren't alone. The day before, the president of Kenya condemned the tear gassing and suspended the senior officer in charge. The acting minister of the interior came to the school personally to apologize, and then came the bulldozers.
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WARNER: Standing in front of the bulldozer, in his shiny suit and very white tie, was the chief surveyor of the Kenyan Land Ministry, Cesare Mbaria. He told reporters the government was delineating the school's real boundary, and that includes the playground.
CESARE MBARIA: We need to put a proper wall for the school to ensure we secure the property.
WARNER: But why the bulldozers, just to build a wall? It turned out the kids were also getting a brand-new flattened soccer field.
CHILDREN: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED BOY #2: We get it and they want to repair it.
UNIDENTIFIED BOY #3: We are very happy.
BOY #2: We are very happy because we have now the ground they make now.
BOY #3: Now we can play now.
BOY #2: Yes.
WARNER: Now, this is not how these stories usually end. Land grabs are such a divisive issue in Kenya. The most controversial ones have sparked deadly ethnic riots and even acts of terrorism. But driving away from the school, in a different part of the city, I passed another prime piece of real estate - this one even larger - with a private developer's illegal fence around it. Here too were government bulldozers destroying the fence, reclaiming public land to a surprised and swelling crowd. It seemed that, at least for now, the school kids had won more than just their own playground. Gregory Warner, NPR News, Nairobi.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
We've been reporting about nonprofit hospitals that dock the pay of some of their poorest patients. Now the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee says hospitals could be breaking the law by suing those patients and seizing their wages. And he wants some answers. NPR's Chris Arnold reports.
CHRIS ARNOLD, BYLINE: NPR and ProPublica looked across six states, and in each we found nonprofit hospitals suing hundreds of their patients. One hospital in particular jumped out. It's called Heartland Regional Medical Center in St. Joseph, Missouri. Thousands of patients a year are getting their paychecks docked by the hospital and its debt collection arm.
KATHLEEN HERIE: They're greedy. I owe more in interest on those bills than I do the bill alone.
ARNOLD: That's Kathleen Herie. She and her husband Keith for years have had 10 and sometimes 25 percent of their paychecks seized by the hospital. Despite that they still owe more than $25,000 in medical bills, and the hospital's been charging them at 9 percent interest.
KEITH HERIE: It's like a never-never plan. You're never going to get rid of it, and you're never going to get ahead of it.
ARNOLD: And here's the thing, the Heries and other patients that we spoke to, based on their income, should have qualified for free medical care. That's based on the hospital's own charity care policy, but that didn't happen. We also documented that hundreds of patients with low-wage jobs at McDonald's, Walmart and elsewhere had their pay seized by Heartland Hospital.
SENATOR CHUCK GRASSLEY: Quite frankly, I'm astounded.
ARNOLD: That's Republican Senator Chuck Grassley who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee. It turns out Grassley, for more than a decade, has been working to make nonprofit hospitals more accountable for the huge tax breaks that they get. They don't pay federal income tax or local property tax.
GRASSLEY: Government felt that nonprofit status was legitimate if you earned it by taking care of people that couldn't provide for their own health care.
ARNOLD: Grassley worked on voluntary standards but he also authored language in the Affordable Care Act requiring hospitals to do more to provide charitable care. So when the senator saw our story about Heartland Hospital, which by the way is changing its name to Mosaic Life Care, he decided to get involved.
GRASSLEY: Under the ACA, a hospital has a responsibility to make a determination - can a person or a family pay, or can they not? And it seems like Mosaic turned that on its head. The law requires that they take the initiative. And it seems to me, they have not taken the initiative, and they have not abided by the law.
ARNOLD: As a result of our stories, the hospital's board is reviewing its practices. Senator Grassley has now sent a letter to the hospital saying he wants to be briefed on the results of that review by January 30. Grassley wrote that the hospital, quote, "may not be meeting the requirements to be a nonprofit." And Grassley hopes his letter sends a wider message to other nonprofit hospitals that might be being too aggressive collecting bills from patients who can't afford to pay.
GRASSLEY: Well, I think some hospitals, you hit them over the head with a two-by-four, and they still don't get the message.
ARNOLD: Grassley says the health care law may need to be strengthened to force nonprofit hospitals to offer financial assistance to patients who can't afford their medical bills.
GRASSLEY: If they don't get the message now, we'll have to work towards getting the ideal language in the legislation.
ARNOLD: A Mosaic Life Care spokesperson says the hospital will quickly respond to the senator's request and that the hospital's goal is to, quote, "do the right thing." Chris Arnold, NPR News.
MONTAGNE: This series is part of a collaboration with ProPublica reporter Paul Kiel. And you're listening to MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.
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And I'm David Greene.
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Researchers in Europe have managed to read from an ancient scroll that was buried when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D. NPR's Geoff Brumfiel reports this feat was all the more remarkable because the scroll was never opened.
GEOFF BRUMFIEL, BYLINE: When Vesuvius erupted, it filled a villa near Pompeii with gas and ash. The villa's library was stacked with papyrus scrolls, and they were preserved - sort of.
BRENT SEALES: Well, to be honest, being from Kentucky, they look like pieces of coal.
BRUMFIEL: Brent Seales works at the University of Kentucky. He's held some of these scrolls.
SEALES: You look at the end, and you can see the circular markings of how it's been rolled, but it looks more like, you know, the growth marks of a tree.
BRUMFIEL: Researchers want to unroll them, but opening these scrolls is more like peeling the flaky skin of an onion.
SEALES: When you try to pull one layer off, it just breaks away from the rest. And so you have 10 million fragments after you peeled it away in that manner.
BRUMFIEL: Of the roughly 1,800 scrolls unearthed, only 300 have survived efforts to read them. And that's why this latest finding is such a breakthrough. The researchers used a particle accelerator in France to bombard a rolled-up scroll with X-rays. These X-rays were so sensitive, they could detect changes in thickness where ink had been used to write letters. The team could make out the entire Greek alphabet inside a tightly wound scroll.
SEALES: Capturing those letters, you know, that's pretty amazing in itself.
BRUMFIEL: The work appears in the journal Nature Communications. The researchers can't read whole words yet, and that's where Brent Seales will come in. He's a computer scientist. He thinks he can make a program that can distinguish which letters belong to which layers so the scrolls can finally be deciphered.
SEALES: Yeah, I do believe that with this remarkable breakthrough, we're going to get there.
BRUMFIEL: It may take a little longer. But Seales thinks these 2,000-year-old scrolls are worth the wait. Geoff Brumfiel, NPR News.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Dead on arrival, that's pretty much been the universal Republican response to the proposals in President Obama's State of the Union address. They included middle-class tax cuts, free community college and paid sick leave. Now, the president knew what the reaction would be before he even delivered that speech. Now he's pitching his policies on the road, and as NPR White House correspondent Tamara Keith reports, he landed yesterday in an unlikely place.
TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Idaho. Deep-red Idaho. The last time President Obama visited the state was in 2008 to campaign for the Democratic nomination, which he won.
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PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Of course in the general election, I got whooped.
(LAUGHTER)
OBAMA: I got whooped twice in fact, but that's OK. I've got no hard feelings. In fact, that's exactly why I came back.
KEITH: He then recalled that speech he gave at the Democratic convention in 2004, the one that made him a household name.
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OBAMA: There is not a liberal America or a conservative America, but a United States of America.
(APPLAUSE)
KEITH: More than a decade later, that idea still gets applause, this time from the 6,000 people at the sport complex at Boise State University.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
OBAMA: And today I know it can seem like our politics are more divided than ever. In places like Idaho, the only blue turf is on your field.
KEITH: The University is famous for its blue, artificial turf football field. Obama told the crowd he would spend his last two years in office trying to get past the politics of red and blue. But then he defended his decision to use his state of the union address to push an aggressive new agenda unlikely to win GOP support.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
OBAMA: My job is to put forward what I think is best for America. The job of Congress then is to put forward alternative ideas, but they've got to be specific. They can't just be no.
KEITH: A spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner responded that Republicans are saying yes to, quote, "good, common sense jobs bills," and they'll soon be sitting on the president's desk. But one man's jobs bill is another man's unraveling of good policy. The White House has already issued several veto threats. And what about bridging the red and blue divide? It may be a bridge too far. Here are Republican Senators Roger Wicker and Johnny Isakson and Congressmen Adam Kinzinger and Trent Franks.
SENATOR ROGER WICKER: I think I heard that 10 years ago.
SENATOR JOHNNY ISAKSON: Most of the kumbaya stuff was just rhetoric.
REPRESENTATIVE ADAM KINZINGER: I think people are kind of looking at it as just a speech.
REPRESENTATIVE TRENT FRANKS: The president is living in complete denial.
KEITH: And if the kumbaya hadn't faded already, considered this announcement from House Speaker John Boehner.
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REPRESENTATIVE JOHN BOEHNER: I've invited the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, to address a joint session of Congress.
KEITH: About, he said, the threat that Iran poses to the Middle East and the world. This is a bit like putting salt in an open wound. The Obama administration's efforts to negotiate with Iran over its nuclear program are a conflict point between the president and many in Congress from both parties who want tougher sanctions on Iran. But the president says new sanctions could derail the nuclear talks, talks Israel's Netanyahu has criticized. And it is with this backdrop that Boehner extended his invitation.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BOEHNER: I did not consult with the White House. The Congress can make this decision on its own. I don't believe I'm poking anyone in the eye. There is a serious threat.
KEITH: Mid-flight on Air Force One, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Boehner's Netanyahu invite was a departure from protocol. Tamara Keith, NPR News, traveling with the president.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
And here's one short analysis of Obama's State of the Union speech; he gave Congress a list of ideas that will never pass. The president spoke up for his priorities. Republicans in Congress have theirs. He spoke of middle-class economics.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Middle-class economics means helping working families feel more secure in a world of constant change. That means helping folks afford child care, college, health care, a home, retirement. And my budget will address each of these issues, lowering the taxes of working families and putting thousands of dollars back into their pockets each year.
MONTAGNE: Let's get another conservative perspective on what the president proposed. David Frum, senior editor of The Atlantic, was among those listening to the president's address and sat down with our Steve Inskeep.
STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: Welcome to the program.
DAVID FRUM: Thank you.
INSKEEP: Good to have you back. Was the president's rhetoric in his proposals any different from any other politician who talks constantly about the middle class?
FRUM: It was very different. This is a much more aggressively progressive program than has been heard in American politics for a long time, including from President Obama himself. A lot more social spending - he calls it tax cuts because it's going to be routed through the tax code, but he's going to give people back much more money than they ever sent in in the first place, so it's spending. He's going to finance that with very aggressively redistributive taxes, or at least that's his proposal. This is a redistributive program; it's not a growth program. That's very different from what we've had for many, many years.
INSKEEP: I would think if he was sitting here, he might argue with you on that point and say, look, providing child care to someone helps her get into the workforce. There actually is some economic growth here.
FRUM: Maybe, but it would be a very indirect effect, very remote effect. And it's not the immediate purpose of the program. The immediate purpose is to move wealth from some people to others, and the president is very explicit about that. In fact, as I walked into the NPR lobby, NPR reported that. That was the headline - to boost equality, president offers new spending.
INSKEEP: Well, let's look at some of these specific proposals, and of course we don't know a lot of details at this point. We do know what the president has already done on health care, which he mentioned. He talked about helping people to get a home, helping people to afford college. He has specifically said he wants people to get two years free community college. Do any specific proposals make economic sense from your perspective?
FRUM: Well, I think the idea of making community college more affordable does make a lot of sense, and I think there's some other measures that might be helpful. I mean, we do need to move towards some system of mothers' allowances to make sure that women are able to participate more fully in the workforce by choosing their own health care.
But the president is financing this in a striking way. I mean, he is going to take away a lot of the existing benefits that benefit professional people, help them pay for their college bills. People earning in the $80,000 to $150,000 range, they will lose in order to benefit people who earn less than $80,000. And that ignites a debate not just between Democrats and Republicans, but even more within the Democratic Party. So much of this speech was an attempt to take away options from Hillary Clinton.
INSKEEP: What do you mean?
FRUM: Well, the Clinton administration of course is famously a business-minded Democratic administration. It invested a lot in education and things like that, but it was not interested in redistribution. Bill Clinton signed a capital gains tax cut, and almost all of the major elements of the financial deregulation, against which the president spoke last night, were signed into law by President Clinton, not by President George W. Bush. And President Obama must worry as he sees his Democratic predecessor's wife and political heir leading the Democratic field, does this mean the party is going back to Clintonism?
INSKEEP: So there's an argument among Democrats as you see it. There's also of course an argument with the Republican Party. We've heard President Obama say he's got his list of proposals. He believes the government can help people pull themselves up in different situations. Republicans have been profoundly skeptical of government's ability to affect the economic lives of individuals in any efficient way. Just because they're changing their rhetoric, are they actually changing that belief?
FRUM: I think we are seeing a slow change of thinking in the Republican Party. And there was a time when the thing we were supposed to discuss was the size of government. When Mitt Romney made his famous 47 percent remark that was not a gaffe in the sense of some crazy thought that came from nowhere.
INSKEEP: All kinds of conservatives were saying...
FRUM: Yeah. That was actually settled party doctrine. Paul Ryan gave a very considered and completely written-out-in-advance speech on that subject to the American Enterprise Institute the year before, warning we were come into point where the people who were net payers would be outnumbered by the people who were net beneficiaries.
I am thankful that that way of thinking has been jettisoned and that the Republican Party can see that the reason so many people are benefiting from government these days is partly because the population is aging and partly because we've had the greatest employment crisis since the 1930s and that the way to make people to less dependent on government is to have a more robust private sector in which people can earn their livings rather than have to invoice for them.
INSKEEP: So if the president takes this approach for the next couple of years, is he going to put Republicans in a difficult situation? Because Republicans want to be saying they recognize the problem with equality of opportunity; they want to bring people up; they want to focus on the poor. But they're going to be against the president's proposals for child care, the president's proposals for education, the president's proposals on health care, on and on.
FRUM: I don't think it's at all a difficult situation. I think it's a fruitful and promising situation and one of most exciting situations we've seen for a long time. The president has opened a debate on which Republicans could have a lot to say if they would energize themselves. They haven't been saying it. Now we are going to have this discussion, and it's going to bring out our best selves, our most generous selves. So we're going to have to talk about, how do we make schools work better? We're going to have to talk about how do we have an immigration policy that increases competition at the top of the labor market rather than at the bottom?
You know, the United States imports a lot of people to compete with construction workers. It imports very few people to compete with surgeons and CEOs. One of the things you might think if you look at the widening of the gap between the top and the bottom is - now we have a real surplus of unskilled labor and a real shortage of skilled labor, and maybe our immigration policy should be flipped upside-down to subject people at the top to the bracing competition that people at the bottom have experienced since 1970.
INSKEEP: David Frum of The Atlantic, always a pleasure.
FRUM: Nice to talk to you.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne. Police in Toledo, Ohio, tried to stop a car early yesterday morning. The vehicle sped away, leading to a brief pursuit that ended in a convenient location - the Toledo Correctional Institution. After circling the facility, the driver ran over one of those rows of metal spikes - oops. All four tires were punctured. The driver is facing resisting arrest as well as vandalism for ramming the gate of the prison parking lot. It's MORNING EDITION.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Once again, hostages in orange jumpsuits have appeared in a video from the Islamic State, or ISIS. This time the men being threatened with death are Japanese nationals. ISIS is demanding a $200 million ransom in exchange for their lives. That demand comes three days after Japan's prime minister pledged exactly that amount, $200 million, in non-military assistance to the U.S.-led coalition fighting ISIS. We wanted to know how this drama is playing out in Japan. For that, we turn to The Washington Post Tokyo bureau chief, Anna Fifield.
Good morning.
ANNA FIFIELD: Good morning, Renee.
MONTAGNE: Now, ISIS showed the hostages in a video and gave Japan 72 hours to ransom them, saying otherwise they would be killed. So, what is the Japanese government doing as far as you know before that deadline?
FIFIELD: Well, the government has said that it has been trying to reach the group that is holding these men and that it hasn't been able to reach them yet. But they have instead been talking to the Americans and to the U.K., two countries who have had nationals beheaded in a grisly fashion by this group. But interestingly, they also have been talking to the French and the Italian governments. Both of these had hostages taken by this group and then released reportedly after they paid ransoms for them. So that has sparked some speculation that maybe the Japanese government is considering paying some money to this group and that they may be trying to use this period to negotiate down the price tag from $200 million.
MONTAGNE: What then is the talk in Japan about whether the government should pay? Are people talking about that? Because just to say, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been quite aggressive on the international stage, something of a hawk. So, those two are a little bit in tension there?
FIFIELD: Right, they are. I mean, there's a wide range of opinion. Some people say that the government should be doing everything it can to get these men home. Some people are saying that he should rescind this offer of $200 million to countries that are fighting the Islamic State. But just in general, this whole situation comes at a very delicate time for Japan. Prime Minister Abe is trying to make Japan a stronger and more normal country, in his words. And he is trying to take off some of the post-war shackles that were imposed on Japan, including by spending more money on the military and allowing Japan's military to become more involved in international situations. So this is sparking a lot of debate in Japan. Some people are saying that it's because of Abe's very aggressive stance and his big vision for Japan, that Japan has got itself into a situation like this in the first place - that it's over there in the Middle East where it has, you know, no business being. But then on the other hand, some people are saying that they wanted to go and launch a rescue mission. Right now under the constitution, Japan can't do that. So conservatives are saying this is exactly why Japan needs to change.
MONTAGNE: Well, one thing though that's unusual about this is that even though France and Italy and some other countries are believed to have paid enormous ransoms to get hostages out and to save their lives, none of these countries admit that they are paying ransoms. Japan is in this unusual circumstance of being asked straightforwardly in public to come up with the money. Would that not compromise, certainly, the country's credibility or Abe's credibility as a hawk?
FIFIELD: In some respects, yes it would, I think. I mean, there would be no way of dodging this. So, Abe is in a very difficult situation there. He's prided himself on being very hawkish. But there would be a lot of criticism, I think, if he wasn't seen to be doing everything he could to try and get them back. At the same time, I should say that there's quite a lot of criticism in Japan of these two men. The people are saying that they got themselves into the situation and neither of them had any business being there. And there's some anger towards them.
MONTAGNE: Well, explain that a little bit. Tell us a little bit more about these two men being held.
FIFIELD: Right. So one of them is Mr. Goto, who is a freelance journalist, a cameraman, and had been filing footage back for Japanese television stations and he had been going back and forth to there. And on one of these trips he had met this other man, Mr. Yukawa, who seems to be a very troubled individual. He'd had a lot of problems in his life. He'd gone bankrupt, his wife had died, and he was on this kind of voyage of self-discovery in the Middle East and apparently had ambitions to become some kind of military contractor. So these two met up along the way, though they seem to have been taken at different times. Mr. Yukawa went missing in August and Mr. Goto, not until at least October.
MONTAGNE: Well, thank you very much for joining us.
FIFIELD: You're welcome, nice to be with you.
MONTAGNE: Anna Fifield is Tokyo bureau chief for The Washington Post.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
As much as President Obama rejects lame duck status, here is one reminder that his time in office is growing short - we're going to find out soon where his presidential library will be located. Chicago desperately wants the library, but it is no sure thing and there's a problem with one of the bids. NPR's Cheryl Corley has more.
CHERYL CORLEY, BYLINE: The University of Chicago, where the president and the first lady once worked, wants the Obama library to be located in one of two parks on Chicago's South Side. But the Chicago Park District owns that land and not the city. The foundation overseeing the competition says that's a problem. So Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who says he'd move heaven and earth to land the library, decided to step in.
(SOUNDBITE OF CITY COUNCIL MEETING)
MAYOR RAHM EMANUEL: This is a once-in-a-lifetime educational, cultural, but economic and job effect that would be unprecedented, and I will not let this opportunity slip through Chicago's fingers and allow New York to outdo us in getting the president's library.
CORLEY: Columbia University in New York City, where President Obama went to school, wants to locate the library on its campus in West Harlem. Yesterday at a Chicago City Council meeting, Mayor Emanuel offered an ordinance that calls for the Park District to transfer about 20 acres of land to the city, five to be used for the library, the rest, green space. The foundation isn't the only group though that's concerned about the Park District land. So are park preservationists. They think the University of Chicago should find land for an Obama library outside of the parks.
At City Hall, Chicago alderman Pat Dowell says there are provisions in the ordinance that address the concerns of the preservationists.
PAT DOWELL: The parkland that would be taken for the library will be replaced elsewhere, and that will be open space that's available for the community.
CORLEY: It will take a vote of the Park District Board and the Chicago City Council to seal the deal. Chicago alderman Will Burns, like Mayor Emanuel, says winning the Obama library is an economic opportunity that can't be missed.
WILL BURNS: I think people will want to come to his presidential library for years to come to learn about him, to learn about his legacy, to show their children. And I think it'll be a world class amenity on the South Side of Chicago.
CORLEY: The University of Illinois at Chicago hopes to locate the Obama library on the city's West Side. It resolved concerns the foundation had with its bid on its own. The University of Hawaii, also in the running, has an oceanfront site in Honolulu it hopes the Obamas will choose. A decision is expected to be made by the end of March.
Cheryl Corley, NPR News, Chicago.
(MUSIC)
GREENE: This is NPR News.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
This morning we're exploring the road to radicalization through the life of one man, Cherif Kouachi. He's one of the two brothers who attacked the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris. Their journey to that moment began more than a decade ago. The brothers began as small-time criminals and became violent jihadis. Theirs is a textbook case of radicalization, as we'll hear from NPR's Dina Temple-Raston. She traveled to France to track Cherif Kouachi's story. We begin in the Paris suburbs.
DINA TEMPLE-RASTON, BYLINE: To get to the neighborhood where the Kouachi brothers spent their teenage years, you need to ride the Metro 40 minutes to the far northeast of Paris, to the 19th arrondissement. This is one of the city's working-class neighborhoods, filled with Algerians and North and Central African immigrants. This is where Cherif Kouachi and his brother Said came almost 15 years ago. I went out to the 19th to meet Laila Fathi, a Muslim rights advocate in Paris.
Hi there. How are you?
LAILA FATHI: Good, and you?
TEMPLE-RASTON: Very well.
And we walked to the Buttes-Chaumont park. This is where years ago, according to local police, Cherif Kouachi and a dozen other men ran around the park, amateurs training for jihad. Fathi, who lives in the neighborhood, runs in the park all the time.
FATHI: Oh, my, God - maybe I ran next to them. (Laughter). Maybe I was running right next to them not knowing this. This is insane.
TEMPLE-RASTON: Buttes-Chaumont looks like France's answer to Central Park.
FATHI: You see there? There's a bridge, there's the river going around the cliff. You have a very nice view of Paris.
TEMPLE-RASTON: And from here, you can see the housing projects where the Kouachi brothers lived. The buildings are tall blocks with just slits for windows.
FATHI: We call them (speaking French), chicken boxes, because people just go there to - I mean, there's no park there, nothing.
TEMPLE-RASTON: People who knew the brothers say that even though they were born in France, they felt the prejudice of the newly-arrived. They were of Algerian descent. They were orphans.
FATHI: We keep on talking about the terrorists and the Kouachi brothers for what they did, but there's little light on who they were and where they came from.
TEMPLE-RASTON: Laila Fathi says the Kouachi brothers bounced from foster homes to housing projects to dead-end jobs, and that set a pattern.
FATHI: I'm not saying it to justify anything, but what I'm trying to get at is that before going into prison, they were not particularly radical. I mean, I cannot go in their head, but, they were just criminals with opinions.
TEMPLE-RASTON: Criminals with opinions. To this point, around 2003, Cherif Kouachi had been involved in petty crimes. He stole cars, he smoked pot, but he was about to enter the next phase of radicalization. The woman who knows this part of the story is Myriam Benraad. I met her in a small cafe in central Paris. She's a research fellow at Sciences Po. Her thesis was on a group of jihadis known as the Buttes-Chaumont Group, named after the park. The leader of the group was a janitor-turned-charismatic-imam. His name was Farid Benyettou.
MYRIAM BENRAAD: Farid took him to his place and started delivering courses, what he claimed was the knowledge of Islam and the Quran in French. And little by little, this led to planning to wage jihad.
TEMPLE-RASTON: He convinced the young men in the group, including Cherif Kouachi, that they needed to go to Iraq to fight the Americans.
BENRAAD: Their plan was to go to Syria under the cover of learning Arabic and studying Islam, with the idea that once in Syria, they would basically pass through the border and join the insurgency in Iraq.
TEMPLE-RASTON: Cherif Kouachi never made it to Iraq. He was arrested before he boarded his flight. Not long afterward, he found himself before a judge. That judge, Jean-Louis Bruguiere, spent 10 hours interviewing Kouachi - this would've been in 2005 - and he thought he was a petty jihadi and nothing to worry about.
JUDGE JEAN-LOUIS BRUGUIERE: At that time he was not a very high-profile jihadi. I remember though that he was very anti-Jewish, anti-Semitic.
TEMPLE-RASTON: The judge says in hindsight, Kouachi's decision to go to Iraq should've been a warning side.
BRUGUIERE: For the first time he engaged and was willing to go to Iraq, you know, to fight against the United States, the U.S. troops, by suicide operations. That was very new for us.
TEMPLE-RASTON: Cherif Kouachi was sent to prison outside Paris while he awaited trial. Several years ago, inmates from that very prison got a video camera into the facility and filmed just how dismal the conditions were. There were showers without nozzles, garbage strewn everywhere.
And in this clip, an inmate showing how prisoners in isolation were still able to speak to each other by passing notes tied to sheets that had been ripped into strips. They're known as yo-yo's.
(SOUNDBITE OF VIDEO)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Foreign language spoken).
TEMPLE-RASTON: "Are you ready?" the man in the video says. "Here it goes."
And he demonstrates how to pass a note through the bars. It's estimated that between 50 to 70 percent of the prison population in France is Muslim. And it was during his 20 months behind bars that Cherif Kouachi met another radical imam, an al-Qaida-linked jihadi named Djamel Beghal. He'd been convicted in 2001 of plotting to bomb the U.S. embassy in Paris. They met initially through those yo-yo communications. Sciences Po researcher Myriam Benraad picks up the story.
BENRAAD: Beghal was very influential on Cherif, further convincing him that jihad was the right way and that once out, he had to do something.
TEMPLE-RASTON: And that completed the second phase of Kouachi's radicalization. The first was his directionless life in the Paris suburbs, which allowed him to fall under the spell of a local imam. And then the second - his exposure to hard-core jihadis behind bars. So all the pieces for Kouachi's radicalization were in place by the time he was released from prison in 2008. His brother went to Yemen to train with al-Qaida's affiliate there in 2009. Officials say Cherif Kouachi went two years later. Then everything went quiet and French officials stopped watching them. Then last August the U.S. started bombing the so-called Islamic State in Iraq. Myriam Benraad said she believes that made Cherif Kouachi snap.
BENRAAD: I think the third phase is the re-engagement Iraq. Iraq was still something that he was feeling as a missed opportunity or something he hadn't achieved as planned.
TEMPLE-RASTON: So according to this theory, he decided to attack in France. And he took aim at the magazine offices of Charlie Hebdo.
BENRAAD: And they knew that by striking Charlie Hebdo, they would basically become famous and recognized by the whole jihadi arena.
TEMPLE-RASTON: And complete the radicalization that began more than a decade ago. Dina Temple-Raston, NPR News.
GREENE: And later today on All Things Considered, Dina will have more reporting on radicalization and specifically, the role of French prisons.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
The growth of radical Islam in Europe has led to a backlash against immigrants from the Muslim world. In Germany, anti-immigrant and anti-Islam protesters and their opponents have been holding rival demonstrations. The most recent were last night in Leipzig, where we find NPR's Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson.
(SOUNDBITE OF DEMONSTRATION)
SORAYA SARHADDI NELSON, BYLINE: Supporters of the anti-Islam group marched in downtown Leipzig chanting we are the people.
(SOUNDBITE OF DEMONSTRATION)
CROWD: (Chanting in German).
NELSON: It's a slogan they appropriated from a pro-democracy movement born here a quarter century ago. That movement ultimately brought down the communist East German government. But last night, it was the future of the anti-Islam group called Pegida that was in doubt.
Its leader, Lutz Bachmann, stepped down yesterday after a photo of him sporting a Hitler mustache went viral, as did his online comments disparaging refugees. Organizers of last night's rally said nothing about that or disagreements between their allied groups. Instead, the leaders of the Leipzig affiliate railed against those who call them Nazis and repeated claims that they aren't racist. They say they oppose what they believe are runaway immigration policies in Germany.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Speaking German).
NELSON: They also took turns complaining to the crowd about how thousands of supporters were prevented from joining the rally by anti-Pegida demonstrators and the German government.
(APPLAUSE)
NELSON: One of the speakers was anti-immigration activist and author Juergen Elsaesser. He accused Chancellor Angela Merkel and her ministers of hypocrisy.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JUERGEN ELSAESSER: (Speaking German).
NELSON: "I can't understand how they say we are exaggerating the dangers of Islam," he said, "and yet prevent us from demonstrating because of an Islamic terror threat."
(APPLAUSE)
NELSON: Elsaesser was referring to a Monday rally in Dresden that authorities canceled after an Arabic-language tweet threatened Pegida's former leader, Bachmann. Meanwhile, Bachmann apologized for his online comments referring to refugees as cattle and filthy. The 41-year-old butcher's son did not address the photo of his Hitler parody. A Pegida spokeswoman called it satire.
(SOUNDBITE OF DEMONSTRATION)
NELSON: But the 20,000 counter-protesters who turned out last night didn't find the anti-immigration movement funny. One of their organizers was city Councilwoman Juliane Nagel of Die Linke, or the Left Party.
JULIANE NAGEL: (Speaking German).
NELSON: She says their goal was to, without violence, keep their opponents from marching. But city officials put 4,000 police officers on the streets to keep the sides apart. Most of the demonstrators were peaceful, although authorities failed to stop vandals who damaged railroad property. That prevented a number of Pegida demonstrators from reaching the March. Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson, NPR News, Leipzig.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
We're going to learn now about what it means when America cuts its military - not about how many dollars are saved or spent but what defense cuts mean to communities. Right now, people living near Army installations are bracing for the worst. We're going to hear from two places - first, Fort Campbell. Here's Emily Siner from member station WPLN.
EMILY SINER, BYLINE: Fort Campbell is like a small city. It sits on the border of Tennessee and Kentucky and is home to the 101st Airborne. On a normal day, more than 30,000 people go to work there, some in uniform, some not. The Army already deactivated two brigades last year, and right now, people are on edge because the Army says it might cut the workforce in half.
NANCY COLE: It's hard for us to completely comprehend the fact that they're talking about cutting as many soldiers as they are.
SINER: Nancy Cole is a realtor on the Tennessee side. Her son is stationed at Fort Campbell.
COLE: Without Fort Campbell here, this place will become a ghost town.
SINER: Cole says the Army post and the community around it are intertwined. She's driving me around Clarksville, pointing out just how much the post means this place. She pulls up to the edge of a subdivision, full of two-story suburban homes.
COLE: You can knock on these doors, and I'm telling you, like, everybody here would have some type of a military connection.
(SOUNDBITE OF MARCHING BAND)
SINER: And those residents turned up at a listening session this week to protest possible cuts. Local leaders advertised the event held at Fort Campbell on billboards almost an hour away in Nashville. Nearly 2,000 people showed up. And the post had to turn away another 2,500 for lack of space.
(SOUNDBITE OF LISTENING SESSION)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: We asked if you have found a seat - so please be seated.
SINER: The lieutenant governor of Kentucky came. So did the governor of Tennessee, Bill Haslam, who said soldiers and veterans want to live in the area.
(SOUNDBITE OF LISTENING SESSION)
GOVERNOR BILL HASLAM: I said, so tell me - why have you all - everyone of you has ended up here. And they said, because of everywhere we lived, this place treated us better than anyone else.
SINER: But the big turnout won't necessarily convince the Army, which has to make tough choices as it tightens its budget. So residents are also making the case that Fort Campbell is a good deal for the Army. Jack Smith, a former captain, told Army officials they couldn't top Fort Campbell's aviation infrastructure or the mild weather, which allows soldiers to train almost year-round.
(SOUNDBITE OF LISTENING SESSION)
JACK SMITH: So my challenge is - find a better value for your training dollar. And I said before, my answer is I've done homework, and I know you can't.
SINER: The Army's holding these listening sessions all over the country since 30 installations could face cuts. Decisions are expected in late spring. For NPR News, I'm Emily Siner in Nashville.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Good morning. I'm David Greene. Well, here's one person who is not true to her name - Brooke Pancake. The 24-year-old pro golfer landed an endorsement from a sweet breakfast chain. No, not the International House of Pancakes; that would just make too much sense. She just inked a deal as the new face of Waffle House. When asked about details of her contract, Pancake could not say exactly how much Waffle House was paying her. But we can say we are pretty sure that she is bringing home the bacon. And you're listening to MORNING EDITION.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
California officials say a measles outbreak that started in Disneyland has sickened 59 people in California and eight more across Oregon, Washington, Utah, Colorado and Mexico. As NPR's Patti Neighmond reports, the outbreak is large compared to other years, and most of those who got sick were not vaccinated.
PATTI NEIGHMOND, BYLINE: In the year 2000, the U.S. was declared measles-free. That's because vaccine rates are so high that everyone, even those who don't vaccinate their children, generally benefit from mass immunity. But those unvaccinated children are still vulnerable. State health officials have not identified the individual who brought the virus to Disneyland, but Dr. William Schaffner, infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt Medical Center, says it was likely someone who lives outside the Western Hemisphere where the virus can be epidemic.
WILLIAM SCHAFFNER: This is the most communicable virus we know.
NEIGHMOND: It spreads easily through the air even before infected individuals get sick.
SCHAFFNER: It can float in the air in an enclosed space. And you leave - you're the spreader - and then a susceptible person can come in a half hour later, breathe the air that contains the virus and they can get sick. No other virus that we know spreads that readily.
NEIGHMOND: So places where crowds gather, like theme parks with long lines and closed rides and lots of hotels and restaurants, are ideal environments for the virus which causes fever, cough and a spotted body rash to spread. People who have gotten the two-dose vaccine are 99 percent protected, but others are susceptible - those with weakened immune systems and infants under the age of 1 before the first vaccine dose is given.
SCHAFFNER: And if infants acquire measles, then they are at high risk of developing the complications of middle ear infection and pneumonia and requiring hospitalization.
NEIGHMOND: Children whose parents are concerned about vaccine safety and don't immunize them are also at risk. There are no problematic side effects of the measles vaccine, and theories about links to autism have been thoroughly debunked.
At UCLA, Dr. Nina Shapiro, a pediatric ear, nose and throat surgeon, says parents can be vague about whether their child is fully vaccinated or not. Take this recent visit with a parent of a 9-week-old baby who had a severe cough.
NINA SHAPIRO: She has five older children at home, and I asked a very simple question which was, are the other children at home immunized? And she said, yes, yes, they're all fully up-to-date with their immunizations.
NEIGHMOND: When Shapiro called the pediatrician to follow up on the patient...
SHAPIRO: The pediatrician said that nobody in that house has had one immunization.
NEIGHMOND: Shapiro speculates parents who don't vaccinate their children may feel marginalized or embarrassed.
SHAPIRO: If a physician says, well, I assume your children are immunized, it's hard to say no.
NEIGHMOND: Shapiro suggests doctors approach the issue more tactfully by discussing risks of diseases that can be prevented with vaccines. State health officials say the number of people getting sick with measles as a result of the initial Disneyland exposure can be expected to rise. Patti Neighmond, NPR News. [POST-BROADCAST CORRECTION: We say the measles vaccine causes no problematic side effects. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, most children do not have any side effects from the shot. The side effects that do occur are usually very mild, such as a fever or rash. More serious side effects are rare. These may include high fever that could cause a seizure.]
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
And some news this morning from Europe. With its economy threatened with recession and deflation, the Eurozone has finally embarked on a stimulus program that's much like the U.S. Federal Reserve's quantitative easing. That program is credited with helping the United States boost its growth rate after the great recession. NPR's John Ydstie joins me to offer some of the details here. John, good morning.
JOHN YDSTIE, BYLINE: Morning, David.
GREENE: So what exactly was announced this morning?
YDSTIE: Well, as with the Fed's program, this one involves massive purchases of government and private bonds by central banks in the 19 countries that use the euro. Mario Draghi, head of the European Central Bank, said the purchases will amount to 60 billion euros a month and run until September of 2016, or until inflation reaches a more healthy level of around 2 percent.
GREENE: And for those of us who are not economists, can you just remind us how bond purchases are supposed to, you know, help and boost growth and inflation?
YDSTIE: Well, when central banks buy these bonds they actually create money that's injected into the financial system. And all that money should reduce interest rates and spur borrowing and economic activity, creating jobs and consumer demand. As consumers start buying more goods and services there's upward pressure on prices, which should help boost inflation back to healthier levels.
GREENE: And are people optimistic that this will work?
YDSTIE: Well, there had been some concern that it wouldn't be large enough to be effective, but the 60 billion euros a month and the length of the program through September of 2016 make it actually larger than expected. One problem is that interest rates in Europe are already very low, so there's a question about whether pushing them down further will really boost borrowing and growth. And Mario Draghi reiterated again this morning that more needs to be done by individual governments to boost growth.
GREENE: Well, John, if there was desperation here - I mean, the United States concluded a third round of this type of stimulus last October. Why is Europe coming to this so late?
YDSTIE: Well, largely because Germany had opposed it. It saw the path to growth as through balancing budgets and restructuring economies. That hasn't worked so well. Now, partly because Europe experienced deflation in December, those objections have been overcome.
GREENE: And, briefly, I mean, are we going to feel the effect of this new European program here in the United States?
YDSTIE: Yes, anticipation of this has made the dollar stronger against the euro, which could hurt some U.S. exporters. But it's also contributed to lower U.S. interest rates, which is positive, and, all in all, it should help the global economy.
GREENE: All right, that's NPR's John Ydstie talking to us about a new stimulus program announced in the Eurozone this morning. John, thanks.
YDSTIE: You're welcome.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Middle class economics - that's what President Obama named the economic approach he pitched in his State of the Union address this week. He asked Congress to help him make community college free and to cut taxes for the middle class. And he asked lawmakers to...
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Send me a bill that gives every worker in America the opportunity to earn seven days of paid sick leave. That's the right thing to do.
GREENE: Now, the business lobby objects to this idea, but some cities and states already mandate it and NPR's Yuki Noguchi reports on how that's going.
YUKI NOGUCHI, BYLINE: Even opponents of this seven day a year paid sick leave proposal agree work isn't something that can or should be done in sickness as well as in health.
LISA HORN: It's not that we think paid leave is a bad idea. In fact, we think employers should offer paid leave. But we just got to think about how we could encourage them to do it voluntarily rather than pursue rigid mandates.
NOGUCHI: Lisa Horn is a lobbyist with the Society for Human Resource Management. She says businesses would prefer flexibility. So whether it's sick time or vacation, workers can choose how to spend their leave. The affect, Horn says, of a federal paid sick leave rule would be that businesses will cut back on other benefits.
HORN: For all employers, regardless of size, they have a finite pool of resources that are dedicated to their total rewards package.
NOGUCHI: About 40 million mostly part-time or lower wage workers do not earn paid sick leave, but state and local laws are gaining ground since San Francisco mandated paid sick leave in 2006. Since then 15 more cities and three states have passed similar measures, including Louis Lista's home state of Connecticut in 2011. Lista owns the Pond House Cafe in Hartford, which employs fewer than 50 workers and doesn't fall under the state's new statute, but he has offered paid sick time for a decade.
LOUIS LISTA: I don't think we've seen a huge cost impact. I think it's helped us a lot with the retention rate.
NOGUCHI: Besides not wanting sick workers infecting food or their coworkers, he says competitors don't poach his people as easily. Chibuzo Njeze owns Spring View Pharmacy in Irvington, New Jersey, which also recently passed a bill. Njeze says he's offered the benefit for at least 16 years and many employees have stayed at least that long, which saves him both time and customers.
CHIBUZO NJEZE: In the pharmacy, customers are usually cantankerous. They are not happy to be there. They want to go home quickly, so if you have to keep training new technicians, that slows you down considerably.
NOGUCHI: This, says Ruth Milkman, is the typical experience. Milkman is a City University of New York sociologist who has studied both sick leave and family leave.
RUTH MILKMAN: With paid family leave, there was all the same kind of alarmist rhetoric about how this was going to be a disaster, especially for small business. Actually, in that study we found that the small businesses were more positive than the larger ones about the program.
NOGUCHI: Regardless, given the political divisions, the Republican-led Congress is highly unlikely to take up the issue. And on this point, both opponents and supporters of paid sick leave agree. But Dan Cantor says that's almost beside the point. Cantor is director of the Working Families Party, a political group that campaigns on progressive issues.
DAN CANTOR: The fight is at the state level. That's why the president putting his voice behind this is so valuable. It just raises the stature of the issue tremendously.
NOGUCHI: He says sick leave measures are gaining support in legislatures in Maryland, New Jersey and Oregon. Yuki Noguchi, NPR News, Washington.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
For someone who is blind, this can be the sound of sight.
(SOUNDBITE OF CLICKING)
GREENE: This is a technique called echolocation. It's used by an increasing number of people who are blind. They listen to how clicking sounds they make with their tongue bounce off the world around them and can determine from that a surprising amount about the world. It's a technique that was popularized by a man named Daniel Kish, who this weekend is the main subject of NPR's new show about human behavior, Invisibilia. Now Invisibilia co-host Lulu Miller has this story of a woman who encountered some unexpected complications when she tried to learn Daniel's technique.
LULU MILLER, BYLINE: Want to know a really great trick for figuring out how to click? Just do what Daniel Kish told Julee-anne Bell.
JULEE-ANNE BELL: Imagine licking peanut butter off the roof of your mouth.
MILLER: Oh.
JULEE-ANNE BELL: And as soon as I do that...
MILLER: Oh.
JULEE-ANNE BELL: ...I've got my click.
MILLER: That's pretty good.
JULEE-ANNE BELL: Thank you, peanut butter.
MILLER: Julee-anne Bell has been blind since birth and first heard about echolocation when she was 38 years old and the mother of two boys. Up until that point, she had spent her whole life getting around unfamiliar places on someone's arm.
JULEE-ANNE BELL: I really didn't feel that I had any other option.
MILLER: She said she felt too nervous with a cane or a guide dog.
JULEE-ANNE BELL: Physically, I would be, like, serious butterflies, like when you're about to go on stage or you're about to do something really scary. But when I'm holding onto someone's arm, it was like the world...
MILLER: Returned.
JULEE-ANNE BELL: Yeah.
MILLER: In fact, it was her husband's arm she fell in love with first. His arm literally reached out and rescued her when a careless boyfriend had left her alone and terrified one night in college.
JULEE-ANNE BELL: The feel of his arm is quite unique, in a sense. I'd never get it confused with anybody else, you know?
MILLER: And Thomas, her husband, loved having her on his arm, too.
THOMAS BELL: It was quite a nice feeling to have her on my arm. It sort of brought us closer together.
MILLER: Which would eventually make Daniel Kish's echolocation lessons...
DANIEL KISH: Hello.
MILLER: ...A problem.
Hi.
KISH: Hi.
MILLER: This is Daniel Kish, the aforementioned expert clicker who Julee-anne hired to give her echolocation lessons after she happened to hear about him on the TV one day. And once he had helped Julee-anne master her click...
(SOUNDBITE OF CLICKING)
MILLER: ...Daniel turned to a much more difficult thing to conquer - letting go of the arm.
JULEE-ANNE BELL: Yeah.
MILLER: He told her that when you hold on to the arm too much...
KISH: You have, in fact, failed to activate the neurology that is critical for freedom to occur.
MILLER: So he urged her to forgo the arm as much as possible.
T. BELL: I would find myself walking very close.
MILLER: Yeah.
T. BELL: I would sort of hover.
MILLER: Which was hard for Thomas.
DANIEL BELL: Yeah, you just want to grab her and be like no, go this way.
MILLER: And her two sons, Daniel and Joshua.
JOSHUA BELL: Yeah, it was daunting and scary.
T. BELL: It is. It's an emotional thing.
JULEE-ANNE BELL: I would invariably not take his arm. And it was just tense. He was tense. I was tense. Everybody was tense.
MILLER: But little by little, she got more comfortable with clicking, until finally she was so confident that she decided to do something that just months before would have been absolutely unthinkable - travel alone to California to go hiking with Daniel.
JULEE-ANNE BELL: Sunny summer day - summer day in Los Angeles, in the canyons of Los Angeles.
MILLER: So flash forward - it's Daniel and Julee-anne and a few of Daniel's friends hiking along a steep ravine...
JULEE-ANNE BELL: We're hiking along, la, la, la.
MILLER: ...When out of the blue...
KISH: We heard a scream and a slidey, soiley sound. And...
JULEE-ANNE BELL: And I went straight down the side of the cliff.
MILLER: At a certain point, she hits rock and starts rolling...
JULEE-ANNE BELL: Logrolling down the side...
MILLER: ...Really fast.
JULEE-ANNE BELL: I'm trying to grab on with anything I had. I lost my cane. I lost my hiking stick...
MILLER: And you have no idea how...
JULEE-ANNE BELL: ...Thinking, how is this going to end?
MILLER: Thankfully, a friend of Daniel's...
KISH: He jumped down.
MILLER: And helped her roll to a stop. And when she realized she was battered, bruised, but OK, her first thought was of her family.
JULEE-ANNE BELL: Yeah, the thought I had was they're going to be really mad.
MILLER: And they were...
T. BELL: I was...
MILLER: ...Especially Thomas.
T. BELL: ...Pretty shocked and concerned and, I guess, angry...
JULEE-ANNE BELL: And of course, my husband's first response is well, Daniel should have taken better care of you.
T. BELL: ...That Daniel might have put her in a dangerous situation.
JULEE-ANNE BELL: And I said, you know what? I'm a grown-up. It happens to all hikers, you know? People fall.
MILLER: It took some time. But eventually, Thomas got the message. The person he loved wanted to be let go. And he needed to let her.
T. BELL: Yeah, you really have to surrender because there's that physicality of guiding someone and the intimacy of that, so you lose that.
MILLER: Her boys spoke about this, too, how it was hard to give up being her guide.
D. BELL: You know, she'd always comment as I got older how my arm was - would get bigger and how I'd get taller. And I think I felt - trying to think - the way to phrase it - proud.
JULEE-ANNE BELL: And I didn't even realize at the time what I was doing by wrenching away. And that's one of the reasons why I tend to hold his arm now.
MILLER: The other reason is that in the last year, Thomas has become ill. It looks a little like MS. And so every day now, Julee-anne takes his arm, and they walk.
JULEE-ANNE BELL: And that is part of how we still connect.
We'll head down the street, I think, because there's a lot of space here.
He now uses a walking stick.
T. BELL: She often uses her cane, and we walk side-by-side.
(SOUNDBITE OF CLICKING)
MILLER: So it's the same gesture, but does it actually feel like a reversal?
JULEE-ANNE BELL: Yeah. Yeah.
T. BELL: Yeah, I guess metaphorically speaking, that's what's happening now. She is sort of taking the lead and sort of caring for me.
JULEE-ANNE BELL: Something here as well. (Clicking). I'm guessing it's another tree - tree-like or it could be a person. (Clicking).
GREENE: Julee-anne Bell now works for an organization founded by Daniel Kish. It's dedicated to teaching blind adults and children how to echolocate. You can hear more about that and the science behind echolocation on Invisibilia this weekend. It's NPR's new show about human behavior, co-hosted by Lulu Miller. You can hear the program on many public radio stations this weekend, and the podcast is available for download at npr.org and on iTunes.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Anti-abortion demonstrators descended on Capitol Hill yesterday for the annual March for Life. And inside the Capitol, House lawmakers voted to tighten federal restrictions on abortion. But the bill they passed was far weaker than what some members were hoping for. The Republican leadership shelved a bill that would've banned most abortions after 20 weeks. As NPR's Juana Summers reports, GOP leaders bowed to the wishes of Republican women and moderates.
JUANA SUMMERS, BYLINE: Tens of thousands of abortion opponents from around the country packed the National Mall on Thursday for the annual March for Life that coincides with the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision.
(SOUNDBITE OF MARCH FOR LIFE PROTEST)
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting) Hey, hey, ho, ho, Roe v. Wade has got to go.
SUMMERS: Just blocks away at the Capitol, Republicans were forced to scrap plans to vote on a bill that would ban most abortions 20 weeks after conception. Republican women and moderates drove the split over the legislation. They pushed for controversial language to be dropped from the 20-week abortion ban bill. It would have allowed an exception to the ban for rape victims, but only if they had reported to their attack to police. Some worried the bill could set the party back at exactly the moment it's looking to broaden its base ahead of 2016's elections. Congressman Charlie Dent is a moderate Republican who represents Pennsylvania.
REPRESENTATIVE CHARLIE DENT: When there are many Republican women in our conference who are pro-life saying that they're having difficulty with this bill, I think all members should listen to them.
SUMMERS: Discontent about the bill flared last week when North Carolina's Renee Ellmers voiced her concerns about the bill at the joint Republican retreat. Yet the bill continued to move toward a vote. Aides say that the House passed an identical 20-week abortion ban in 2013. But a lot can change in a year.
2014 gave Republicans a historic House majority. And with that majority came more diverse ideologies to grapple with. This was supposed to be a unifying moment for the party. But instead, House leaders changed course, holding a vote on a more limited bill that would permanently ban the use of federal money for nearly all abortions. Democrat Louise Slaughter of New York said Republicans seemed eager to pass any bill they could to chip away at women's rights.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
REPRESENTATIVE LOUISE SLAUGHTER: Can't pass this one? Grab another. Can't pass that one? Just take the next one. They're insistence on attacking women's health seemingly knows no bounds.
SUMMERS: Just three Democrats voted in favor of the bill the House passed Thursday to forbid the use of taxpayer funding for abortions. Five years ago, 64 Democrats voted for what's known as the Stupak Amendment, which would prevent women who receive federal insurance subsidies from buying abortion coverage. Supporters of the 20-week abortion ban said they are disappointed that the bill didn't get a vote. Arizona Republican Trent Franks is a leading sponsor of the bill.
REPRESENTATIVE TRENT FRANKS: The last time that this country debated or argued among ourselves an issue of this nature and magnitude, where the personhood of a certain group of people was denied in the courts, we shot ourselves to doll rags on the battlefields of the Civil War. At least today, we are talking amicably and trying to work it out.
SUMMERS: While Franks and other supporters say they are deeply committed to reviving it, others seem ready to move on so that the party can prove its ability to legislate on issues important to voters. Congressman Dent of Pennsylvania.
DENT: I would prefer that our party spend less time focusing on these very contentious social issues because that distracts us from broader economic messages where I think we have a much greater appeal to the larger public.
SUMMERS: House Republican leadership aides say they plan to take the 20-week abortion ban bill up again later this Congress. And Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says the Senate will vote on the ban this year, too, despite the president's threatened veto.
(SOUNDBITE OF MARCH FOR LIFE PROTEST)
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting) Hey, Obama, your mama chose life.
SUMMERS: Juana Summers, NPR News, Washington.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Now, in his state of the union speech this week, President Obama said the nation was emerging from crisis at home and abroad. And the crisis is certainly easing in Ohio, where Republican John Kasich is the governor.
GOVERNOR JOHN KASICH: It's somewhat of a rebirth. Our unemployment has been dropping. We are embracing manufacturing, particularly advanced manufacturing. But our great challenge is to work aggressively to bring the new industries into Ohio. We just received about a $1-billion investment in cloud computing.
GREENE: OK, so the Republican governor here and the Democratic president both see better times. They disagree on why the economy has improved. Kasich doesn't give the president much credit. And they are both thinking of what to do next. Kasich is receiving a lot of attention. He's the governor of a swing state. He's just won an overwhelming reelection. He's not ruling out a run for president. And when he spoke with our colleague Steve Inskeep, he was traveling to six states to promote a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.
STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: How do you think the new Republican Congress has done in its opening weeks at setting a national agenda?
KASICH: I think it's too early. To me, if you're going to be an effective politician of any party, you have to drive things with ideas. So in our state, we have privatized our economic development. We have expanded Medicaid so that we can help people who live in the shadows, who are mentally ill or drug-addicted or the working poor to get on their feet. We are trying to bring job training and real businesses into the welfare office so that people can get trained, get a job and not be dependent, you know, for a generation. We are reforming our K-12 education systems dramatically. We've got a lot of programs to involve people in their communities so they can begin to solve some of the basic problems that we see in our lives today.
And that's one of the big issues. Can Americans understand that patriotism means that you don't take a pass on dealing with problems where you live? Don't wait for the government, or don't wait for somebody else. So we are very much an idea- oriented administration. And I think ideas are what generate excitement. Are they risky? Do they aggravate some people? Sure. But, you know, if you're not doing that, you're not doing your job. So for the Republicans in Congress, they need to have a very strong agenda of ideas because that's what people want.
INSKEEP: Well, help me advance the debate then on economic opportunity, if you will, because the president this week laid out a number of ideas that he wants to support - greater access to child care, free community college, tax breaks for the middle class - that he argues would help people bring themselves up in the world. And I'm aware that a lot of Republicans, including some possible presidential contenders, are trying to focus in new ways on the idea of economic opportunity. But I don't have a clear sense of what strong Republican solutions to the problem of economic inequality...
KASICH: Yeah, sure.
INSKEEP: ...Or however you want to describe it would be. What's...
KASICH: Well, I...
INSKEEP: What's something that you would put out there?
KASICH: Well, I can't - I mean, we're doing it in Ohio. I couldn't - I'm not in Congress anymore. But for us, we have done a number of things to make sure that people are lifted. I created the first earned income tax credit program in the state of Ohio when I cut taxes for those on the top. I also provided tax breaks and tax incentives for people who are not making a lot of money to give them an incentive to move ahead.
We believe in lifelong education, so that if you get a job and you're in a position of where you don't have the training or the skills to move up, we're going to give those to you. We're going to have lifelong learning, and we're providing for that in some of our community colleges. And these are all things that are designed so that everybody feels they can be a part of this and everybody can get ahead.
INSKEEP: What would you say to people in the conservative movement who have said over the years that things like the earned income tax credit for people who are poor or job training or various other things that you listed are things to be against because it's free stuff? They're takers if they're getting...
KASICH: Yeah.
INSKEEP: ...If people are getting that kind of thing.
KASICH: Well, I would just ask them to read the very end of Matthew 25. As I recall - and I don't have the scripture in front of me - you know, why didn't you feed me when I was hungry? Why didn't you clothe me when I was naked? Did you help feed the hungry? Did you help clothe the poor?
I mean, one thing we should realize in the conservative movement is the faith community has always played a large role. If you study the Old Book or the New Book - it was brilliant they put the two of them together - it all talks about the need to lift people. And to me, that's conservatism. But it's a sin to continue to help people who need to learn how to help themselves. So we see this in a couple directions - job training - critical element. I've told the people in Washington what I'd like to do is I would like to be able to train people who are currently employed rather than to see them get unemployed so then we train them. I believe that training people in the jobs they have, our ability to raise wages for them - I mean, these are the things that will work. And I don't pay much attention to narrow ideologues.
INSKEEP: Governor, one other thing - as you traveled the other day, someone asked you about running for president and you said if the field is lacking, you might have to give some thought in that direction. Of course, you now have a field that includes, potentially, names like Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie of New Jersey, quite a few others. Is the field lacking?
KASICH: Well, I think it's too early to assess how they're all going to do. My only point was, you know - and I get asked this question all the time - I'm keeping my options open.
INSKEEP: What would be the case for a governor of Ohio to run for president?
KASICH: I'm not making a case as to why I'm going to run for president. I can only tell you - if you - I'm not answering your question.
INSKEEP: (Laughter) Governor John Kasich of Ohio. Thanks very much.
KASICH: Thank you.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Our next guest is no stranger to Washington, D.C. David Plouffe managed both of Barack Obama's presidential campaigns. Since leaving the White House, Plouffe has signed on with a new employer - the ride-sharing service Uber. This week, he is back in D.C. lobbying a group that is key to Uber's business - the U.S. Conference of Mayors.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Since launching five years ago, Uber has become a worldwide company worth $40 billion, operating from San Francisco to St. Petersburg. Yesterday, it released a Harvard study on its drivers. A third once drove limos or taxis, but most are driving part-time to supplement their incomes from other jobs. David Plouffe joined us for more. Good morning. Welcome to the program.
DAVID PLOUFFE: Good morning, Renee. Thank you so much for having me on.
MONTAGNE: Why don't we start with Uber's phenomenal growth due to innovations that offer enormous convenience? I mean, you summon Uber on your app. The car is there in just a few minutes. You watch its progress as it comes to you. But it has become quite controversial because it is a mostly unregulated challenge to established city taxi services. Now, you're here talking to mayors. What kinds of feedback or pushback are you getting?
PLOUFFE: Well, what's interesting, a year ago, there was no city or state in the U.S. who had passed modern ride-sharing regulations. And now, just in the last few months, 22 have. And as you know, we released a driver study yesterday that, I think, is part of the reason that so many cities are embracing Uber and services like it because it provides a flexible income opportunity for thousands of people. Here in Washington, there's over 11,000 active people driving on the Uber platform.
So I think what mayors are seeing is it's a lot of jobs. It is something that helps small businesses and the general economy. It's safe. It helps reduce DUIs and distracted driving. There's really nothing like it in our economy on this scale, so that's one of the reasons, I think, so many mayors and officials are starting to embrace it.
MONTAGNE: So are you saying that is your experience, how they actually are?
PLOUFFE: Oh, yeah. I think in the beginning it was, well, what is this? And now, I think people see OK, how can we make sure that we provide the opportunity for these drivers to make a living, an income to provide this service, which really improves the transportation system in a city? And I think in the beginning, it was viewed as a sort of zero-sum game between taxi and Uber and some of our competitors. And I think what you see is these things can coexist. What happens is the overall transportation pie grows. And so underserved areas are better served where it might have been hard to get a taxi. People who might not have wanted to just go out and hail a taxi down the street, they can just press a smartphone - like they do for everything else - they bank, they get news. And so I think it's an alternative in these cities, but an important one.
MONTAGNE: Let me just put something to you, though, on the question of insurance. Some insurance companies have already come out and said they won't cover a car that's being used for commercial ride-sharing, a private car. So no matter how much insurance Uber puts forward or promises, are these insurance companies going to honor this if something does happen to one of these people who is basically using their own car?
PLOUFFE: Well, you know, obviously, our drivers have personal insurance. Those that are doing Black Car have commercial. But we have a policy on top of that. I also think it's very interesting that two major insurers last week - Farmers and USAA - introduced ride-sharing-specific insurance policies in Colorado, and we'd expect to see that continue. The market's growing in such a large and profound way. I think you're going to continue to see new products out there in the insurance space that meet this need.
MONTAGNE: David Plouffe, I have one thing that fascinates me. You were deeply involved for many years in a White House and a president that favored regulations to protect workers, consumers, small businesses. Yet with Uber, you are representing something of the opposite - a business that seems to thrive on as little overt regulation as possible. How do you square those two positions?
PLOUFFE: Well, I think that is a complete misnomer because 22 different municipalities have passed ride-sharing regulations, and we are at the table there. We are in favor of smart modern regulations that enshrine in law things like background check standards, insurance standards, vehicle inspections. So we are hungry for that.
I will say, Renee, when I was at the White House, I was actively involved in something called a look-back, where we looked across the government - a look back at regulations. And, you know, we found dozens of them - more than that. That served no purpose. They did at the time, but they were outdated. So I think that's what you find is a lot of these transportation regulations do not serve the moment we're in. But we are actively working with regulators, with local officials, to find a way forward.
MONTAGNE: David Plouffe, thank you very much.
PLOUFFE: Thanks, Renee.
GREENE: That was Renee Montagne talking to David Plouffe, who is senior vice president for planning and strategy for the ride-sharing service Uber.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Catch a ride to the movies and maybe you'll be catching "Red Army." It is a new documentary not about the Soviet military. It is actually the story of one of the most dominant hockey teams in the history of the game, and Kenneth Turan has that review.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "RED ARMY")
SLAVA FETISOV: I was born in the Soviet Union. It was pretty rough - no running water, no toilets. And I got to fish only one day a week. It was Thursday. I was happy kid. I played game. I play hockey.
KENNETH TURAN, BYLINE: That's Slava Fetisov. He not only played hockey, as a defenseman he developed into one of the best the sport had ever seen. The engaging documentary "Red Army" uses his career to focus on what happened to individual lives as the USSR transformed into the Russia of today. Fetisov was 10 when he began his association with the Red Army team. The USSR channeled considerable funds into hockey and other sports like gymnastics because it was felt that athletic success would prove to the world the superiority of the Soviet system. One reason the Red Army team was such a powerhouse was the gifts of his coach, hockey visionary Anatoli Tarasov, an innovator who studied chess and ballet for concepts to pass on to his team. It was Tarasov who envisioned hockey as an art form in which creativity was essential for success. And his teams dazzled the world. However, Tarasov was replaced by a demanding martinet whose heartless coaching alienated the team.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "RED ARMY")
FETISOV: Andrei Khomutov's father was going to die. He came and said can you let me see my father? He said no, you have to get ready for the next game.
TURAN: Fetisov's situation as a star began to change with Glasnost and Perestroika and the gradual end of the Soviet era. The story of how this strong-willed player finally got out of Russia and into the NHL is a complex and fascinating one and director Gabe Polsky's treatment of this material is nothing if not entertaining. Any film involving ice hockey that features trained circus bears playing the game can't be accused of not having a sense of humor.
GREENE: Kenneth Turan reviews movies for The Los Angeles Times and for MORNING EDITION.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Announcing) This is "Jeopardy."
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
It's actually MORNING EDITION. I'm David Greene. But did you catch "Jeopardy" last night?
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "JEOPARDY")
TODD COLEMAN: National Public Radio for 800.
GREENE: We were the Daily Double and the contestant wagered all of his money.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "JEOPARDY")
ALEX TREBEK: Steve Inskeep and David Greene host this show in the a.m. in D.C. Renee Montagne, not far from us here in Culver City.
GREENE: Come on, Todd Coleman of River Falls, Wisconsin - you can do it.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "JEOPARDY")
COLEMAN: What is Marketplace?
TREBEK: Oh, no. What is Morning Edition.
GREENE: That's right, it's MORNING EDITION.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
One of the most striking images from the second Bush presidency was of George W. Bush at his ranch in Crawford holding hands with Saudi King Abdullah. It's a little unusual in Texas, but in Saudi Arabia it's a sign of great friendship. And for all the profound differences between the United States and the oil giant, Abdullah remained a close ally. He died yesterday. He was believed to be age 90. Let's remember Abdullah now with Thomas Lippman. He's former Middle East bureau chief of the Washington Post. His most recent book is "Saudi Arabia On The Edge: The Uncertain Future Of An American Ally." Mr. Lippman, good morning.
THOMAS LIPPMAN: Good morning, how are you?
GREENE: I'm well, thank you. So you met the king. You covered him for decades. Tell us what sort of man he was, and, really, what was his impact on the kingdom?
LIPPMAN: Well, you know, he was - he came across as an avuncular, kindly person, but he was also decisive and, in some ways, he could be quite vindictive. I mean, some of his political and strategic decisions were based on personal feelings including his antipathy to President Assad of Syria. And he led the kingdom the way a king does. That is to say, he was the boss, and at the end of the day, when decisions had to be made he made them. Sometimes not in accordance with what the United States or anybody else might have wanted, but according to his sense of what the best interests of Saudi Arabia were.
GREENE: Just remind us, if you can, where those interests between Saudi Arabia and the United States really lined up and where they just didn't.
LIPPMAN: Well, this was a very strange alliance and has been since the early days back in the 1940s because it's hard to imagine two countries more different than the United States and Saudi Arabia were. But they've always had, since the beginning right after World War II, common interests that made them dependent on each other. Saudi Arabia had oil. The United States had the weaponry and the technology that Saudi Arabia needed for its security. And, one way or another, these two countries always found each other necessary in terms of protecting the national interests, one or the other.
GREENE: So you say the king was really the boss. His half-brother, Crown Prince Salman, now becomes king. What do we know about him? What will this transition be like?
LIPPMAN: Well, you know, he was really not much known to the international community for most of his public life because he was the governor of Riyadh, which was an important position within Saudi Arabia, but very much a domestic position and had hardly any international dimension. Recently, of course, as crown prince he's been better known as representative of his country abroad. But what we know about him is that he derived from the same tradition as his half-brother Abdullah that in which the ruling family is the ruling family. They govern from the top down and his decision, at the end of the day, is final.
GREENE: You know, just before I let you go, I think about the king's legacy. A lot of people in the world critical of Saudi Arabia in terms of the rights of women, among other things - some saw him as a reformer. I mean, how do you see him? Is that the right title?
LIPPMAN: You know, his reputation as a reformer, I think, exceeds what actually happened. He did a lot of things that were presented as reforms, such as the creation of institutions like the National Dialogue, to allow a greater participation of people. But everything that he did reinforced rather than diminished the authority of the ruling family. His purpose was to ensure the people that the house of Saud was the best power or the best source of authority and stability for the kingdom and to ensure their loyalty.
GREENE: Thomas Lippman is the author of "Saudi Arabia On The Edge: The Uncertain Future Of An American Ally." Mr. Lippman, thanks so much for your time this morning.
LIPPMAN: My pleasure.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Whether it's health workers, soldiers or journalists, many outsiders have been called to serve in the Ebola hot zone. They calculated the risks, prepared, went to work. Well, this story's a little different. It's about a young American missionary who arrived just as the Ebola outbreak started in Guinea and decided to stick it out. From the capital, Conakry, NPR's Kevin Leahy has this profile.
KEVIN LEAHY, BYLINE: Luke Whitworth got to Guinea in December of 2013. His Christian faith had deepened throughout college. And he was eager to begin work as a Baptist missionary. Around the same time, Ebola got to Guinea.
LUKE WHITWORTH: At the very beginning, I'd never heard of it.
LEAHY: The virus was spreading through Guinea's forest region in the south. Whitworth had just begun a two-year stay.
WHITWORTH: You know, the death rate and what it actually did to the body, it was scary.
LEAHY: But today he's still here. The 23-year-old sits down with us in the Baptist mission's open-air lobby in Forecariah. It's a mining town about two hours east of the capital. He's clean-shaven with dark, wavy hair pushed to one side, wearing a T-shirt and shorts, socks, sandals with a disarming smile. Whitworth and the other Baptists teach English here. The locals speak Susu. The official language in Guinea is French. Luke Whitworth, from Pickens, South Carolina, speaks neither of those languages, and he's trying to spread the gospel in a predominantly Muslim country; all challenging enough, but Ebola? When the virus was identified, Whitworth was given the option of packing his bags and heading home, but he says he never really considered that.
WHITWORTH: The Lord has continually sustained me and given me the strength to do what he's called me to do, and we've actually had more doors open to us through this.
LEAHY: The Baptists began educating villagers about how to protect themselves against Ebola. Those messages don't always get a warm welcome, though. Earlier this month, two African Baptists from another mission were badly beaten by suspicious villagers not far away. So Whitworth doesn't push too hard. After all, Ebola is a frightening disease, he says. And, of course, it worries his parents and twin brother and friends back home, but they've been supportive of his decision to remain in the hot zone. And he says the arrival of Ebola in the United States helped them understand what was going on in Guinea.
WHITWORTH: Because it made the situation more real to them. And so it shined a light onto - to what I was having to deal with and what the people were having to deal with here.
LEAHY: Which, of course, didn't make them worry any less.
WHITWORTH: You know, my friend joked around. He said if you die over there I'm going to come kill you.
LEAHY: He says that with a smile, but whatever happens, Luke Whitworth believes it's part of a bigger plan.
WHITWORTH: I do enjoy it a lot. It is definitely challenging, but this is where the Lord has me and I'm happy here.
LEAHY: So he is staying the course here in Guinea where his mission and the Ebola epidemic began simultaneously. Kevin Leahy, NPR News, Conakry.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
We're going to spend the next few minutes exploring some difficult U.S. relationships abroad. In Havana yesterday, the most senior U.S. official to visit Cuba in almost 40 years held talks about re-establishing diplomatic ties. We'll hear how that went in just a moment.
But first, to Yemen. It is a crucial U.S. ally in the fight against al-Qaida and the country has now fallen into political chaos. Yemen's president resigned yesterday with an insurgent group known as the Houthis in control of the capital, Sanaa. We begin with Reuters correspondent Yara Bayoumy, who is in the capital. Yara, good morning.
YARA BAYOUMY: Hi, good morning, David.
GREENE: So President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi has now given up power. What events over the last 24 hours or so led to this?
BAYOUMY: In his resignation letter he said that he just felt that he couldn't carry out his responsibilities and duties anymore, ever since the Houthis rebels took over the capital. A lot of people weren't really expecting that President Hadi would resign - and his government, shortly before he did - because this came a day after he conceded to a lot of demands that the Houthis wanted and signed a deal with them. So things now are really quite tenuous because there's no state authority and the Houthis themselves have said they don't have any official position until they know whether or not President Hadi's resignation will be approved or rejected by Parliament. So things are really up in the air and moving quite fast.
GREENE: And what does it feel like in the capital right now, with so much uncertainty about who's in charge?
BAYOUMY: I've been going around the capital this morning. It's worth noting that the Houthis have called for a big rally this afternoon. They've been handing out flyers saying that they're going to be gathering because they're rejecting the division of Yemen, and also in protest against caricatures or the cartoons against the prophet. This is obviously in reference to French caricatures that have been in the news recently. So we're really looking out to see if there's a big turnout or not. I think people are really just in wait-and-see mode until more political developments become clearer.
GREENE: All right, Yara. Thanks very much.
BAYOUMY: Thank you, David.
GREENE: That's Yara Bayoumy, a Reuters correspondent who's been covering these developments in Yemen.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Now, let's remember how we got here and what the future might hold for this country that is key in the U.S. fight against terrorism. The Houthis, who as we just heard are running the capital, are from Yemen's north. They practice an offshoot of Shiite Islam called Zaidism and are believed to be supported by Iran. They're also believed to be working with a former president who Yemenis ousted in the Arab Spring. A lot of uncertainty here. Let's bring in another voice. It's Letta Tayler, she's a senior researcher on terrorism at Human Rights Watch and an expert on Yemen. We spoke to her about the Houthis.
LETTA TAYLER: They are a real wild card. They're a rebel group from northern Yemen. They have rapidly morphed into the armed faction of a full-fledged political movement. And I guess the most important thing for Americans to know is that part of this Houthis slogan is - God is great. But then, it continues - Death to America, death to Israel.
GREENE: Wow. Well, all of that makes it sound very disturbing. I mean, does that suggest that this country's moving into a very dangerous place?
TAYLER: Well, it could indeed be moving into a very dangerous place. But despite this slogan, the Houthis have not harmed Americans nor have they harmed Israel, it's AQAP.
GREENE: This is al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula...
TAYLER: Exactly, yes.
GREENE: ...Which has presence in Yemen, OK.
TAYLER: AQAP is the group in Yemen that is kidnapping - and in some cases killing - foreigners. It's not the Houthis.
GREENE: Well, this sounds like there's a lot of confusion when it comes to the politics going forward.
TAYLER: Indeed.
GREENE: Let's just say the Houthis are able to fully take over the country, is there any hope that the United States and the West could continue working with them to fight al-Qaida in this country, or does the U.S. fight against al-Qaida in Yemen fall apart?
TAYLER: Well, ironically, the one thing that we know the Houthis and the U.S. government have in common is that they both want to get rid of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. So it may not be entirely implausible to envision the Houthis and the United States joining in the fight against AQAP.
GREENE: There is something incredibly striking about this narrative - that you have a country that overthrows a leader during the Arab Spring, the United States is fighting terrorism there. The United States, in theory, might have to work with that former president who was ousted and a group that has called for death to America, if they want to continue the fight against terrorism.
TAYLER: This is often the way Yemen is. Yemen's politics and intrigue makes the word Byzantine seem simplistic.
GREENE: (Laughter).
TAYLER: We don't know if Yemen is really sliding into chaos or if it's just continuing to hover on the brink. But we do know that this is a serious challenge for the U.S. government.
GREENE: Combating terrorism in Yemen is so important to the United States. I wonder where that is on the priority list of the Yemeni people. Is that a top priority?
TAYLER: Combating terrorism is a priority for the Yemeni people, but it's not nearly as high on the priority list as ending government corruption, creating jobs, providing a good education system, ensuring that the country does not run out of water. So these are the concerns of Yemenis. Most Yemenis see AQAP as more of a problem of the U.S. government. And they see the U.S. government coming in not to help fix its own problems, but rather to take out elements of AQAP that may be a threat to the U.S. but not to resolve any of the deep problems of Yemen.
GREENE: You have traveled to this country a great deal. And I'm just thinking about the list of things we have talked about - violence, a power struggle, a Shiite rebel group that is fighting for power. Meanwhile, this is all taking place in the poorest country in the region. Sounds like a lot of terrible stuff. Does anything give you hope for the future of this country?
TAYLER: (Laughter). I think the thing that gives me the most hope is the Yemeni people. There are so many people filling the squares and the streets of Yemen who genuinely want change, who will continue to press their demands peacefully no matter how often they are tempted to try to shed blood. Let's not cross this country off just yet as a failed state.
GREENE: Letta Tayler, thanks so much for talking to us. We appreciate it.
TAYLER: Thanks you so much. It's been a pleasure.
GREENE: She's a senior researcher on counterterrorism and a Yemen expert for Human Rights Watch.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Talks between U.S. and Cuban diplomats in Havana ended cordially, according the both sides. The talks focused mostly on the logistics of converting diplomatic outposts in both countries into full-fledged embassies. But there was no avoiding the deep ideological differences that have long divided these two countries, as NPR's Carrie Kahn reports from Havana.
CARRIE KAHN, BYLINE: If there was one theme that came out of the historic summit here in Havana, it would be we agree to disagree. After all, it's hard to repair a relationship that's been so acrimonious for so long. Assistant Secretary of State Roberta Jacobson, the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit Cuba since the Carter administration, says undoubtedly the process will be challenging.
ROBERTA JACOBSON: To overcome more than 50 years of a relationship that was not based on confidence or trust.
KAHN: There are things we have to discuss first, says Jacobson, yet she declined to put any preconditions on opening embassies or assigning ambassadors.
JACOBSON: The establishment of diplomatic relations really does not have a checklist or a template that one has to follow every time.
KAHN: She did say Cuba's human rights record is of major concern to the U.S. Cuba's lead diplomat at the talks, Josefina Vidal, was not shy about specifying her country's concerns.
JOSEFINA VIDAL: We expressed that it would be difficult to explain that diplomatic relations have been resumed while Cuba is still unjustly listed as a state sponsor of international terrorism.
KAHN: President Obama ordered a review of the communist nation's placement on the list, which Cuba says has caused severe repercussions. Vidal says Cuba's Interests Section in Washington can't find a U.S. bank willing to work with it because of the designation. And she says the U.S. economic embargo against Cuba must be lifted. But Vidal, switching to Spanish, says Cuba will not waiver from its one-party rule or centrally planned economy in exchange for better treatment.
VIDAL: (Speaking Spanish).
KAHN: "No one should assume that in order to improve relations Cuba will renounce its principles," she says. Opponents of the communist regime aren't surprised by such hard-line comments. Jose Daniel Ferrer, who heads one of the largest dissident groups on the island, says while he's optimistic the warmer relations might bring about much-needed changes in Cuba, he's also a realist.
JOSE DANIEL FERRER: (Speaking Spanish).
KAHN: "I'm worried that economic interests could take priority and improvement of Cuba's human rights situation will be pushed aside," says the 44-year-old Ferrer. He says he's seen before how Cuban diplomats skillfully give away very little and receive much in return. On the streets of Havana, expectations of what warmer relations could bring ran high. On a busy street corner, as old model cars and busses belch black diesel exhaust, about a hundred people line up to get in the country's most famous ice cream parlor, Copellia.
TERESA SARABIA: (Speaking Spanish).
KAHN: "We are two countries that are so close, practically family," says Teresa Sarabia, who's in line with her husband. "We should be able to work things out and soon," she says. She wants to go visit her older brother in Orlando, Florida. She hasn't seen him in 30 years. Carrie Kahn, NPR News, Havana.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Greeks will be voting this Sunday in early parliamentary elections. An anti-bailout leftist party is leading in the polls. But this election could still end in a deadlock. That political uncertainty is worrying business owners who are weathering the worst economic crisis in recent memory. Joanna Kakissis has this report from Athens.
JOANNA KAKISSIS, BYLINE: In early 2013, just as the Greek government was claiming the economy was on the mend, Theodoros Tzokas left a job in the private sector to open his own business. It was a longtime dream. He modeled his cafe and bar after a prohibition-style speakeasy, a nod to his wife's great-grandfather, who ran one in the United States.
THEODOROS TZOKAS: Most of my friends told me that, OK, you have a great job in the private sector. Don't leave it because you're going to lose the money. You are crazy to put your money and open up a business in Athens in that period - stuff like that.
KAKISSIS: He wanted to believe that Greece had turned a corner. But despite talk of reforms, his business still took months to set up thanks to tons of red tape. And no banks are lending, so he was forced to seek credit from his own suppliers.
TZOKAS: With very careful management, we managed to make this place work without having any loss on our back. But it was quite hard.
KAKISSIS: He's actually lucky because he's breaking even. The number of businesses in Greece has dropped by 230,000 in the last five years. Now this weekend's elections have Tzokas on edge.
TZOKAS: Any change will worry us because we're walking on a rope now because we don't know how the markets will react with a new government in Greece.
KAKISSIS: It's unclear when that new government might be formed. It's a contest between Syriza, the leftist party that's leading in polls, and the conservative New Democracy, the main party in the current coalition government. Syriza opposes the multibillion-dollar bailout that's keeping Greece afloat. New Democracy claims that supporting Syriza would mean leaving the euro. Neither party offers much hope for business owners, says Giorgos Kavvathas, who leads the merchants' confederation.
GIORGOS KAVVATHAS: (Speaking Greek).
KAKISSIS: "New Democracy's only platform appears to be fear," he says, "and Syriza seems to have no clear plan to revive the economy." But Mathaios Ploumis is thinking about voting for Syriza anyway. He ran an ouzo restaurant on the island of Chios for 17 years. But austerity tripled his tax bill, slowed business and shut him down.
MATHAIOS PLOUMIS: (Speaking Greek).
KAKISSIS: "I've been unemployed for more than a year now because I was also crushed by a depression that seems to have taken down half the country," he says. "And it did not have to be this way." He says he hopes the next government will finally stand up for him and for Greece. For NPR News, I'm Joanna Kakissis in Athens.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Today, memories of a fallen Marine - in January, 2005, Lance Corporal Brian Parrello was part of a Marine unit patrolling near Iraq's Haditha Dam when he was killed by an IED. He was 19 years old. Brian was the only member of his platoon who did not make it home. In the 10 years since his death, Brian's platoon has grown close to his family. And one of those Marines, Sergeant Kevin Powell, interviewed Brian's mother, Shirley Parrello, for StoryCorps.
SHIRLEY PARRELLO: Tell me about the day Brian died.
SERGEANT KEVIN POWELL: We took fire that day. And we heard a large explosion, and we could feel it. I see that Brian's laying there with his shirt cut open. His rifle had been blown in half from the IED that he hit. I grabbed his hand, and he looked at me. And he wasn't yelling, and he wasn't upset. I can still picture him. And I picture him all the time. I spent a lot of time laying in bed, not being able to go to sleep, just thinking, what if I had done something differently? What could I have done better? I still have those thoughts.
PARRELLO: I wanted to make sure that none of you guys felt as if we blamed anybody for what happened and that I know you guys did the best you could. I'm just happy that he was with his other family, even though we couldn't be there with him. He was with people that loved him.
POWELL: I still think about that day every day. But our relationship has most certainly made it easier.
PARRELLO: The day that I met your platoon - do you remember?
POWELL: I couldn't wait to meet you and give you a hug. I remember running through my head what I'd say to you. I walked up to you, I gave you a hug, and I didn't say anything because I couldn't. And I'm sorry for that.
PARRELLO: You don't have to apologize because the hug was enough. As a little boy, when he would go to bed at night, I would tuck him in and give him a kiss and a hug. And then I'd walk out of the room, and he'd say, one more hug, mom. This would go on. I mean, it was like 10 times I'd have to go back and forth. And at the time you're thinking, come on, Brian, please. You know, it's late. And now I would give anything to have one more hug.
POWELL: The day that you lost Brian, you gained 20-something other sons. And we'll always be your sons.
PARRELLO: Yes, you were his family. So that means you're my family.
POWELL: Never ceases to amaze me in how strong you are - the things that we talk about that I can hardly talk about - and he was your son. And I want to tell you I know you're hurting. And I'll always be there for you.
PARRELLO: I know.
POWELL: For as long as I'm alive.
GREENE: That was former Marine Sergeant Kevin Powell with Shirley Parrello, whose son Brian was killed in Iraq 10 years ago this month. Powell and other members of Brian's platoon recently marked that anniversary with Brian's family in his hometown of West Milford, New Jersey. The story originally aired on October 25 of last year on Weekend Edition. It's archived at the Library of Congress. And you get the StoryCorps podcast at iTunes and at npr.org.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Good morning. I'm David Greene. You know, there are times when you probably shouldn't be on your phone. A professional sports game in which you're competing is probably one of them. But don't tell that to the Ukrainian soccer player who hid a phone in his shorts and used it on the field. One player from the other team said he would watch as his opponent got the phone out from time to time, called someone, conversed a little bit. The player was suspended, and he couldn't dial up a win. His team lost 2-to-1. It's MORNING EDITION.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Well, we know the two teams heading to the Super Bowl, and we'll be hearing plenty about them in the coming days - the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks. In fact, we'll even hear about the balls they're using - how much air is in them. Let's get to that in a minute. First, to some teams who are out of the running and trying desperately to get back in the mix next year. The New York Jets, Chicago Bears, Atlanta Falcons all fired their head coaches after the season. Buffalo's walked away. The San Francisco 49ers and Denver Broncos mutually parted ways with their coaches - whatever that means. Not to mention Oakland, which canned its head coach just a few weeks into the season. Now, this might seem like a good way to get a fresh start, but there is some new research casting doubt on whether it's the smartest move. And I spoke to NPR's Shankar Vedantam, a fellow football fan, to find out more.
SHANKAR VEDANTAM, BYLINE: I think if your hope is to win next year, David, the answer seems to be you should not change your head coach. I spoke with Michael Roach. He is an economist at Middle Tennessee State University. He's also a football fan. He follows the Tennessee Titans. He recently analyzed all football teams between 1995 and 2012, and he measured the effect of a change in head coach. And he finds, on average, that teams do worse after changing their head coach.
MICHAEL ROACH: After I wrote this paper, the Titans actually fired their coach, hired a new coach this past off-season. And then this year, they went 2 and 14, so they hired a new coach and promptly went in the tank and were tied for the worst record in the NFL.
GREENE: OK, a couple things it sounds like we should note there. One is that we're talking about the very next season. Teams, on average, don't do as well as they did the year before.
VEDANTAM: Or the next couple of years.
GREENE: Or the next couple of years. OK, so it is a few years. And also, we're talking about averages. I mean, it doesn't mean that this is a bad move for every team.
VEDANTAM: That's exactly right. So the team that I follow, the Philadelphia Eagles, did fairly well after a head coaching change a couple of years ago. But this is the temptation, David. Every team believes it has the unique power to spot the head coach who can turn things around. But, you know, very often head coaching changes are really based on not liking the guy that you have rather than a rational decision about whether there's somebody better to come in and take his place. Here's Roach again.
ROACH: You just say, OK, this guy that we've got wasn't able to get us over the finish line. We need somebody else. But somebody else is this idealized, you know, Vince Lombardi that's going to come in there. When in reality, it's probably not going to be someone who's that good, and it's likely going to involve disruption. It's going to affect team performance negatively next year.
GREENE: So he thinks they're focusing on whoever's in the job, and it's like, we got to get rid of this person, and just sort of assuming that oh, the world's a nice place. We're going to get someone like Vince Lombardi who comes in, of course, as a legendary coach of the Green Bay Packers, and it just doesn't always happen.
VEDANTAM: Exactly. In fact, regardless of whether you do well or poorly after firing a head coach, Roach's analysis finds you would probably have done even better if you had not changed coaches. Now, a lot of what's happening here, David, is known as reversion to the mean. All teams tend to get drawn toward the average. So if you are lousy one year, it's just statistically likely that you're going to be better the next year. This is something that fans often miss. When you change a head coach and you go from being a 2-14 team to an 8 and 8 team, what you don't know is if the same thing would have happened under the old coach as well.
GREENE: Well, let me ask you this - I mean, sometimes teams face enormous pressure from their fan base to make a change. And it might not be fair because, you know, a team might almost make the playoffs, some chance call at the end of the game keeps them out. That shapes the whole narrative. It's possible a coach could come back next year and get them right back in that position, but because the narrative is changed, you don't make playoffs, it's like there's this impulsive decision that happens.
VEDANTAM: Yes, and I know as a sports fan, David, I think that way as well, which is that something doesn't go well, your team loses, and you really have the desire to sort of throw the book at people and say, figure out some way to turn the ship around. And in many ways, this is the premise of fantasy football, you know, the idea that it's the people you have that's going to determine whether you win or lose. And the idea is that you have control over the process, that if you pick the right people, you're going to win.
GREENE: But Shankar, isn't there a moment where changing a coach might actually be the best idea? And it might not bring instant success. It's a long-term decision. You know, maybe it's a three or four-year building process, but for long-term success, it just makes sense.
VEDANTAM: I think that's right, David. So I mean, you can take Roach's argument to an extreme and say because changing head coaches is bad in the short term, you should never change a head coach. And of course that means that if you're stuck with a bad coach, you're going to have that bad coach indefinitely. I don't think that's what Roach is saying. He's saying something much closer to what you are saying, which is what owners need to tell their fans. This coaching change that I'm making is probably going to hurt in the short term, but it's the right decision for the long term. Now, I could be wrong, David, but that's not the kind of message that most sports fans want to hear.
GREENE: Here's a message I want to hear - Eagles-Steelers Super Bowl next year.
VEDANTAM: I'm with you, David.
GREENE: Yeah, let's do that. Shankar Vedantam, thanks a lot as always.
VEDANTAM: Thank you, David.
GREENE: Shankar Vedantam joins us regularly to talk about social science research. And you can follow him on Twitter, @hiddenbrain.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Even with the Super Bowl coming up, all the football talk this week wasn't about the game, it was about the ball.
(SOUNDBITE OF PRESS CONFERENCE)
BILL BELICHICK: In my entire coaching career, I have never talked to any player, staff member about football air pressure.
GREENE: OK, that's New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick. His team allegedly used footballs that weren't inflated to league standards last weekend. Lots of fans have wondered how the Patriots could have gotten away with this. And also, what sort of advantage this would give them anyway. NPR's Jacob Pinter looked for answers.
CATO JUNE: It's pig skin. It's nice and tough.
JACOB PINTER, BYLINE: That's former NFL Pro Bowler Cato June holding a football pumped up to 12 PSI, which is within the NFL's regulation pressure.
JUNE: You definitely have concentrate - those quarterbacks that throw the ball with a lot of velocity. And, you know, it can beat you up a bit if you allow it to.
PINTER: June puts that ball down and picks up another one. It's pumped with less pressure, and it has a little more give when he squeezes it.
JUNE: You'll notice it right away because it's softer, and it will fall into your hands, and you'll be able to grip the football whether you are throwing it or catching it.
PINTER: If the Patriots did cheat in their 45 to 7 thumping of the Indianapolis Colts, that's probably why they did it. An NFL investigation reportedly found that 11 of the 12 balls supplied by the Patriots in the first half were inflated below league standards. Longtime NFL referee Scott Green says that if those reports are true...
SCOTT GREEN: I'd say something was going on.
PINTER: The league does supply footballs used in kicking plays. But the ones used in the rest of the game and supplied by the teams. Each side provides a dozen. Referees check all of those balls right before kickoff. So assuming the system works, every ball in the game has the ref's stamp of approval. Plus, officials handle the footballs during the game. They can take them out of play if they get too muddy or a little ragged or if they are underinflated.
GREEN: He would probably be telling the ballboy to get this ball out of the game. We don't want to use this.
PINTER: Almost a decade ago, Cato June won a Super Bowl with the Colts, the team New England clobbered last week. He's skeptical the ball made that much of a difference.
JUNE: It did kind of (bleep) you off a bit because, like - really? Really? You guys are going to deflate the balls, and you're going to beat us like that?
PINTER: The NFL hasn't announced what, if any, punishment New England might face. And for now, the issue hasn't deflated Patriots fans' expectations for next week's Super Bowl. Jacob Pinter, NPR News.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
He is being called victim number 86. Alberto Nisman was the Argentine prosecutor investigating the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires which killed 85 people . Earlier this week, Nisman was found dead in his apartment - an apparent suicide. Nisman's death came the day before he was scheduled to testify that the country's most senior officials had worked to cover up who was behind that '94 bombing. Argentina's president was a subject in that investigation. And she says Nisman's death was no suicide. This story has become a sensation in Argentina. And for the latest, let's talk to journalist Jonathan Gilbert, who's in Buenos Aires. Jonathan, good morning.
JONATHAN GILBERT: Good morning.
GREENE: Remind us what happened in 1994 - this bombing of the Jewish community center.
GILBERT: It was the worst terrorist attack in Argentina. There was a Renault van loaded with explosives driven into the front of this community center in downtown Buenos Aires. And then ever since 1994, the investigation into the bombing has been foiled. And then in 2005, the former president appointed Nisman as prosecutor -sort of breathe life into the case. But his accusation's that eight Iranians masterminded the plot and that Hezbollah in Lebanon had carried out the plot. So it came to nowhere. The Iranians's refused to extradite their former officials. And they were never questioned.
GREENE: When Nisman started bringing up the suggestion of Iranian involvement, is that when government officials began to get more uncomfortable?
GILBERT: The big development here is not in 2005 when Nisman was appointed, but rather far more recently, just before he died when he filed a criminal complaint which pointed to a cover-up by government officials here - that the memorandum that they signed with Iran to get to the bottom of the attack was, in fact, just a veneer for a secret pact that was we'll exchange the immunity of those Iranian officials for oil imports.
GREENE: So the government is accused by Nisman of making some sort of deal with Iran to not charge these Iranian agents in return for oil exports. That's what you're saying here.
GILBERT: That's exactly right. Nisman filed this explosive report - 289 pages - last week.
GREENE: I mean, what do we know about how he died?
GILBERT: What we do know is that Mr. Nisman was lent a gun by an assistant at his office on the Saturday. And on the Sunday, he was found dead with this gun lying next to his body in the bathroom of his luxury apartment close to downtown Buenos Aires.
GREENE: Tell us a little bit about him - about Alberto Nisman - and how he came to investigate this bombing.
GILBERT: A longtime lawyer - essentially what you would call in the States a district attorney. And he was always an even-keeled guy. He was 51. He really took the investigation on. He'd been working on the case for 10 years. He sent messages to friends just before. He was about to talk to politicians in Congress on Monday, saying that this was essentially the defining moment of his career. That was on the Saturday, and then on the Sunday, he was found dead.
GREENE: Jonathan Gilbert, this is such a story of intrigue. I mean, how much are people in the country paying attention to this story as it unfolds?
GILBERT: The news has completely enveloped the country. Argentina's highly polarized. President Cristina Kirchner's supporters - some have stuck by her, some have not. And her opponents have really spoken out. There were thousands of people in the streets here and in other cities in Argentina, too, demanding a full investigation into his death. I've never seen a case that has more enveloped the country.
GREENE: We've been speaking to journalist Jonathan Gilbert in Buenos Aires. Jonathan, thanks very much
GILBERT: No problem.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
United Nations has 193 member states. A group of cooks that calls themselves United Noshes aims to re-create meals from all of them alphabetically as a series of dinner parties. Reporter Deena Prichep stopped by during the preparation of a recent meal to see what you can learn from cooking your way around the world.
DEENA PRICHEP, BYLINE: Jesse Friedman is pounding roasted eggplants with fish sauce in an enormous mortar and pestle.
JESSE FRIEDMAN: I'm going to throw the shallots in.
PRICHEP: Friedman is preparing recipes from Laos, a landlocked country in Southeast Asia. It's the 92nd country in the UN's roster, which means it's the 92nd United Noshes dinner. Friedman and his wife started the project three years ago. They've held dinners at their dining room table and large banquet halls with ingredients ranging from cashew juice to French charcuterie to fermented corn flour.
FRIEDMAN: One time I walked into an African market and the person behind the counter asked me so where do you do Peace Corps? (Laughter) It's the only time a non-African would come into their store.
PRICHEP: In addition to exploring the world's culinary diversity, Friedman was also happy to cook for people which doesn't always happen in New York City.
FRIEDMAN: And then from there, we decided to make it a fundraiser to fight hunger because we felt we had to acknowledge the fact that many people couldn't even enjoy the sorts of foods that we were celebrating from their own country.
PRICHEP: Diners give a small donation, and so far the project has raised over $20,000 - first for the U.N.'s world food program, and now for Mercy Corps, an international relief and development organization based in Friedman's new home of Portland, Oregon. In addition to learning about the culinary holdovers of colonialism and several dozen very distinct ways to cook rice, it's been a way for Friedman and his wife, Laura Hadden, to discover places with surprising food ways like the African islands of Comoros.
LAURA HADDEN: It was a lobster with a creme fraiche sauce - a vanilla creme fraiche sauce.
PRICHEP: Which, after months of fufu and collard greens, was a welcome change.
HADDEN: There's a lot of Central African countries that start with the letter C, so we were just kind of like OK, another one of these meals. And then we discovered this really great cuisine and learned a lot about the country through that cuisine.
PRICHEP: Of course, there have been meals that were less successful.
HADDEN: Which was the one we did with the yak butter?
FRIEDMAN: Bhutan.
HADDEN: Bhutan.
(LAUGHTER)
FRIEDMAN: The yak butter.
HADDEN: It was bad. It was bad.
FRIEDMAN: Butter soup, butter soup.
PRICHEP: About a dozen people are here sharing the meal from Laos. Some have taken part in other noshes, like the infamous Bhutan. But tonight's meal, with its aromatic sticky rice and piles of fresh herbs, is a bit more popular. Chris Tebben and her husband Cam are at their first nosh.
CHRIS TEBBEN: I especially liked the rice salad - I don't think that's the right name for it - with the sausage, which was really fantastic. He liked the Beerlao.
CAM TEBBEN: Yes, I like the Beerlao.
PRICHEP: But United Noshes' isn't just the money being raised. Friedman and Hadden say it's the connections that happen when you share a meal with the world - both at the table and beyond.
HADDEN: I had a cab driver in D.C. He's from Burkina Faso. And I said oh, I've had food from Burkina Faso. And he was like no, you haven't. And I was like yes, I have. So - and I told him the name of these little donuts, and he was like, oh my God, I used to sell those in the market with my mom when I was a kid.
PRICHEP: Uniting Noshes should be halfway through their project in a few weeks with a meal from Libya. For NPR News, I'm Deena Prichep in Portland, Oregon.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Peter Sokolow is considered an elder statesmen among klezmer musicians. He's one of the last living links to the musicians who brought klezmer to America from Eastern Europe. And now he's sharing his first-hand knowledge with a younger generation of musicians. Jon Kalish has this profile.
JON KALISH, BYLINE: During the 1980s when the traditional dance music of East European Jews known as klezmer was enjoying a revival, Pete Sokolow was called the youngest of the old guys.
PETE SOKOLOW: Now I'm the oldest old guy. Most of the old guys are gone. Pincus is gone, Dave, Sidney is gone - all my old friends. I miss them. I miss them.
KALISH: Sokolow started playing klezmer in the summer of 1958 with some of those older musicians at resorts in the Catskills. He was a college student then, and it was there that he met the great klezmer clarinetist Dave Tarras.
(SOUNDBITE OF DAVE TARRAS MUSIC)
KALISH: Sokolow also played with the three Epstein brothers, whose orchestra had been a force on the American klezmer scene since the 1930s.
SOKOLOW: In one sentence, Max Epstein changed my entire style. He said to me - kid, you play terrific clarinet, but you should understand that in this kind of music, the dreidlach - which are ornaments - are there to enhance the melody, not the other way around. In other words, all that (imitating clarinet playing) doesn't mean a thing. If you lose the melody, he said to me, you've got nothing.
(SOUNDBITE OF KLEZMER MUSIC)
KALISH: Sokolow began his career playing clarinet and saxophone but switched to piano, an instrument that was not originally associated with klezmer. His cramped Brooklyn living room is dominated by a Steinway grand from the late 1800s.
SOKOLOW: My father was a piano teacher. This great big Steinway here was his. He was a hell of a piano player, my old man. He played like Gershwin style. When I was 17 years old, I picked up one of my father's old 78s of Fats Waller. And I sat at this piano teaching myself how to play the Fats Waller style. And damned if I didn't do it.
(SOUNDBITE OF PIANO MUSIC)
KALISH: Pete Sokolow suffered a stroke less than a week before our interview.
SOKOLOW: After the stroke, the damage was done to my right hand and I'm going to have to take the therapy. To my standard, it's like I fell back all the way to the beginning. But once my strength is back a little bit in the hands, I'll be able to really do what I do. I was a heavyweight strike player. I was really good.
KALISH: He was.
(SOUNDBITE OF PIANO MUSIC)
KALISH: Sokolow played both jazz and Jewish music throughout his career. Interest in klezmer music started petering out after World War II, but made a comeback in the late 1970s. Before long, Sokolow found himself playing with younger musicians whose only previous exposure to the music was old 78s. Henry Sapoznik was a key player in what came to be called the klezmer revival. He says Sokolow taught those kids a lot.
HENRY SAPOZNIK: He's a tough bandleader, and he's a tough teacher. Should have T-shirts - I survived Pete Sokolow, and I'm a better musician for it. I'm a better person for it.
KALISH: For his part, Pete Sokolow says he was a little baffled by the klezmer revival.
SOKOLOW: All klezmer was was dance music. It was the shockaroo of my life at that point that anybody would want to sit to listen to a concert of dance music. But I should have know better because the swing era - Benny Goodman did that in Carnegie Hall - and there they were, sitting in Carnegie Hall, listening to dance music.
(Playing clarinet) Something like that (scatting).
KALISH: In 1985, Sokolow was on hand for the first KlezKamp - what become an annual gathering in the Catskills prompted by the klezmer revival. There he taught both clarinet and piano and helped bridge the generations.
SOKOLOW: My main job in the revival was as the go-between. I brought the old guys into the scene.
KALISH: One of them was the clarinetist Sid Beckerman, who knew tunes that Sokolow had never heard before. Soon the two were playing together and in groups with their younger peers.
(SOUNDBITE OF KLEZMER MUSIC)
KALISH: Sokolow is continuing that cross-generational collaboration with Tarras Band, named for klezmer legend Dave Tarras. The group is led by clarinetist Michael Winograd who studied with Sokolow at KlezKamp.
(SOUNDBITE OF KLEZMER MUSIC)
MICHAEL WINOGRAD: He's a musician's musician, you know? It's like he has unnatural ability. He has perfect harmonic sense, perfect melodic sense. He's a great arranger. When we're working on arrangements for Tarras Band and we're like what's this harmony? He knows it immediately - one of those minds that every once in a while you bump into, you know?
KALISH: Winograd is one of the younger musicians who's incorporating contemporary elements like rock into klezmer. And that's fine with Pete Sokolow. He's content being the oldest old guy.
SOKOLOW: I don't want to, you know, create new ground and become a totally new creative guy. I'm an old-time guy. I like to play music that's fun for me. I want to have fun doing this.
KALISH: And, he says, he still does. For NPR News, I'm Jon Kalish in New York.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Kohaku Uta Gassen - hope I said that correctly - is a singing competition that began in Japan shortly after World War II and eventually spread to the U.S., kind of like NBC's "The Voice" but with Japanese music. The competition almost completely disappeared from U.S. cities after the first generation of Japanese immigrants died, although it continues in a few places that have large Japanese populations. And today, Denver's tiny Japanese community holds its 40th singing contest. Colorado Public Radio's Chloe Veltman reports.
CHLOE VELTMAN, BYLINE: At the Buddhist temple in downtown Denver, Junko Higdon is rehearsing a traditional song for one of the Colorado Japanese community's biggest annual events.
JUNKO HIGDON: (Singing in Japanese).
VELTMAN: Higdon is one of 30 amateur singers competing in two teams at this year's Kohaku Uta Gassen, which means red and white singing battle.
HIGDON: White is for the men. Red is for the women. And whoever gets the most point out of the team wins a trophy.
VELTMAN: U.S. Kohaku contests, like the one in Denver, are spinoffs of a massive, annual, televised singing event in Japan.
SEIJI TANAKA: This is a very traditional Japanese event. You don’t have to leave Denver to enjoy one day Japanese culture.
VELTMAN: That's Seiji Tanaka. He chairs the Denver Kohaku organizing committee and has been involved with the event since it started 40 years ago. He says Japanese communities across the U.S. decided to replicate the original Kohaku as a way to entertain first-generation immigrants. When those people passed away around 20 years ago, most cities stopped producing it.
TANAKA: We tried to continue to entertain, but no audience, just like fishing when no fish there.
VELTMAN: Denver has a Japanese population of fewer than 3,000 people, but Tanaka felt an attachment to Kohaku, so he decided to change things up.
TANAKA: We start finding new fish in the new generation people.
VELTMAN: The events now includes Japanese rock music, like this...
(SOUNDBITE OF UNIDENTIFIED SONG)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: (Singing in Japanese).
VELTMAN: ...And English songs, like this one from the musical "Les Miserables."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BRING HIM HOME")
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: (Singing) Hear my prayer.
VELTMAN: The sing-off used to be the event's biggest draw. But it now includes things like traditional Japanese dancing and Taiko drumming. And it's also becoming more diverse.
Daniel Medina is a non-Japanese musician performing in a band at this year's Kohaku. He met Japanese lead singer Jin Kazama on Craigslist.
DANIEL MEDINA: All of my Japanese knowledge came from videogames of Final Fantasy, and then I just got lucky meeting Jin and getting to be surrounded by Japanese culture.
TANAKA: If you can't beat them, you have to join them.
VELTMAN: Denver Kohaku organizer Seiji Tanaka says the efforts to diversify are paying off. But he's also nostalgic for the old days.
TANAKA: Many older people cannot understand new pop-type music. But in order to keep going, we need to have that kind of balancing things.
VELTMAN: And in order to keep Denver's Kohaku Uta Gassen going, Tanaka, who's 76, is now on the hunt for a successor. For NPR News, I'm Chloe Veltman in Denver.
JAMIE CULLUM: (Singing) Well, don't you know, baby? Well, don't you know, baby? Now, don't you know, baby?
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
That's Jamie Cullum singing Ray Charles's "Don't You Know." It's just one of the many songs from the American songbook that's featured on Jamie Cullum's seventh album, "Interlude." Jamie Cullum is the United Kingdom's most successful contemporary jazz musician. He has collaborated with Sir Paul McCartney, Clint Eastwood and Pharrell Williams. We won't mention all the awards he's won. We can't. Time won't permit. And there was a time when you might've seen him performing at a clothing shop. Jamie Cullum joins us now in NPR's Studio One. Thanks so much for being with us.
CULLUM: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.
SIMON: Playing in a clothing shop?
CULLUM: Yeah, well, clothes is an interesting word to use. It was actually in the - kind of a ladies' undergarment part of a department store.
SIMON: That's an even more interesting...
CULLUM: Yes, it is, really, isn't it? It was a tough gig, that one. It was in Marks & Spencer's. You know Marks & Spencer's over here?
SIMON: Of course. Yes, yes, they're famous. There are Americans who will only get their underwear at Marks & Sparks, as it's called, because it's famously durable.
CULLUM: That's how I earned my living from the age of 15, really. I got my first kind of piano gig. Apart from being in bands, you know, I would be the piano player in various places. And one day, it was 75 pounds for playing all afternoon in the particular department of Marks & Spencer's.
SIMON: Let's hear a song, if we may.
CULLUM: OK. Why don't I play "Make Someone Happy" for you now?
SIMON: Wonderful.
CULLUM: (Singing) Make someone happy. Make just one someone happy. Make just one heart the heart you sing to. One smile that cheers you. One face that lights when it's near you. One girl you're everything to. Fame, if you win it, comes and goes in a minute. Where's the real stuff of life to cling to? Love is the answer. Someone to love is the answer. Once you've found her, build your world around her. Make someone happy. Make just one someone happy. And you will be happy, too. Fame, if you win it, comes and goes in a minute. Where's the real stuff of life to cling to? Love is the answer. Someone to love is the answer. Once you've found her, build your world around her. Make someone happy. Make just one someone happy. And you will be happy, too.
SIMON: Boy, that's absolutely beautiful.
CULLUM: Thank you.
SIMON: I have read interviews where you say you're not a particularly good pianist, or at least not a natural pianist.
CULLUM: No, no, I mean, I'm not. And I say that with no kind of false modesty. It's just that I've never studied. You know, I don't read music. I play completely by ear. So I just kind of learned. You know, I grew up playing in rock bands and discovered jazz a bit later. And my version of it is something that's still evolving. I'm more of a communicator than a technician.
SIMON: Can we hear another song?
CULLUM: Sure. I'll play something a bit more up for you. And you played a little bit at the top of the show. But Ray Charles is a real root into jazz for me. The kind of world he came from I know nothing about, but I can hear it through his music. And we can all sing about love and sex and what we need, and Ray Charles, I think, sang that better than anyone. And, you know, as a teenager, that resonated with me, and I think I'll spend the rest of my life trying to be Ray Charles.
(Singing) Well, don't you know, baby? Well, don't you know, baby? Little girl, little girl, don't you know? Please listen to me, baby. Girl, I'm in love with you so. Turn your lamp down low. Turn your lamp down low. Woo, turn your lamp down low. Turn your lamp down low. Come on now, now, baby. Girl, I'm in love with you so. Now, you know I've been away for such a long time. But now, baby, I can't get you off my mind. So come on now, baby. Come on, come on now, child. Oh, listen to me, baby. Love your daddy all night long. If you love me like I love you, we can do all the things that we used to do. Now, come on now, baby. Come on, come on now, child. Oh, listen to me, baby. Love your daddy all night long. Turn your lamp down low 'cause I love you so. Baby, baby, please come on. Baby, baby, please come on. Hear me talking with my baby. Love you, daddy, all night long.
SIMON: That's just terrific.
CULLUM: (Laughter) Thank you.
SIMON: What's it like to be a kid in rural England and hear Ray Charles?
CULLUM: I had pretty cool parents, so they had some good stuff on our record player at home. So I was exposed pretty early to Nina Simone. You know, Eric Clapton was a real, you know, was someone we listened to a lot in our house. My mom and dad never had the chance to be musicians for a job, but they used to play in bands. When my older brother was a little boy, my mom and dad would go out on the weekends to earn extra money in a covers band. My mom was playing bass guitar and singing. My dad was playing guitar, as well. My granddad was playing saxophone.
SIMON: Can I get you talk about your grandparents? They were very important to you.
CULLUM: On my mother's side, she was born in Burma. So my grandmother was Burmese. My grandfather - he was an orphan. And we think he was Indian. And on my father's side, he was born in Jerusalem. His mother escaped Nazi Germany at just the right time. But my grandfather on that side was English. He was from Kent.
SIMON: Can you draw a line between you as a performing artist now and things you learned from any of your grandparents, things you heard with them, any clues to life?
CULLUM: It's curiosity. And, actually, one thing I always say about getting to do this for a living is the gift isn't the talent. That is, you know, many people have talent. And the gift is actually being able to follow it up and make it your career. And, you know, I'm certainly the first generation in my family that's been able to just follow a dream that I had. You know, I liked - I used to sit around, listening to records, playing the guitar and working the stuff out on the piano. And I've had the great privilege to make that my life, so...
SIMON: I'm fascinated by the debt you owe your parents and grandparents when you say you're the first generation that's been able to follow a dream. That's a very thoughtful observation about generations.
CULLUM: Well, my parents grew up having to think about just how to be responsible and have more than their parents did and how to just make life work. They certainly wanted to steer my brother and I in the direction of something that was more, shall we say, stable. But when they saw that we had talent and desire in music, they were like, look, go for it. You know, my dad says I wouldn't choose to be in finance if I could do my life all over again. But it gave us a good life and we're having a good life and, you know, I admire that as well. And, you know, we're a lucky generation. I hope we don't mess it up. There's a lot of messy things around, that's for sure.
SIMON: You're going to play us out with another song.
CULLUM: Yeah. I'd love to, although, I'm always a bit frightened to play it because it's written by one of my truly great living heroes, and it's a Randy Newman song called "Losing You."
SIMON: Well, I really want to hear this. And I thank you for being with us. It's been terrific.
CULLUM: Thank you for having me.
SIMON: Stay tuned while Jamie Cullum plays us out. His latest album, "Interlude," will come out next week on January 27. He'll also be on tour in select cities in North America next month. Thanks so much.
CULLUM: Thank you for having me. It's been great to be here.
(Singing) Was a fool with my money and I lost every dime, sun stopped shining and it rained all the time. It did set me back some, but I made it through. But I'll never get over losing you. Do you know how much you mean to me? Should've told you...
SIMON: This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Thomas Maggs is a lonely little boy. When "Mr. Mac And Me," Esther Freud's new novel opens, Thomas is 13 years old. His brothers have died, his father, who runs a bar, drinks too much of his own stock and beats his son. Thomas dreams of sailing away.
The First World War descends on a small English seacoast town in Suffolk, where he lives. Tourists stop coming, blackout curtains go up, village boys enlist and go off to war while Thomas walks the beaches and marshes. It is there he meets a man in a black cape who puffs on a pipe and stares at the waves as if looking for clues.
Thomas thinks he must be a detective, but he turns out to be Charles Rennie Mackintosh, the architect and designer. He's got an accent. People in town wonder who he is and what he must be doing there.
The story of an unlikely friendship between a lonely little boy and an isolated artist in a world growing dark with suspicion set the heart of Esther Freud's new novel, "Mr. Mac And Me." Esther Freud, author of of "Hideous Kinky," "The Sea House" and other novels joins us from London. Thanks so much for being with us.
ESTHER FREUD: It's a pleasure.
SIMON: I guess all strangers do arouse suspicion, but why this one in particular?
FREUD: Well, I think what's interesting about this particular area of the coast is that it was actually - it always attracted a lot of visitors. When the war was declared, it was considered to be an extremely vulnerable and dangerous part of Britain, right opposite Flanders, that everybody who could leave left, but Mackintosh and his wife who are by now very impoverished - they didn't leave. And it was their staying, staying longer than they should have stayed, that aroused so much suspicion.
SIMON: Yeah. People would distrust a man who sketches?
FREUD: Well, I think that they might not have, but what I found when I did my research was that every day, every week, new posters went up outside the village hall, outside the post office, saying beware of loose talk. It took everybody's imagination and everyone's fear and tried to direct it somewhere. And I think in this environment, even somebody who sketched seemed suspicious.
SIMON: And let's understand, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, whose name can draw thousands to an exhibit in museums these days, was on the outs during this period of time.
FREUD: Yeah. I mean, I knew very little about Mackintosh when I started writing the book, but I did know that he'd spent time in this village, which is a village I know very well - a small area of Suffolk. And I, for many years, lived in a cottage that used to be the village pub. And what I discovered was that Mackintosh had stayed in the village pub, so I found myself kind of curious about this man - this extraordinary man who made such beautiful buildings and designs had actually stayed in the house that I was living in.
SIMON: You are the daughter of an artist?
FREUD: Yes.
SIMON: In addition being the great-granddaughter of - oh, heck, I don't even want to have to mention his name - but in any event, your father Lucian was the preeminent British artist of his time.
FREUD: Yes.
SIMON: How do you think that connects you to this story?
FREUD: It's interesting because I think when you have something for nothing, you forget that you have it at all. So I was very focused on all the things I didn't know - all the research about the First World War, all the research about Mackintosh, trying to create the story and the structure, and I wrote very easily and happily about Thomas's watchfulness as Mackintosh draws a series of flower pictures. But of course, I'd forgotten that I'd spent my own childhood doing something extremely similar. I didn't live with my father. He was that kind of an artist. The art was his - at the absolute center of his life. But I used to visit him in his studio and I used to look at his paintings. And, you know, I gave all that to Thomas, honestly, without thinking ever about it. And it was only when I'd finished the book that someone pointed out oh well, obviously, you have this great insight.
SIMON: And do you think they're right?
FREUD: They are right because some - once I thought about it, I realized, of course. You know, I really did watch those paintings grow. And I can even remember how old I was by looking at certain of my father's paintings and remembering oh yes, I was 10, and I remember he did that painting, and he was still doing it when I was 11. Then that seemed like the most ridiculous amount of time to spend on a painting. Once I was in my 40s I thought, God, he's finished that painting already. He's just like a demon.
SIMON: I - without giving anything away, there's a sequence in the the novel where Charles Rennie Mackintosh will end a note saying and MMYT.
FREUD: Yes. I think that that's permissible to discuss. One of the real insights I had into the man himself were a collection of his letters that he wrote to his wife over a period of about a month. And he signed those letters MMYT, and I realized that it meant My Margaret, Your Toshy. Toshy was his nickname. And I just thought that was so touching. And, in fact, the letters themselves are incredibly, incredibly romantic and touching and say beautiful things like it's a week now since you've been gone and one less I hope until you return.
SIMON: Boy it makes it hard for the rest of us who are sending text messages to our spouses, doesn't it, to...
FREUD: Yeah, you...
SIMON: ...Come up something that...
(LAUGHTER)
FREUD: ...You're late. It's a tragedy.
SIMON: Of course, I've - at one point in the novel, you see those initials and you begin to think oh my gosh, maybe he is passing secret signals somewhere to someone. And I guess in a sense he is. But it's the oldest secret of all, isn't it?
FREUD: Yeah. Well, I guess I was following - you know, you're reading a novel through Thomas's eyes, and Thomas isn't sure.
SIMON: Yeah.
SIMON: Thomas really wants this man to be his friend and his mentor. But is he somebody he should be suspicious of? You know, and so we go on that journey with Thomas. And I wasn't sure, you know, entirely what Thomas was really going to discover for himself.
SIMON: I don't ask this to be polemical. But you read this novel and you wonder, are we also living in a time where suspicion comes very naturally to us?
FREUD: Yes, I think so. I think, in a way, with the increased media, people are alerted endlessly to what they should be fearful of. And in a way, that's a real reflection of what happened with all the posters and the things in papers saying, you know, you must watch and listen and always be vigilant. And I think people feel like that now, and they're suspicious of people in a way that almost always is unnecessary.
SIMON: Esther Freud, her new novel "Mr. Mac And Me." Thanks so much for being with us.
FREUD: It's a real pleasure.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
In the State of the Union address this week, President Obama noted that crime in America is down.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Surely we can agree that it's a good thing that for the first time in 40 years, the crime rate and the incarceration rate have come down together.
SIMON: But Jill Leovy, an award-winning reporter for the Los Angeles Times, cites another statistic in a new book - about 40 percent of those Americans who are murdered each year are African-American males. And in the city of Los Angeles, where she covers crime, police have arrested a suspect in those killings less than 40 percent of the time over the last 30 years, mounting to what she calls impunity for the murder of black men. And her new book, "Ghettoside: A True Story Of Murder In America," uses the story of a single murder to trace the loss of life, the blight of lives and the failures of police and courts. Jill Leovy joins us from NPR West in Culver City, California. Thanks so much for being with us.
JILL LEOVY: Thank you.
SIMON: I want to begin by asking you about this young man, Bryant Tennelle, one night, 2007. He's 18, carrying a root beer, pushing his bicycle. What happened?
LEOVY: A car pulls up around the corner. A young black man jumps out of the car, raises his gun and shoots. Bryant is struck in the head and falls on the lawn.
SIMON: And his father is an LA police detective.
LEOVY: His father is a homicide detective in RHD, which is the elite homicide unit in the LAPD.
SIMON: Did this ultimately change the investigation or in fact did it become a bigger investigation because of this?
LEOVY: You know, the LAPD I think sensibly treated this case as any case, but there were some twists and turns when it went unsolved for a couple months. Frustrations mounted in the department. It was an extremely emotional case, as you might imagine, for all of Tennelle's colleagues. Eventually, the case is transferred from one detective to another. The lieutenant in charge asks around and says, who really do we have? Who really knows the street? Who really solves cases? And they come up with the name of John Skaggs, who had been quietly toiling in backwater in the Watts station house solving these kinds of crimes. He has expended great effort doing thankless work on cases that no one in the city noticed at all.
SIMON: What are some of the problems police have in getting witnesses to talk?
LEOVY: Well, everybody's terrified. I've had people clutch my clothes and beg me to not even write that there was anybody at the scene. I'm not even describing them. They just don't want anyone to know that there was somebody at the scene.
SIMON: I mean, let's be blunt about this. These are - you're talking about Americans who are as reluctant to talk about a crime that occurred in front of them as - an uneasy analogy here - somebody in Syria might be reluctant to talk about what Bashar al-Assad did because they're afraid they'll get harmed. But in this case, it's by a gang.
LEOVY: Well, listen. In the big years in LA, in the early '90s, young black men in their early 20s - who, by the way, are a disproportionate group among homicide witnesses because this is the milieu they're in - had a rate of death from homicide that was higher than those of American troops in Iraq in about 2005. So people talk about a war zone. It was higher than a combat death rate. They are terrified. They have concrete reason to be terrified. And then the justice system comes along and asks them to put themselves in possibly even more danger. What would you do?
SIMON: I was moved - and I don't know if that's a funny word or might be exactly the word I mean - to read about older gang members who say, I want to get out of this. This is no way to live.
LEOVY: It's very, very hard to pull yourself out. I had - when I did the homicide report, which is the blog I did of homicides, I had at least three young men that year who were killed for refusing to join their local gang. They took a moral stand, and they said, I won't join. I don't want to be a criminal. And they got killed for it.
SIMON: So are police departments short of resources to put into trying to solve these crimes or do they choose not to invest a lot of resources?
LEOVY: You know, I see the problem as lying outside police departments far more than inside police departments. It's easy to blame the police, but we have the police we deserve. We have the police we've asked to have. There is tremendous emphasis on prevention: We want to know about crime before it's going to happen; we want to target it and saturate areas with police officers. All this kind of fuzzy thinking that, on the street, doesn't feel like justice to the people who live in these neighborhoods. It translates to a system that falls short on catching killers, prosecuting them for the most serious crimes.
SIMON: I want to bring this back to Bryant Tennelle, and I also don't want to give away the end of the book. But Bryant Tennelle was gunned down by people who, as it turned out, weren't looking for him at all.
LEOVY: You know, the sheriff's homicide detectives - actually I have a term for this; it's so common - they call it profiling murder. And so what's happening is gang members will get in a car. They will go to the rival neighborhood to send a message, and they will just look for the easiest, most likely victim they can find - and probably going to be a young black man. And if he fits the part, that's good enough - and an astonishing number of victims. I did a count in 2008 of 300-some LA homicides of the gang-related homicides, and I think something like 40 percent of the victims were this sort of victim - noncombatant, not directly party to the quarrel that instigated the homicide, but ended up dead nonetheless.
SIMON: Jill Leovy of the Los Angeles Times. Her new book is "Ghettoside: A True Story Of Murder In America." Thanks so much for being with us.
LEOVY: Thank you.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon. The new king of Saudi Arabia has been named - Salman Abdulaziz. Salman Abdulaziz is 79 years old. He succeeds King Abdullah, who died this week at the age of 90. King Salman has already addressed nation on TV to reassure Saudi citizens regional powers and international oil markets. The U.S. and Saudi Arabia have an effective working relationship in many areas. And President Obama heads there next week to show his support for the new monarch. The U.S. buys a lot of Saudi oil. Saudi Arabia buys a lot of U.S. military hardware and shares his suspicion of Iran and some fundamentalist groups. But Saudi Arabia has also helped fuel some jihadist movements. And as NPR's Deborah Amos explains, the kingdom faces a number of problems as this royal transition takes place.
DEBORAH AMOS, BYLINE: Let's talk about beyond the borders. You know, when we heard about the death of King Abdullah, it competed in the headlines with the collapse of the government in Yemen. And that's on Saudi's southern border. This is a very fast-paced crisis. Yemen's president, who was an ally of Saudi Arabia as well as the United States, he was forced to step down by Houthi rebels. You also have al-Qaida in Yemen. You have Syria. You have Iraq. You have the potential of Iran rejoining the region. Analysts that I talked to say he picked a terrible time to die, not that anytime is a good time to die.
SIMON: And does the drop in oil prices mean that Saudi Arabia has a little less wherewithal to go into this?
AMOS: Well, let's talk about this domestically. Here's how it works. Saudi has a history of quelling dissent with money. They expand the roster of state jobs. They add unemployment benefits. There are salary increases, so if they're faced with deficits, that gets harder to do at the same time the kingdom has taken a very hard line on dissent.
Now, you know about this Saudi blogger, Raif Badawi. He was sentenced to jail time, a fine and 1,000 lashes for a website that's called Free Saudi Liberals. When the lashings began, the Saudis came under enormous pressure. And they've suspended it for the moment. So this is another crisis that is going to fall in the new king's lap.
SIMON: At the same time, there's been the appointment of a new second in line for the throne, a deputy crown prince - relatively young man, at the age of 55, Mohammed bin Nayef. He's the minister of the interior. I guess the first grandson to move into the ranks.
AMOS: Yeah, and this is a generational shift. Again, it was smooth. Mohammed bin Nayef - he got the top job at the Interior Ministry in 2012, and he's already the most powerful prince of his generation. He's been in charge of the Saudi drive against Islamists. He's credited with the successful campaign against al-Qaida in the kingdom in 2003. And most important for his image, he survived a suicide bomber, and it was a very close call. So he has shed blood in this campaign against Islamists.
SIMON: Deb, what's your feeling for what Saudis think they can expect from the transition?
AMOS: I think that the shift signals that a new generation is moving into power. There was no public infighting. And so that calmed some jitters at a time of unprecedented upheaval in the region that is right on Saudi's doorstep. Mohammed bin Nayef was educated in the U.S. He's well known in Washington. He's well liked. Considering his age and position, he can wield a lot of power. And finally, now that Abdullah has died, you may see a more decisive Saudi Arabia. The king had been sick for some time. Some people saw his decisions as erratic. Now the transition is over, and decisiveness is what it's going to take to deal with Syria, Iraq, Yemen - I can list them all. Each one of these crises would keep any monarch up all night.
SIMON: NPR's Deborah Amos. Thanks so much.
AMOS: Thank you.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Students in Washington, D.C., have access to one of the most comprehensive sexual assault survivor programs in the nation. Local groups as well as the mayor's office have assembled an array of services, from immediate care to long-term counseling, but connecting students to those services can be difficult. NPR's Eleanor Klibanoff reports.
ELEANOR KLIBANOFF, BYLINE: Maya Weinstein is a junior at the George Washington University.
MAYA WEINSTEIN: I was raped my freshman year here by someone that I knew.
KLIBANOFF: After going out with friends, Weinstein ran into an older student she knew from around campus. By the time she ended up in his bedroom, she says she was intoxicated to the point of passing out. It wasn't until she woke up the next morning that Weinstein realized she had been sexually assaulted. She had no idea where to turn.
WEINSTEIN: Do I go to student health? Do I walk into the ER or do I call 911? I've always had this image of, like, walking into the ER and, like, that's what you do. You show up there and you're all, like, disheveled and they do what they do.
KLIBANOFF: Instead she did nothing.
WEINSTEIN: I just stood in the shower and I cried.
KLIBANOFF: Weinstein didn't know she could've gotten a free ride to a designated hospital where she'd be met by a sexual assault counselor. There she could get a forensic exam from a trained nurse, like Jana Parrish, who stressed that the victim drives the whole process. For example...
JANA PARRISH: You do not have to report to the police to receive any kind of medical or forensic care. If you could fit that in somewhere that's great.
KLIBANOFF: Survivors also get emergency contraception, STD tests and any medication they need. Services are free and don't get linked to your medical records in any way. These offerings are getting more people to seek treatment.
HEATHER DEVORE: We have over a 10 percent increased reporting rate every single year since 2008, since we began this program.
KLIBANOFF: Heather DeVore, the medical director of the Sexual Assault Nurse Program, is cautiously optimistic.
DEVORE: It's still the tip of the iceberg that most people don't seek care and don't get any sort of help.
KLIBANOFF: Take Weinstein - a month into her freshman year, how was she to know that these services were available to her? That's what prompted Men Can Stop Rape and the Mayor's Office of Victim Services to put all this information into an easy-to-use app. It's called ASK, or Assault Services Knowledge. For college students specifically, there's UASK. The U stands for university and all nine schools in D.C. participate.
ARIELLA NECKRITZ: It centralizes, essentially, all of these different resources that survivors can access - everything from being able to get a free Uber ride to a hospital to finding out what your university offers.
KLIBANOFF: Ariella Neckritz, the president of an anti-sexual assault group at George Washington, says this app needs to be on every student's phone. It means no one will ever have to wonder what to do after they've been sexually assaulted. The app has been around for two years. I asked Rachel Friedman, the deputy director of Men Can Stop Rape, how successful ASK and UASK have been.
RACHEL FRIEDMAN: To date, we've had over 14,000 people access both UASK and ASK, which is really great.
KLIBANOFF: Fourteen-thousand downloads is progress, but it's nowhere close to reaching all of the almost 100,000 students at these nine schools. GW's Ariella Neckritz admits the universities could do a better job marketing the app. She thinks they may be hesitant to tell students - or, really, their parents - just how useful a sexual assault app is in this day and age, but part of the problem is the students themselves. Neckritz says lots of her peers are guilty of...
NECKRITZ: Trying to see sexual assault as an outside issue, as something that isn't directly affecting you, your life, your campus, your community.
KLIBANOFF: Even Maya Weinstein, a survivor of sexual assault, doesn't have the app on her phone. She says she knows the system well enough now, but her classmates are another matter.
WEINSTEIN: I don't know who would download the app. You don't want to think that you're ever going to need it, so why would you put it on your phone?
KLIBANOFF: It's that perception of invincibility that activists are up against and committed to overcome. Eleanor Klibanoff, NPR News, Washington.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The Obama administration proposes to expand federal subsidies for child care. Stopping in Kansas after his State of the Union speech, the president said that for most parents who work today, child care is more than a side issue.
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PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: This is a national economic priority for all us.
SIMON: The president noted that the U.S. used to provide national child care during World War II when his grandmother and other women worked in factories. And that made NPR's Jennifer Ludden curious about the program.
JENNIFER LUDDEN, BYLINE: If it seems hard to believe, you can see for yourself on YouTube.
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LUDDEN: This grainy newsreel is from Kaiser Shipyards in California. Smiling toddlers do puzzles, paint, listen to a woman play music.
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UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Future torch singers or choir members gathered around the piano, as tiny fists provided the percussion.
LUDDEN: All this plus lunch and snacks for 50 cents a day. Shipyard manager Edgar Kaiser boasted these centers shaped good citizens.
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EDGAR KAISER: That's a job of both industry and community to do.
LUDDEN: How did that happen? Actually, it started during the Great Depression.
CHRIS HERBST: It was really a source of fiscal stimulus, if you will.
LUDDEN: Chris Herbst of Arizona State University says the Works Project Administration first ran day cares. The idea was to employ teachers and also watch kids while their unemployed parents looked for jobs. When women replaced men in the workforce during World War II, the government funded a major expansion. It all ended with the war. Though, in the early in 1970s Congress approved another program of federally subsidized universal day care. Herbst says aides convinced President Nixon to veto it.
HERBST: Some critics of the program actually called this child care bill an entry into the Sovietization of America's children.
LUDDEN: He believes you can still see that wariness today. American child care, he says, is patch work, ad hoc, little regulated, and the cost falls heavily on families.
MELISSA HUDSON: It was just kind of shocking. There was no way we could pay.
LUDDEN: Melissa Hudson says she and her husband both had good government jobs when they moved to Maryland a few years ago, yet putting three children in day care seemed utterly out of reach. They gave up on the centers they liked in favor of in-home providers that charged less and still...
HUDSON: Over 80 percent of my paycheck went to child care and we just continued with the grind in hopes on promotions to balance things.
LUDDEN: Lynette Fraga of the advocacy group Child Care Aware of America says that kind of struggle is typical.
LYNETTE FRAGA: In 30 states actually and the District of Columbia, the cost for an infant in a center was higher than a year's tuition and fees at a four-year public college.
LUDDEN: Fraga is thrilled the president is making child care a higher priority and not just so more parents can work.
FRAGA: What we know - and the science is clear - is that the earliest years are critically important for children's healthy development and so we need to invest in the youngest years.
LUDDEN: Only a fraction of eligible children today get federal subsidies. The president's budget would nearly double that aid, spending $80 billion to serve a million more children over the next decade. It would also triple the current child care tax credit. Funding would come from higher taxes on the wealthy and financial institutions, a plan Republicans largely dismiss. Researcher Chris Herbst says there is another challenge.
HERBST: The problem is that the quality rendered in the U.S. child care market is low to mediocre on average.
LUDDEN: In fact, Herbst's research finds children in federally subsidized day care don't fare well on cognitive and behavior tests. The administration's plan has other measures to boost quality, but Herbst wonders whether the country's willing to spend what it would take for universal high-quality child care the way it once did briefly. Jennifer Ludden, NPR News, Washington.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon. The Obama administration's tense relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu got a bit more tense this week. The president asked Congress in his State of the Union address to allow more time for nuclear talks before imposing new sanctions on Iran. The Republican Congressional leadership responded by inviting Prime Minister Netanyahu, who is famously critical of those talks, to give his own address to Congress in early March. Now Israelis nervously watch this spat play out. NPR's Emily Harris reports from Jerusalem.
EMILY HARRIS, BYLINE: The March speech will be Netanyahu's third address to Congress.
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PRIME MINSTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, members of Congress...
HARRIS: Nineteen years ago, he spoke about peace with the Palestinians. Four years ago, the main topic was the same. But both times, he mentioned the threat from Iran, a real concern of Israelis.
MEIR JAVEDANFAR: Absolutely nobody in the State of Israel wants Iran to have a nuclear weapon for a nanosecond - nobody.
HARRIS: Meir Javedanfar teaches Iranian politics at Israel's Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya. He says if Netanyahu convinces Congress to vote on sanctions against Iran, that could undermine the ongoing U.S.-Iran negotiations, the same as if Iran's parliament voted to keep up the country's nuclear enrichment program even during negotiations, he says.
JAVEDANFAR: How would that be interpreted in the West? That would be taken as a sign of bad will. And this is the equivalent if we do this now.
HARRIS: And that could lead to a crisis, says Hebrew University's emeritus poli-sci professor Yaron Ezrahi.
YARON EZRAHI: The thing that worries me the most is that if due to the crisis in the negotiation between Iran and the United States a war will ensue, Netanyahu will being accused, Israel will be accused of sabotaging a process of coming to some kind of a settlement that will prevent the war.
HARRIS: Ezrahi also worries that the partisan way Netanyahu's speech was arranged could potentially split congressional support for Israel and possibly threaten the strong backing Israel has long had from both parties. But political analyst Eytan Gilboa of Israel’s Bar-Ilan University says a congressional speech on Iran could win Netanyahu votes back home, two weeks before a tight election.
EYTAN GILBOA: Many people here believe that Obama is leading to a bad agreement. The opposition here would like this election to focus on social and economic issues, where Netanyahu and his party are much more vulnerable.
HARRIS: Gilboa says how Netanyahu's speech plays in Israel will depend in part on how he's received in Washington. Emily Harris, NPR News, Jerusalem.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
(Imitating Ernie Banks) It's a beautiful day for a radio show. Let's do two today.
I make that page here on NPR's public address system every Saturday just before our show begins. It's an admiring imitation of Ernie Banks, the Chicago Cubs Hall of Fame baseball player who died last night at the age of 83. Ernie used to say, especially in the long years of hot summers - including this last one when the Cubs were stuck in last place - it's a beautiful day for a ballgame. Let's play two today. It became his signature line. People on the street would ask for it the way kids at a concert call out for Bruce Springsteen to sing "Born In The U.S.A." And Ernie would oblige. Let's play two, let's play two. It was a phrase his used to remind himself and other players that whatever their complaints, they got to play a game for a living and hear the cheers of strangers. It was a reminder to all of us to cherish life and the chance to have work that gives enjoyment to others.
Ernie Banks had to hang his uniform on a nail when he began to play ball with the Kansas City Monarchs of the old Negro Leagues in 1950. In 2013, the president of the United States, an African-American man from his hometown, hung the Presidential Medal of Freedom around Ernie Banks's neck. Leo Durocher, the old player and manager who'd famously groused nice guys finish last, and was more noted for epithets than compliments, said Banks is the one nice guy who finished first, but he had the talent to go with it. It was that talent - the almost feline-slender wrist that could snap a baseball bat like a whip - and his life-long stats that got him into the Hall of Fame.
Ernie Banks hit 512 home runs. He was twice the Most Valuable Player in the National League. But over the years of playing with a team that became best-known as a punchline for losing, it was another stat by which he became known - no man ever played more games without ever getting into a championship game. I got to interview Ernie Banks a few times over the years - as a young reporter, for a couple of books and on this show. He was unfailingly gracious, but he also plainly enjoyed being Ernie Banks for people. He enjoyed seeing the smiles he could bring to children's faces, and the way he could make middle-aged people light up like children when they saw him. Ernie Banks was a big star, but he was also baseball's sunshine.
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ERNIE BANKS: (Singing) Hey, hey, holy mackerel. No doubt about it the Cubs are on their way. Hey, hey, hey, come on out.
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EDDIE VEDDER: (Singing) And here's to the men and the legends we've known, teaching us faith and giving us hope. United we stand and united we'll fall down to our knees the day we win it all.
SIMON: Eddie Vedder - you're listening to NPR News.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
President Obama arrives in New Delhi tomorrow. He's expected to discuss a broad range of issues, including national security and climate change with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The president is cutting his trip short to fly to Saudi Arabia. He will also pay his respects to the family of King Abdullah, who, of course, died this week, but first, President Obama will be the guest of honor at India's Republic Day parade. He is the first U.S. president to be invited to that event. And NPR's Julie McCarthy tells us that his visit can note a new hope for the relationship between India and the U.S.
JULIE MCCARTHY, BYLINE: This was after years of drift. There is this new energy, this new vigor in this relationship, and there's also enormous excitement, Scott, over the president and the first lady returning to India. The president has this coveted seat at this dazzling display of Indian military hardware during Monday's Republic Day parade, which is actually meant to commemorate the Constitution. And he'll see in a flyover this huge U.S.-made Super Hercules lifter, a testament to the close defense ties between India and the U.S.
SIMON: And is the president arriving at a time of enthusiasm in India?
MCCARTHY: Oh, he certainly is. They're here at a very heavy time. The stock market is on this bull run. It's hitting record highs. The IMF predicts that India's growth will actually outpace China's by 2016. So there's this energy here and there's this hope for improving the lives of 1.2 billion people, but that requires a lot of change. And that's what the president won't necessarily see - the 300 million Indians who don't have electricity, the 600 million who don't have access to clean toilets.
SIMON: Speaking of energy, should we expect anything concrete out of these meetings?
MCCARTHY: Well, the U.S. wants to make some headway on renewable energy. And that could bring light to millions of these households that are now in darkness. It wants progress on climate change. India produces 5 percent of the world's carbon emissions and if it follows the same model of development as China, it could be disastrous for India and the region in terms of pollution. But the bottom line here really is that there's no big, new idea in the offing for U.S.-India relations. Rather, what's evolving here is an all-encompassing look at the region and their strategic ties from Afghanistan to China. Narendra Modi says India will look West, but act East, and that's a comfortable fit for the United States. That's also in the midst of its own pivot to Asia. China's flexing its muscle in the South China Sea. It's made inroads with India's neighbors, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. So expect India and the U.S. to renew a defense pact that includes joint military exercises. One analyst sees all of this defense cooperation as a subtle move to jointly contain China's growing militarism, especially in this strategic Indian Ocean region.
SIMON: The president and the prime minister seem to have struck up a real personal connection, despite the fact that Mr. Modi was banned from entering the U.S. for 10 years. And this was over his handling of religious riots in Gujarat, where he was the chief minister. How was that resolved?
MCCARTHY: Well, when Modi won election last year, the U.S. decided not to look back. No court ever indicted Modi and the U.S. set this whole question of anti-Muslim riots and his alleged involvement aside. And rather than holding a grudge over the visa flap, Modi embraced the United States. He made it a priority, so that's how they got over it. Besides, the U.S, is not about to abandon Pakistan, and it has to make good with India - Pakistan's nuclear rival. It's a balance. And that said, there's a chemistry between President Obama and Mr. Modi. Obama was warm and informal with Modi when he came to Washington, taking him on an impromptu tour of the Martin Luther King Memorial. And expect to hear about nonviolence and tolerance from the president, who speaks at a town hall meeting here. So part of Obama's legacy is being written here, Scott. India offers the chance to broaden that legacy.
SIMON: NPR's Julie McCarthy in New Delhi.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Much of America's military campaign against militants and terrorists in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen is conducted these days by drones - unmanned aircraft that collect intelligence and can deliver lethal strikes in conflict zones. The people who steer those aircraft are pilots, but they are in remote locations that are many miles from where they fly the drones. Now the U.S. Air Force says they're running short of drone pilots during a time when there are calls to expand the number of drone missions. About 240 drone pilots leave the U.S. Air Force each year, only about 180 new ones are trained. General Mark Welsh, the U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff, joins us from his office. General, thank you very much for being with us.
GENERAL MARK WELSH: Scott, thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.
SIMON: What's so stressful about this work that so many pilots leave do you think?
WELSH: What makes the work hard and the reason we have 240 people leaving each year - some are for family reasons, some are just because they've reached what they believe is a logical end of their time in the service. And other times it's because they're just flat tired, Scott. A typical person doing this mission over the last seven or eight years has worked either six or seven days a week, 12 hours a day. And that one or two day break at the end of it is really not enough time to take care of that family and the rest of your life. And we haven't been able to make them confident that we're going to be able to change the pace. That's the real problem.
SIMON: Now, I - of course, I know drone pilots aren't flying passenger planes, but a drone pilot does have to make some life-and-death decisions. Is it wise to have them fatigued and stressed out and working?
WELSH: Oh, absolutely not, Scott. That's not - that's the - kind of our problem. Remember that we went from basically a dead start over the last 15 years where we didn't have these capabilities to now having a remarkable capability to collect intelligence and information using these platforms and all these great people. And so we just - as an institution we have to get ahead of that. It's been hard to do as the demand grew so rapidly.
SIMON: I know they're not in combat, which is its own category to acknowledge and respect, but is it possible for a drone pilot to develop what some people would call post-traumatic stress?
WELSH: Oh, I think it's beyond possible. I think it's happened. This is one of the kind of second-order effects that we probably didn't anticipate when we first started this work. I don't think there's any question that it's a factor. I don't believe it's an overriding factor. We don't have a great number of people who have manifested these kind of symptoms and problems, but we certainly do have some.
SIMON: Do drones offer the appearance of risk-free combat?
WELSH: Well, inside our business, Scott, they don't. There's nothing risk-free about anything we do. And when you're talking about decisions that may affect life and death, I think we take this very seriously. There is nothing in this enterprise that discounts the value of life on the ground - all life, by the way - friendly life, enemy life and then, of course, civilian non-combatant life and property. It's something that is very deeply ingrained in our folks as they go through training.
SIMON: But to press you a bit on this, General, I wonder - does drone warfare offer, to some Americans, the appearance of being able to strike militarily almost anywhere in the world and not have to worry about suffering casualties and consequence?
WELSH: Yeah, it's one of the reasons that we don't like the term drone warfare, Scott, the - because drone does imply a level of autonomy that is not the case. It does imply a lack of thinking and a lack of human involvement. A primary reason we call them remotely piloted aircraft is because there is somebody flying them. There is somebody in that decision loop. In fact, there are lots of somebodies in it who are adding the human judgments that we think are critical when you're in the business of life and death.
SIMON: General Mark Welsh, who is U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff. Thanks so much for being with us, General.
WELSH: Scott, thanks.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Now to an unusual case of an immigration judge who was suing the U.S. Department of Justice, alleging discrimination. The judge is of Iranian descent and she says her superiors ordered her not to hear any cases that involved Iranian nationals. NPR's Richard Gonzales reports.
RICHARD GONZALES, BYLINE: Immigration Judge A. Ashley Tabaddor has been hearing immigration cases since 2005. In her lawsuit, she says her troubles began three years ago when she was invited to a White House meeting with Iranian-American community leaders. She asked her supervisors for permission to attend and they approved, but they also recommended that if she went she recuse herself from all immigration cases involving Iranians. When she returned from Washington, Tabaddor says the recommended recusal became an official order. That move sparked outrage among fellow immigration judges who say it violates Tabaddor's First Amendment rights.
DANA LEIGH MARKS: And we do believe that this appears to be discriminatory based on her Iranian heritage.
GONZALES: Dana Leigh Marks is the president of the National Association of Immigration Judges. There's an ongoing rift between the government and immigration judges who say they don't have the same autonomy as other federal judges. They're employed by the Justice Department and and the judges feel that compromises their independence.
MARKS: A judge should not have a supervisor who can tell them how to act in a given case.
GONZALES: In fact, Mark says the Department of Justice requires her to say that she's speaking for the Association and not the government. Typically, immigration judges are randomly assigned cases. Sometimes the parties will ask that a judge recuse him or herself if they suspect a conflict of interest or bias. According to Judge Tabaddor's lawsuit, no one has accused her of bias. Instead, Justice Department officials were concerned with the appearance of impropriety. This case has intrigued legal observers.
IRA KURZBAN: It's quite odd.
GONZALES: Attorney Ira Kurzban teaches at the University of Miami. He literally wrote the book on immigration laws, and he says he's surprised by the scope of the Justice Department's action.
KURZBAN: I have never heard of a case of a recusal of a judge on this basis, across the board.
GONZALES: Kurzban says by the same logic, the Justice Department would have to order African-American judges not to hear cases involving people from Africa or the Caribbean. Or a Jewish judge would be barred from hearing cases involving Israelis. Ali Mojdehi is Judge Tabaddor's attorney.
ALI MOJDEHI: What is most troubling is that the Department of Justice policies itself. The Department of Justice encourages employees, as it should, to be active in the community.
GONZALES: The Department of Justice has moved to have Judge Tabaddor's discrimination claim dismissed. It argues that because the judge is a civil servant the court has no jurisdiction over her discrimination suit. The government also says Judge Tabaddor failed to file her complaint within the time period required by the civil service law. A spokeswoman at the Justice Department declined comment on the lawsuit or the government's motion to dismiss it. A court hearing has been set for mid-March. Richard Gonzales, NPR News.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
There were talks between the U.S. and Cuba in Havana this week. And while no breakthroughs were announced, cultural exchanges, as well as trade and travel, are expected to increase. The Bronx Museum of the Arts has already begun a collaboration with the National Museum of Fine Arts in Havana, which will feature art that shows urban life. Sergio Bessa is the Bronx Museum's program director.
SERGIO BESSA: We are looking for common threads between the two communities. And if you have traveled to Havana, you will see that the local culture is spectacular, and I think it's the same thing with the Bronx.
SIMON: Later this year, more than 80 U.S. works of art, dating from the 1960s, will travel to Havana. Next year, more than a hundred pieces will come from Cuba to the Bronx. The works of Cuban artists will include the late Antonio Vasquez, who paints in a style that reminds critics of Goya, or Alfredo Sosabravo, who paints bright, vivid figures that purportedly have a critical edge. Both exhibitions will be called "Wild Noise" - words that Sergio Bessa says echo in the history of art in the Bronx.
BESSA: For example, in the early '80s, when young artists were experimenting with graffiti art, they refer to it as the wild style.
SIMON: The project will exchange artists as well as pieces of art. Mary Mattingly of New York will go to Cuba this year to create a new work and meet Cubans. Humberto Diaz, the Cuban artist, will come to the Bronx in 2016. There are also plans to connect American and Cuban teenagers by having them exchange emails and jointly work on zines and other projects.
BESSA: It goes beyond just the exhibition. I think it's more a model of engagement - it's a model of engagement through the arts.
SIMON: Sergio Bessa says he hopes the project will give Americans and Cubans alike a fuller understanding of life in countries that are so close, but have mostly been isolated from each other for half a century.
BESSA: I think when you are isolated for such a long time, you're going to fantasize about the other. And I think projects like this, people just realize there is much more in common than they suspected.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Where am I going to get a Bigfoot garden yeti statue, or a Grillbot automatic grill-cleaning robot, or a strike-a-pose zen yoga frog statue? This week, the company that publishes the SkyMall in-flight catalog filed for bankruptcy. Now, you may wonder - how can a company that sells Boise State Bronco or Purdue Boilermaker pet beds for $90 dollars or Chicago hot dog-scented T-shirts for $28 go bankrupt? Well, it may not be the goods, but the tech.
With the increased use of electronic devices on planes, chief executive Scott Wiley said in court papers, fewer people browse the SkyMall in-flight catalog. And he added that more airline in-flight Wi-Fi, quote, "resulted in additional competition from e-commerce retailers and additional competition for the attention of passengers." I don't know, I never had a problem paging through SkyMall instead of - I don't know, what are they - yeah, the New York Times - that's it.
SkyMall had sales of about $33 million in 2013, which fell to only 15.8 million through the end of September last year. Mr. Wiley said he hopes a new buyer might run SkyMall as a scaled-down enterprise. SkyMall will be auctioned in March, so this might be a propitious time to stock up on Brew-to-Go Beer Sippy Cups or T-shirts that proclaim - I came, I mowed, I kicked grass.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The times they are a-changin'. But should you ever doubt that, the cover and featured interview in the next issue of the AARP Magazine will be Bob Dylan.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FOREVER YOUNG")
SIMON: The editor-in-chief of the AARP Magazine is Robert Love, who is the former managing editor of Rolling Stone. That also sounds like a milestone. The interview is timed to coincide with Mr. Dylan's 36th studio album, recording of classic American songs called "Shadows In The Night." Bob Dylan on the cover of AARP Magazine. How does it feel? Don't think twice. It's all right.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FOREVER YOUNG")
BOB DYLAN: (Singing) May you grow up to be righteous. May you grow up to be true. May you always know the truth and see the light surrounding you. May you always be courageous, stand upright and be strong. And may you stay forever young. May you stay forever young.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Years of austerity have worn down Greeks, who will choose a new government tomorrow. They are expected to elect the first anti-austerity party in the Eurozone. But the new leadership will still have to find a way to get Greece out of a deep depression. Joanna Kakissis reports from Athens.
JOANNA KAKISSIS, BYLINE: Maria Tsitoura is a lively grandmother in her 70s. Like many retirees in Greece, she shares her small pension with her grown children, whose salaries have dropped by more than half in the last four years. And more than a quarter of Greeks are unemployed. Four years of austerity, which came in exchange for billions in bailout loans, have crushed the economy. Greeks are now poised to elect Syriza, a leftist party that calls austerity fiscal waterboarding. Christoforos Vernadakis is a pollster who is running as a parliamentary candidate on the Syriza ticket.
MARIA TSITOURA: (Through interpreter) Europe's austerity experiment has failed. And as a result, the old political parties, viewed as tools of this austerity policy, have fallen apart.
KAKISSIS: One of those parties is New Democracy, the Conservative Party of the outgoing prime minister, Antonis Samaras. He is warned that Syriza is reckless and untested. If the party wins, it must find a way to pay off the country's debt while keeping its generous promises to voters, says economist Jens Bastian.
JENS BASTIAN: If it wants to implement its ambitious economic and welfare agenda, where's it going to find the money for that? It will need financial assistance from international, in particular, European partners. That is a matter of negotiation and of compromise, consensus building.
KAKISSIS: But Vernadakis says the party wants to kick out the troika, the representatives of international lenders. He calls them foreigners infringing on Greek sovereignty.
CHRISTOFOROS VERNADAKIS: (Through interpreter) The only thing we have to talk to our creditors about is debt. How will we pay it back? How can we do it quickly? That's all.
KAKISSIS: Syriza says Greeks must ask for debt relief, something Germany, the biggest Eurozone lender, has rebuffed.
(SOUNDBITE OF RALLY)
ALEXIS TSIPRAS: Thank you. First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin.
KAKISSIS: But that attitude may change with the Syriza victory, especially if another hard-charging anti-austerity party, Podemos, comes to power in Spain, another troubled European economy. Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias joins Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras at a giant campaign rally in Athens.
(SOUNDBITE OF RALLY)
PABLO IGLESIAS: (Speaking Greek).
(APPLAUSE)
KAKISSIS: "The wind of democracy is blowing through Europe," Iglesias declared in perfect Greek as the crowd cheered. For NPR News, I'm Joanna Kakissis in Athens.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Conspiracies theories are flying in Argentina over the death of a prosecutor who was investigating the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center. Dozens of people died in that attack. Hundreds were injured. Alberto Nisman was found dead a day before he was to give testimony that he said would've implicated Argentina's president in a cover-up of those responsible for the bombing. NPR's Lourdes Garcia-Navarro joins us from Buenos Aires. Lourdes, thanks so much for being with us.
LOURDES GARCIA-NAVARRO, BYLINE: My pleasure.
SIMON: I can't think of any better way to begin this than asking, what do you hear?
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yeah, it's all anyone can talk about here. It's on the radio. It's on the TV. It's in the newspapers. What happened to him has geopolitical ramifications. It has national impact here in Argentina in the highest levels of government. So who was this man? Well, Nisman was a prosecutor who was investigating, as you say, Argentina's worst-ever terror attack. And he alleged that Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militant group at the behest of Iran, was behind that bombing in 1994. Nisman's latest evidence through wiretaps, some of which now have been released, was supposed to show that Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner was trying to obstruct the investigation into that bombing in order to sort of cozy up to Iran and get Iranian oil for this economically troubled country. So Iran, of course, has always denied any involvement in the bombing, and did so again yesterday when Iran's foreign minister spoke from Davos in Switzerland, saying this has nothing to do with us. But, of course, everyone is pointing fingers at everyone else here.
SIMON: Investigators had initially said that Mr. Nisman was a suicide. What does it look like now?
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yeah, he was found in his apartment, they say, with a bullet to the head and a gun with a single shell casing next to him. But the timing was so very suspicious that his death caused an immediate uproar. His family and his friends said he was upbeat before the testimony, that the idea that he would kill himself just didn't ring true. And it's just sort of gotten murkier since then. There's been mounting evidence that he could have been killed. There was no gunpowder residue on his hands. A locksmith testified that the back door to his apartment was unlocked. A secret third entrance to his apartment was discovered where a potential killer could've gotten in. It reads like a novel. And the strangest part of all this, of course, was that this man knew he was under threat. Nisman was being protected by 10 security guards, but where were they? And that's where the investigation is at now. Was it murder? In an abrupt about-face, President Cristina Fernandez herself, after first saying that she thought he had committed suicide, now says she also believes he was killed.
SIMON: Who do the major suspects seem to be?
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Well, I mean, basically this is Middle East conspiracy theories meets politically polarized Argentina. You name it - Iran, Hezbollah, they've obviously come up. The opposition is casting suspicion on the president and her government thing, saying that they were trying to silence him. Israel even gets an accusation from, of course, the Iranian press. They allege Israel wants to scupper talks on Iran's nuclear program. President Kirchner says she believes that it was a disgruntled spy intent on discrediting her government. So, many possibilities but very little clarity.
SIMON: And we should remind ourselves this bombing, that happened in 1994 at the Jewish center and killed so many people there in Buenos Aires, has not been solved.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: No, it hasn't, and it's been over 20 years. It was a massive human tragedy that still has no resolution, which is why some people say we may also never know what really happened to Alberto Nisman.
SIMON: In addition to all the talk, is there an actual, you know, police investigation going on?
GARCIA-NAVARRO: There is, of course, a police investigation going on. And it's a very well-scrutinized police investigation. But so far, the lead investigator on this case still hasn't declared that Alberto Nisman's death is a homicide.
SIMON: NPR's Lourdes Garcia-Navarro in Buenos Aires. Thanks so much.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: You're welcome.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
And time now for sports.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SIMON: And one of the great figures in sports, and in American life, has died. Ernie Banks of the Chicago Cubs was 83. He was a great player who appeared in 14 All-Star Games, who played for - and, look, I can say this; I'm a Cub fan - a team that was usually comically bad. But Ernie Banks was epically gracious on the field and to fans. That motto let's play two reminded us all how to value what, after all, is the real game of life. NPR's Tom Goldman joins us. Thanks for being with us, Tom.
TOM GOLDMAN, BYLINE: Hi, Scott.
SIMON: And Ernie Banks is being celebrated, as much as anything today, for his largeness of spirit.
GOLDMAN: Billy Williams was a Hall of Fame outfielder and teammate of Ernie Banks for many years. And he's quoted in an article by baseball writer Tim Kurkjian as saying, people always asked him - Williams - if Ernie was really happy all the time, which is how he always was in public. Williams said it was legit. He called Banks the most positive guy I ever met. He loved playing the game. And Williams speculated maybe it came from playing in the Negro Leagues, where he said players had so much fun with the game. Banks, of course, played for the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro Leagues before he went to the Cubs. And when Banks was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1977, he said this about his rosy attitude - I guess my critics say he must be crazy. Nothing can be that beautiful. But when you think that there are so many people around the world who have nothing, you realize how lucky you are to be making a living in the big leagues. There's an unbelievable, indescribable love for baseball in Wrigley Field.
SIMON: And let's not forget, he was one sweet ballplayer, wasn't he?
GOLDMAN: Oh, yeah. You know, as you mentioned, an All-Star many times. He hit 512 career home runs, 500 being a magic mark in baseball. His career spanned 19 seasons, from 1953 to 1971. Only six of those were winning seasons. But he won the NL - National League - Most Valuable Player Award in 1958 and '59 - first National League player to win in consecutive years. And in '58, he was the first National League player to win the MVP on a team with a losing record. And, you know, just, Scott, he was known as a power hitter as a shortstop. And that really wasn't something that was expected of a shortstop in those days. He was tall and thin, very strong wrists. And from 1955 to 1960, he hit 40 or more home runs in five of those six seasons, so quite great at the plate and in the field. But back to Ernie Banks as the person. Scott, you knew him. You interviewed him. What was that like?
SIMON: You know, he could be almost maddeningly sincere, you know, and reporter - what's your angle? But he cherished the grass, the ivy, the sunlight. He never complained about the kind of rag-bin of a club that he was on for most of his life. We talked to him last year at Wrigley Field.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
ERNIE BANKS: I mean, winning is a lot of fun. But the main thing in my life is making friends. After the game was over, I'd walk out of this ballpark and see kids waiting for autographs. And I would look in their faces. And I had met a lot of kids. They were 10 years old. Now they're in their 60s. And they still talk about things that I did, things that I signed. And I loved the winning part of it, but I really like the fact that I met some nice people in this ballpark.
SIMON: And I want to tell a purely personal story. The day of my mother's memorial service last year, Tom, I got a haircut. Ernie turned out to be right across from me, getting his head shaved - gracious man, big tipper. Tom, he stayed in that barbershop for 40 minutes when he was done just to talk to people about baseball, about his young child, about their children. He never earned a lot of money by the terms we understand it now. He was comfortable, didn't charge for autographs the way some even great retired stars now do. In some ways, he was a bigger symbol after he left the game. And I remember thinking in that barbershop, you know that phrase great athlete? I think that should be not just someone who excels on the field but who brings honor to the game, you know, enriches life. And I'm sorry if this sounds sloppy or sentimental. In the end, we follow sports because at its best, it elevates us, right? It makes us feel the joy in life. And that's what made Ernie Banks a Hall of Famer beyond baseball.
GOLDMAN: Yeah, and he chose his own way to touch and inspire people. That's for sure.
SIMON: NPR's Tom Goldman with our memories of Ernie Banks. Thanks so much for being with us, my friend.
GOLDMAN: You're welcome, Scott.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon. Earlier this month, Pluto passed directly behind Jupiter, which counteracted the Earth's gravity. And for a brief moment, everybody on Planet Earth was weightless. Well, actually, that didn't happen. But maybe you read on Facebook that it was going to. This week, Facebook made sharing news stories like that a little more difficult. The company is making changes that will allow users to report fake news. NPR's digital culture correspondent Laura Sydell joins us in our studios. Laura, thanks very much for being with us.
LAURA SYDELL, BYLINE: You're welcome.
SIMON: What's Facebook done? What will we see?
SYDELL: OK, so when you're on Facebook and say your Auntie posts something about a 28-foot alligator, and you actually believe it for a moment, and then you start to dig and realize, OK, it's not possible for there to be a 28-foot alligator, there's a little drop-down menu up on the corner of the post. You bring down the drop-down menu and it allows you to report something as being spam or to report something that is a photo of yourself you don't like, and now they're adding fake news. So you can now report something as being fake news. If enough people do that, what will happen is that Facebook will start to not show that post anymore. You still want to see what your Auntie posts, so if your Auntie is somebody who is close to you, you'll see her post, but you'll also see something that says this has been labeled fake news. So that's how it works.
SIMON: And Facebook is doing this because?
SYDELL: Because they've gotten complaints from their users. So Facebook says they don't want people to go away. They want them to stay and feel happy with their newsfeed. And if this is upsetting people, that's why they've added this.
SIMON: Well, let me understand this. Facebook is not making any effort to investigate the veracity of the stories. They're just throwing it open for a vote.
SYDELL: That's right. So if enough people keep saying this is a fake news story, this is a fake news story, the algorithms - so this is totally done by computer - will then just start to not post it on people's feeds.
SIMON: But people can also be wrong, can't they?
SYDELL: Yes, they can.
SIMON: People have pointed out a lot of major news stories in 2014 began as a report on the web.
SYDELL: That's true. People can be very wrong. For example, Twitter had an issue on this where, all of a sudden, a story by The New York Times that had to do with Florida State University's football team started to disappear off Twitter. Now, it's not exactly clear what happened. But it may have been that there were huge fans of Florida State University who started to label this negative story about how police were going easy on investigating FSU football players, and they may have just tried to keep saying, oh, this is, you know, there's something wrong with this, and it began to disappear from Twitter. The Times actually called Twitter and said, what's going on? And Twitter fixed it. But you could see how a whole group of people could decide and have a little conspiracy.
SIMON: Get organized and spike a story that might be true.
SYDELL: Yeah, that's right. And that's one problem with only having computer algorithms. But that's how companies like Facebook function. They don't have human beings checking this out.
SIMON: But people in journalism will tell you it's journalism to determine the truth of a story. You don't do it with algorithms.
SYDELL: Well, you and I may think that's the case (Laughter).
SIMON: How quaint.
SYDELL: But out in the, you know, Silicon Valley, they think that computers can do a better job. You know, I mean, you know, eventually, Scott, you and I will be replaced by robots.
SIMON: It's funny you should mention that because you didn't recognize that I am a robot, did you?
(LAUGHTER)
SIMON: You're thinking, why would they spend all that money to make a robot that looks like that? Can't they do better? Yeah, this is just - I'm just a prototype. NPR's Laura Sydell. Thanks very much.
SYDELL: You're welcome.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Rachel Martin. French-Canadian filmmaker Xavier Dolan's new film "Mommy" took a top prize at Cannes last year - an achievement for any director, let alone one who is 25 years old. The mommy in the movie is Diane, Di for short, a fast-talking hard-drinking widow. She's trying to get back on her feet when her teenage son, Steve, is kicked out of yet another psychiatric institution. Steve moves back home leaving both Di and the audience on edge waiting for his next uncontrollable and, usually violent, emotional outburst. We spoke with Dolan about his film. And he describes Steve, the troubled young man at the heart of the story.
XAVIER DOLAN: We're not talking about an average hyperactive kid, you know, whom you can give pills to and then have him, you know, succeed and have A's at school and everything. We're talking about a way more troubled child who has trouble of attachment which is directly linked to the mother, the relationship he has with her. And the fact that all of his gestures and behaviors and all that he purports to is actually find the proof or the confirmation that the love of his mother for him is as big as the love he feels for her. And seeking those questions will lead him to throw and thrust himself in the, you know, most horrible chasms.
MARTIN: Did you have conversation with families who have a child who suffers from something like this?
DOLAN: No. I - not that I was lazy, but I feel like I knew this kid. You know? He's just the worst version of who I was. And I was very, very much violent as a kid. And then I just try to use my imagination and understand, you know, this kid's distress and his, you know, his worst fears and his anxieties and how worried he was that his mother would stop loving him or would love someone else even more.
MARTIN: Did you suffer from those kinds of doubts when you were a child?
DOLAN: No. No. It's not my mother. It's not my story. I can relate to, you know, Steve's angst and anger. I was brought up about two blocks away from where we shot this film. So Di and Steve were my neighbors. There were on the bus. They were at the - you know, at the supermarket. They were everywhere. And they're made of thousands of elements that I've been collecting, I guess, from people from my childhood.
MARTIN: Kind of sounds like it might be a little bit of your story.
DOLAN: But it's not. It's not. I wasn't mentally ill. I wasn't placed in institutions. I don't have that rapport with my mother. My mother is not Di. I can relate to them, but it is not autobiographical.
MARTIN: So I ordinarily wouldn't point someone's age out, but this is, quite frankly, a film that you would expect to have been made by someone who has lived far longer than you have. You're only 25.
DOLAN: Yeah. But, you know, age is purely factual. I mean, I know how old am, but I've been living a quite idiosyncratic youth, I guess. I can't really give you an answer or an explanation, but I just cannot wait to be whatever age feels - not appropriate, but more of a...
MARTIN: To the point where people stop asking you about it.
DOLAN: No, it's not about - no, no because I don't mind addressing these things, but I just don't have a satisfying answer. I've been surrounded by adults my entire life, and I'd seek their company when I was a kid. I was a pretty lonely child and despicable child to - with other children. I had a problem with authority. I - yeah, so it's been an irregular childhood. But I'm grateful for that sort of alternative path.
MARTIN: Let's talk more about these characters that you've created in this film. There are several very intense scenes throughout the movie. And one in particular I want to talk about - it is when Steve is having a bad episode, and he goes after his mom. And she has to lock herself in another room. He is exploded. This is the worst we ever see him. What was that scene like to shoot?
DOLAN: Those are tricky scenes because they are fun for actors, as much as this may sound surprising. Screaming and shouting and insulting people and spitting and pounding on walls and jumping and being all over the place - and it's not, you know, like going down the rabbit hole in a silent way, crying, looking through a window where you've got to, you know, it's - anger is fuel. But for Steve, I remember I was telling him, you know, keep breathing and trying to - you know, this kid has been told by people all his life to probably breathe and try to calm down and find his peace. So it was really about Steve being like (breathing). And I don't really direct the scene as a director, I direct it as an actor. This is the angle I love to approach scenes with as opposed to, oh, yeah, we're going to shoot with that lens. You know, all of that collapses if the acting choices are off.
MARTIN: There's also, though, the physical outbursts that you're afraid of as a viewer - there's also an uncomfortable sexuality about the film. There is a sexual undercurrent to their relationship, to how he interacts with his mom.
DOLAN: Yeah. Steve doesn't understand boundaries and doesn't know any limits. So actually when I was in France promoting the film a young man from the audience raised his hand in a Q&A and asked, all the fathers are always gone or dead or absent in your films. And then he asked is Steve the first little step that you've taken towards incorporating father figures in your films because he's really trying to protect Die. And he's trying to, you know, pay things for her. Well, pay, I mean, steal. But for him that's, you know, provide his mother with things and the things that she needs. And I think it's true. I think that the thing about Steve is that, yes, there is - he's the son, but he thinks of himself as his mother's lover.
MARTIN: I don't even know what to say after that. (Laughter).
DOLAN: But, you know, it's - all of this lies underneath. You know, on the surface what people will really, I guess, see and feel is a story that isn't that warped. It's just the story of love. And we didn't explore the sexual tension, but I'm glad you've noticed that it is there.
MARTIN: Your previous film which was called "I Killed My Mother" also had some autobiographical notes in it. Clearly this is a relationship - that of a son and a mother that compels you artistically. There's something in there that you keep digging at. Has this film changed in any way the way you reflect back on your own experience with your mom?
DOLAN: No. I understand the relationship that I have with my mom. I am not seeking answers through, you know, writing about the mother and son bond. It's just that mother figures inspire me. They are rich characters, and they are a solid foundation to start writing about and to, you know, write a story on.
Mothers have sacrificed dreams and projects and ideas and maybe even values and a part of themselves to become moms. And being a mother is just a status or a role. It is not who you are. It is what you do for, you know, anyway. Through these mothers and women, I can express many things and claim many things and fight my fights, awkwardly, as a young man in his twenties. I know it's a bit of a stretch, but it's been like this. And it will be like this forever.
MARTIN: Xavier Dolan - his latest film is called "Mommy." Thanks so much for talking with us, Xavier.
DOLAN: Thank you so much for your questions.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
J. Ivy is a Grammy Award-winning poet who may not be on your radar, but he should be. In the mid-2000s, Ivy performed on HBO's "Def Poetry Jam." Here he is reciting the poem that he says changed his life. It's called "Dear Father."
(SOUNDBITE OF POETRY READING, "DEAR FATHER")
J. IVY: (Reading) Dear Dad, these words are being written and spoken because my heart and soul feel broken. I laugh to keep from crying, but I still have to heal after all of my years of my goofiness and joking. You've got me open, hoping this ill feeling will pass, won't last. I wear a mask so my piece won't ask for the truth, truthfully speaking the truth hurts...
MARTIN: J. Ivy spent years trying to come to grips with his relationship with his dad. His father had walked out of his life after his parents split up. And J. Ivy was never able to forgive him until after his dad passed away. His memoir recounts that experience and how poetry saved him starting at a young age. J. Ivy was in elementary school when he wrote his very first poem. I spoke with Ivy recently about his new memoir and his first poem about clouds.
IVY: Yes, "There Once Was A Cloud."
MARTIN: (Laughter) Can you tell that story - what that was like when you were asked to stand up and kind of own this poem in a way you weren't expecting to have to?
IVY: Yeah. Well, I was a very shy, teenager or child. So my junior year of high school, my English teacher, her name is Ms. Paula Argue. She gave us this homework assignment to write a poem. And I went home, and the only thing I could think about was the clouds that I saw outside of my window. So the next day, she surprised the class and made everyone read their homework in front of everyone. So I read my piece.
And to my surprise, she pulled me to the side after the class, and she told me that I had a very nice speaking voice. And she said, I have a show coming up, I want to put you in this show. And I said, I'm not doing the show. You know, I didn't want to do it. So I didn't do the show. And then she had another show come up, and she said, you know what? Last time I asked you to do the show, you didn't do it. So this time I'm not asking you. You have to do it. I decided to take on the challenge so she gave me a speech to learn. And my first time ever on stage as nervous and scared as I was to get up there, I got up there and did it. And the first time ever on stage I received a station ovation, and I just fell in love.
MARTIN: You spend a lot of time in this book talking about your mom.
IVY: Lady P.
(LAUGHTER)
MARTIN: She saw your talent pretty early on, right?
IVY: Yeah. Yeah. When I wrote that poem, "There Once Was A Cloud," I took it home because I got an A on it, and I was excited. I said, wow, I got an A something, you know. So I took it...
(LAUGHTER)
IVY: Something yes. So I took it home, and I showed it to my mother. And, my mom, she loved it. And, you know, she read it, and she just went crazy over the piece. She's just always been there, always encouraging me to encourage others. That's my angel, you know.
MARTIN: Her opinion meant even more to you because your dad wasn't around, I imagine. How old were you when you're dad left?
IVY: I was 12 - 12, 13. My father, he was actually a DJ. So he actually - I would actually listen to him on the radio before I would go to school in the mornings. And he had this magnificent voice. And he would actually do the news so this - essentially, we're doing what he was doing back in the day. But, you know, turns and twists happened in this life where alcohol became a factor, drugs became a factor. He lost his job. Fights broke out in the home. And separation eventually happened, which led to divorce. And then I didn't see or hear from my father for the next 10 years.
MARTIN: You finally reconcile or at least you finally get to the point where you sit down with one another. What was that conversation like?
IVY: When I walked up to the door, it was just such a nervous, nervous feeling. And, you know, ringing that bell and opening - and him opening the door and me expecting to see this giant, because that's what he was the last time I saw him, you know. And now I'm towering over him. And now he's just this older man. And you could tell life had beat him up.
You know, so seeing him in that moment, I could see that life had beat him up. He was at the time, I believe, like 59 years old, but he looked like he was 80. But I - as soon as he opened the door, I just - I hugged him. I said, man, you know, I love you. And then we didn't talk a lot, you know, outside of, you know, any deep conversations. But, you know, I was let him know about how my brothers were and how my mother was. And one of the things he told me, he said man, I never stopped loving your mother.
MARTIN: This book is not just about that seminal relationship with your dad, but it's also a retracing of a really unique career and what it took for you to get to where you are. You and Kanye West ended up collaborating. He used your poem, "Never Let Me Down," as inspiration for a song that he did of the same name. Would you mind reading for us?
IVY: Yes indeed. (Reading) We're all here for a reason on a particular path. You don't need a curriculum to know that you are part of the math. Casting, I'm delirious, but I'm so damn serious. That's why I expose my soul to the glow of the world. I'm to trying to make it better for these little boys and girls. I'm not just another individual.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "NEVER LET ME DOWN")
IVY: (Rapping) My spirit is a part of this. That's why I get spiritual. But I get my hymns from him. So it's not me, it's he that's lyrical. I'm not a miracle. I'm a heaven sent instrument.
MARTIN: J. Ivy joined us from the Studios of WBEZ in Chicago. It was great to talk with you.
IVY: Thank you so much for having me. It's such a pleasure and an honor.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "NEVER LET ME DOWN")
IVY: (Rapping) But that ain't what gives me the heart of Kunta Kinte I'm trying to give us "us free" like Cinque. I can't stop, that's why I'm hot. Determination, dedication, motivation. I'm talking to you of my many inspirations. When I say I can't let you or self down. If I were on the highest cliff, on the highest riff, and you slipped off the side and clinched on to your life in my grip, I would never ever let you down.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The late 1960s and early '70s defined a vibrant, electrifying and psychedelic era for rock music everywhere. That includes Cambodia.
(SOUNDBITE OF DENGUE FEVER SONG)
DENGUE FEVER: (Singing in Khmer).
MARTIN: The Khmer Rouge communist movement put an end to that when they took power in 1975. But the music from that era has been discovered and rediscovered over the years. Ethan Holtzman was bitten by the bug. He came back to LA from a trip to Southeast Asia in the late 1990s with a suitcase full of cassette tapes. And his passion for the music soon lead him to form the band Dengue Fever.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GHOST VOICE")
DENGUE FEVER: (Singing in Khmer).
MARTIN: The group's fifth album, "The Deepest Lake," will be out on Tuesday. Ethan Holtzman joins us from NPR West. Welcome to the program, Ethan.
ETHAN HOLTZMAN: Hi, thanks for having us.
MARTIN: And you're not alone. Your brother and band cofounder Zac is also there. Hey, Zac.
ZAC HOLTZMAN: Hey. How's it going?
MARTIN: Goes well thanks. And Chhom Nimol is the band's lead singer. She's also there in the studios with you.
CHHOM NIMOL: Hello, hello.
MARTIN: Hey. Thanks for being with us. Let's start kind of at the beginning. Zac, when Ethan came back with those tapes, you had also discovered Cambodian music yourself, right? How did you find this genre?
Z. HOLTZMAN: Yeah. My friend Byron was working at a record store in San Francisco called Aquarius. He's like, Zac, you've got to hear this music. And so he laid it on me, and then moved back down to Los Angeles. And I was just playing it, and my brother Ethan was like, whoa. How did you get some of this music? And so we started talking about it. We thought it would be really neat to sort of start a band based on that old music.
MARTIN: What was it in that music that struck you?
Z. HOLTZMAN: I mean, it's got so many great elements. The Cambodians, they didn't just mimic the things that were going on, they really just added their cool styles of singing. Like, they do this falsetto sort of thing that's called a ghost voice where they crack into higher registers. It's kind of like a Cambodian yodel.
MARTIN: Can you guys do that?
NIMOL: Yeah. I can do that.
MARTIN: I'm putting you on the spot.
(LAUGHTER)
NIMOL: (Singing in ghost voice). Something like that, you know.
MARTIN: Wow. That's pretty good. It's haunting, that sound.
Z. HOLTZMAN: Yeah, but then at the same time, it had all these other elements like surf guitar and just kind of garage and psychedelic sort of things. And somehow, they got like a Farfisa organ to Cambodia. And they were playing one of those. So it was, you know, familiar and yet exotic.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GHOST VOICE")
DENGUE FEVER: (Singing in Khmer).
MARTIN: So it's one thing to just be a fan and collect this kind of music and really get into it, but, Ethan, how did this becomes something that you guys thought you could actually do yourself?
E. HOLTZMAN: Well, Zac and I, we started figuring out some of the old songs, you know, from the '60s, songs that were written by Sin Sisamuth. He was probably the most prolific song writer in Cambodia, sort of like Bob Dylan over there or Elvis. And the vocalists he worked with were amazing. Ros Sereysothea and Pan Ron were our favorites. So we just figured out - we just - I just kept listening to these songs like, you know, they were on cassette. And I just became, like - that was, like, what I listened to everywhere. And we were just like, why don't we figure out some of these?
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: The next song, "Thanks A Lot."
(SOUNDBITE OF DENGUE FEVER SONG, "THANKS A LOT")
MARTIN: Nimol, how did you come onto the scene? How did you join the group?
NIMOL: Zac and Ethan, they went down to Long Beach at the club called Dragon House. That's when I used to work there every weekend. And they asking me to join the band.
MARTIN: Ethan and Zac, can you describe the first time you heard Nimol sing?
Z. HOLTZMAN: Yeah, we - this is Zac speaking. We went into Dragon House, and it's a big club in Long Beach. And there was, like, all these Cambodians circle dancing. And up on stage was a Cambodian band and about five or six female vocalists. And they were all kind of trading off going up to the mic. And then the Nimol went up there and started singing. And I just instantly knew, we got to ask her. It turns out her family is kind of like the Jacksons of Cambodia. You know, like, she, like, comes from this whole musical family.
(SOUNDBITE OF DENGUE FEVER SONG)
DENGUE FEVER: (Singing in Khmer).
MARTIN: I wonder, Ethan and Zac, what the reaction - and Nimol - what the reaction has been to your music in the Cambodian community in LA.
NIMOL: Right now, a lot of Cambodian people, they come to our show. I can say, like, 50 percent west and 50 percent Cambodian right now.
MARTIN: Split down the middle. Is that right, Ethan and Zac? You're getting...
E. HOLTZMAN: Well, it depends where we play. Like, we were playing a couple shows in Long Beach, and there's a lot of Cambodians that live there. It's Little Phnom Penh. Outside of Cambodia, I think that's the highest population of Cambodians. So when we play there, they - I'd say they're the majority. And they're a lot of fun. The love to hear some of the old songs. And like - they've grabbed onto a lot of our original songs, too. So they're very energetic, and they, you know, they'll jump on stage with us and sing along, grab a microphone. But it's not just Long Beach. It's also, like, there's...
NIMOL: Seattle.
E. HOLTZMAN: Seattle, yeah.
NIMOL: San Francisco.
E. HOLTZMAN: Modesto. So they'll be like...
Z. HOLTZMAN: Paris.
E. HOLTZMAN: ...Pockets. Yeah.
NIMOL: Yeah. Oh, yeah, Paris, too.
E. HOLTZMAN: Wherever the Cambodians live, they all find - they'll find our show and come out. And they'll always make it a little more fun for us.
(SOUNDBITE OF DENGUE FEVER SONG)
DENGUE FEVER: (Singing in Khmer).
MARTIN: Chhom Nimol, Zac and Ethan Holtzman make up Dengue Fever. They talked to us from our studios at NPR West. Their new album is called "The Deepest Lake." Thanks you three. Thanks so much for talking with us.
E. HOLTZMAN: Thank you.
NIMOL: Thank you for having us.
Z. HOLTZMAN: Thanks, Rachel.
E. HOLTZMAN: Thanks, Rachel. Bye.
(SOUNDBITE OF DENGUE FEVER SONG)
DENGUE FEVER: (Singing in Khmer).
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WATCH OVER US")
THE LONE BELLOW: (Singing) Watch over us. Father, your sickness lives here in me.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
That beautiful tapestry of harmonies is the latest from the trio, The Lone Bellow. The song is called "Watch Over Us," and it comes off the group's latest album which is called "Then Came The Morning." Zack Williams, Kanene Pipkin and Brian Elmquist are The Lone Bellow, and they join us from our studios in New York. Thanks so much for being with us.
BRIAN ELMQUIST: Thanks for having us.
KANENE PIPKIN: Thanks for having us, yeah.
MARTIN: Singing harmony is a really intimate experience. What is it like for the three of you when you're in that moment?
PIPKIN: Well, I grew up harmony singing and a lot of the work of that for me growing up was learning how to change my voice to sing with other people and how to blend. And the first time I sang with these guys, we all just had to belt this ridiculous note. And we were all singing our faces off. And I realized after the song was over I was, like, I didn't think once about changing my voice, like, it just feels so good singing with these two. And it's so much about trust and hope. And I think it adds a quality to the music that just can't be faked, or it can't be taught with technique.
MARTIN: Let's listen to another song off the new album. This one is called "Call To War."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CALL TO WAR")
THE LONE BELLOW: (Singing) Tables prepared and streets of gold, you've bared your tears from stories told. The stage is set so we can fly. But suns will set and hearts are wise.
MARTIN: So what was the recording process like for this album? I'm going to put Brian on the spot.
ELMQUIST: We went up to this church in upstate New York close to Woodstock called Dreamland which is an old studio.
PIPKIN: And there are stained-glass windows.
MARTIN: Oh, wow.
PIPKIN: You're in a big sanctuary, a big open sanctuary. And we did all the vocals live and together. And it was a different way for us to record. And it was wonderful.
MARTIN: What was different about it? Can you...
PIPKIN: Just to do it all together.
MARTIN: At the same time instead of laying down separate tracks.
PIPKIN: At the same time, and, yeah, there was no opportunity, really, for minute tweaking or that kind of hyper-perfection you hear a lot in studio recordings. And then it's a really liberating way to record vocals. And you just have all of these voices bouncing off the walls. And it just feels really transcendent and beautiful.
MARTIN: Yeah. A lot of the lyrics and the inspiration for your songs come from very personal places. The song "Marietta" is illustrative of that. Let's listen to a little bit of this before we talk about it.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MARIETTA")
THE LONE BELLOW: (Singing) You sleep with the lights on. I let you in again, Marietta. The loneliness burns at your door in your midnight. She seeps through the cracks in your floor.
MARTIN: How did that song come to be?
ZACK WILLIAMS: I've never talked about this song in a recorded situation.
MARTIN: Is this Zach?
WILLIAMS: Yes, this is Zach. Hello. I met my wife when I was young. I met her when I was 12. And we had been married for, like, three years when we moved out to New York. And our relationship kind of spiraled into a confusing time. There was betrayal that happened, and there were secrets that were kept for several years. And it was terrible. And then one day we started being honest with each other. And Marietta represents a person in my life that hurt me. And the song is a confession that I'm just like him. It was just, like, a time in my life where I had to come to grips with the fact that I am also capable of doing folks wrong.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MARIETTA")
THE LONE BELLOW: (Singing) And I am. Anyone could it be. Love found and lost and your name.
WILLIAMS: And we made it through, and the record comes out January 27. And I do not know what I'm going to say when people ask me this question about this song. I know that it's important to me to sing songs that are honest. And I need to be honest with myself and sing those songs. And it's a beautiful thing to be able to sing on a song was friends, with real friends.
PIPKIN: Yeah. We always say that, like, you can sing something that's really, really, really sad or dark, but if there are three people singing at the same time, it's not as sad.
MARTIN: One of the things that your fans love about the three of you and your band in general is what it's like to experience a live performance - energy and emotion and making yourselves vulnerable singing these very personal songs in this very public space. And it has this confessional element to it. Are you just wiped at the end of the show?
ELMQUIST: Yes, we're wiped.
WILLIAMS: I was, like, who's going to say it?
PIPKIN: Everyone was, like, big inhale.
ELMQUIST: I know, it's the up and down of the whole thing. I mean, we, in a day, will play to a bunch of people and songs that you've written and you're a part of are a part of their story. And they've almost took the meaning, your meaning, out of it and put theirs in it. That's what's so beautiful about singing these songs. And with a three- part harmony is, I think, just invites people into it. And it's not, like, just get sad. Let's celebrate life and, like, what it is, the up and down. It's all of it. It, like, it sucks, and its great and beautiful and horrible at the same time.
MARTIN: The Lone Bellow's new album is called "Then Came The Morning." It is out Tuesday. Zach Williams, Kanene Pipkin and Brian Elmquist. Thanks so much for talking with us, you three.
PIPKIN: Thank you.
WILLIAMS: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FAKE ROSES")
THE LONE BELLOW: (Singing) It's a low and lonesome song.
MARTIN: You can hear all of The Lone Bellow's new album "Then Came The Morning" before it comes out on Tuesday in a first listen at our website, npr.org.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FAKE ROSES")
THE LONE BELLOW: (Singing) Put her mind on better times. It's a low and lonesome song.
MARTIN: This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Rachel Martin.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Lots of people play video games to escape the real world, but a new type of virtual reality experience does just the opposite. It takes you to the streets of Syria and other conflicts zones gripped by very real violence. But as reporter James Delahoussaye discovers, the new video game could be a useful tool for journalists.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Are they comfortable on your face?
ALLISON BEGALMAN: Yep. That's good.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: OK.
BEGALMAN: Yeah.
JAMES DELAHOUSSAYE, BYLINE: University of Southern California student Allison Begalman donnes bulky, virtual reality goggles and headphones.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG)
UNIDENTIFIED SINGER: (Singing in foreign language).
BEGALMAN: Oh, my God.
DELAHOUSSAYE: And in the moment, she is transported to a sunny street corner in Aleppo, Syria. There is a cart selling food, cars and trucks passing by and a group of people circled around a singing little girl. But then...
(SOUNDBITE OF EXPLOSION)
BEGALMAN: All of a sudden, there's, like, a bomb that goes off. It's completely full of dust and dirt, and you - I'm sort of walking back and forth.
DELAHOUSSAYE: In this virtual world, Begalman has experienced a mortar shelling from Bashar al-Assad's regime. This is Project Syria, a virtual reality experience built by a team of students at the University of Southern California. The bomb blasts, the destruction, they're all created using the same kind of tools videogame makers use, except that this is not a regular videogame.
NONNY DE LA PENA: In America, we're deeply involved in Syria, but we're very disconnected about what is that place? Who are the people? Why do I care? Why are we there?
DELAHOUSSAYE: Nonny de la Pena is the lead for Project Syria and a long-time journalist in print and film
PENA: I sometimes call virtual reality an empathy generator. It's astonishing to me. People all of a sudden connect to the characters in a way that they don't when they've read about them in the newspaper or watched it on TV.
DELAHOUSSAYE: Pena sent her team to the Middle East to film refugee camps and interview survivors. The audio heard in Project Syria, from the singing girl to the bomb blast, was taken from YouTube videos of an actual mortar strike in Aleppo. What Pena's doing - using virtual reality in combination with actual reporting - is part of a wider landscape of video games being used to explore the news. And they're called, appropriately enough, newsgames.
IAN BOGOST: There's an argument to be made that games are perfect at getting at the systemic problems and challenges in the world.
DELAHOUSSAYE: Ian Bogost, a professor at Georgia Tech says games are really good at showing us the complex under belly of stories. Take a game that he helped make - "Oil God." The player controls an oral rich region waging wars and inciting coups.
(SOUNDBITE OF VIDEO GAME, "OIL GOD")
DELAHOUSSAYE: In playing, the user learns that oil prices are contingent on all sorts of factors rarely mentioned in a story about the price of a gallon of gas.
BOGOST: When you go to the cinema or you turn on the radio and you hear someone's story, you relate to it at a remove. You're not really in their shoes. You're not make choices on their behalf. You're not thrust into their situation.
DELAHOUSSAYE: But in a game, players interact with the real forces making different choices and seeing their consequences. And Bogot says that creates a deeper understanding. In the game, "Oil God," you can go to war and see why oil prices jump. In Project Syria, you can walk straight into a bomb blast to understand a cold reality of the Civil War.
Back at the University of Southern California, student Allison Begalman steps out of the game lab. She says that while she's heard about the war in Syria, she never felt that she could empathize with its refugees until she played this game.
BEGALMAN: You can only understand so much, but when you get to see if for yourself, yes, I'm not actually there, but this is a huge step.
DELAHOUSSAYE: A step, she says, that will lead to more time spent with all kinds of media learning about a complex war in a far off land. For NPR News, I'm James Delahoussaye.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Rachel Martin. Feeling a bit deflated this past week? Here's a game with just the right amount of pressure. It's time for the puzzle. Joining me now is WEEKEND EDITION's puzzle master, Will Shortz. Good morning, Will.
WILL SHORTZ, BYLINE: Good morning, Rachel.
MARTIN: So what's going on, Will? I understand you've got some table tennis coming up in your life.
SHORTZ: Yeah. In two weeks, my club - the Westchester Table Tennis Center - is hosting the grand final of the 2014 North American tour. It's got the 16 top players in the country, $10,000 in prizes.
MARTIN: OK, so don't be offended by this next question, but is table tennis a good spectator sport?
SHORTZ: That is a good question.
MARTIN: (Laughter).
SHORTZ: I think it is. You can be sitting 10 feet away from one of the top layers in the country, and if you're watching NBA or NFL...
MARTIN: That's true. You don't get to do that unless you're Jack Nicholson. OK. All right. Let's get down to puzzle business. Remind me, what was last week's challenge?
SHORTZ: Yes. I said name two animals, both mammals, one of them domestic, the other wild. I said put their letters together, and rearrange the result to name another mammal, this one wild and not seen naturally around North America. What mammal is it? Well, the domestic one is the dog. The wild one is the gnu - G-N-U. And you put those letters together, and you get the dugong - D-U-G-O-N-G. Did you know a dugong?
MARTIN: No, no.
SHORTZ: Well, it's a large plant-eating mammal off the coast of Australia sometimes called a sea cow related to the manatee.
MARTIN: Sea cow I know. Yeah. But a dugong.
SHORTZ: There you go. It's status is listed as threatened so it's a good thing to know about.
MARTIN: But save the dugong doesn't really, like, roll off the tongue for a bumper sticker, I suppose.
SHORTZ: (Laughter) Well, maybe we can start something.
MARTIN: Yeah. We could start something. (Laughter). OK, so this was a hard one. Even so, we got 104 correct answers. Our winner this week is Michael Kurh from Geneva, Illinois. He joins us on the line now. Hey, Michael, congratulations.
MICHAEL KURH: Thank you.
MARTIN: So you clearly knew what a dugong was.
KURH: Yes, I've been trying to get my babies to say that as their first word.
MARTIN: (Laughter) How old are your kids?
KURH: They're four and a half months old.
MARTIN: Twins, huh? Congratulations. What do you do in Geneva, Michael?
KURH: Right now, I'm getting ready to go back to school 'cause hopefully I will be a teacher someday.
MARTIN: Oh, great. What do you want to teach?
KURH: Biology mostly, but, you know, any science.
MARTIN: Sometimes there are science-y kinds of puzzles. I have no idea what Will has cooked up this week, but are you ready to try to play the puzzle, Michael?
KURH: Ready as I'm going to get.
MARTIN: All right.
SHORTZ: All right, Michael, no science today, I'm afraid. Every answer is a word starting with the letters A-R, which I'd like you to identify from its anagram. For example, if I said A-R plus Rob - R-O-B - you would say arbor. And every answer starts A-R. Number one is A-R plus nog - N-O-G.
KURH: Argon.
MARTIN: Argon.
SHORTZ: Argon. And I was wrong, we did have a science-related question.
MARTIN: Yeah.
SHORTZ: Number two is A-R plus rod - R-O-D.
KURH: Ardor.
SHORTZ: That's it. A-R plus acne - A-C-N-E.
KURH: Oh, arcane.
MARTIN: Yeah.
SHORTZ: Arcane, nice. A-R plus tend - T-E-N-D - as you tend a garden.
KURH: Ardent.
SHORTZ: That's it. A-R plus tyre - T-Y-R-E.
KURH: Oh, T-Y. Artery.
SHORTZ: That's it.
MARTIN: Good.
SHORTZ: A-R plus tribe - T-R-I-B-E.
KURH: Arbiter.
MARTIN: Good.
SHORTZ: That's it. A-R plus lanes - L-A-N-E-S.
KURH: That one I'm having some trouble with.
SHORTZ: I'll tell you the next letter is S.
KURH: OK. Arsenal. There we go.
SHORTZ: Arsenal is it.
MARTIN: Good.
SHORTZ: A-R plus since - S-I-N-C-E. This one is also science related in the same way that argon was.
KURH: Arsenic.
MARTIN: Yep.
SHORTZ: Arsenic is it. A-R plus toss in - T-O-S-S I-N. And your next letter is S.
MARTIN: Oh, really?
KURH: Arsonist?
SHORTZ: Arsonist, yes. And your last one - A-R plus old mail - O-L-D M-A-I-L. And since you like animals...
KURH: Oh, armadillo.
MARTIN: Oh.
SHORTZ: Armadillo.
MARTIN: Wow. I totally did not see that. Michael, well done..
KURH: Thank you.
MARTIN: For playing the puzzle today, you get a WEEKEND EDITION lapel pin, maybe we'll send two 'cause you have twins and maybe each of them wants one. That's what I'm thinking. Puzzle books and games as well. You can read all about it at npr.org/puzzle. And before we let you go, Michael, where do you hear us? What's your public radio station?
KURH: WBEZ in Chicago.
MARTIN: Michael Kurh of Geneva, Illinois. Thanks so much for playing the puzzle.
KURH: Thank you.
MARTIN: OK, Will, what's the challenge for next week?
SHORTZ: Yes, it comes from listener Ben Bass, also Chicago by coincidence. Name someone who welcomes you in. Insert the letter U somewhere inside this, and you'll names something that warns you to stay away. Who is this person? And what is this thing? So again, someone who welcomes you in, insert the letter U somewhere inside, and you'll name something that warns you to stay away. Who is this person? And what is this thing?
MARTIN: All right. When you've got it figured out, go to our website, npr.org/puzzle and click on that submit your answer link. Just one entry per person please. Send in your answers by Thursday, January 29, at 3 p.m. Eastern time. Don't forget to include a phone number where we can reach you at about that time because if you are the winner, then we'll give you a call, and you will get to play on the air with the puzzle editor of The New York Times. And he is WEEKEND EDITION's puzzle master, Mr. Will Shortz. Thanks so much, Will.
SHORTZ: Thanks, Rachel.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The group that called itself the Islamic State has forced Christians in northwestern Iraq to flee. And as they leave their homes behind, an ancient heritage is at risk. As NPR's Alice Fordham reports, some Christians decided there was one thing they could save - their library.
ALICE FORDHAM, BYLINE: In the northern Iraqi city of Erbil, I meet two monks. Father Najeeb Mikhael is a beaming Iraqi in white robes. In black vestments is Father Colomba Stewart - a Texan, tall, spare and pale. They are on a rescue mission.
FATHER NAJEEB MIKHAEL: There's a big collection of our archive and manuscripts there. And there are old books.
FORDHAM: Mikhael has taken me to a house where he's stashed a substantial part of what remains of the Christian libraries of Iraq.
FORDHAM: OK. So tell me what I'm seeing. Wow.
MIKHAEL: This is a New Testament - altogether Saint Mark, Matthew and Luke and Jean here. And as you see, in many colors also here.
FORDHAM: So it's an illuminated Gospels.
MIKHAEL: Exactly.
FORDHAM: There have been Dominican monks in the city of Mosul since about 1750. They amassed a library of thousands of ancient manuscripts, and say they brought the printing press to Iraq in the early 1800's.
MIKHAEL: And we start printing in six to seven different languages, as Arabic, Chaldean, Syriac, Turkish also Latin, French.
FORDHAM: As an Islamist insurgency roiled Mosul in 2008, they smuggled their library out bit by bit to the Christian village of Qaraqosh. And last summer when ISIS was inching closer, Mikhael took action.
MIKHAEL: I prepare everything, and take a very big truck and put all this collection. At 5 a.m., I came with a truck. We passed the three checkpoints without any problem. I think Virgin Mary have her hand to protect us. (Laughter).
FORDHAM: In fact, in Qaraqosh, he'd been working on a digitizing project headed by Stewart’s Hill Museum and Manuscript Library based in Minnesota. He'd gathered manuscripts from all around Iraq and was photographing them. Stewart studies Syriac, a variant of the Aramaic language from the time of Jesus. He shows me a sheaf of yellowed handwritten pages that have lost their binding.
FATHER COLOMBA STEWART: I'm not sure exactly what this is because we're missing the first part, but it looks like a liturgical manuscript. (Reading in a foreign language).
FORDHAM: They explain there's actually two dialects - Western Syriac and Eastern Syriac. The Iraqi monk, Mikhael, sings the old prayer, the "Our Father," to demonstrate.
MIKHAEL: (Singing in foreign language).
FORDHAM: That's the Western version.
MIKHAEL: (Singing in foreign language).
FORDHAM: And that's the Eastern one. Stewart needs the manuscripts to study the way prayers shift across dialects.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHILDREN SINGING)
FORDHAM: Every night, many displaced Christian families living in an unfinished building in Erbil sing the old prayers together, and hope they'll go home. In private, the monks say they think this upheaval will drive the last of Iraq's Christians out. They're trying to document the heritage before all this disappears. Alice Fordham, NPR News.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
This past week, President Obama became the first president to use the word transgender in a State of the Union address. Today, we bring you a conversation from StoryCorps OutLoud initiative. Here is Shane Fairchild, a transgender man, remembering his late wife, Blue Bauer, a transgender woman. Shane sat down with their friend, Sayer Johnson, in St. Louis.
SHANE FAIRCHILD: Blue was 6-foot tall and weighed about 230 pounds, had red hair and brown eyes, had been a trucker all of her life. So she was very rough around the edges. If I'd get to drinking, and I'd get a little redneck, and I'd get in somebody's face, Ms. Blue would step in. And I'd be like, really, I don't need you to take up for me. And she's like, yes you do. Shut up and sit down. She'd also been a biker. Blue was in an all-male motorcycle club. And they had never had a woman ever. So Blue was the first.
SAYER JOHNSON: So the way that I know you is you and Blue were sort of the Mama and the Papa of the trans community. Did you and Blue intentionally do that?
FAIRCHILD: Well, Blue was having problems. Her sisters weren't accepting her. Her son wasn't. Then when her grandchild was born, they wouldn't let her see the grand baby. So yeah, I think it was a lot to do with what Blue was feeling.
JOHNSON: I saw so many people coming to your home, trans folks, when your Blue was home and she was dying.
FAIRCHILD: The day that she died, she had been comatose the whole day, and she kept fighting for every, every breath. And then it dawned on me. Three days before, she was on the couch watching TV, and she started crying. And I said, baby, what's the matter? And she said, I promised you when we got together I'd never leave you. Not even death was going to take me. And I thought, is that why she's fighting so hard? And so I whispered in her ear, you're really not leaving me. I know that. And she took one, easy breath and was gone.
JOHNSON: I love that her motorcycle was right up there by the casket.
FAIRCHILD: What she wanted was to be embalmed and set on her motorcycle. And I'm like, no, I'm not going to do that.
JOHNSON: She was dressed how she wanted to be dressed.
FAIRCHILD: She had her t-shirt on that said, you never seen a motorcycle parked outside a the psychiatrist's office. She had her combat boots on. So yeah, she was good. She's the only person I ever met that ever treated me like I was me. You know, they say there's always that one person - your soul mate, and I think Blue was mine. I really do.
MARTIN: That was Shane Fairchild remembering his wife Blue with their friend Sayer Johnson. Blue Bauer died of lung cancer on April 12, 2013 in St. Louis, Missouri. Their interview is part of StoryCorps OutLoud, recording stories of the LGBTQ community across America. If you'd like to add your voice to the StoryCorps archive, visit storycorps.org. And to hear more from StoryCorps OutLoud, check out their podcast. It's on iTunes and npr.org.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Rachel Martin. There is a new video that appears to depict yet another gruesome death. The Islamic State has purportedly killed one of two Japanese hostages. The Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, said he is, quote, "speechless" and has demanded ISIS release the second hostage.
ISIS has given its own ultimatum. They've demanded the release of a prisoner being held in Jordan on terrorism charges. The CIA estimates that ISIS has recruited up to 31,000 fighters to their ranks in Syria and Iraq. Two thousand of them are westerners, and the numbers keep going up. But what happens when those radicalized fighters return to their home countries?
Last year, the city of Aarhus in Denmark launched a program to try to bring those young jihadis back into Danish society. Allan Aarslev is a police officer from Aarhus. And he's been working with de-radicalized fighters for several years now. He says many of the young people coming home feel more lost than before they left.
OFFICER ALLAN AARSLEV: We can assist them with different kinds of help to make sure that they have a decent life when they come back from Syria. And that could be, for instance, seeing a psychologist if we feel they have posttraumatic stress, a battle mind or whatever kind of problem they could bring back from Syria. But we could also help them back to the education they left before they went.
MARTIN: So it sounds like you are treating these returning jihadis not like potential terrorists necessarily, but just like young people who may be troubled, who are just crying out for some kind of help.
AARSLEV: We think among them could be potential terrorists. That's also important to say. It is very important for us that when we focus on this group of young men, it is a very different group. Some of them are quite disillusioned when they get back from Syria and just want to get their old life back. Others, we are more concerned for them that they might be a threat to the Danish society. Of course, we do not know if they would be, but we supply all the information which we get about these young men. We pass it onto the intelligence service here in Denmark.
MARTIN: Are there any similarities? What do these young men all have in common?
AARSLEV: Well, apart from being Muslims, they have nothing in common. The mosques they attend here in the city is a Salafi Mosque. And the Swedish covered that a lot of these young men attended the same mosque. We confirmed to the press that the recruitment went on through this specific mosque. And that is one year ago. And as we said that out loud, we also discussed with the board of the mosque what could be done about this problem. And we have seen for the past year that traffic from the city of Aarhus to Syria has stopped. Thirty of them, we know for a fact, went in 2013, and only one has gone to Syria in the year of 2014.
MARTIN: So have you made any arrests when you say that all of these young men can be traced back to one particular mosque that was doing the radicalizing? Have there been any arrests made in connection with that?
AARSLEV: There have been no arrests made because it's very difficult for us to prove that they have been a member of ISIS. But of course, we have tried to prove these things, but we have not had any success.
MARTIN: I realize you need to protect the identities of the people involved in the program, but in order to better understand it, is it possible for you to tell me the story of one of these young men, perhaps someone who really benefited from the program?
AARSLEV: One of the cases I can tell you where a young man went to Syria without telling his mother and father. And he called them when he was in Syria. So we invited these parents to come into a parent supporting group. And we tried to support them through this group of persons which all have sons which are in Syria. As he returned, the parents called us right away and told us now he's back in the city, and we fear what could happen with him.
He came to our office for an interview, and we also saw that he was wounded in his one arm. He told us how he injured. As a matter of fact, he told us that he was guarding medicine that was transported to a camp where he was a helper. We do not know for a fact this story is right, but we could not prosecute him because we could not find proof that he had done anything that could incriminate him. But we could help him.
So we saw what kind of situation he was in, and we also saw that he was quite disillusioned about what he has experienced when he was in Syria. We made him see a psychiatrist. And the psychiatrist recommended to us yes, help him so we recommended to his school that they took him back. And he is, a matter of fact, in his high school again right now finishing his studies and becoming a quite normal pupil again.
MARTIN: It sounds like in order for this program to succeed, you have to have some kind of trust between these families or the Muslim community and law enforcement because it's those families, that community that has to pick up the phone and call you to alert you to a potential problem. Is that the case? What is the relationship between the Muslim community in your city and law enforcement?
AARSLEV: Well, one of the positive things we have seen through this program is we often go to meetings with minority groups in this city. And we often discuss with them what could be done about this problem. And we see them all. They are very motivated to help us to see that no Syrian foreign fighters returns to the cities of Aarhus and becomes a terrorist or a criminal.
MARTIN: You've had this program up and running for a while. I wonder how the recent terrorist attacks in France and the recent arrests in Belgium have made you think differently about your program.
AARSLEV: Well, our mind about this program has not been changed because of what has happened in France or in Belgium. We feel that every method which could be used to prevent anything serious from happening here in this country is necessary to take. The criticism we have had that we speak to these persons and we try to understand what goes on, well, we don't take that so serious because this is a method that could help us to live in a more secure society if we use this method as we use prosecution and investigation and surveillance as well. It is not crime prevention or investigation; it is both.
MARTIN: That was Allen Aarslev. He's a police officer in Aarhus, Denmark, where he helps reintegrate radicalized fighters.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Greece could make history today. Voters in the parliamentary elections there could vote in Europe's first political party that is all about ending austerity measures. The party says the deep spending cuts that international lenders are imposing in exchange for billions in bailout loans have destroyed the Greek economy. Joanna Kakissis joins us now from Athens for more. So, Joanna, what's the mood like among voters today?
JOANNA KAKISSIS, BYLINE: Well, the mood's actually pretty subdued. Voters are anxious, and they're confused. And they're not sure what's going to happen. The only thing that everyone seems to agree on is that austerity is just not working in Greece. The country is still deeply in debt. The unemployment rate is still at more than 25 percent, and that's astonishing. And this promise that we're turning a coroner keeps getting broken. So Greeks are ready to try something new.
MARTIN: So this political party is called Syriza. If they are brought into power, clearly there's some kind of indication that Greeks believe this party can really change things. Can they?
KAKISSIS: Well, I'm not sure anyone but the true believers - the leftist intellectuals who have been part of this party for years - think Syriza is going to save Greece in one fell swoop. Some pundits sympathetic to Syriza have framed this contest, this vote today as a contest between hope and fear. But that's a pretty simplistic view.
You know, Greeks are savvy enough to understand that Syriza is an inexperienced, untested party that's never governed before. It's going to make mistakes. They also know that this party is best known for protesting the system and not creating one. So some are still worried that Syriza's economic policies might actually lead to a euro zone exit for the country. That's scaring a lot of people still. But they're willing to give this party a chance because it's something new, something uncorrupted and because the policies of the previous governments have failed so dramatically to improve the economy.
MARTIN: So they're gaining traction just because they're so different? I mean, what happened to Greece's mainstream political parties in all this?
KAKISSIS: You know, the two main political parties are New Democracy, and that's the conservative party about going Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, and PASOK, a center-left party. Voters are blaming them for creating the debt crisis and then selling out the country's sovereignty to foreign lenders, who then squeeze the economy dry. So those parties are pretty much over. I mean, their credibility is so damaged with Greeks right now. Now, there are more than 20 parties running in Greece today; a country of just 10 million people.
MARTIN: So if this party, Syriza, is elected into government and they're able to roll back all these austerity measures, does that mean, Joanna, that then Greece ends up defaulting on all of these international loans?
KAKISSIS: Well, you know, that's still - that answer is still unclear because Alexis Tsipras, he's the leader of Syriza, he's actually dodged that question. He won't say whether he's willing to do that, to default in exchange for standing up to foreign lenders on austerity measures. But what he has said is that he insists that the economy must grow so Greece can actually stop being what he calls a debt colony so it can actually have money to pay back its loans.
The Europeans have been warming up to Tsipras since the European elections last year when Syriza did very well. And they keep saying that Greece is no longer the imminent threat to the Euro zone that it once was. But, you know, a euro zone exit would still be very messy for the monetary union. And now there's another anti-austerity party, Podemos, in Spain, and they're arising. And so that's apparently concerning Brussels, the leaders in Brussels and Berlin that the euro zone will also face a political crisis if Syriza is elected.
MARTIN: Reporter Joanna Kakissis talking to us from Athens. Thanks so much, Joanna.
KAKISSIS: Thank you, Rachel.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
South Georgia Island is a spectacular spot in the South Atlantic with mountains and glaciers and seabirds and an overabundance of rats. The vermin arrived on whaling ships 200 years ago. And over the decades, they have decimated some of South Georgia's more delicate bird species by attacking their nests.
Last week, a ship headed out from the Falkland Islands with what scientists are hoping is enough poison to finally exterminate the rodents. This is the third phase of a five-year project to put nature back in balance on the island. But it's a tricky proposition in which scientists must spread the poison so it wipes out the rats without killing off the birds at the same time. Apparently, the plan has been working. One expert speaking about a particular bird species told the BBC, quote, "the pipit is our equivalent of a canary in a coal mine. And we are starting to hear their song again."
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Rachel Martin. Stop Reporting Or We'll Kill Your Family - that's the chilling title of a new report by Human Rights Watch on threats to journalists in Afghanistan. The document details not only how members of the local media are targeted by the Taliban and warlords, but also how the government there has failed to protect them.
2014 was the most violent year on record for Afghan journalists according to one media advocacy group.
We're joined now from Kabul by Najib Sharifi. He is the head of the Afghan Journalists Safety Committee. We should also say Najib worked as an NPR producer and translator for several years. Welcome to the program, Najib.
NAJIB SHARIFI: Thank you, Rachel. I'm happy to be with you.
MARTIN: So I suppose there is good news in that Afghanistan, over the years, has seen this huge expansion of news outlets since the fall of the Taliban. But that progress is clearly under threat. Why have things gotten so dangerous for local journalists at this point?
SHARIFI: Well, it's mainly because the government did not manifest the necessary political will to protect media, freedom of expression and journalists. And it was, basically, this reluctance on the part of the government that emboldened everybody to attack journalists with the belief that they can get away with it. The other part, which is extremely discouraging and disappointing, is that the government elements, particularly security forces, have been the biggest source of intimidation and violence against journalists.
MARTIN: Why? What's the motivation?
SHARIFI: It's mainly because of the corruption and are being involved. They see the media as a threat to their behavior.
MARTIN: Can you talk about the kinds of threats that Afghan journalists face today?
SHARIFI: They encounter the danger of death, danger of getting assaulted, danger of them losing their jobs because of pressures. They receive threats from the government. They received threats from the Taliban. They receive threats from the warlords. Journalists, they have to resort to self-censorship because there are many cases that they are not able to report.
MARTIN: The human rights report details that, suggesting that editors and reporters end up steering clear of certain topics that they think could get them killed.
SHARIFI: Absolutely.
MARTIN: You and I both remember a time in Afghanistan right after the war, the U.S. invasion, when there were all kinds of American and European NGOs working there starting media organizations. Millions and millions of dollars were spent trying to build a free press in Afghanistan. Did it make a difference? Did it pay off? Was the money worth it?
SHARIFI: Well, it did pay off in the sense that we have to keep in mind that today, the media is playing a very important role in the public life in Afghanistan. It's basically the media that is the only watchdog over the - not only the government, but also non-state actors.
MARTIN: Lastly, the new Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, has talked a lot about the importance of the free press in Afghanistan. Are you optimistic? Do you expect any follow-through from his government on this?
SHARIFI: The signal sent by the National Unity Government is promising. However, to preserve and to protect media, we need more meaningful actions by the government. This is something that we are still waiting to see. But in sum, I can say that the initial actions of the National Unity Government has made us hopeful about the future of media and freedom of expression.
MARTIN: Najib Sharifi is the head of the Afghan Journalist Safety Committee. He spoke with us from Kabul. Thanks so much for talking with us, Najib.
SHARIFI: Thank you, Rachel.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Big data - it's a term for the ever-expanding cloud of information that's increasingly searchable. In the field of medicine, big data can include things like genetics information or searchable electronic health records. And theoretically, big data could provide a trove of answers to important medical questions like whether certain drugs have side effects or if a particular treatment works. Amy Standen from member station KQED in San Francisco has more.
AMY STANDEN, BYLINE: In 2011, a young girl from Reno, Nevada, was flown by helicopter to the pediatric intensive care unit at Stanford's Lucile Packard Children's Hospital. Jenny Frankovich was an attending physician there.
JENNY FRANKOVICH: She was gravely ill. Her kidneys were shutting down.
STANDEN: Tests showed the girl had lupus, a disease in which the immune system goes rogue. Frankovich had seen kids like this before. And she recalled that some of them also developed blood clots, which can be deadly. Blood clots can be prevented with an anticoagulant, but that too carries risks.
FRANKOVICH: You could stroke. A patient could bleed into another organ.
STANDEN: Giving the drug was risky. Not giving the drug was also risky. So Frankovich asked the other doctors around the girl's bed, what should we do here? The answer - we don't really know.
FRANKOVICH: There wasn't enough published literature to guide this decision. And that really, the best route was to not do anything.
STANDEN: And that's when she had her big idea.
FRANKOVICH: I knew I had the patients' charts, all electronic, in a database that was searchable.
STANDEN: Not long ago, she says, this data would have filled an entire office room with boxes of paper files. Now, she could search it with a keystroke.
FRANKOVICH: I brought the data back to that big team of doctors that was around her bed. And I said, hey, this is the number of lupus patients we've had. This is the number that had a clot. And what do you think? Universally everybody said, wow, based on those numbers, you know, it seems like we should try to prevent a clot in her.
STANDEN: So they did. It worked.
FRANKOVICH: She didn't develop a clot. And over time, her lupus did get better. And she's, as far as I know, doing well.
STANDEN: This may sound kind of obvious, like something doctors would do all the time. But it's actually really unusual, the only time her hospital had used medical records in a situation like this. And to Atul Butte, who studies medical data at Stanford, this is a big step, an example of a seismic shift he believes is happening right now in medicine.
ATUL BUTTE: The idea here is the scientific method itself is growing obsolete.
STANDEN: This idea draws from an essay published in Wired magazine back in 2008 called "The End Of Theory." And according to the essay, in the future, so much information will be available at our fingertips that there will be almost no need for experiments.
BUTTE: Think about it - the scientific method, we learn this in elementary school. You come up with a question, or what we call a hypothesis, and go make the measurements to address and answer that question or hypothesis.
STANDEN: The answers already exist.
BUTTE: We already have the measurements and the data. The struggle is to figure out what do we want to ask of all that data?
STANDEN: To Butte, this cloud of data means that pretty soon, we shouldn't need so many controlled trials. The answers are already there in the patient records and other digital health databases. If Butte's right, you might think that what Frankovich did has become standard practice at her hospital. In fact, the opposite happened.
FRANKOVICH: We're actually not doing this anymore.
STANDEN: The system just isn't ready, the hospital decided. What if Frankovich had used the wrong search terms or the engine itself had bugs? What if the records had been mis-transcribed? Even Frankovich agrees that it's just too risky.
FRANKOVICH: I mean, for sure, the data is there, right? Now we have to develop the system to use it in a thoughtful, safe way.
STANDEN: Getting that system in place, she and others hope, will lead to better, faster, cheaper medicine. But it's still many years away. For NPR News, I'm Amy Standen.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Rachel Martin. And this is For The Record. It wasn't the first time President Obama has talked about this issue, but mentioning cyber security in the recent State of the Union address underlines this problem in America in a new way.
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PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: So we're making sure our government integrates intelligence to combat cyber threats just as we have done to combat terrorism. And tonight I urge this Congress to finally pass the legislation we need to better meet the evolving threat of cyber attacks, combat identity theft and protect our children's information.
MARTIN: Cyber threats have evolved over time from basic identity theft to a computer virus that holds your digital life for ransom.
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UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Seven is on your side tonight with a warning about a fast-moving computer virus that isn't just locking up your computer, but it could also scam you out of your hard-earned money.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Now experts call it ransomware.
MARTIN: For The Record today - the fight for cyber security. We're going to introduce you to three people who had very different experiences but carry some of the same scars - first up, Jim Higgs.
JIM HIGGS: I'm the owner and general manager of WAKV in Plainwell, Michigan.
MARTIN: It's an AM radio station in Southwest Michigan that he and his wife run out of the basement of their house.
HIGGS: We're known as the memory station. It's everything from Frank Sinatra to Bob Seger. How's that for a variety?
MARTIN: Jim remembers the day of the crime very clearly.
HIGGS: It was a Friday afternoon. I had pretty much finished my work for the day and had gone upstairs and fixed myself a cocktail, sat down on my lazy boy and put my feet up.
MARTIN: About an hour later, he went back downstairs. He noticed something, and it wasn't good.
HIGGS: There was silence which is about the worst thing you can hear on a radio station. And that's when I noticed on the screen of my office computer were these two icons - large ones - which said we have locked your files, and you have to pay us $500 to get them back. All of the music files were gone, all of the station jingles, all of the commercials - all of that was locked and encrypted.
KATIE: My name is Katie.
MARTIN: That's a nickname. Katie doesn't want her full name broadcast.
KATIE: I live in Madison, Wisconsin. And I'm 45 years old. And in 2013 my identity was stolen.
MARTIN: Katie came home one Saturday after running some errands and checked her voicemail. Kohl's department store had called.
KATIE: The Kohl's fraud department had left a message at home saying please call us regarding some recent activity on your newly opened account. And I froze because I didn't have a newly opened account.
MARTIN: But someone posing as Katie did. They had a fake ID with all her information on it, including her Social Security number.
KATIE: They got $18,000 in total in a matter of - it was two days. They were at an outlet mall. And you could tell on a map. Literally you could watch. They went from store to store - Macy's, Kohl's, Best Buy, Bass Pro Shop, Sears, OfficeMax.
MARTIN: Our third voice today comes from Jonathan Agin from Virginia.
JONATHAN AGIN: I'm an attorney childhood cancer advocate lobbyist.
MARTIN: Jonathan and his family were the victims of an especially hurtful kind of identity theft. In 2011 Jonathan's 4-year-old daughter Alexis passed away. She had suffered from an inoperable brain tumor.
AGIN: Prognosis is generally the child passes away between 9 to 12 months after diagnosis. Alexis was diagnosed at 27 months and she actually survived and battled valiantly for 33 months.
MARTIN: He and his wife were still in the middle of grieving the death of their child when they got a call from their accountant. He was doing their taxes, and he had disturbing news.
AGIN: He said that somebody had used to set Alexis's Social Security number to file a return. So we couldn't file electronically. We were going to have to file by paper. We were going to be late, and ultimately we were going to have to prove that Alexis was in fact our child.
MARTIN: That same day, Jonathan went online looking for answers.
AGIN: I put her name in Google, and I put Social Security number. And immediately a genealogical website popped up. And on that website was her date of birth, her date of death, her full address and her full Social Security number. It was right there for anybody and everybody to see.
MARTIN: Those are the types of crimes that can get wrapped into discussions about cyber security. And they are each very different - a ransom hack, credit card fraud and the theft of a Social Security number. But the emotional reaction to this kind of crime can be similar. When Jim Higgs realized his computer was being held ransom by hackers, he didn't overreact.
HIGGS: I went upstairs and poured another drink and decided I'd deal with it in the morning.
MARTIN: You sound like you are taking all of this in stride.
HIGGS: What can you do? I mean, really, Rachel, what can you do about it? You get hit. There's nothing the police can do.
MARTIN: Did you feel angry?
HIGGS: Absolutely I felt angry. I felt invaded.
KATIE: Having someone pose as you is just - I can't explain. It's very violating.
MARTIN: For Katie, the credit card fraud was also insulting.
KATIE: I wanted to throw up to be honest with you because you work so hard to - that's just not who I am. I pay my bills on time. I save money. And someone out there was pretending to be me and just frivolously going through and spending money willy-nilly.
MARTIN: Jonathan Agin says he and his wife each reacted differently.
AGIN: My wife was more emotional, and I was angry at the fact that somebody would obviously prey upon my daughter who passed away from cancer and utilize her for their own financial gain.
MARTIN: When the shock wears off, then there's the sometimes long and complicated process of assessing the damage and, if possible, righting the wrong. Jim Higgs was lucky. He had backed up his entire audio collection on another computer. But there were losses he never recovered.
HIGGS: Among the audio files that I lost was one of my grandkids singing a Christmas song or my granddaughter recording a commercial as a class project in high school. You know, those are gone.
MARTIN: And the hackers who attacked him were never caught. Katie isn't sure how her personal information was stolen. It could've been a clerk at a store or it could've been a cybercrime. Regardless, the whole thing has made her anxious, so afraid, she didn't want to use her full name. And Jonathan Agin, he has spent the last few years working hard with state and federal lawmakers to make Social Security numbers harder to access online. But he too reconsidered how much personal information he puts out into the world. He and his wife continue their work as advocates for families caring for children with cancer. It is a close-knit community, and a lot of the counseling he does is online.
AGIN: I can't imagine not being available and not trying to help people. And so you put yourself out there because the benefits outweigh the risks.
MARTIN: The Obama administration is pushing legislation that would tighten up punishments for cybercrime and improve information sharing between the private and public sectors to prevent cyber attacks. But there's only so much the government can do when it comes to protecting American citizens on this front.
ADAM LEVIN: You have to assume that breaches and hacking and the identity theft that flows from it - this is the new certainty in life.
MARTIN: This is Adam Levin. He's the chairman and cofounder of an online security company called IDT911. His first practical bit of advice... [POST-BROADCAST CORRECTION: Adam Levin is referred to as chairman and co-founder of IDT911. In fact, he is the chairman and founder of the company.]
LEVIN: Never use your email address as your user id because if somebody gets your email address, all of a sudden they have one half of your login process for many sites.
MARTIN: Next, he says, sign up with your bank or credit card company for something called transactional monitoring.
LEVIN: That's where they notify you anytime there's activity in your accounts. No one is in a better position to know what you're doing or what you have done than you. You will see things the bank won't see.
MARTIN: Finally, if you are the victim of some kind of online theft or sabotage, there are some easily accessible places to go for help.
LEVIN: Many organizations, as a perk of your relationship with them - it could be your insurance company, your bank, your credit union or the HR department where you work - offer plans that will help you get through a problem - identity related problem, a fraud related problem. You won't know unless you ask. And it could be free.
MARTIN: Levin says minimizing your risk is important, and sometimes it's really just not that hard. You've heard it a million times. Change your passwords. Make them more complicated. And while Levin says all these steps aren't a failsafe, if you don't take responsibility for your own online security, it will be far easier for someone else to compromise it.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Tut, tut, indeed. A debacle is unfolding at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo where someone broke off the beard of King Tut's burial mask and then attempted to glue it back on. The 3,300 year old mask is one of the most famous archaeological relics in history. Now experts say it is irreversibly damaged. To add to the drama, it's not clear who is responsible. The AP reports three of the Museum's curators give conflicting accounts of what happened and when. But they all say they were ordered to immediately fix it to get it back on display. Someone apparently had the novel notion to use epoxy to stick the beard back on. It's a strong, fast-drying glue usually used to repair metal or wood. But experts say it is not suited for something like King Tut's mask. When the conservators realized their mistake, one reportedly grabbed a spatula and tried to scrape the glue off. Instead he left a permanent scratches. The curse of Tutankhamun continues.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Rachel Martin. President Obama is in India today, just in time for that country's Republic Day celebrations. He'll attend a state dinner tonight and a big parade tomorrow. He and India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi met for several hours this morning. The two men say they reached a breakthrough that could encourage more clean energy in that country.
NPR's Scott Horsley is traveling with the president. He joins us now. So Scott, one of Obama's big agenda items on this trip has been - is climate change. What did he and the Prime Minister have to say about that issue?
SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Rachel, India is the world's third biggest carbon polluter after China and the United States. So President Obama sees India's cooperation as vital to achieving any kind of global agreement to curb greenhouse gases. (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I think India's voice is very important on this issue. Perhaps no country could potentially be more affected by the impacts of climate change, and no country is going to be more important in moving forward a stronger agreement than India.
HORSLEY: So far India is not making a China-style commitment to cap its use of coal or its carbon emissions. In fact, the country is expanding its use of coal as it tries to provide electricity to some 300 million Indians who don't now have it. But the Obama administration hopes to work with India to encourage more carbon free forms of energy, including solar and nuclear power. And today the two governments reached a deal to remove some of the obstacles that have been preventing American companies from helping India to develop its nuclear power plants.
MARTIN: OK. So what's the Indian take on all this?
HORSLEY: Well, it's important to remember the average Indian generates only about one tenth as much carbon pollution as the average American does. And what's more, India's cumulative emissions since 1990 are only about a quarter of the United States. So in some ways, India is in the position of the guest who's shown up late to the dinner party just as the plates are being taken away and is now being asked to help clean the pots and pans. Prime Minister Modi said today India will not be pressured by other countries. But speaking through an interpreter, he did say he does feel the pressure of rising temperatures. (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRIME MINISTER NARENDRA MODI: (Through interpreter) Global warming is a huge pressure. And all those who think about a better life and a better world for the future generations, those who are concerned about this, then it is their duty and their conscience. They would want to give a better lifestyle to the future generations.
MARTIN: Scott, I understand President Obama and Prime Minister Modi also took part in a wreath laying ceremony at a memorial for Mahatma Gandhi. And I take it there were some echoes there of an earlier meeting in Washington.
HORSLEY: That's right, Rachel. When Modi was in Washington last fall, he and Obama took a walking tour of the Martin Luther King Memorial there. Of course Gandhi was an inspiration for Dr. King. And that tour allowed the two men to spend some quality time together, and they seemed to hit it off. Today, in New Delhi, they took a walk through a garden. They stopped to have some tea in front of the television cameras. It was obviously a staged photo op, but it seemed to be more than just that. They had a long and animated conversation, and these two men do seem to share some common traits. They both come from humble backgrounds. They both rose to positions of power atop Democratic governments after some very energetic campaigns. And they seem to have some real personal chemistry. Obama says he hopes to translate that affection into a strong global partnership.
MARTIN: NPR White House correspondent, Scott Horsley, traveling with the president. Thanks so much, Scott.
HORSLEY: Thank you, Rachel.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
In another diplomatic move, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrives in Nigeria today. He will urge the country to hold credible elections next month and do more to counter the extremist group Boko Haram. Just this morning, the Nigerian military said Boko Haram had killed dozens of people in northeastern Nigeria. NPR's Michele Kelemen reports.
MICHELE KELEMEN, BYLINE: Secretary Kerry has described Boko Haram as one of the most evil and threatening terrorist groups on the planet.
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SECRETARY OF STATE JOHN KERRY: The Boko Haram video showed thugs shooting defenseless people on the ground with the narrator saying, from now on, killing, slaughtering, destruction and bombings will be our religious duty.
KELEMEN: The Islamist militants control a large part of northern Nigeria. Last year, the U.S. sent a team to help Nigeria save abducted schoolgirls. But those girls remain missing and tensions have been rising between the U.S. and Nigeria, according to Jennifer Cooke of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
JENNIFER COOKE: The U.S., on the one hand, has been highly critical of the Nigerian military's response to Boko Haram, the human rights abuses. On the other hand, the Nigerians feeling that the U.S. has kind of abandoned them in their moment of greatest need.
KELEMEN: Cooke says the U.S. is also worried about what's expected to be a very contentious election on February 14.
COOKE: If the military and the political forces are squabbling over an election result, there's a big opportunity for Boko Haram to expand its hold in the Northeast.
KELEMEN: The State Department says Kerry is using his visit to talk with the country's president and leading opposition candidate and to call for a credible and peaceful vote. Michele Kelemen, NPR News, Washington.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The Ebola epidemic seems to have reached a turning point in some of the worst hit African nations, including Guinea, where the outbreak began little more than year ago. But mistrust, anger and denial in some areas are threatening the government's goal to eradicate the virus by mid-March. NPR's Ofeibea Quist-Arcton is back in the West African country where she first reported on Ebola last spring. She joins us from the capital, Conakry. Ofeibea, Guinea sounds like a kind of good-news-bad-news story when it comes to Ebola. What else can you tell us?
OFEIBEA QUIST-ARCTON, BYLINE: Indeed. It's good news in that the numbers of cases are dropping here in Guinea. The bad news, though, is that we're still seeing denial. We're still seeing resistance. And this is to health workers and to the health message about Ebola. And there is such an atmosphere still of fear, of suspicion, of rumor that that is hampering this government goal of trying to eradicate, trying to beat Ebola by the middle of March.
MARTIN: So you are saying that there are fewer Ebola patients in treatment centers which is the good news but cases are still popping up all over the country?
QUIST-ARCTON: Indeed. And this is apparently a huge problem because although there is a sharp drop in infections, the geographical spread of the Ebola virus is the issue. The fact that health workers and responders can't get to all these pockets of infection in the East and the West, even in the South which was the epicenter of the epidemic. They are seeing cases that are near the Liberia border, near the Sierra Leone border. Unless there are zero cases in all three countries, the health workers tell us there is still an Ebola epidemic.
MARTIN: And you say there is all this denial still about the virus, Ofeibea. What does that denial look like? And how do you combat that?
QUIST-ARCTON: Some of the main problems are the fact that people are still hiding sick Ebola patients at home and not taking them to the hospitals, to the treatment centers. And the other huge problem is unsafe burials. Now unsafe burials come because people are still burying their dead without the authorities knowing. And often these are Ebola patients. We were with the Imams, the Muslim religious leaders, in a city called Kindia yesterday. And they were saying we have got to teach people this must stop. And another form of resistance that we have been learning about, the head of Doctors Without Borders - and they were the first responders here in Guinea - Jerome Mouton (ph), was telling us that he recently had a close shave when a community right here in the capital, Conakry, objected to their presence.
JEROME MOUTON: We decided to build a new treatment center in Conakry. And at one point, we were to organize sanitization of the population. There was a French ambassador, the U.S. ambassador, the governor of the city. They all run away. And we ran away. So when we get into the car, we had two angry young people with sticks running after us.
MARTIN: So international healthcare workers are feeling threatened themselves. What does this mean for the planning for the future?
QUIST-ARCTON: Just this week, Rachel, kids went back to school on Monday. They've been out of school since July last year. But in one area - well, one instance that we've been told of - the health authorities and the education ministry and UNICEF sent special Ebola kits to all schools to help them - i.e. they need to wash their hands in chlorinated water and so on. Apparently the community has destroyed these because what they say is, no, they're trying to contaminate us with Ebola. When they are sending these kits to children or when the health workers come to try and raise awareness, they are the ones. It's the outsiders who are bringing Ebola into the community. So that's the sort of fear and suspicion that has got to be overcome before there is any talk of eradicating Ebola here in Guinea.
MARTIN: NPR's Ofeibea Quist-Arcton on the line from Conakry, the capital of Guinea. Thanks so much, Ofeibea.
QUIST-ARCTON: Thank you, Rachel.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Time now for sports. Oh, it's true. We're just a week away from the Super Bowl, and we're going to talk with Mike Pesca about the matchup between the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots. But we simply cannot have a sports conversation this week without addressing the story taking all the air out of the room or, in this case, the football. Of course, we're talking about Deflate Gate. Did the Pats let the air out of their footballs on purpose in the championship game against the Indianapolis Colts? Just yesterday Pats coach Bill Belichick said their team, quote, followed every rule. Here to talk about that and a whole bunch of other stuff we may not have been paying attention to is Mike Pesca of slate.com. Hello.
MIKE PESCA: Hey.
MARTIN: Hey. So I mean, I enjoy picking on Tom Brady as much as the next person. But is any of this going to result in actual league rule changes?
PESCA: Probably, but I don't think it will affect the Super Bowl. I mean, they're going to take care of their footballs and not allow a two hour gap between when the referees look at them and then when the game starts. So that will happen. I've been looking at this entire thing, this Deflate Gate controversy, as a bit of a minor equipment issue but conflated with the Super Bowl - biggest game of the year and the Patriots, the most hated and recognizable team in football. Then you have this roiling ongoing team coverage that literally led every network newscast, except ABC, they were in Havana. But that was the lead domestic story was a deflated football on Thursday.
MARTIN: (Laughter) Because it's, like, this thing. I can't stop watching it. I'm part of the problem. I keep watching the coverage. OK. So we're going to move on. What should we be obsessing over this week in the week before the Super Bowl?
PESCA: Well, you know, ISIS, the Ukraine, EU's quantitative easing. Oh, you mean football-wise? Um, yes.
MARTIN: Football.
PESCA: Well, a big thing I think going in were key injuries to members of the Seattle Seahawks defensive unit - Earl Thomas, Richard Sherman - Richard Sherman, the quite verbal and interesting three-time Pro Bowler. But both those guys - Sherman really is going to be good. He practiced all week. Earl Thomas they say will be fine. There's some indication that that's true. And Seattle, as a fully healthy unit, represents a challenge that the Patriots, no matter how much PSI are in their footballs, haven't faced all year.
I mean, especially coming down the stretch, they have faced rather weak teams. And then in the postseason where New England has seemed juggernaut-ish, if not fully inflated, where they put up massive amounts of point against the Ravens of the Colts. The Ravens and the Colts are - especially the Ravens lately - their secondary was pulling in guys who weren't even on NFL rosters. And the Colts were a really bad team against the run. So I give the Patriots credit for being really smart in knowing how to attack a defense. Problem is - Seattle has an almost impossible-to-attack defense. That will be the key to the Super Bowl.
MARTIN: You think Seattle?
PESCA: I think Seattle by a point. This is interesting. The spread - the Las Vegas spread - is a point. They are favoring Seattle by a point. New England was a little bit of an early favorite. And it seems to me that this is the closest that all of the odds predictors and all of the advanced systems have ever said a Super Bowl would be. And I see no reason why that shouldn't be true. You know?
Yesterday Bill Belichick in his press conference said I am not a scientist. And then luckily - you know, usually when that phrase is invoked it's some, but global warming may not be real. But he said, I am not a scientist. But I've been looking at footballs. But he kind of is a scientist, or at least he's a mad genius. And when you match his wits against Seattle's strength, this could be a great Super Bowl. And we'll forget all about the balls.
MARTIN: Do you have a quick curveball?
PESCA: Sure. Let's go to the world of the NHL.
MARTIN: Let's.
PESCA: It's NHL All-Star weekend. A guy named Zemgus Girgensons is on the All-Star team.
MARTIN: I love him.
PESCA: Why? He's not good. The answer is he's Latvian. So the NHL allows anyone in the world to vote at least 10 - up to 10 times on devices. And this guy is the most popular Latvian athlete, the highest pick in Latvia. So even though he's about, I don't know, let's say the 150th best player in the NHL, he's there. He's an All-Star. It's kind of a cute story - Zemgus Girgensons.
MARTIN: Mike Pesca of Slate's "The Gist" podcast. Thanks so much, Mike.
PESCA: You're welcome.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Expectant mothers have to make a lot of decisions, like whether they want to know if their fetus has chromosomal disorders like Down syndrome. If parents do want to know, there are several ways to go about testing each with its own pros and cons. Today in Your Health, we're going to look at some new testing technology that women are choosing. But as NPR's Nell Greenfieldboyce reports, it's so new that some women and their doctors don't realize what they have signed up for.
NELL GREENFIELDBOYCE, BYLINE: One woman who opted for this new kind of pregnancy screening is Amy Seitz. She's an epidemiologist, and she's married to a doctor. So she's interested in medical advances.
AMY SEITZ: I think that I initially heard about it through family and friends. Speaking with them, they had - you know, had the option of it given to them by their doctors.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: This kind of test uses a simple blood sample from an expectant mother and analyzes bits of fetal DNA that have leaked into her bloodstream. It's only been on the market since October of 2011. Several companies now offer it.
Seitz got pregnant with her second child last year, and at 35 years old, she knew there was an increased chance of chromosomal disorders like Down syndrome. She didn't want an invasive procedure like amniocentesis or CVS. Those are considered the gold-standard tests but doctors must put a needle into the womb to collect cells that contain fetal DNA, which means a small risk of miscarriage.
SEITZ: I wasn't interested in going as far as getting an amniocentesis because of the risk associated with that. And so when I heard about this test, that was part of the reason that I was most interested in it.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Seitz says this new way of testing fetal DNA seemed to have already become fairly common where she used to live in Washington, D.C. But she'd recently moved to Alabama, and the clinic she went to there wasn't as familiar with it. Although when she talked to her doctor, she learned they just had a visit from a company sales rep.
SEITZ: You know, I think it was a fairly new test for them at that point. But she was interested in pursuing it further to see what needed to be done.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Seitz got her blood drawn last July, becoming one of hundreds of thousands of pregnant women who've gone for this new kind of test instead of the more traditional, invasive ones. Doctors say the impact has been huge.
MARY NORTON: Those of us in the field who do diagnostic procedures like CVS and amnio have seen a drastic decrease in the number of those procedures that are being performed.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Mary Norton is an expert on maternal fetal medicine and genetics at the University of California, San Francisco.
NORTON: Places are reporting doing fewer than half the number of procedures that were being done previously.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: But she says things have changed so quickly that it may be hard for doctors and patients to know what they're dealing with.
NORTON: You know, in three years, yes, they've been around for a little while, but it's still new and it's quite different than previous genetic testing that's been available. It's quite a different paradigm, if you will.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: An invasive test, like an amnio, lets doctors get a complete picture of the chromosomes. And if there's a problem, you know it. You get a solid diagnosis. Until these new tests came along, the only less invasive option was for an expectant mother to get an ultrasound plus have her blood tested for specific proteins. This can reveal if there's an increased risk of certain disorders, but it's not very accurate. It produces a lot of false alarms. Norton says studies have shown that the new fetal DNA tests do a better job. They're less likely to flag a normal pregnancy as high-risk.
NORTON: They're much more accurate than current screening tests, but they are not diagnostic tests in the sense that an amniocentesis is. And so I think that has led to some confusion.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Even though the newer blood tests do look at fetal DNA, they can't give a definitive answer like an amniocentesis can. That's because they are analyzing scraps of fetal DNA in the mother's blood, and they're all mixed up with her own DNA. Norton says when women get worrisome results from one of these new tests and are referred to her center, they sometimes don't understand why doctors are offering a follow-up amnio.
NORTON: Because they were under the impression that this was as good as an amnio.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: She's concerned that some people might end a pregnancy without getting confirmatory testing. She points to one study last year that found a small number of women did that.
NORTON: You know, there's at least some evidence that it's happening to a greater degree than I think many of us are comfortable with.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: The tests are being used more and more widely. Some worry that the company's websites and marketing materials don't make the limitations clear enough. But Lee Shulman doesn't see it that way. He's an obstetrician and geneticist at Northwestern University in Chicago who's consulted for a couple of the testing firms.
LEE SHULMAN: Patients need to understand that while this is better, it is not a diagnostic test. And I think the companies have done a great job in putting this material out. Whether or not clinicians use this material and take it to heart and use it for patient counseling is a different story.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: He says this technology is so new that a lot of doctors have no experience with it. And consumers need to understand that.
SHULMAN: If the patient - if the couple are not getting the answers, not getting the information they feel comfortable with, they need to seek out prenatal diagnostic centers, maternal-fetal specialists, clinical geneticists who may have more experience.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: For example, here's one thing that might turn out to be a little more complicated than you'd expect. Along with screening for the common chromosomal disorders, companies offer parents the chance to learn their baby's sex weeks before it's clear on a sonogram. Diana Bianchi is an expert on prenatal genetics at Tufts University Medical Center.
DIANA BIANCHI: Many women are very excited by the idea that as part of their blood testing, they could find out pretty definitively if the baby is a boy or a girl.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: She says what they may not realize is that the test will also determine whether there's something abnormal about the sex chromosomes, which isn't that uncommon.
BIANCHI: Approximately 1 in 700 pregnancies, there's an extra X or an extra Y.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: These are mild conditions, but they normally would go undetected unless a woman had invasive test like in an amnio. Amy Seitz in Alabama, thought it was a bonus that getting this new blood test would tell her if she was having a boy or a girl. But it didn't actually do that because of a paperwork glitch.
SEITZ: The box for sex got unchecked somewhere along the way, so we weren't able to find it out from the test.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: The results she did get were reassuring. Nell Greenfieldboyce, NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The pre-Super Bowl controversy over deflated footballs is really one of the minor questions facing the sport. It is true that 11 of 12 footballs used by the New England Patriots had low air pressure as they won a conference championship last week. The Patriots have struggled to explain. That's true also. Over the weekend, Coach Bill Belichick offered a scientific theory, which was rebuked by Bill Nye the Science Guy on ABC News; All very compelling, but not really the big topic in football. A more vital conversation is taking place between a young football player and his mom. Among other things, they've been talking over the long-term health effects of playing our nation's most popular sport. They spoke with NPR's Michel Martin.
MICHEL MARTIN, BYLINE: Joining me now are Nahshon Ellerbe. He is a senior at Trinity Christian Academy in Addison, Texas, just outside of Dallas. He's been a star running back and an honor roll student there, and those accomplishments have earned him a place at Rice University, which he plans to attend next year to study and play football. Also with us is his mother, Roshounda Ellerbe. She is a third-grade teacher at Folsom Elementary School in the suburbs of Dallas. Welcome to you both. Thank you both so much for joining us.
NAHSHON ELLERBE: Thank you for having us.
ROSHOUNDA ELLERBE: Glad to be here.
MARTIN: Nahshon, let me start with you. What do you love about football?
N. ELLERBE: Football is an amazing sport. It's always been a part of my life, and it's always been something I've been passionate about. The intensity of football is definitely something that I think draws fan, spectators, but the best thing about football, in my opinion, is just the atmosphere, the family atmosphere. You grow close with a group of guys. You - you know, the blood, sweat and the tears, together it just makes for a really good atmosphere and the locker room is my favorite place on campus. So that's probably my favorite thing about the sport.
MARTIN: Roshounda, what about you? Mrs. Ellerbe, what about you? As a teacher yourself, were you ever concerned? Did you ever have any second thoughts about your son playing football?
R. ELLERBE: Well, I think every mom, when their son plays football, kind of have second thoughts. He's been playing football since he was 8 years old. And I get excited at football games, but part of my excitement - I get butterflies, you know...
MARTIN: But about what?
R. ELLERBE: I want to make sure that everything's OK.
MARTIN: What do you have jitters about?
R. ELLERBE: Well, and it's interesting - the jitters are not so much about if they're going to win or lose, but when your kid's out there playing an intense sport like football, you just want to make sure that all the boys have a good time and everyone stays healthy. And I think that's how every mom feels about the sport.
MARTIN: What about the headlines about all things that have happened, you know, off the field, like the ugly side of the sport? I mean, I don't - I'm sure you're familiar with all of them. I mean, it's scandals over bounties for hard hits, players who have been involved in criminal acts. I mean, professional players we're talking about, and also college players who have been involved in domestic violence incidents or there have been allegations of really ugly behavior toward girls and women. And then, of course, the ongoing concern that the physical price paid by players at all levels is just too high. Does that ever give you pause?
R. ELLERBE: You know, those are things that happen in our society on a daily basis. And we surround our kids and we support them and we raise them with integrity. And we make sure they're surrounded by good people who can, you know, pour into their lives and influence them in a positive way. His - he's had good role models. Every single coach he has had in his life has been an amazing role model for him. And I just think when your children are surrounded by positive influence you can't help but have positive outcomes.
MARTIN: Nahshon, what about you? I know you're very busy, you know, with your sports and with your studies, but do these headlines ever kind of penetrate into your conversations, especially with the other players, with your coaches, with your friends? What do you think about all this stuff that we've been talking about here?
N. ELLERBE: That's definitely conversation that comes up in the locker room, just the different things and, you know, who's who and who's doing what. And usually it's - the conversation is basically characterized as, you know, shock. There's shock and there's disbelief and there's concern among just, you know, players and coaches in as far as my high school locker room is concerned. And so there's the general understanding that those things are not OK and there's a general understand that something should be done about, you know, the headlines that are making waves and putting a negative light on the NFL and the sport as a whole.
MARTIN: Can I just ask - let me just push you, though, Nahshon 'cause, you know, you're almost grown. I feel like I can push you a little bit. Why is there shock at this point? I mean, when you've got year after year, when you've got people who have been accused of murder, in some cases have been convicted, people who are on trial even now, people who engaging in these acts - I know you saw the Ray Rice video.
N. ELLERBE: Right.
MARTIN: So when you think about that what does it make you think about? Does it make you think about your sport or do you feel like it's something else?
N. ELLERBE: Well, you asked why is there shock and I think you mentioned, like, the repetitiveness of just the repeat crimes and repeat offenders and things like that. And I think part of the shock is in the fact that it's so repetitive, that it keeps happening and that there continues to not be, you know, some type of solution that the patterns keep repeating themselves. And me personally I feel like it is an outside issue. I feel like the sport of football is very positive. I think, you know, people not only enjoy watching the sport, but they enjoy playing the sport.
Football's something that, you know, grandfathers and dads and kids, they play all throughout the family and they enjoy the sport. And so I think when you have negative things like that that shine a negative light on the NFL and college football, it kind of, you know, starts to put a damper on it. It poisons it a bit for the purists, the people who want to enjoy the sport for what it really is and what it really should be.
MARTIN: Nahshon, when people see you in your uniform, your Trinity Christian Academy uniform, and soon to be your uniform at Rice - and we wish you every good thing in your next - the next stage of your life - but what do you want them to see?
N. ELLERBE: You know, I hope that the product that I'm putting out on the field and off the field is something that people can be inspired by. That people can, you know, just say that that guy's doing things the right way. I just really want to be a role model for whoever feels like they need one. So if I can, you know, do positive things and help other people, you know, see the game of football in a positive light then I consider that a success.
MARTIN: I've been speaking with Nahshon Ellerbe, senior and star running back at Trinity Christian Academy, and his mother, Roshounda Ellerbe, third-grade teacher at Folsom Elementary School. That is in the suburbs of Dallas, Texas. Thank you both so much for speaking with us.
R. ELLERBE: Thank you for having us.
N. ELLERBE: Thank you very much.
INSKEEP: This is part of a great and vital discussion. Great person to lead it and tomorrow Michel will be in Dallas with our member station KERA for a live event on the ethics of football on and off the field. And you can join a live Twitter chat using the hashtag #NPRMichel. That's N-P-R-M-I-C-H-E-L.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
One of President Obama's political goals remains a practical problem. It's the president's effort to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He vowed to finish that job by the end of his first year. He's still trying and says he means to do it before leaving office.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
A man at the center of that debate is Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel. And Hagel tells NPR News it will be very difficult to achieve the president's goal. Hagel is on his way out of office. In recent months, he was privately criticized for the speed at which he certified prisoners for release from Guantanamo. It's hard to find countries to receive the detainees, for one thing, and Congress has said the U.S. will not receive them. This was one of the topics we discussed when Hagel welcomed us into his office on Friday for an exit interview.
U.S. DEFENSE SECRETARY CHUCK HAGEL: The closing of that prison, which I support - I supported it when I was in the Senate - it requires more than just a military dimension. It requires countries hosting these detainees. First, countries who are willing to take them. Second, do they have the capability, capacity and commitment to assure in every way they can that satisfies us that there is substantial mitigation of risk of these individuals returning to the battlefield to threaten the United States or our people or our allies?
INSKEEP: It was hard for you to sign off on some of the prisoner releases or transfers out of Guantanamo in recent years, wasn't it?
HAGEL: I didn't sign off on any Guantanamo detainees that I did not certify that we substantially mitigated the risk of them returning to the battlefield. Now, has there been a slowing of that which hasn't always made me popular in all quarters? Yes, but I made that very clear to the president and to everyone - to the Congress.
INSKEEP: You're affirming that there were people at the White House who were saying come on, move faster. Let's get this done.
HAGEL: I am not affirming anything. I'm just saying that not all people agreed with me.
INSKEEP: I understand, I understand. In the last couple of months, a number of people have been released from Guantanamo. Things seem to be moving more quickly. Is it going to be possible to close the Guantanamo Bay Naval detention facility in the next couple of years?
HAGEL: It's going to be very difficult, especially if the Congress further restricts where these last 122 detainees go. How they will be dealt with - this isn't a simple, easy matter of, well, let's just move 122 detainees. These people are there for a reason. And as you draw down into the last numbers there, these are the most difficult cases.
INSKEEP: As you know, Secretary Hagel, a couple of your predecessors publicly complained about the White House's hands-on involvement in national security affairs. Of course, there's always a balancing act because you have civilian control to the military. You spent a couple of years as the guy in between the White House and the military. Did the White House get that balance right?
HAGEL: Well, every president has to find that balance and that position on how he deals with not only his military, but every agency of government. We in the military - we have had, continue to have, every opportunity to express ourselves on every occasion and on every issue. I don't think there is any perfection in the process.
It depends on the issues. It depends on timing. It depends on what is going on at any one time where as to how much involvement the White House has, how much involvement the president has. And again, he is the commander in chief and the people who work with him at the National Security Council are his arm in working with the Defense Department. And quite frankly, they have responsibility for all of the government. We are one component of the government.
INSKEEP: Did you ever have a moment in the last couple of years of saying to someone at the White House, wait a minute, I understand he's the commander in chief, but hold on, you're going too far here?
HAGEL: We've had opportunities to express ourselves on many occasions.
INSKEEP: (Laughter) I don't think you're answering the question.
HAGEL: I just did.
INSKEEP: Meaning, have you expressed yourself in that way?
HAGEL: I have expressed myself in many ways, but I don't get into the book-telling business of conversations I had with the president. That's not my style. I don't think that's a responsible thing to do.
INSKEEP: How much, if at all, has this institution been able to begin to renew itself after the sacrifices and the difficulty of more than a decade of war?
HAGEL: Well, I think one of the hidden consequences of 13 years of nonstop war, which is unprecedented in the history of this country - two wars, two large landmass wars. Also unprecedented is the fact that we fought those wars with an all-volunteer force, never has that happened. And what that means is you keep rotating back into combat tours, the same people - four, five, six combat tours, the same people. Strain, stress, consequences of that are showing up. They have been showing the last two or three years. And I've tried to pay a lot of attention to this over the last two years in our medical health care reviews, family issues, everything that affect people because in the end it is people that is the most important asset of any institution.
You can have all the capabilities. If you don't have the quality people, you don't have much, so we've got to pay attention to that. We're going to have to pay more attention to it. It's affected, for example - I always ask when I bring young enlisted soldiers in and young officers in for private luncheons, which I do, and I always ask the question do you intend to stay the military? And when I went around the table this morning on six young officers, 5 out of the 6 said that they were uncertain whether they we're going to stay in the service and most likely would get out. You know why - because of family issues because of stress and strain. If you want to have a family, what does this mean? Uncertainty of budgets, uncertainty of are we going to continue to cut the force? This is very dangerous. Now, you don't see that anywhere. That is not anything that's articulated in any big news stories because it's not here and now. And the news business, I know and it's part of it, it's reporting on what's there today, but rarely are there any reflective stories on how do you assure this country's security into the next generation? And this is what I look at.
INSKEEP: Secretary Hagel, thanks very much.
HAGEL: Thank you.
INSKEEP: Chuck Hagel stepping down soon as the United States Secretary of Defense. That was one of a very few exit interviews he's giving on his way out of office. And you can find a full transcript of our discussion at NPR.org. Give it a read.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Years ago, high school sports teams did not consider concussions a big deal.
JANIE HEARD: We used to just - if a kid got knocked out on the football field, we put smelling salts under their nose, and we sent them back out.
INSKEEP: That's Janie Heard of Trinity Christian Academy in Dallas. NPR's Michel Martin has been talking with young people there. And elsewhere in today's program, we hear a mother and son talking through football injuries. Right now, we hear of a more modern approach to treating concussions in school. Here is Lauren Silverman from our member station KERA in Dallas.
LAUREN SILVERMAN, BYLINE: Trinity is one of thousands of high schools in the U.S. trying to bring kids back from concussions in a more balanced way. And senior Graham Hill has recovered so well under its academic rehab program that...
(SOUNDBITE OF FOOTBALL PRACTICE)
SILVERMAN: ...He's returned to football practice. Still it took a long time for this defensive end to suit back up after his concussion. For months, he felt sick. His stomach hurt, he was exhausted and there was a pressure in his skull like a balloon was being inflated in his head.
GRAHAM HILL: It's kind of hard to describe. It's like a migraine on steroids.
SILVERMAN: The instructions from the doctor were simple - no football and, for a while, no school.
HILL: Immediately it was - do absolutely nothing, basically be brain dead. Just sit in a dark room, no electronics, no reading, no loud noises and just focus on getting your mind better.
SILVERMAN: So as long as he had symptoms, Graham didn't hang out with friends, even text them. He missed two full weeks of class during his all-important junior year and then went back part-time.
HEARD: Our goal is to get them back to where they were academically before the brain injury. And it's different for every one of these kids.
SILVERMAN: Administrator Jamie Heard created the school rehab program at Trinity after she had a serious concussion years ago. In the past four years, she's helped 128 students throughout the school with a gradual return to class after a brain injury.
For Graham, that took months. For some, it's quicker. The newest thinking is to create a unique game plan for each kid using their symptoms as a guide. And it's a big change from the so-called cocoon therapy - the idea that more rest must be better.
DANNY THOMAS: Most people would assume is that when you are resting, you're having less stimulation on your brain and then, therefore, you would have lower symptoms because you're not challenging yourself.
SILVERMAN: Danny Thomas is a pediatric emergency medicine doctor at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin. He led a randomized trial to test the idea of strict rest for young patients with concussions.
THOMAS: What we found was that patients who were randomized to the strict rest group took longer to recover and had more symptoms during that recovery period.
SILVERMAN: That's right, headaches and nausea were worse for the kids resting more for five days instead of two. And they complained of emotional symptoms like irritability and sadness.
THOMAS: The pendulum had swung too far towards rest. And hopefully, this study has moved that pendulum back to the middle.
SILVERMAN: Even before Thomas' study was published, Janie Heard of Trinity had adopted the custom approach. She coordinates with doctors, students, parents and teachers to make sure a student is doing as much work as possible without aggravating symptoms. Sometimes that means avoiding technology.
HEARD: In our schools, we use screens all the time now. We have overheads, Smartboards. So our kids know they have to put their heads down in class if a screen is being used when they are recovering from a concussion.
SILVERMAN: For a student taking six classes and applying for scholarships, trying to give the brain the appropriate amount of rest can be a challenge, but it's crucial. Dr. Gerry Gioia of Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., says the brain's electrical transmissions, which govern the whole body, can be affected by a concussion.
GERRY GIOIA: I often say the software system of the brain now is impaired, and all of the functions that that software runs - like your thinking and your behavior, your emotion, your sleep - can potentially be impaired as well.
SILVERMAN: The evidence shows getting all that back online takes some flexibility and a lot of patience. For NPR News, I'm Lauren Silverman in Dallas.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
And now let's get to a report on new protections proposed by President Obama for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Here's NPR's Sam Sanders.
SAM SANDERS, BYLINE: Obama's Department of Interior will push for heavier conservation measures over millions of acres of the Arctic refuge. The president made the announcement in a YouTube video with music and pictures of Arctic wildlife.
(SOUNDBITE OF YOUTUBE VIDEO)
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Alaska's National Wildlife Refuge is an incredible place, pristine, undisturbed. It supports caribou and polar bears, all manner of marine life.
SANDERS: The plan is to give more of the refuge the designation of wilderness. That title means you can't drill or mine or build a road or any other permanent structure there. Right now, less than 40 percent of the 19-million-acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has that declaration.
The new protections from the Interior Department are temporary. Only Congress can make a permanent wilderness declaration. And with both chambers controlled by Republicans, that seems unlikely. That's because the measure might slow oil and natural gas drilling. Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski called the new measures an attack on her state's economy and vowed to fight back with every resource at her disposal.
Malte Humpert is the executive director of the Arctic Institute, a think tank. Humpert says Obama gets something even if Congress doesn't approve a permanent wilderness designation.
MALTE HUMPERT: This is kind of a very low-hanging fruit. It's an easy initiative to announce, and then you can blame Republicans for not passing it.
SANDERS: The Obama administration is set to announce further conservation measures this week, including limits on drilling in the Arctic Ocean. Sam Sanders, NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
There are not so many occasions when the leaders of the world's two largest democracies share the same stage. It is happening in India this week. President Obama took an invitation to attend India's Republic Day parade in New Delhi. He is attending with India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and of course, they have been discussing more than parades as we'll hear in a moment. But we begin with the scene and NPR's Julie McCarthy. Hi, Julie.
JULIE MCCARTHY, BYLINE: Hi, Steve.
INSKEEP: What have you seen?
MCCARTHY: Well, it was an incredible parade today. It was this rich tableau of kind of joy-filled India. It was kind of a typically Republic Day. Unfortunately, this one began in the pouring rain which came down as they played the national anthem.
(SOUNDBITE OF NATIONAL ANTHEM)
MCCARTHY: The president pulled up in his armored Cadillac known as the Beast and he stepped out in front of this flower festoon reviewing stand. Prime Minister Modi greeted him, and they made their way to this bulletproof enclosure that was open to the pouring sky. There were no umbrellas to be found, and the president stood there for several minutes before one arrived. But, you know, the rain didn't dampen the spirits of 125,000 Indians who went through security checks to show up. And it certainly didn't dent the enthusiasm of the stream of marching bands who - I've never seen anything like it, Steve - created a seamless production of sound.
INSKEEP: Well, I can get a sense of the enthusiasm just listening to you.
MCCARTHY: No, it was a wonderful show. There was a flyover that was magnificent at the end, including a massive U.S. transport carrier called the Globemaster. But the one group that really catches the eye and the ear is the All Camel Band. And here they are.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE ALL CAMEL BAND)
INSKEEP: I'm sorry, the All Camel Band?
MCCARTHY: The All Camel Band is a contingent from the border security force. They are riding camels. They're wearing some 75 different accessories, and they're playing instruments. That was followed by a series of floats and an iron lion called Make in India, a bullet train that India is developing, a salute to the girl child and there was a lot of military hardware, much of it from Russia, tanks from the 1990s, infantry carriers from the Czechs, but the president did see a gigantic American C-130 swoop overhead.
INSKEEP: OK. Sounds like a lot of fun. But you have a relatively new Indian prime minister leading a country of well over a billion people meeting with the president of the United States. Have they discussed substance?
MCCARTHY: They sure did discuss substance. And they discussed it in this sort of warm atmosphere of bon ami. The two of them clearly click. But Modi and Obama cleared hurdles in a long-delayed civil nuclear agreement that potentially opens up a market worth billions of dollars to U.S. companies who would come and build power plants here. The Obama administration, as well as Modi, look at nuclear energy as a non-carbon source of energy, part of the drive for cleaner air, less polluted India. The two sides also renewed a defense framework.
So I think the takeaway here is that they were resolving old issues. And that led to progress in opening up new doors, to do a lot with India on energy, global health, global warming. As I say, the two men clearly click, and it looks like a new page for U.S.-India relations.
INSKEEP: Julie, thanks very much as always.
MCCARTHY: Thank you.
INSKEEP: That's NPR's Julie McCarthy in New Delhi.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
And there's a bit of good news about the battle against Ebola. Liberia and Sierra Leone appear - key word there, appear - to be turning a corner on Ebola. But neighboring Guinea still faces challenges. Some people there still hide people suffering from Ebola at home, and unsafe traditional burial rituals are helping the virus spread. Sixty percent of Ebola cases in Guinea are related to those burials, according to the World Health Organization. NPR's Ofeibea Quist-Arcton traveled to Guinea's third-largest city where the country's leading Muslim cleric is calling on people to adopt safer funeral practices.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Singing in foreign language).
OFEIBEA QUIST-ARCTON, BYLINE: Kindia is an important city and a major crossroads in Guinea, a country the size of Oregon. But Kindia has had its fair share of fear and suspicion about Ebola.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Singing in foreign language).
QUIST-ARCTON: Over the weekend, Guinea's Grand Imam, El Hadj Mamadou Salio Camara, gathered together hundreds of his fellow clerics and read the riot act in the local language, Soussou.
EL HADJ MAMADOU SALIO CAMARA: (Speaking Soussou).
QUIST-ARCTON: "With Ebola, you have to do more," roars the barrel-bellied cleric with his white beard and mustache, distinguished in a snow-white boubou, the traditional flowing gown of West Africa. El Hadj Camara tells his fellow imams that Guinea must adapt if its customs mean people are dying of Ebola. He repeated this after his address in an interview with NPR.
CAMARA: (Through interpreter) There is nothing in the Quran that says you must wash, kiss or hold your dead loved ones. I agree, tradition is important, but everyone must find a way to respect the dead and observe burial rites without putting themselves or anyone else in danger of catching Ebola.
CAMARA: (Speaking Soussou).
QUIST-ARCTON: It may not seem an obvious partnership, but the American ambassador to Guinea has linked up with the grand imam to fight Ebola. Alex Laskaris says the answer to stopping the spread of the virus won't come from outsiders. He says it takes leadership, with the grand imam and others playing a key role.
U.S. AMBASSADOR ALEX LASKARIS: One of the things I tell people about Guinea is the state is weak. It has been weakened over time through poor management. Society is very strong. And I think in contrast to Liberia and Sierra Leone where the war has destroyed everything, the fabric of traditional leadership in Guinea, whether it's religious or customary, is really strong. And these guys get respect the old-fashioned way, by earning it.
QUIST-ARCTON: Headmaster Karamba Salim Diaby is also an imam. He says many people deny the existence of Ebola because they claim not to have seen anyone dying of the hemorrhagic virus. Others, he says, blame foreigners for importing Ebola into Guinea through ignorance.
KARAMBA SALIM DIABY: They just accuse, you know, you Western people for injecting this virus into Guinea and Liberia and Sierra Leone. You know, there is a confidence crisis between the population and the government. So they don't believe in them. So that they think that the Red Cross, when they come, they try to contaminate people. So this is why they resist against this Ebola problem.
LASKARIS: (Foreign language spoken).
QUIST-ARCTON: The U.S. ambassador also addressed the assembled imams in Soussou and French. Laskaris spent the past week traveling around southern Basse Cote, the lower coastal area of Guinea that includes Kindia and other areas of persistent denial and resistance to Ebola. He says he learned that there can be no change unless Guinea's customs are honored.
LASKARIS: And above all, it involves an absolute respect for the rituals of death. And one of the areas we've had problems in Basse Cote was the perception that some of the safe burial teams were less than fully respectable of religious tradition and of cultural tradition. There is no future for Ebola treatment in Guinea if we're not checking that box.
QUIST-ARCTON: That's why Laskaris says he's here meeting the religious leaders. Burial teams are dispatched to ensure that dead bodies still toxic with Ebola are safely removed from homes and treatment centers. But unsafe burials continue, proving a challenge to the government's target of zero Ebola cases by mid-March. Those caught hiding Ebola patients or carrying out secret burials could face prosecution. Sitting behind rows and rows of imams in caps and colorful boubous, women wearing white listened attentively to their male religious leaders. Women are the principal caregivers of people kept at home who may be Ebola sufferers. Hadja Bintou Conte is a mother of five.
HADJA BINTOU CONTE: (Foreign language spoken).
QUIST-ARCTON: Hadja Conte believes Ebola exists, and says she shares that message in her community but that it'll take time to persuade some naysayers. The grand imam says he's confident that he and fellow religious leaders will gain confidence of people currently in denial about Ebola. But he admits it's a battle.
CAMARA: (Foreign language spoken).
QUIST-ARCTON: The imam's ally, U.S. Ambassador Laskaris, says they're learning how best to relay that message.
LASKARIS: Radio's important here. The Internet is not a factor. This is old-school, pre-digital diplomacy. It's making contact eye to eye, person to person, sitting under the mango tree, and it's also listening to people's fears and finding out what is motivating young people to throw stones, women to bar us from entering their houses. In the meantime, Ebola, you know, it's like a forest fire. You've got to get every single ember out because that one ember you forget can reignite the whole thing in Guinea and in the region.
QUIST-ARCTON: The same sentiment you hear across Guinea's borders in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Ofeibea Quist-Arcton, NPR News, Kindia.
MONTAGNE: This is NPR News.
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Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne. Fallen prey to love's cruel sting - consider the San Francisco Zoo's Valentine's Day special. Adopt a giant hairy scorpion in honor of your ex-lover because, according to the zoo, scorpions are also low-lifes. The zoo will send a certificate to the person who inspired the adoption, or perhaps a Madagascar hissing cockroach. The zoo says that donation could cure, quote, "your love life karma" so you never have to encounter a cockroach again. It's MORNING EDITION.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
The death of a prosecutor has focused international attention on Argentina. Alberto Nisman was investigating Argentina's worst ever terrorist attack. He was also about to present evidence that he said would show Argentina's president was obstructing the investigation. Then just before he could do that, Nisman was found dead with a bullet to the head. NPR's Lourdes Garcia-Navarro begins her report today from the streets of Buenos Aires.
LOURDES GARCIA-NAVARRO, BYLINE: In the San Telmo neighborhood of Buenos Aires, tango music echoes down the narrow alleyways during the Sunday market. There is a famous saying about tango, that it is a sad thought to be danced. Alberto Nisman's death is the latest sad chapter in a troubled national history. The investigation is still ongoing, and the details are murky. But while authorities here say he may have committed suicide, pretty much no one on the streets here buys that.
MONICA BEATRIZ: I think he was killed. Many people, I think, want to kill him, to shoot him.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: That's Monica Beatriz. Alfredo Lauret blames the government.
ALFREDO LAURET: He was murdered by the government because he knew too much. It's very simple. Everybody knows the truth here.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Actually, truth in Argentina is hard to come by. This all started with the AMIA bombing, as it's known here. On July 18, 1994, the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association was blown up. Eighty-five people were killed. Hundreds were injured. No one who supposedly perpetrated the bombing has been punished. The only people to have gone to trial were the people supposed to be investigating the case. Think about that. It's almost like no one knowing who was behind 9/11. Romina Manguel is an investigative journalist who's been covering the AMIA case since it happened.
ROMINA MANGUEL: (Speaking Spanish).
GARCIA-NAVARRO: "When you tell people from the outside about it," she says, "it seems to them almost like a horror movie. There's even an ex-president of Argentina, Carlos Menem, who's been charged with also taking part in the cover-up. That's how absurd, dirty and ridiculous the AMIA case is."
Alberto Nisman was appointed to take over that stalled investigation 10 years ago, under then sitting president Cristina Fernandez's husband, Nestor Kirchner. Nisman quickly accused the Shiite militant group Hezbollah of being behind the attack under the direction of Iran. Fast forward to 2013, Argentina's government says it's going to set up a truth commission with Iran to get to the bottom of the bombing.
MANGUEL: (Speaking Spanish).
GARCIA-NAVARRO: "People ask themselves, what was the point of inflection in Nisman's break with the government," she says, "and this was it." Nisman said, "this is a commission of impunity. This is the death of the AMIA case."
So according to Manguel, that's when Nisman begins to investigate the government. He thought they were trying to freeze the inquiry. Last week he was just about to present what he said was evidence that President Cristina Fernandez and members of her government were doing just that, cozying up to Iran to get oil for the energy-starved country. But he ended up dead. President Cristina Fernandez herself came out and said she believes that Nisman was murdered by ex-members of her intelligence services whom she just fired. Romina Manguel says there are many theories.
MANGUEL: (Speaking Spanish).
GARCIA-NAVARRO: She says, "many say this profoundly hurts the president, and she is now stained in blood. So this was done to hurt the president during an election year. Others say it was done by the government to implicate the intelligence services who'd gotten out of control."
MANGUEL: (Speaking Spanish).
GARCIA-NAVARRO: She says that "I am discussing who killed who 20 years after the AMIA bombing - if it was the government or the intelligence services who killed the lead investigator on a terrorist case speaks to the moment that we're living in."
Lourdes Garcia-Navarro, NPR News, Buenos Aires.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Now let's listen to a man who always conserved hope - Ernie Banks died last week at 83. He was a great player on a losing baseball team, the Chicago Cubs.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
ERNIE BANKS: Every year I always looked at spring training as a brand-new year.
INSKEEP: Banks was famous for saying let's play two, so it's fitting we will now play our talk with Ernie Banks a second time. In 2009, we met Banks in a hotel and brought an old recording of a baseball game.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
JACK BRICKHOUSE: Well, here it is, Tuesday May the 12, 1970, and Ernie Banks comes to bat with two out and nobody in the top half of the second inning against Atlanta.
INSKEEP: We played that tape for Ernie Banks and a smile spread across his face. He knows this play. He remembers standing in the batter's box. And as he listens, he knows exactly what's about to happen.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
BRICKHOUSE: Jarvis fires away.
(SOUNDBITE OF BAT HITTING BALL)
BRICKHOUSE: And that's a fly ball, deep to left, back, back, that's it. That's it. He did it. Ernie Banks got number 500.
INSKEEP: His 500th home run.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
BRICKHOUSE: Everybody on your feet. This is it. Whee.
INSKEEP: All these years later, Ernie Banks rises to his feet. He throws his strong arms over his head in celebration. And across the hotel lunchroom, people applaud as if the home run is happening all over again.
BANKS: (Laughter) Oh, boy. What a life, what a life. I remember those things as if they were yesterday. The pitch, the time, the fans, and when I heard that tape, I felt how I felt that day and the spirit that I had and the feeling in my body and running around the bases. And, you know, just thinking about my mother and father, my dad who trained me and had great interest in me playing baseball. And I think about all of that. My family and my friends, my school and all of that comes back to my mind.
INSKEEP: Could you name a point when you thought you'd fallen in love with baseball?
BANKS: That's a good question. When I first stepped into Wrigley Field in 1953, the Cubs was on a losing streak, had 10-game losing streak and...
INSKEEP: How unusual to have the Cubs on a losing streak.
BANKS: (Laughter) It was interesting, but I put on the uniform and I couldn't wait to get down and walk on the field, just to see the place. You know, I think I was the first one on the field. I just said, gosh, this is the place I want to be. So I found out later that Mr. Wrigley had an apartment in left field and I went to look at it. I wanted to stay there. I really did, I didn't want to leave the park. It just captured me. It just grabbed me, said this is the place you need to be. Like, it was talking to me, the park itself. This is your place. This is a place where you'll do all the things you need to do in the game, and I just fell in love with it.
INSKEEP: How did you come to learn how to deal with disappointment?
BANKS: I guess I was with a writer at one time named Herb Cohen and he would give me little quotes and things to think about in my life. And he said, well, most things, Ernie, in your life you care about them, but not that much. So I kind of stuck with my life. I care about it, but not that much. You know, we play the game, we lose. I care about it, but not that much.
INSKEEP: Did you ever ask to be traded?
BANKS: No.
INSKEEP: Maybe to a team that had won the World Series within anybody's lifetime.
BANKS: No, I did not. They talked about it, but I didn't think about no trade at all. I just was so focused on playing. When I walked in that ballpark, my mind just, boom, on the game. This is a park where you can easily lose your concentration because you're close to the fans and all of that. And, you know, you can see people in the stands walking around, pretty girls and all of that. You can lose your concentration real fast. And I played the game as if nobody was there but me. That was it. When I walk in the ballpark today, I mean, it's the same thing, just me and the ball. And my life is like a miracle. I mean, I don't even know how I got into baseball and I always felt bad about attention coming my way, for some reason. Something happened to me, I do something pretty exciting, and I didn't want the spotlight on me. I got an award the other day at the Library of Congress and I said, gosh, I'm getting an award for doing nothing (laughter). I haven't done anything, nothing.
INSKEEP: Well, I think that record book would dispute you there.
BANKS: No, but me personally, I mean, I always had a bigger goal when I was 15, and that was to win the Nobel Peace Prize. And I think about that a lot. I dream about it. I see myself in Stockholm. That was - that has been my journey. I mean, I've been chasing the footsteps of my life to do something worthwhile. I haven't done anything yet. I have not done anything yet.
(MUSIC)
INSKEEP: Ernie Banks in 2009. He died Friday without that Nobel Prize, but did receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013. It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
And I'm Renee Montagne.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
It felt like a presidential election here over the weekend in Iowa. The Iowa caucuses are more than a year away, and no candidates have formally declared they're running. But many potential contenders courted conservative activists set a forum in Des Moines. NPR's Don Gonyea was there.
DON GONYEA, BYLINE: The setting was a historic, old theater downtown.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
REPRESENTATIVE STEVE KING: Do you believe that the next president of the United States is going to be speaking from this stage to you today?
GONYEA: That's the event's co-sponsor, Congressman Steve King. Over the next nine-plus hours, the program would include nearly a dozen possible presidential candidates, though only about half of those would qualify as real contenders. Let's start with a few for whom the word long shot is a generous description. Former Hewlett-Packard executive Carly Fiorina was here and got big cheers when she went after Hillary Clinton.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
CARLY FIORINA: Like Hillary Clinton, I, too, have traveled hundreds of thousands of miles around the globe. But unlike her, I've actually accomplished something.
(LAUGHTER)
GONYEA: Donald Trump was on the bill. Few believe he means it when he says he's thinking again about running. He called out Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush, neither of whom attended the event. Trump said Romney had his chance and choked. As for Bush...
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
DONALD TRUMP: The last thing we need is another Bush.
GONYEA: Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker boasted of taking on public employee unions. He spoke of death threats he received and of surviving a recall and winning re-election.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
GOVERNOR SCOTT WALKER: Well, I'm proud to tell you today that in Wisconsin, because of our reforms, we didn't just balance the budget. We now say in our schools, there's no more seniority or tenure. You can hire and fire whoever you want. You can pay based on performance.
(APPLAUSE)
GONYEA: A challenge for the GOP in national elections is that primaries pull the field of candidates to the right. You could feel that pull in Des Moines. But Rick Santorum, the former senator who won the Iowa caucuses in 2012 and who has solid conservative credentials, did say that the party needs to focus more on the concerns of working Americans.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
RICK SANTORUM: You hear Republicans say all the time as a rising tide lifts all boats. And that is true, unless your boat has a hole in it.
GONYEA: The response to that line was mostly silence. Not so for Senator Ted Cruz, who said every Republican candidate will tell you they are the most conservative. Talk is cheap, Cruz added.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
SENATOR TED CRUZ: If you say you oppose the president's unconstitutional executive amnesty, show me where you stood up and fought.
(APPLAUSE)
GONYEA: After eight hours, there were still some big names left to speak. Former Texas Governor Rick Perry, looking to run again after his gaffe-prone campaign of 2012, was heckled by immigration activists. He responded by praising the right to protest in America. Then came Chris Christie who answered those who would say he's not conservative enough for the GOP, that his New Jersey bombast won't play in the heartland. He said he was elected twice running as a pro-life candidate.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
GOVERNOR CHRIS CHRISTIE: The notion that our party must abandon our belief in the sanctity of life to be competitive in blue states is simply not true, and I am living proof of that fact.
(APPLAUSE)
GONYEA: The last to speak was former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, who combined attacks on President Obama with some words of caution for Republicans.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
GOVERNOR MIKE HUCKABEE: You cannot create a successful organization if you spend your time taking a grenade, pulling the pin, tossing it onto the chair of the people who are in your own tent.
(APPLAUSE)
HUCKABEE: We don't need to spend the next two years beating each other up in the conservative tent. We need to tell America what's right with this country.
GONYEA: Given the size of the field and the stakes, that's a long-shot proposition. Don Gonyea, NPR News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Cokie Roberts joins us most Mondays to talk politics. And she's with us in this morning. Good morning.
COKIE ROBERTS, BYLINE: Hi, Renee.
MONTAGNE: Now, Iowa is a - as a choosing ground for candidates has been problematic for both parties, especially for Republicans in recent years. But do you think it was smart for the candidates who stayed away from that event - or this event - to do so?
ROBERTS: Yeah, I do. If Bush or Romney - Jeb Bush or Mitt Romney - had shown up, they probably would have been booed because this was not a crowd that likes them. And this is really, actually, more of a tryout for folks that the Iowans don't know, like Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.
But doing well in a room like that one is a problem for the Republican Party because it can be disastrous in a national campaign. I mean, look at the Republican candidates who do well in Iowa. You just heard Don say Rick Santorum won last time. Pat Robertson did very well there, Pat Buchanan. They don't go on to win the nomination, but they do have the effect of pushing Republican candidates to the right in such a way that it's a big problem for them when they do face the general electorate. And some of the hot-button social issues that appeal to Iowan Republicans that we heard over in this forum can be a real problem. Take gay marriage - if they come out strongly against gay marriage, that turns off young people in droves.
MONTAGNE: And, Cokie, I know that you think that there's another group that's likely to be turned off by the events of the weekend, and that's Hispanics.
ROBERTS: Well, we saw immigration demonstrations there with young people holding up signs saying, Deportable?, but it's not just where the event was held but who held it. Congressman Steve King has become one of the outspoken politicians in the country on the subject of immigration. And his name is absolutely toxic among Hispanics. So one of the reasons the Republicans did so well in the midterms is because Hispanics had dropped off the Democrats by nine points from the 2012 vote. But since the president's executive order on immigration, that has completely turned around. Immigration is the key issue in this huge, growing voting group. And the president's numbers went up 22 points among Hispanics in the last ABC poll. If Democrats can hold onto that kind of momentum, it's very good for them in 2016 and something the Republican Party at the national level has been trying to combat, but not in Iowa.
MONTAGNE: Well, let's talk about the Republican Party at the national level. House Speaker John Boehner has invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address Congress. White House officials say he has breached protocol by not discussing that invitation with the White House. What's that all about?
ROBERTS: Well, of course, the speaker would say that for a president who's ready to issue executive orders without consulting Congress, to then complain when Congress acts on its own is somewhat hypocritical. But look, what's going on here is the Republicans are making a point about sanctions against Iran because they think it makes Obama look weak. And some Democrats, notably Senator Menendez of New Jersey, the highest-ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, agrees with them that we have to be tougher on Iran. And they want to to take a vote saying that. The White House says that'll make it harder to de-nuclearize Iran, that the president will veto it. Republicans think that veto will look good for them politically, unlike another presidential veto that's threatened on the Keystone pipeline, where, right now, the president has the voters with him.
MONTAGNE: Thanks much. That's Cokie Roberts.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Let's go next to eastern Ukraine, where officially there is a cease-fire. The reality is different. Over the weekend, shelling killed 30 people in the port city of Mariupol. Ukraine's government says pro-Russian separatists did this; the separatists deny it. We're going to talk it through with The Guardian's Moscow bureau chief, Shaun Walker, who's in Donetsk, a city not too far away. He's been covering the fighting. Welcome to the program, sir.
SHAUN WALKER, BYLINE: Hello.
INSKEEP: Given that everyone's denying everything, what did seem to happen here?
WALKER: Well, we've had a Human Rights Watch expert on the scene, and we've had international monitors from the OSCE on the scene. And both of those have been pretty clear. They've looked at the craters from this multiple-rocket attack, and they've said that it came from the East. And that means it came from territory controlled by the pro-Russian separatists. We've had here in Donetsk the leadership of those rebels denying that. They've said it's provocation. They said it was the Ukrainians doing it to themselves. And, you know, this conflict's really been full of these incidents of things happening and both sides blaming the other. But it does seem this time there's some pretty clear evidence that this has come from the rebels, so it's a pretty horrific act.
INSKEEP: Well, let me ask because this happened in Mariupol. It's a port city. It's on the Black Sea, strategically located in this conflict. But I'm trying to figure out if there would be any strategic purpose in someone firing a series of rockets into that city and killing a bunch of civilians or if this just seems to be a random act.
WALKER: Well, there are all sorts of suggestions that Mariupol would be very useful for the pro-Russian rebels. It would be useful for Russia. It would pave the way for a land corridor between mainland Russia and Crimea, which, obviously, they annexed from Ukraine last year.
But really, taking the city of nearly half a million people - it would require a huge assault. It would require major urban warfare, probably hundreds, maybe thousands of casualties. And I don't think Russia or the rebels are ready for that yet. So this does look like a sort of isolated incident, possibly yet another horrible mistake, rather than the start of some sort of campaign to sort of wage terror on the city and take it over.
INSKEEP: What you're describing doesn't sound like much of a cease-fire.
WALKER: It doesn't, does it? I mean, you know, this cease-fire was signed in September, and it's never really held. There were a few weeks when there was relative calm. But certainly in the last few weeks, we've seen kind of upscale in the fighting. There's been hundreds of people killed. The rebels have said they're going on the offensive. And although we've heard Vladimir Putin say that it's Ukraine at fault for breaking the cease-fire, the rebels have said themselves that they think Ukraine is going to launch an attack in March or April, and so they're getting in there first. But either way, both sides are firing again. And of course, it's the civilians are in the middle who are suffering.
INSKEEP: Shaun Walker of The Guardian is in Donetsk in eastern Ukraine. Thanks very much.
WALKER: Thank you.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
And here's some news for those looking for alternatives to cable TV. Dish Network is set to roll out a streaming video service called Sling TV. The service will charge $20 a month for a dozen cable channels including ESPN. NPR TV critic Eric Deggan's sampled the service and says it works like cable-cutter's dream.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "ESPN FIRST TAKE")
STEPHEN A. SMITH: How is it that it's five days later, and he hasn't even been interviewed?
ERIC DEGGANS, BYLINE: It's always fun watching ESPN's Stephen A. Smith lose his cool, especially when he's slamming the NFL for not interviewing players at the heart of the deflated football controversy. But this moment is particularly interesting 'cause I'm not watching Smith on a TV connected to a cable box. I'm watching him on my iPad, thanks to Sling TV.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
JOE CLAYTON: All you need is a credit card and a broadband connection.
DEGGANS: That's Joe Clayton, CEO of Sling TV creator Dish Network, speaking at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this month. He was almost giddy in describing Sling TV, an online service that doesn't require a Dish membership or cable subscription. You can watch it from mobile devices, laptops and some streaming TV gadgets, like the Roku. Dish gave critics early access to Sling TV, so I gave it a spin, downloading the app to my iPad and to a Roku 3 streaming device on my home TV. And the results were impressive.
(SOUNDBITE OF UNIDENTIFIED TV SHOW)
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: An MRI taken Thursday showed Kobe Bryant has a tear in his rotator cuff. And sources...
DEGGANS: The basic service features 12 channels including ESPN, TNT, CNN and the Disney Channel. The app allows you to watch the channels live, see what's coming up and access a few movies on demand. Most are channels you previously had to buy a cable or satellite subscription to see. Most channels also stream their commercials, but ESPN and ESPN2 play this.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
DEGGANS: Presumably because their advertisers haven't yet paid for Sling TV's viewers. Dish is careful to say that this service targets millennials who have broadband Internet connections but don't buy cable TV. That's probably to avoid upsetting cable companies, which have always insisted they can't offer smaller chunks of channels at a lower price. But Sling TV's channels seem more likely to appeal to cord-cutting TV fans of all ages looking to drop a hefty cable bill and already watching lots of television online.
Simple, effective and relatively cheap, Sling TV offers a small taste of cable TV for those who don't want to buy the whole smorgasbord. It might also help push a reluctant cable industry into letting people more closely choose which channels they pay for. I'm Eric Deggans.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep with a triumph of nature. A coyote was wandering New York. She was found in the sprawling complex known as Stuyvesant Town. She's now been released to a wildlife area of the Bronx. And this is the second time this month the coyote has turned up in the nation's most populous city. So there is wildlife in New York to go along with the pigeons, the rats, the statues of animals on the clock at the Central Park Zoo and the alligators in the sewers, which are mythological, I think. It's MORNING EDITION.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
During the recession in the eurozone, none of the 19 nations using the euro suffered quite like Greece. Creditors demanded austerity measures, and those austerity measures, pushed especially hard by Germany, have resulted in a 50 percent unemployment rate among young people and a 25 percent drop in the size of the Greek economy. Yesterday, Greek voters made it clear they've had enough. A left-wing, anti-establishment party known as Syriza was the victor in parliamentary elections. And today, the party's leader was sworn in as prime minister. Reporter Joanna Kakissis joins us from Athens for more. Good morning.
JOANNA KAKISSIS, BYLINE: Good morning, Renee.
MONTAGNE: Now, this outcome was not unexpected, but it is certainly a huge statement on the part of Greek voters.
KAKISSIS: Yes, it is. And Syriza is all set to govern today, but with strange bedfellows ,as Syriza fell just short of an absolute majority. So the party, which is leftist, has decided to team up with a small, right-wing party, the Independent Greeks, to have enough seats in parliament to form a government. And this may not go over well, that this major win for the European Left will now be majorly compromised.
The Independent Greeks are populists that thrive on conspiracy theories and device of nationalism. Their leader, Panos Kammenos, has been criticized for anti-Semitic comments like saying Greek Jews don't pay taxes. The only thing that these two parties seem to have in common is strong opposition to the bailout deal that has brought on all these austerity measures. And the Independent Greeks have really vilified Europe and especially German Chancellor Angela Merkel. So that doesn't really set the stage for a new partnership for a new Europe.
MONTAGNE: And given this huge change, how happy are they now?
KAKISSIS: Well, there's jubilation here from what I saw. There were - thousands were on the streets to celebrate yesterday, and here's what it sounded like.
(SOUNDBITE OF CELEBRATION)
KAKISSIS: I was there as everyone danced and sang revolutionary songs. And they were really, really enjoying themselves, saying they felt hope again for the first time in years. There were also lots of European leftists there, including people from the Spanish anti-authoritarian party Podemos, which is now leading polls there. And there also seems to be a lot of goodwill at the moment towards the next prime minister, and that's Alexis Tsipras, even though he is young and untested. Here he is at his victory speech last night. He's only 40 years old.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
PRIME MINISTER ALEXIS TSIPRAS: (Speaking Greek).
KAKISSIS: "Greece is turning the page," he's telling everyone, and leaving behind what he's calling the austerity of destruction. He's talking about Greece moving forward with hope and self-respect. And that's something that resonated with a lot of voters, like Electra Kanellou. She's an archaeologist. And here she is talking.
ELECTRA KANELLOU: His heart's in the right place. I think he will try to do the best for us, not as the other parties, which are trying to do the best for, you know, the banks and everyone else but the people.
MONTAGNE: Well, there's a voter in Athens, but trying to do the best for the people means following through on some pretty big promises.
KAKISSIS: Yeah, it is a challenging environment because what Greece has to do is pay back billions in bailout loans. It still has to do that, no matter what. But Syriza has also promised to increase spending to help the poor and the middle class that have been really devastated by this crisis.
MONTAGNE: Well, if the EU is wary, what about the markets? How are they reacting?
KAKISSIS: Well, at first glance, not very well. Stock prices fell today and the euro is at an 11-year low. Many people outside Greece are uncomfortable with a government that seems so confrontational with the eurozone and especially the biggest lender, Germany.
MONTAGNE: Joanna Kakissis speaking to us from Athens, Greece. Thank you very much.
KAKISSIS: Thank you, Renee.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
The stories of real-life challenges and pure entertainment are on display now at the Sundance Film Festival. It's in full swing, which is why we reached our own Kenneth Turan. He's on the scene, up early, and he was ready to tell us about some of the festivals must-see films. Good morning.
KENNETH TURAN, BYLINE: Morning, Renee.
MONTAGNE: Now, Ken, we've talked many a time when you've been at Sundance and you often say the strongest category at the festival is the documentary category. What about this year?
TURAN: Well, this year, really, I think they're stronger than ever. There are some films that really just blew people away. Two of them that I wanted to mention that really have political context that really are kind of controversial, there's one called "The Hunting Ground" directed by Kirby Dick, who did "Invisible War" a couple of years ago, which is a film about rape in the military. This is a film about rape on college campuses. And the situation is just as bad, but in some ways more complex because of other factors - money-involved factors. One of the really interesting facets of "The Hunting Ground," it's the first time that the woman who has accused Florida State quarterback Jameis Winston of rape - it's the first time she's on camera telling her story. Jameis Winston has been investigated, not formally charged. But this woman tells her side of things. It's very powerful. It's very moving, and it's especially interesting in the context of the rest of the film, where you see it's all of a piece with what is happening on campuses across the country. It's a very moving film.
The other film that everyone is talking about is called "Going Clear." It's directed by Alex Gibney, and it's about Scientology. It's taken from Lawrence Wright's book, and it's got a lot of footage of interviews with disaffected former Scientology leaders, inside Scientology footage of some of their gatherings. It's very, very chilling stuff.
MONTAGNE: And some might know director Alex Gibney, who got an Oscar for another very dark film "Taxi To The Dark Side."
TURAN: Yes, and this film is every bit as dark, believe me.
MONTAGNE: What else then are you seeing that's quite strong in the documentary category there at Sundance?
TURAN: There are really two films that really struck me. They're documentaries about major show-business figures who had complicated, troubled lives, and you get to see inside these lives in a really unexpected way. The first one that played on opening night is called "What Happened, Miss Simone?" This is about the singer Nina Simone. The title is from a poem by Maya Angelou, who wondered about the gap in Nina Simone's performing career. And this looks at the entirety of her career - how she started. She had a major involvement in the civil rights movement. Then she had a lot of personal difficulties. And this film really shows us what her life was like in a very intimate way.
The other film is about Marlon Brando. It's called "Listen To Me Marlon" because this is from a collection of audio tapes that Brando made for his own use. He was going to do some kind of project with these tapes, then he died and filmmakers have gotten access to them. They've also gotten access to TV interviews, newsreels that Brando did. And this is kind of a sound-and-image collage that really gives you a real idea of the kind of person he was. If you care about Marlon Brando and if you care about film acting - of course you do - this film is really a revelation.
MONTAGNE: And let's switch here just at the end to drama. If you had to pick one feature film to talk to us about, what would that be?
TURAN: Oh, it would be "Brooklyn" without a doubt. This is a film I fell in love with. This is a romantic drama. It's got a wonderful pedigree. It's from a Colm Toibin novel, its screenplay by Nick Hornby. It's a story of a young woman who emigrates from Ireland to Brooklyn in the early 1950s. It's about the heartbreak of immigration, of leaving your home. It's about the joy of romance. It's beautifully done. It's really got everything I'm looking for in a film, so I can't wait until this is in theaters and I can tell people to see it.
MONTAGNE: Ken, thanks very much. Enjoy the rest of the festival.
TURAN: Thank you, Renee.
MONTAGNE: And Ken Turan reviews movies for MORNING EDITION and the LA Times.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Let's talk now about a culture clash just off the African coast. It involves Alcoholics Anonymous, created 80 years ago as a spiritual path to sobriety. Though never overtly Christian, it does employ Christian constructs of confession, redemption and submission to a higher power. And for some traditional Muslims, 12-step can still feel like a threat. NPR's Gregory Warner reports from the mostly Muslim island of Zanzibar on the Indian Ocean.
GREGORY WARNER, BYLINE: Waves crash on the port of Zanzibar that once welcomed cardamom and cumin seeds from Asia on the ancient spice road. It is now a key stop on the global heroin trade, shipped here from Pakistan and Afghanistan before being smuggled on to Europe. Addiction rates on the island are some of the highest in the world. Suleiman Mauly used to come to this port as a teenager to buy heroin. Now 34 and very clean, he doesn't even drink soda. Mauly is back doing outreach for his heroin recovery houses. Mauly brought the 12-step program to this island six years ago with the help of a treatment center in Detroit.
SULEIMAN MAULY: It's a spiritual program, not religious program.
WARNER: Twelve-step is not overtly Christian. He says Jesus Christ never comes up. But the recovery process rests on concepts of admitting your sin and seeking redemption, of making amends to friends and family that you harmed as an addict.
MAULY: And before you make amends, you have to search yourself, your feelings of guilt, resentment. It's kind of like a Christian - some Christian spiritual process.
WARNER: And that can be a sensitive topic on an island that is mostly Muslim, an island with a frictional relationship with the mostly Christian mainland.
ADBULRAHMAN ABDULLAH: Well, I had a lot of challenges with that with my mom, you know. I said...
WARNER: Adbulrahman Abdullah manages one of the recovery houses. In the house with other addicts, they talk a lot about submitting to HP - Higher Power - it's a big part of the 12-step program. But when he goes home, his mom says don't talk about HP here.
ABDULLAH: Come here talk about Allah, don't give a [bleep] about your HP, you know? (Laughter) And if you don't watch your mouth, they're going to convert you to Christian, you're going to be in Christianity soon.
WARNER: She believes the 12-step could be a gateway to conversion to Christianity. A lot of islanders used to think that. But now 3,000 addicts have gone through the program, and success has won local support, to a point. Suleiman Mauly says families are still often unwilling to pay for the recovery program for their daughters - only for their sons.
MAULY: Because they give up hope with women.
WARNER: Wait, you said they give up hope?
MAULY: They give up hope with the women because when women - they use, they go into things that family feels more ashamed.
WARNER: While men might use crime to support their habit, women often turn to prostitution. And for traditional Muslims in Zanzibar, he says, that is an act from which there can be no redemption. There can be no amount - no amount - of making amends.
But Suleiman Mauly is nothing if not persistent. And with no financial support except for some funds he was able to divert from the men's clinic, the newest recovery house for women opened just last month. It's called Malaika House, where each morning begins with a chirp of songbirds and the Serenity Prayer, said in Swahili.
UNIDENTIFIED MALAIKA HOUSE MEMBERS: (Speaking Swahili).
WARNER: The room is bare - just a TV set and a whiteboard. I find, curled up in a plastic chair, 22-year-old Mosi Tamim Khalfan. She's been clean just 16 days. Her old life on the streets is still fresh.
MOSI TAMIM KHALFAN: (Through interpreter) Yes, it's very easy to get money in the sex industry. When I was arrested, I had so many condoms, they asked me whether I was opening a pharmacy to sell condoms.
WARNER: But now she says this bare-bones recovery house is really her soul sanctuary. She can't go home where her brothers all use. She can't go back to the streets where men on this tiny island all know her as a sex worker.
KHALFAN: (Through interpreter) When I get out of here, I don't want a man, and I don't want a man for the next at least two or three years. I also don't want to get a job because I believe if I get job and I have good money to spend, I will start buying drugs again.
WARNER: But if she can manage to be clean for just a year or two, then she imagines she can reenter life on the island, maybe find a job, and helping her in that process is 34-year-old Zuhura Khamisi. She's the house mentor, and she's been clean almost two years.
ZUHURA KHAMISI: (Through interpreter) The people who knew me when I was doing drugs and then they see me now, then they know that it is possible to get out of this.
WARNER: Even male addicts in Zanzibar tell me that there is a culture of looking down on women addicts. And Suleiman Mauly says he's not just trying to start a recovery house for women, he's trying to change that culture, to encourage this core 12-step concept that you can start life again, that you can be redeemed whatever your past. He points out that Zanzibaris were suspicious of the idea for men until there were too many local successes to ignore.
MAULY: So you need to walk the same model, you need to replicate it in women, and we just started.
WARNER: Unfortunately just two days after this interview was recorded, Mosi Tamim Khalfan, the 22-year-old, disappeared. She left the house. Suleiman Mauly says she likely relapsed, but he's waiting for her return.
MAULY: And we know that she might try again to quit. And she's welcome to join the program again.
WARNER: He believes deeply in second, third, fourth chances. Look at me, he says, you never know when someone will be saved. Gregory Warner, NPR News, Nairobi.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Swedish authorities have spent a lot of time thinking about a target of military surveillance. They were tracking a foreign submarine a few months ago. And that submarine got away. Russia is the main suspect. As Russia's military becomes more aggressive, European leaders fear they do not have the military power to deal with this new threat. NPR's Ari Shapiro reports from Stockholm.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Karlis Neretnieks used to run the Sweden's National Defense College. He's had a long career in the military. We're sitting down to coffee at a hotel in Stockholm, when suddenly he runs up the stairs with a shout.
KARLIS NERETNIEKS: You, there.
SHAPIRO: He's standing wide-eyed in front of a conference room.
NERETNIEKS: I recognize it because the last thing the navy had on this island was the naval officers' mess.
SHAPIRO: What does this word mean above the door?
NERETNIEKS: Naval officers' mess.
SHAPIRO: Now it's a conference room in a luxury hotel. Stockholm is a city of islands. And this island in the center of town was the seat of Swedish naval power for 500 years. Walking outside, Neretnieks explains those days of military might are gone.
NERETNIEKS: The army has been reduced by 90 percent. The navy has been scaled down by some 80 percent and the air force some 70 percent.
SHAPIRO: After the Cold War, Sweden and the rest of the continent believed they had entered an era of European peace and unity. Lately, Russia has proven them wrong, and not only by seizing part of Ukraine. Last month, a Russian military aircraft flying in stealth nearly crashed into a commercial passenger plane taking off from Copenhagen. In April, Russian fighter jets carried out a simulated bombing raid on Stockholm. And nobody seems able to do anything about it.
ADMIRAL JAN THORNQUIST: The situation around us has dramatically changed in a very negative way.
SHAPIRO: Admiral Jan Thornquist is chief of staff for the Swedish navy. He worries that with tensions this high, a small slip-up could turn into an international crisis.
THORNQUIST: Perhaps if you're doing an exercise close to a border - another country - you can easily pass that border by mistake. For example, you point out another ship with a radar system or something, and that could easily be interpreted there's a threat.
SHAPIRO: Suddenly, armed conflict in northern Europe seems plausible, and this region is not prepared. Sweden is trying to find foreign submarines in its waters, even though the country retired its last submarine-hunting helicopter in 2008. Jan Solesund is the secretary of state for Sweden's Ministry of Defense.
JAN SOLESUND: And not only Sweden. I mean, Europe as a whole, of course, downsized their forces. We tend to forget that things can change quicker than we thought.
SHAPIRO: Now thanks to Russia, many European countries, including Sweden, are talking about rebuilding the military. Defense Minister Solesund says it's hard to overstate what a huge change that is.
SOLESUND: I've been in the armed forces since the early '70s, and I have only experienced reductions.
SHAPIRO: But many analysts fear it won't be enough. Keir Giles is a military expert at the Chatham House think tank in London.
KEIR GILES: Right now, yes, most European leaders do appreciate the scale of the problem. But European leaders come and go. And Russia benefits from a continuity of leadership and also from strategic patience which none of its adversaries can match.
SHAPIRO: Just look at Russia's latest budget. Even with the ruble at its lowest point in years, President Putin announced last month that he is increasing the military's already huge budget by a third. Ari Shapiro, NPR News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
And in the U.S., a new study by a children's research and advocacy group is blaming the federal government for not properly enforcing laws to protect children from abuse and neglect. As a result, children are suffering. NPR's Pam Fessler has that story. And a warning - it contains details that may be disturbing to some listeners.
PAM FESSLER, BYLINE: The numbers are grim. Almost 680,000 children were the victims of abuse and neglect in 2013. More than 1,500 of them died. The federal government says it's encouraged that the numbers are lower than they were the year before, but child advocates say no one is really sure that they are.
ELISA WEICHEL: This is just something that's chronically underreported.
FESSLER: Elisa Weichel is with the Children's Advocacy Institute at the University of San Diego Law School. She says abuse and neglect cases, especially those resulting in death, are often not disclosed as required by law. And she says that has led to other problems in the child welfare system.
WEICHEL: It all boils down to having the right amount of data about what's working and what's not. And when your data is flawed, every other part of your system is going to be flawed.
FESSLER: And her group says there are plenty of flaws. The institute conducted a three-year study and found that not one state has met minimum child welfare standards set by the federal government, standards such as how quickly they investigate reports of abuse. And the group blames both Congress and the courts for failing to step in.
WEICHEL: We're not going to save every kid, but I have to think that if we were doing a better job of protecting them, we might have saved some of them.
FESSLER: The Department of Health and Human Services, which reviews state programs, declined to comment on the report. But there is broad agreement among those involved that the system is in desperate need of repair. The child welfare agencies are underfunded and caseworkers often overwhelmed.
RON SMITH: Whether or not individual states can meet a reporting standard to us is not where the emphasis ought to be.
FESSLER: Ron Smith is with the American Public Human Services Association, which represents child welfare administrators.
SMITH: It needs to be on making sure that the kids who need assistance are getting assistance, and the families that need assistance are getting the assistance.
FESSLER: He says state and local officials complain that they spend too much time filling out federal forms and trying to meet requirements that aren't necessarily best for kids. Instead they want more flexibility to focus on keeping families together, rather than on helping kids after they've been abused and removed from their homes. Ron Zychowski agrees that change is needed. He's with Eckerd, a nonprofit company that runs child welfare services in three Florida counties. Eckerd has developed a new system. It identifies which children under its care are at highest risk of serious injury or death so it can quickly fix any problems.
RON ZYCHOWSKI: And I'm very pleased to report that in two years we have not had a child death from abuse or neglect in any of our cases.
FESSLER: And the program's getting lots of attention, including from a new commission set up by Congress to help eliminate abuse and neglect deaths. But Zychowski warns in this field, there's no silver bullet.
ZYCHOWSKI: Bad people will do bad things to children. We're not going to catch them all, and we're not going to stop them all.
FESSLER: And there was a horrific reminder of that this month. A Florida man was accused of killing his 5-year-old daughter by throwing her off a bridge. Zychowski says that family wasn't in the child welfare system. Pam Fessler, NPR News.
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The remains of a World War II soldier who died in a Philippine prisoner of war camp have been identified. Private Arthur Bud Kelder was ID'd after legal battle between his family and the Pentagon. This came after a joint NPR-ProPublica investigation last year first exposed this story. NPR's Kelly McEvers reports.
KELLY MCEVERS, BYLINE: When he was a teenager, John Eakin and his grandpa went to visit his grandpa's sister in Chicago. Eakin saw a picture on the wall of a relative he'd never seen before.
JOHN EAKIN: I asked, who's this picture of? And grandpa was kind of choked up, and he said, that's Bud.
MCEVERS: Bud Kelder, who enlisted in the Army in 1941, served as a dental assistant in Manila, the Philippines, then ended up on the Bataan Peninsula. The Japanese invaded, took prisoners then marched thousands of Americans to POW camps. In late 1942, Bud Kelder died in one of those camps after suffering from malaria, a vitamin deficiency and diphtheria. All his family got, Eakin says, was a letter.
EAKIN: And I realized how much hurt the entire family had suffered because Bud's remains were never recovered. None of them really knew what happened to him.
MCEVERS: So Eakin decided to find out. He learned that Bud's remains were mixed with the remains of 13 other soldiers who died on the same day. They were labeled as unknown soldiers and buried in an American cemetery in Manila. But even though the family had evidence suggesting Bud was there, the Pentagon wouldn't dig up the graves. So Eakin filed a lawsuit against the federal government in 2009. And now, after years of motions and filings, the Pentagon has finally exhumed that group grave and matched Bud Kelder's remains with his family's DNA. Pentagon officials had no other comment. Eakin got the call from one of his cousins.
EAKIN: He was just over the moon excited. This is what we'd been waiting for.
MCEVERS: The federal agency tasked with doing this identification work is the Joint POW-MIA Accounting Command, or JPAC. Our investigation last year found the agency to be slow, risk-averse and prone to outdated scientific practices. Eakin says he shouldn't have had to sue the agency to get Bud Kelder identified, that this should have been routine work. JPAC officials maintain the reason the process can be slow is they take great care to not just make a positive ID, which is easier now with DNA testing, but to identify and return as full a set of remains as possible so families can have closure. Just because Kelder's remains have been identified doesn't mean the case is over. Eakin says some of those other 13 families want answers, too. Since our investigation, the Pentagon has launched a major overhaul of JPAC. The longtime director of its central identification lab will eventually be replaced by a Navy captain who's an expert on DNA. Kelly McEvers, NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
We're getting a glimpse of the opportunities and the friction in the relations of the world's two largest democracies. President Obama has finished his trip to India. Each country, the U.S. and India, is a huge market for the other. We will start, though, with the friction. President Obama finished his visit by urging Indians to safeguard the rights of women and of religious freedom. NPR's Julie McCarthy is covering this story from New Delhi. And, Julie, this is interesting, the prime minister of India, Narendra Modi, is a self-declared Hindu nationalist in a country with a lot of people who are not Hindus. So what did the president say about religion?
JULIE MCCARTHY, BYLINE: Well, it was this unmistakably strong message to India to preserve the rights of other people to practice whatever religion they want to. It was set in this larger context of what India and the U.S. share in terms of being democracies that threw off colonialism and wrote their own founding documents that look very similar. And the president raised this issue, Steve, of religious tolerance at a time when India is really grappling with religious intolerance, attempts to elevate Hinduism over other minority religions, especially Islam.
Now, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was not at the address when the president told the audience, which included millions of people on TV, that religion's been used to tap into the darker impulses of men. And he urged Indians to avoid that and to look beyond differences and rejoice in what he called the beauty of every soul.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: And nowhere is that more important than India. Nowhere is it going to be more necessary for that foundational value to be upheld. India will succeed so long as it is not splintered along the lines of religious faith, so long it's not splintered along any lines and is unified as one nation.
MCCARTHY: He said he was addressing himself to the young people, who he said could still change their thinking and rid themselves of stereotypes. And he got a very big round of applause when he talked about women's equality.
INSKEEP: Well, what did the president say about that?
MCCARTHY: Well, you know, he acknowledged that the United States is still trying to give women and girls all the opportunities they deserve and equal treatment. And the president acknowledged that Indian women have shown that they can succeed in every field, including government, where there have been a lot of women leaders. And he said India's young women are part of a new generation standing up. Here's what he had to say.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
OBAMA: Here's what we know. We know from experience that nations are more successful when their women are successful. When girls go to school...
(APPLAUSE)
OBAMA: ...This is one of the most direct measures of whether a nation is going to develop effectively, is how it treats its women.
INSKEEP: The president, speaking, of course, in a country where there's been a lot of focus on attacks on women. So let me ask you, Julie McCarthy, it's always a delicate thing for a world leader to go abroad and be talking to another country about its domestic issues. Were Indians taking this at all as a lecture from the president?
MCCARTHY: I don't think so, Steve. I think a lot of people share the sort of general, global outrage about the treatment of women - the mistreatment of women that they see in India, which, by the way, must be noted, is a global phenomenon. And I think, as far as the religious question goes, it has caused, internally, upset and unease among a lot of people. So, no, I don't think it would be viewed necessarily as the president being out of bounds or lecturing.
INSKEEP: So it didn't change the tone - the upbeat tone of this visit, then?
MCCARTHY: Well, he did climb on a plane as he left, and Mr. Modi was not in that auditorium. But they did seem to create this perception that the U.S. is elevating India, happy to do so. India is embracing the U.S. and happy to do so. But there is this reality - India is a difficult place to do business, and there's a lot that needs to be done here. Whether U.S. companies, which were a big part of this visit, have the energy and patience to stick with India is a big question. So after all the warm glow fades, have they been able to generate something concrete?
INSKEEP: NPR's Julie McCarthy is in New Delhi. Julie, thanks as always.
MCCARTHY: Thank you.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
And it was earlier this week that President Obama announced what he called a breakthrough that might pave the way for new American nuclear reactors in India. The White House says the reactors are good for the climate, good for American industry and good for strengthening ties with India. NPR's Geoff Brumfiel reports on what some see as the deal's dark side.
GEOFF BRUMFIEL, BYLINE: India is hungry for electricity. Right now, it uses a lot of dirty coal. As it grows, it wants cleaner nuclear. Tanvi Madan tracks India at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.
TANVI MADAN: India has a state-owned company that produces nuclear power, but it's actually fallen behind targets for decades.
BRUMFIEL: And that's where this U.S.-India nuclear deal comes in.
MADAN: There's a sense that India needed foreign technology and foreign suppliers.
BRUMFIEL: To bring a new generation of plants online. Seems like a win-win, U.S. companies sell reactors, India gets lots of clean energy, and that's the way it was sold back in 2005 when President George W. Bush first announced this nuclear deal with India. There's just one small problem, says Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association. The last time the U.S. sold India nuclear technologies...
DARYL KIMBALL: India used those technologies to produce plutonium for its first nuclear weapon test explosion in 1974.
BRUMFIEL: So this time around, the deal has moved at a crawl. Congress approved it in 2008, but only if India told the U.S. how it used everything it bought from America. India resisted until this week. Speaking at a news conference in Delhi yesterday, U.S. Deputy National Security adviser Ben Rhodes says India's now cooperating.
(SOUNDBITE OF NEWS CONFERENCE)
BEN RHODES: The Indians are providing us with information. We have lines of communication open that meets our concerns that we will have, again, a sufficient understanding of how India is approaching nuclear security.
BRUMFIEL: But arms-control advocate Daryl Kimball isn't satisfied because even as it plans civilian reactors, India is also enlarging its nuclear weapons stockpile.
KIMBALL: India continues to produce fissile material for nuclear weapons. It continues to build up its nuclear weapons arsenal with increasingly sophisticated ballistic missiles.
BRUMFIEL: Kimball says even with the new assurances, this deal sends mixed messages, and it sends them at a time the U.S. is trying to negotiate with Iran over how to expand its nuclear power programs without building nuclear weapons. The deal does look set to move forward, assuming one final problem gets solved. U.S. companies are afraid they might be sued if there's a meltdown in India. The two governments say they have a plan to protect foreign companies building reactors in the country. But U.S. firms say they want to read the fine print before construction begins. Geoff Brumfiel, NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Here's a reminder of a word to listen for in news coverage of winter storms. It's the word could.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
As in the storm now striking the Northeast could be the worst in history.
INSKEEP: Phrasing that also means it could be a little less. But we are able to bring you a few facts such as this.
MONTAGNE: Leaders across the Northeast have declared states of emergency. Thousands of flights have been canceled.
INSKEEP: Train service has been suspended, and drivers were banned from hitting the roads overnight.
MONTAGNE: Many people are preparing for possible devastation, and that includes politicians. Big storms have sometimes been devastating to political careers. Local governments are forever judged by how well the streets are plowed.
INSKEEP: Here's some history. In 1969, New York City was hit with 15 inches of snow. Nearly half the city's snow removal equipment was out of order. And that storm became known as Lindsay's Storm for Mayor John Lindsay.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MAYOR JOHN LINDSAY: I guessed wrong on the weather before the city's biggest snowfall. And that was a mistake. But I put 6,000 more cops on the streets, and that was no mistake.
MONTAGNE: When Mayor Lindsay visited Queens, he was booed by residents who'd been stuck in their homes for days. He won re-election, but the storm loomed over the rest of his political career.
INSKEEP: Then there was the snowstorm in Chicago in 1979. Mayor Michael Bilandic was on his way to re-election when that storm hit. Nineteen inches of snow fell. Road crews did not keep up. Many streets were impassable. And a little-known candidate for mayor began criticizing Bilandic for the unplowed roads.
(SOUNDBITE OF POLITICAL AD)
MAYOR JANE BYRNE: No one could stop the snow, but good planning can prevent the collapse of public transportation and clean the city up fast. I'm Jane Byrne. I think it's time working again for you.
MONTAGNE: Jane Byrne defeated Bilandic in the Democratic primary and became Chicago's first female mayor.
INSKEEP: Washington, D.C., Mayor Marion Barry had no trouble getting around when a blizzard hit Washington in the 1980s. That's because he was in CA for the Superbowl.
MONTAGNE: Meanwhile, streets in the nation's capital went untouched for days. When Washington, D.C., TV reporter Tom Sherwood asked Barry what he was going to do, the mayor told him he was going to get a manicure and play some tennis.
TOM SHERWOOD: Marion Barry was a very smart politician. But like so many smart politicians, he didn't understand snow and the angst and the aggravation that accompanies snow. But of course, he didn't have to drive in it.
INSKEEP: Sherwood says he has seen local governments across this country repeatedly blindsided by snow.
SHERWOOD: Snow is a toxic subject for any mayor anywhere in the country. And then here in the Washington area, it's kind of like the third rail of our Metro system. It's always hot, and you're probably going to get burned no matter what you do. But you better not be caught doing nothing.
MONTAGNE: Which brings us back to New York, where Mayor Bill de Blasio ordered streets shut down indefinitely.
INSKEEP: The satirical newspaper "The Onion" quoted de Blasio as telling residents they're all going to die but that subway service will resume as normal on Wednesday.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep. Of all the ways to declare a snow day, this may be the best. The Moses Brown School in Providence, R.I., released a music video featuring the head of schools.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC VIDEO, "SCHOOL IS CLOSED")
MATT GLENDINNING: (Singing) School is closed, school is closed 'cause it snowed so much last night. School is closed, school is closed, so I stay at home and sit tight.
INSKEEP: So that song will be stuck in your head all day. It's MORNING EDITION.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
And an update now on that big snowstorm in the Northeast. At this hour, two feet of snow has fallen in parts of New England. But further south, many dodged the worst of it. Travel bans have been lifted in New Jersey and New York City. Watching all of this is meteorologist Ryan Hanrahan of NBC's affiliate in Hartford CT, and we reached him by phone. Good morning.
RYAN HANRAHAN: Good morning, Renee.
MONTAGNE: Now, there's been a lot of hype leading up to this storm. New York City mayor Bill de Blasio is just one of the many public officials to say that the snowfall - or to predict that it would be historic. But I must say, at the moment, the snow in New York doesn't seem to be living up to that billing.
HANRAHAN: It really doesn't, Renee. It would be fair to say that this storm is going to be a big bust for New York City. And the reason why is the storm actually took a last-minute jog about 100 or 150 miles east. And so that's putting the heaviest snow up toward Boston and not New York City. So unfortunately for New York, they shut the city down. They shut mass transit down last night. And really it's sort of just a run-of-the-mill snow event for New York City now.
MONTAGNE: Although I guess the upside for that is at least they did not fail to meet the challenge of an historic storm.
HANRAHAN: Well, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, and you look at what happened during Sandy. And there was a lot of criticism that the city and the mayor weren't necessarily prepared for the storm, that they didn't take the warnings from the weather service seriously. So they may swung to the other side of the pendulum here where they were looking at the forecast and said we need to shut everything down to make sure we're prepared.
MONTAGNE: So the Northeast, though, is being hit pretty hard although that is a region that is used to snow.
HANRAHAN: Yeah, absolutely. And so the worst the storm is going to be from Boston down through portions of Rhode Island, eastern Connecticut, Worcester, MA, and then up into portions of New Hampshire and Maine. But it's not terribly unusual to get a big snowstorm or a blizzard in southeastern New England. We're looking at snowfall anywhere between 20 inches and as much as 30 or even 35 inches in some areas. So it'll be a big storm. It'll cause a lot of problems around Boston this morning. But it's something that they'll probably dig out from relatively quickly. We've certainly seen bigger storms in the last few decades.
MONTAGNE: You know, let me just ask you briefly - quote you, really, from your blog this morning. It's a beauty from a meteorologist's perspective and a beast from a normal person's perspective. A beast we get. Why a beauty?
HANRAHAN: Well, beauty - you know, when we look at storms as meteorologists, we sort of look at them as incredible creatures that mother nature is able to develop. And so we're looking at the satellite loop and the radar loop and the storm comes together, and it looks like a perfect storm as we went through last night and early this morning. So it was very textbook-like. It was very classic, with strong jet stream diving down through the East Coast of the U.S. and forming this very powerful nor'easter off the coast. So the meteorologists and the weather geek in us wants to refer to a storm like this as just beautiful. But we know that most people aren't meteorologists that are standing outside their door, looking at two feet of snow they need to shovel. So we get that most normal people don't look at a storm as a beautiful thing.
MONTAGNE: Well, it's definitely beautiful from the outside. I'm glad I'm not there.
HANRAHAN: (Laughter) Absolutely.
MONTAGNE: Thanks very much. Meteorologist Ryan Hanrahan of NBC's affiliate Hartford, CT.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
The mandolin player Chris Thile is one of the most exciting talents in acoustic music. He made his name in bluegrass as a child star, but also plays classical and other genres, and he fronts a band that brings it all together. NPR's Vince Pearson reports on the latest from Punch Brothers.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BETWEEN FIRST AND A")
PUNCH BROTHERS: (Singing) I've never dwelled on leaving, only getting somewhere.
VINCE PEARSON, BYLINE: Chris Thile, the singer here, says he still remembers the day he met fiddler Gabe Witcher more than 25 years ago.
CHRIS THILE: At a little bluegrass festival in Southern California.
PEARSON: Chris was 7. Gabe was 9.
THILE: He was playing in his dad's bluegrass band. They had him standing on a chair so that he would be as tall as everyone else.
PEARSON: And decades later, the childhood friends met a like-minded banjo player and decided to team up.
THILE: And then since it was fiddle and mandolin and banjo, it seemed pretty clear that whatever the music might sound like, it would look like bluegrass.
GABE WITCHER: So we better get a guitar player and a bass player.
PEARSON: That's Gabe. Punch Brothers do look like a bluegrass band, but the sound is all their own.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BETWEEN FIRST AND A")
PUNCH BROTHERS: (Singing) On the very street where I call you. With three drinks, maybe more...
PEARSON: Their latest release is called "The Phosphorescent Blues." The title was inspired by an experience many performers today will relate to - standing on stage, looking out at a crowd fiddling with its cell phones.
THILE: It's actually kind of a beautiful lighting effect. I bet you they have no idea how well lit they are from stage.
WITCHER: (Laughter).
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LITTLE LIGHTS")
PUNCH BROTHERS: (Singing) Look at us, we're glowing.
THILE: People look like ghosts from stage, and they kind of are ghosts. In a way, they're not really there, and that's kind of how we are all right now. We're never really all the way anywhere. A lot of the record is just trying to think about that.
PEARSON: So the band wrote songs about distraction and isolation and yearning for real connections in this hyper-connected age.
(SOUNDBITE OF UNIDENTIFIED PUNCH BROTHERS SONG)
PUNCH BROTHERS: (Singing) As you explode out of your phones, amen.
PEARSON: Thile and Witcher call the album their most ambitious. It opens with a 10-minute overture and ends with a swelling chorus, and here's the thing about that chorus - they crowdsourced it. Gabe says they tried to loop their voices but it just didn't sound right. So they reached out to their fans - how else? - using social media and asked them to record themselves singing the part. Some 1,500 people uploaded files.
THILE: It was incredible. We had people from 14 or 15 different countries
WITCHER: And they sound great.
THILE: They sound great. It was very powerful.
(SOUNDBITE OF PUNCH BROTHERS SONG, "LITTLE LIGHTS")
THILE: I have a conviction that we'll make all of this work and that we won't end up living less vibrantly than our forefathers because we'll figure it out. But to actually hear all of these people sing this little thing that we wrote and so earnestly and so beautifully in a way that couldn't have happened before the technology existed, it ultimately lent some conviction to the hope at the end of that lyric.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LITTLE LIGHTS")
PUNCH BROTHERS: (Singing) Guide us back to who we are from where we want to be.
PEARSON: The new album from Punch Brothers is called "The Phosphorescent Blues." It comes out today. Vince Pearson, NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
A leader of a rebel group appeared at the International Criminal Court at the Hague yesterday. Dominic Ongwen was first a child soldier and then a military commander for Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army. He faces seven counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity for a 2004 attack on a camp for displaced persons. The BBC's Kassima Kayira was at yesterday's hearing.
KASSIMA KAYIRA: The Lord's Resistance Army atrocities have been committed over four countries. It is northern Uganda, it is South Sudan, it's the DRC and Central African Republic where he was captured. But these particular charges against him will concentrate on what happened in northern Uganda after 2004.
INSKEEP: Which is why some victims' advocates say the charges do not go far enough. The Lord's Resistance Army is accused of kidnapping children to use as soldiers and as sex slaves. Ongwen was turned over to U.S. custody this month. The leader of the Lord's Resistance Army, Joseph Kony, remains at large.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The blizzard in New York City has not yet stopped the street crews.
(SOUNDBITE OF STREET SWEEPER)
INSKEEP: That is the sound of a street sweeper in New York, where the snow is underwhelming so far. Elsewhere, it is falling as much as 3 to 4 inches per hour, a very serious storm in many parts of the country. Roads are closed in five states that issued travel bans. NPR's Hansi Lo Wang is covering the nor’easter. He was out walking the streets of New York this morning. Hi, Hansi.
HANSI LO WANG, BYLINE: Good morning, Steve.
INSKEEP: What's it looking like out there?
WANG: Well, it's very, very quiet here in the streets of New York, which is very unusual to see empty streets, even so early in the morning. I couldn't even get a cup of coffee. The most of the people that you see are cleanup crews. And the first guy I saw, his name is Angel Cartagena from the Bronx, he stayed overnight in Manhattan in the high-rise where he's working at. And he's what he told me.
ANGEL CARTAGENA: The mayor said don't go out. You know, it's going to affect the city if whoever went out, you know, is going to get stuck.
WANG: I mean, you're stuck.
CARTAGENA: Yeah, I'm stuck, but I have a place to stay tonight, you know? I'll probably be back home Wednesday night.
WANG: So he's stuck in Manhattan, so are other New Yorkers, wherever they are in the boroughs, because the subway is closed and so are the streets. And that's the same for folks in Boston. Also, there's a travel ban in Massachusetts, of course, but Rhode Island, Connecticut and New Jersey. But, in New York right now, it really is a beautiful scene. You see kind of snow dusting all over the city, and it looks like kind of frosted buildings. It's a really nice kind of winter wonderland.
INSKEEP: Yeah, and I suppose the city never sleeps - people get a chance to sleep in since the city shut down.
WANG: There you go.
INSKEEP: But you mentioned that, even though things are not so bad in New York City, they are quite bad in other parts of the Northeast. What's going on there?
WANG: Yeah. Along the coast a lot of places are being pummeled, like places in Long Island, N.Y., and also just up the coast through Maine. There's about 3 to 4 inches falling per hour, as you mentioned, in some of those areas and more than a foot in some of those places that have accumulated so far overnight. And there's also reports of flooding in - along the Massachusetts coast because this storm - this blizzard's bringing such high winds where we're seeing flooding as high as 3 feet. And as the storm's making its way north right now this morning, Maine has just added itself to a list of states that have declared a state of emergency. And so this storm is not over yet, even though in New York, it's not as big as we expected.
INSKEEP: I'm glad you mentioned the flooding of up to 3 feet. This is a regular thing that people have to deal with the Northeast that I guess we should describe for the rest of the country. You sometimes have inbound winds that essentially blow the ocean onshore. Is that what's happening here?
WANG: Right, and there's a real threat to that shoreline. And, folks, officials warned that this might happen, and it is happening in some parts along the Massachusetts coast. And it's something we're watching.
INSKEEP: So how long is this storm going to last?
WANG: Well, we're expecting the weather conditions to continue for the rest of the day today, so people are pretty much going to be stuck home. And cleanup officials say it should start around midday Wednesday. But with - you know, in New York City, with the subway shut down and also in Boston, it's going to be an interesting kind of waking back up, if you will, to shut down such big systems and to get it back online again. That's going to be an interesting wake-up.
INSKEEP: Well, Hansi, enjoy your long, long, long stay in Midtown Manhattan, then.
WANG: Thank you, Steve.
INSKEEP: That's NPR's Hansi Lo Wang.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Over the weekend, President Obama proposed giving wilderness status to 12 million acres of Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, also known as ANWR. President Obama said it's a way of preserving a pristine environment for future generations. It also means energy companies would be barred from drilling in a region with rich oil reserves at a time when Alaska's economy is being hurt by plunging oil prices, which is why opponents of the president's move came out swinging, including Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski. She is the Republican chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Good morning.
SENATOR LISA MURKOWSKI: Good morning.
MONTAGNE: You have described the president's plan as an unprecedented assault on Alaska that will have long-lasting effects on the state's economy and the nation's energy security. Now, when you speak of the nation, is not America actually more energy-secure than it has been in generations?
MURKOWSKI: We are because we have been accessing our domestic reserves, primarily on private and state lands. But think about what our potential could be if we are able to access those federal resources. We are a state that has been providing oil to the country for decades now and doing so in an environmentally sound and safe way. But what the president is proposing has the potential to thwart any development there. All of a sudden, it's a one-two-three kick to Alaska.
MONTAGNE: When you say environmentally safe, I think many Americans know about and certainly think about - are exactly the moments when it's not safe, when there's an oil spill.
MURKOWSKI: If you look to the track record - the safety track record - in Alaska, it is a model of environmental standards and safeguards. What people unfortunately relate to when they think of Alaska oil was when the Exxon Valdez went aground because of a captain that was drunk. But when you look to how we have been safely producing and moving Alaska's oil for decades, it is a track record that is enviable.
MONTAGNE: The fight over the Arctic refuge has been with us for some time. Twenty years ago, President Clinton vetoed a law passed by Congress that would've approved exploration and production on the coastal plain of the refuge. That veto stuck. When you say, as you already have in a statement, we are left with no choice but to hit back as hard as we can. What do you mean by that? What can you realistically do?
MURKOWSKI: What we are faced with right now is a different battle than we had in 1995 when Clinton vetoed the opening of ANWR to limited exploration and development. What we're faced with now is not a situation where we're trying to get votes to open it to limited access. We're trying to keep this area from being locked up permanently, indefinitely, forever to anything.
And keep in mind that what the president has started is a process that would move towards a wilderness designation. But it is ultimately and only the Congress that can make that determination. I can almost guarantee that this Congress will not approve placing ANWR into wilderness status. So the president is pushing something in the Congress that it will not endorse.
The problem that we're facing right now, though, is that once he has initiated this process, as he has, these areas will be managed as wilderness. So what does that mean for the people that live in the ANWR area? There's so much focus on the wildlife, on the polar bear and the critters and the birds. And they are important. Don't get me wrong. But equally important - more important - is the obligation that we have to the people who live there, who have been there for centuries, many of them. So let's not lose sight of the human beings that are part of this discussion.
MONTAGNE: That's Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. Thank you very much for talking with us.
MURKOWSKI: Thank you, Renee.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
How much oil and gas is really at stake at ANWR? Well, nobody's really sure. NPR's Martin Kaste reports this decades-old political fight is based on rough estimates of what's really in the ground.
MARTIN KASTE, BYLINE: Matt Berman is an economics professor in Anchorage. And in Alaska, economics equals oil and gas. But even he doesn't know what the true energy potential is in ANWR.
MATT BERMAN: I think the politics of it sort of affect all the information that you're going to get from anybody who has some interest in either opening it or closing it.
KASTE: The basic numbers come from the United States Geological Survey. Its mean estimate is that ANWR contains 10.4 billion barrels of recoverable oil. That sounds like a lot, but...
DAVE HOUSEKNECHT: Because that data is somewhat dated, we have a large range of uncertainty around that estimate. USGS researcher Dave Houseknecht helped to do the last seismic survey there the 1990s. The technology they used then isn't as good as what's used today, he says. And there hasn't been any exploratory drilling in ANWR either, with one exception.
HOUSEKNECHT: The so-called KIC well.
KASTE: It was drilled in the 1980s by Chevron. And Houseknecht says no one seems to know what they found. When you talk with people from even the companies that were involved with drilling, it is a significant secret within the company. And there are usually only two or three people who have ever got to know what really was encountered in the well.
KASTE: It's a safe bet that ANWR has oil. It's east of Prudhoe Bay, the biggest oilfield in America. The question is does it represent the kind of bonanza that can prop up the state economy, even as flow Prudhoe Bay tapers off? At the University of Alaska, Anchorage, Matt Berman says that hope has faded somewhat.
BERMAN: It's unclear that it still has the same importance today, partly because of the growth of the fracking in the Lower 48. But also because right now, the price of oil is quite low. And the price of oil would have to be fairly high to make it be really attractive.
KASTE: But though the market may not seem conducive to drilling new wells in the Arctic right now, when that changes, most Alaskans don't want the federal government standing in the way. Martin Kaste, NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The drama in Argentina keeps growing. We've been tracking the story of a prosecutor found dead just before he could offer explosive testimony. Now the president of Argentina, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, has addressed her nation on TV, and she is proposing to disband the country's domestic intelligence agency. She said the agency is behind the prosecutor's death. NPR's Lourdes Garcia-Navarro is covering this story.
Lourdes, why did she take aim at the country's intelligence service?
LOURDES GARCIA-NAVARRO, BYLINE: There are so many twists and turns in this very confusing case. The public reason she gave last night was that the agency was the legacy of the very brutal dictatorship here and had essentially gotten out of control. It has sole domestic power to do wiretaps, for example. And she said its power needed to be reformed.
Now, her fight with the intelligence secretariat, as it's known here, seems to go back to that slain prosecutor you mentioned, Alberto Nisman. He had been given many, many hours of tapes of wiretaps that clearly could only have come from someone inside the spy agency. Those tapes form the basis of his most recent report that he was about to present to Congress in which he alleged that the president herself and members of her government were part of a conspiracy to obstruct the investigation of a 1994 terror attack that killed 85 people here and wounded hundreds more.
INSKEEP: So we have this man who actually was pointing fingers at the president herself, not necessarily intelligence agencies. Now the president points at the intelligence agency?
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yeah, she basically says that one master spy is behind the death of Alberto Nisman, someone she had fired recently, saying he had been feeding Nisman the wrong information about that investigation on her. So she basically says that this is all to do with the internal politics of the spying agency and not to do with the larger investigation, of course, that has remained unresolved into that 1994 bombing.
INSKEEP: So did the president offer any evidence for her allegations against her own government's intelligence agency?
GARCIA-NAVARRO: No, she did not. In fact, she went even further. Last night, she again fingered another suspect - the man who gave Nisman the gun that was found next to his dead body, all this with absolutely no proof. This is a sitting president making allegations to a national audience while there's actually an active investigation underway. So this all seems like it's being tried in the court of public opinion and not in a court of law.
INSKEEP: Are people in Argentina able to talk about anything else at this point?
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Absolutely not. Everywhere I go, everyone has different theory about who killed Nisman, who was behind the bombing in 1994, if it was the government, if it was the rogue intelligence services, if it was the CIA - they've gotten a look in. Everyone has been implicated. And you have to understand that this is all based around that very terrible attack in 1994 that was on that Jewish community center. It's as if 9/11 had remained unresolved. It was the worst terror attack in Argentine history.
In the absence of any proof, what you have here is incredible amounts of speculation and people saying that they feel they have no trust in the institutions, no trust in the government and that if Alberto Nisman could've been killed - of course there's been no proof that he's been killed, but people suppose that he's been killed - then it could happen to them. So it's absolutely riveting this country.
INSKEEP: NPR's Lourdes Garcia-Navarro is in Buenos Aires. Thanks very much.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: You're welcome.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne. A Boy Scout troop in Montana got its camping gear back after thieves had a change of heart. After taking the gear and a trailer worth about $7,000, the thieves left a note on the windshield of a car in a church parking lot saying they felt guilty and directing the scouts from Troop 373 where to find their stuff. There might not be a merit badge in that, but Scoutmaster Rick Lindholm was happy that the thieves had done a good deed. It's MORNING EDITION.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
We'll talk next with a man who has been talking with Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad. Jonathan Tepperman is managing editor of Foreign Affairs magazine and interviewed the Syrian leader in Damascus. He's on the line. Welcome to the program, sir.
JONATHAN TEPPERMAN: Thank you very much.
INSKEEP: Congratulations on the interview. I read it - extremely interesting. I don't want to summarize it too much here, but Assad essentially says nothing is his fault. Israel is behind his troubles, and he believes that in spite of the fragmentation of his country, the Syrian people are still with him. I want to ask, did Assad appear as self-confident as his words to you would suggest?
TEPPERMAN: Yes, Steve, that, in fact, was one of the most striking things about the interview to me. He was filled with bon ami, was extremely polite and solicitous and supremely relaxed throughout the conversation. And when he would speak these wild untruths, which - he had to know that I knew were patently false - he voiced them with unblinking, unshakable confidence. And it was really, really striking. And that said one of two things to me; either he is a spectacularly competent liar and this was all being done for domestic consumption, in which case he's merely a sociopath, or he really believes what he's saying. You know, this is like Hitler in his bunker when the Russians were an hour outside Berlin still insisting to his generals that Germany could win the war.
INSKEEP: Or he's speaking to the world and essentially saying and essentially saying, I'm not going anywhere.
TEPPERMAN: Right.
INSKEEP: Is that the message you think he was sending?
TEPPERMAN: Well, I do think so, and this to me is one of the other big takeaways from the interview. You know, if you've been watching carefully over the last few weeks, the West has started to send signals that it is more open to a compromised solution with Assad about how to end the war. In the past, the U.S. had insisted that Assad had to step down as a precondition to any peace treaty. In the last few weeks, Senator Kerry and others have started to suggest that that's no longer necessary.
INSKEEP: Secretary of State John Kerry, right, right.
TEPPERMAN: Yeah, excuse me. And what all of that suggests is there is a perception in the West that some kind of compromise is now more likely. The Assad that I met made it very clear that such a compromise is an absolute fantasy. It's impossible to imagine because he is convinced that he is winning the war militarily. He is convinced that he is winning the war for the hearts and minds of his people. He is absolutely unrepentant.
I mean, when I asked him five times if he had made any mistakes during the course of the war or if there was anything he'd done that he regretted, he said he literally couldn't think of a single thing. And then when we talked about the specifics of negotiations and how a peace deal would be struck, he insisted that he would be open to talking to anybody and that he would be open to any sort of a deal. But then he completely undermined that by saying that, of course, any change in the political structure of Syria would have to be confirmed by a referendum of the Syrian people. And of course...
INSKEEP: Oh, that he would control.
TEPPERMAN: Exactly. I mean, keep in mind that this is - A - number one, he only controls about a third of his territories, so how you hold a referendum is not clear. Second of all, this is a guy who was reelected just this past June with something like 98 percent of the vote.
INSKEEP: OK, well, interesting situation. So in just about five seconds here, you're telling us that he is saying that he's willing to negotiate as long as it's on his terms.
TEPPERMAN: That's precisely right.
INSKEEP: Mr. Tepperman, thanks very much.
TEPPERMAN: My pleasure.
INSKEEP: Jonathan Tepperman is managing editor of Foreign Affairs magazine and recently completed an interview with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
And let's get to some domestic news we've been following - the high cost of college. President Obama rolled out some new ideas in his State of the Union address to help middle-class families pay for it, but he's taking heat for proposing the end of a popular tax break on college savings accounts. NPR White House correspondent Tamara Keith has more.
TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: The college savings accounts are known as 529s. And in recent years, there's been a big push to get families to start saving early.
(SOUNDBITE OF COMMERCIAL)
UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: Remember how it felt the first time she slept through the night? Starting your child's plan with the College Savings Plans of Maryland can feel the same way.
KEITH: Here's how it works. Parents or grandparents put money in. It gets invested, and if all goes as planned, it grows right along with the child. Mary Morris, CEO of the Virginia529 College Savings Plan, says that when it's time for college, students can use the funds to pay for tuition, books and the other expenses.
MARY MORRIS: And then currently, as long as the distributions are used for qualified higher education expenses, they're never taxed.
KEITH: Tax-free - it's a pretty good deal and one that's been around since 2001. But the White House says fewer than 3 percent of families use these accounts, and 70 percent of the money in them comes from families earning more than $200,000 a year. President Obama's proposal would take away that tax benefit for future deposits. Morris, who also chairs the College Savings Foundation, says this would be a major blow to a program that helps millions of families save for college.
MORRIS: We are hearing those families speaking out and saying wait, this is - we've counted on this, and we're saving slowly month over month. Please don't take this benefit away.
KEITH: White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest says you can't think about the proposed changes to 529 plans in isolation. You have to look at the president's whole proposal which expands education tax credits to help middle-class families pay for college.
JOSH EARNEST: And when you consider that entire package of reforms, the tax cut that we're looking at for middle-class families is $50 billion.
REPRESENTATIVE LYNN JENKINS: I really think it was a mistake that somebody made over at the White House.
KEITH: Republican Congresswoman Lynn Jenkins from Kansas says the expanded tax credits the president proposed won't defray enough of the costs of college. And so saving in 529 accounts is still needed. Yesterday afternoon, she introduced a bill that would further enshrine the 529 program into law. Her co-author is a Democrat, and Jenkins expects bipartisan support. It wasn't meant to be a response to the president's proposal, but the mother of two college students says she can't figure out why the White House would suggest this change.
JENKINS: There's, like, 12 million accounts nationwide. This isn't a partisan issue. This is one that should get to the president for signature.
KEITH: With a GOP Congress, it is certainly more likely Jenkins's bill will get to Obama's desk than his own tax proposal. Tamara Keith, NPR News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Greece's new left-wing ruling party, Syriza, is pledging an end to the tough austerity measures that country has endured for the last five years. Those austerity measures were imposed in exchange for bailout loans to the bankrupt country, which the new prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, says he will renegotiate. European finance ministers are meeting in Brussels today to talk about what that could mean. For a sense of the stakes involved, we spoke to Tom Nuttall of The Economist. Good morning.
TOM NUTTALL: Good morning.
MONTAGNE: Now, what is - before we get into the details on the question of renegotiating these terms - what is the reaction of the 18 other nations in the eurozone to the election of this leftist leader in Greece?
NUTTALL: It's been clear for a while that Tsipras had a very good chance of taking office in Greece. So I don't think there were any major surprises after the election on Sunday, although perhaps the margin of victory was a little bit larger than some had expected. The biggest surprise I think came with the choice of coalition partner.
Now, Syriza is a party of the left, some people would say the hard left. It's gone into coalition with a small party called the Independent Greeks, who are a bunch of right-wing nationalists. They share very little in common other than a hatred of the troika, the officials who have imposed the conditions on Greece's bailout. The decision to go into coalition with that party seemed to send a clear signal that this government would perhaps take a rather harder line than some had expected it might do.
MONTAGNE: And that troika you speak of, that would be the EU, the IMF...
NUTTALL: And the ECB, the European Central Bank. Yes, these are the three institutions who have set the conditions for Greece to receive its bailout funds. Greece has endured great pain. Its GDP has gone down by 25 percent since the beginning of the crisis. Unemployment is at around 25 percent. And Mr. Tsipras, the new prime minister, has done a rather good job of channeling the anger and the discontent in Greece towards the troika.
MONTAGNE: I'm curious, can he actually change the bailout terms?
NUTTALL: That's a good question. In December, Greece's bailout was extended by two months. It expired at the end of February in just over a month. Now, that clearly doesn't leave very long for Mr. Tsipras to form a negotiating position because if that bailout expires without a further extension being agreed, then liquidity support to Greece's bank from the European Central Bank will be cut off. Now, that could precipitate a huge crisis. So now - well, if you speak to officials here in Brussels, then what they all say is that the ball is now in Greece's court. They're waiting for this new government to formulate a set of demands and requests that they will then be able to respond to. And the clock is ticking.
MONTAGNE: But one thing - this new prime minister of Greece, he has told his supporters he wants to stay in the eurozone. But when he's thinking about renegotiating the debt, what is he armed with? What can he threaten to do if he's not going to threaten to get out of the eurozone?
NUTTALL: The concern that a lot of eurozone officials have - and officials in creditor countries like Germany - is that if in the course of negotiations with Syriza, they start to go soft, they start to go wobbly, they start to give in to some demands, then parties, you know - governments in places like Spain may start to say, well, hold on, if Greece is starting to get a good deal, then why don't we get a good deal as well? And all of a sudden, you have a different sort of contagion spreading from Greece to other parts of the continent. That is the new concern that people here have.
MONTAGNE: Tom Nuttall writes the "Charlemagne" column for The Economist magazine. Thank you very much for joining us.
NUTTALL: It was my pleasure.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Let's visit a place hit hard by today's East Coast snowstorm. It is not New York City where the snow is far less than forecast, nor is it upstate New York where major highways are reopening. It is eastern Massachusetts. Anne Mostue, from member station WGBH, is at the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency command center, and Anne, where exactly is that command center?
ANNE MOSTUE, BYLINE: Well, Steve, I'm about 40 feet underground in Framingham, Mass., about 15 miles outside Boston.
INSKEEP: Forty feet underground - so I guess you're covered up for any eventuality there?
MOSTUE: That's right. That's right. I don't know how many states put their governor in an underground bunker to monitor snowstorms, but that's what we do here.
INSKEEP: OK, I guess we should mention that you heard from the governor there. You are getting information. So as best authorities are able to tell, what is happening above ground?
MOSTUE: Well, the snow's still falling very heavily - up to 13 inches on Cape Cod and in other coastal areas. But it's very windy, so there are large snowdrifts. It's ankle-deep in some places and knee-deep in other places.
INSKEEP: And how bad is that for Massachusetts?
MOSTUE: Well, it's been tough. The number of power outages just jumped from 10,000 to 21,000, and most of those are along the coast. The governor says he's very happy that everyone's obeying the driving ban which went into effect at midnight. And he's asking people to shovel and clear out exhaust pipes today, but mostly just to stay put.
INSKEEP: I want to make sure I understand this driving ban. Is the governor saying that literally the entire state should not be driving? There is not a single formally open road in the entire state of Massachusetts?
MOSTUE: That's correct. The only reason for driving, they say, is if you have to go to a hospital, if you're a medical worker, a state public safety worker or someone plowing or involved with transportation. But all public transportation and all roads are closed in Massachusetts to driving (inaudible).
INSKEEP: Now, I'm thinking about the fact that a few years ago when there was 3 feet of snow in Washington, D.C., the nation's capital was completely unprepared for it 'cause it just doesn't happen here very often. How prepared, generally speaking, is Massachusetts, though, for a major snowstorm like this? Is this beyond what people are ready for?
MOSTUE: No, no. I think it's actually been very well-handled and well-prepared. I mean, we have a new governor who took over with the same operations as the previous governor. We've been paying attention - the press, here in the bunker - to how he's doing things differently. He's really not. The driving ban was something that the previous governor started doing, and it really makes a lot of sense.
INSKEEP: So this is a situation where - I guess, where you have a politician who is under the gun. I mean, this is something where people will be judged by their performance.
MOSTUE: Yes, he really is. The new governor, Charlie Baker, he's definitely under the gun.
INSKEEP: And any idea how long the situation will last, in a couple of seconds?
MOSTUE: Well, there's - the belief is that we'll all be back - things will be back up and running sometime late tomorrow. But they're just not lifting the driving ban yet.
INSKEEP: OK. Anne Mostue, thanks very much.
MOSTUE: Thank you.
INSKEEP: That's Anne Mostue of our member station, WGBH. She's in a bunker 40 feet underground in eastern Massachusetts, getting a little bit further underground as we go, as the snow continues to fall heavily there and in some other parts of the country.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Today President Obama is meeting a new ruler of an old ally. He's paying respects after the death of Saudi King Abdullah, and he's meeting King Salman, Abdullah's half-brother who is 79. NPR's Scott Horsley is traveling with the president, joins us from Riyadh, and, Scott, what have you been seeing there?
SCOTT HORSLEY, HOST:
Steve, we just arrived in Riyadh a short time ago. The president and Mrs. Obama stepped off of Air Force One into a blazing sun. There was a full-on arrival ceremony at the airport with a military band and a canopy that the president and King Salman stepped under and lots of handshaking there with the members of the Saudi delegation. Then we took a very fast drive through the capital and arrived at a palace where an extended U.S. and Saudi delegation is now meeting.
INSKEEP: And I'm thinking, Scott, that this is more significant than the ordinary ceremonial meeting between heads of state because of the way the Saudi-U.S. alliance has been from the very beginning, when there was a meeting between the Saudi king in 1945 and President Franklin Roosevelt and the way that presidents since then have sent their best friends or good friends to be ambassadors to the Saudis. This is a very personal relationship.
HORSLEY: Well, that's right, and you could just underscore that by the president's own presence here. Initially, the White House said Vice President Biden would lead the U.S. delegation. But when it became clear that President Obama was going to be in the neighborhood with his trip to India, he decided he would take on that role. The White House is stressing that this is largely an opportunity for the president and first lady to pay their respects to the royal family and to meet the new king, not really a substantive sit down. But surely there will be some time for the president and King Salman to talk about some joint concerns, notably the ongoing fight against the Islamic State extremists and the volatile situation in Saudi Arabia's next-door neighbor, Yemen.
INSKEEP: Two different situations there, both involving extremist groups of different kinds. Is there a sense, Scott Horsley, that the U.S. and Saudi Arabia are on the same page with those situations?
HORSLEY: Yes, I think that's right. In fact, of course Saudi Air Force pilots have been flying alongside American pilots in the fight against the Islamic State extremists, which is a pretty active role for Saudi Arabia. They're usually playing a more behind-the-scenes role. And certainly they're equally concerned about the situation in their southern neighbor, where the pro-American government has resigned under pressure. The White House insists that the battle against the al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula group that's headquartered in Yemen and which has taken responsibility for the attacks in Paris earlier this month, that fight they say will go on even though the U.S.-backed government in Yemen has been forced from power.
INSKEEP: I'm thinking of a few issues on which the two countries might be more at odds, though, Scott Horsley. The president just came from India where he was able to give a speech on women's rights and on religious freedom. I'm trusting that such subjects do not come up quite so easily in Saudi Arabia.
HORSLEY: It's sort of an awkward juxtaposition, and I assume that the White House didn't plan to be in Riyadh hours after giving that speech when the language was crafted. It was a very powerful speech, given to an auditorium full of mostly young people from India. And the president said, in our global economy a country cannot succeed while ignoring the talents of half its population. He talked about women's rights and religious pluralism as two values that even if they haven't always lived up to them perfectly, the U.S. and India share - they're written into the founding documents of both countries. And obviously neither of those is a quality that's often assigned to Saudi Arabia.
INSKEEP: Scott, thanks very much as always.
HORSLEY: Good to be with you, Steve.
INSKEEP: That's NPR's Scott Horsley traveling with the president in Riyadh.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Let's turn an ear to a part of this country that's at the center of the big Northeastern snowstorm. Parts of the country, of course, are better off than expected. New England is seeing plenty of snow, and the weather is especially dramatic on Cape Cod, which juts out into the Atlantic Ocean like a long, long pier. Sean Corcoran of member station WCAI is in Mashpee, which is on Cape Cod. Welcome to the program.
SEAN CORCORAN, BYLINE: Thank you, Steve.
INSKEEP: So what's it look like where you are?
CORCORAN: Well, if I look out a window, I can't see anything because it's completely covered with snow. But if you go outside, it looks like a snowstorm for sure. It is blowing hard. The snow's coming down sideways. We're really in the thick of it now. And standing outside is like standing on top of a mountain. That's exactly what it reminds me of - that these winds continue steadily blowing.
INSKEEP: Well, that's really interesting. I guess Cape Cod would be a similar situation because the winds have had miles and miles and miles out at sea with nothing to slow them down before they reach you.
CORCORAN: That's true, and those winds are a real problem when it comes to coastal flooding. We just had a high tide around 5 o'clock this morning. We'll have another one around 5 o'clock this afternoon. And so as those winds blow, the water gets to build up, build up and when the high tide hits, we are worried about some of the communities, particularly the town of Nantucket, which is also an island, which has just been getting pounded.
INSKEEP: You know, sometimes a snowstorm is a very quiet time and sometimes not so much. What does it sound like to be where you are?
CORCORAN: Right now, I really compare it to being in a shack in the White Mountains, maybe Mount Washington in New Hampshire or something like that. But there were times earlier in the morning where I heard thunder. And we had anticipated this thundersnow, and I did hear some thunder. By the time I got the recorder out, it had passed.
But overnight wasn't the freight train sound that I anticipated. It wasn't until earlier this morning, probably around 5 o'clock, that the winds really started to pick up here. And, as I said, we're still in the thick of it. We probably will be until about noon today.
INSKEEP: So, of course, you're in a resort community. People spend a lot of time in the summer on Cape Cod. Who's there in the winter?
CORCORAN: Well, in the wintertime, we do have a significantly older population here, a lot of retirees, and not all of them are what they call snowbirds. Not all of them are leaving in the winter. Many of them stay. So to give you an idea, our year-round population is about 200,000. In the summer, it balloons up to about 500,000. So among those 200,000 here now, many are older folks. And our concern was that the temperatures would rise during the storm, and we'd really get a heavy snow. If there is kind of a bright light here, it's the fact that the snow is pretty light. So even though there's about a foot and a half of it, it's easier to move. The problem with the winds right now - don't move it now because it's going to blow right back.
INSKEEP: And is it your sense, from what you can glean anyway, that most people have hunkered down safely and that they're just waiting for this to pass?
CORCORAN: Really, people took this seriously - yes. People are hunkered down. There's no one out. I've seen no one even walking around. So, yeah, it's really serious here, and people are staying in. They know we're not done yet. We've had some roads closed, but I don't even think they need to close them just because nobody's out there right now. It's pretty impassible.
INSKEEP: Sean, thanks very much.
CORCORAN: Thank you, Steve.
INSKEEP: That's Sean Corcoran of member station WCAI on Cape Cod.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
OK. Some American ambassadors stationed in South American nations headed by left-wing governments have faced their own version of hostility. Some have even been expelled. In Ecuador, the top U.S. envoy has found a novel way to reach out to his host country by playing keyboards in an Ecuadorian blues band. John Otis has the story.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
JOHN OTIS, BYLINE: Shortly before taking the stage at a Quito bar, the Ecuadorian band Samay Blues plugs in for a sound check.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
OTIS: Some of the bar-goers tonight are Americans. That's because the word is out. U.S. Ambassador Adam Namm will be sitting in on keyboards.
U.S. AMBASSADOR ADAM NAMM: I'm glad to get out of the office once in a while. Thanks for coming. I need my bench. They gave me a chair, and I've got to find one of my roadies.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
OTIS: Namm took his first piano lesson at age 5. After joining the U.S. Foreign Service, he played with bands in the Dominican Republic and Pakistan, then hooked up with Samay Blues here in Ecuador. The band practices in the ambassador's official residence where Namm's bodyguards helped set up the amplifiers and plug-in microphones. Besides playing keyboards, Namm often sings lead vocal.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SAMAY BLUES: (Singing) Yeah, love my baby like the finest wine. Stick with her until the end of time.
OTIS: For Namm, playing with the band several nights a week is a way to break away from traditional, buttoned-down diplomacy.
NAMM: It's a great way to connect. So sports, art, whatever your passion is, get out and share it because it you shouldn't be the stiff ambassador who only shows up at speeches and cocktail parties.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
OTIS: But it turns out singing the blues is one of Namm's dwindling options. Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa is a fierce critic of the United States. He expelled the previous U.S. ambassador and has refused to meet with Namm. He's also kicked out U.S. military advisers and aid workers.
Elsewhere in Latin America, it's also been tough sledding for U.S. diplomats. The left-wing governments in Bolivia and Venezuela have expelled American ambassadors. In September, Kevin Sullivan, the top U.S. diplomat in Argentina, was nearly given the boot for commenting on that country's debt default, which involves U.S. hedge funds.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
PRESIDENT RAFAEL CORREA: (Speaking Spanish).
OTIS: Here in Ecuador, President Correa sometimes lashes out at Namm. In this speech, Correa warned the ambassador not to misbehave after Namm criticized a government crackdown on the news media. Namm plays down the conflict.
NAMM: The U.S. relationship with Ecuador certainly has its difficulties, and it's had its difficulties over the last several years. But I think both governments recognize we have a lot more in common than differences. And it behooves both countries to work together.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
OTIS: So does all this blues diplomacy make any difference? Moises David, the drummer for Samay Blues, says Namm's soulful performances help debunk the caricature of U.S. ambassadors as overbearing imperialists.
MOISES DAVID: (Speaking Spanish).
OTIS: "Namm is so warm and communicates so well with the people that they want to come back and see him," David says. "He gives diplomacy a new image."
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
OTIS: Music has also helped Namm break the ice with Ecuadorian officials, like Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino, who delights in both slamming Washington and in singing.
NAMM: He asked me to play. He had an Ecuadorian band, and I played some piano. And he sang, and it was a great experience. It was - actually, we played "Besame Mucho."
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
OTIS: The song was an intriguing choice given the bad blood between the two governments. In Spanish, "Besame Mucho" means kiss me a lot. On this night, however, Namm and his bandmates closed their set with another classic, "Roadhouse Blues" by The Doors. For NPR News, I'm John Otis.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MONTAGNE: This is NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Tony Simmons helps homeless people to get off the streets, which is remarkable because he has been homeless himself. He is the first subject of an occasional series about individuals who do not have much money or power, but do make a big difference. NPR's Pam Fessler reports.
PAM FESSLER, BYLINE: Tony Simmons is 53, a former Marine, also a former heroin addict and drug runner, in and out of jail. Eventually, he hit rock bottom - homeless, penniless, alienated from family and friends. When we first met two years ago, Simmons said he was afraid he might die, that he had to do something.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
TONY SIMMONS: You must start with yourself. Get up, get going, no excuses. That's what I tell myself every morning after prayer 'cause every time I help one person, I get a little part of me back.
Here you go. I want you to come to our dinner Saturday, all right?
FESSLER: Today, Simmons has gotten much of himself back as the unofficial go-to person for many of Baltimore's of 3,000 homeless residents.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: All right, thank you.
SIMMONS: All right, you're very welcome.
FESSLER: People like the bundled-up men and women who come to the Health Care for the Homeless clinic for medical treatment and other services or just to escape from the cold.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: I got to be at housing at...
SIMMONS: Tell your case manager that you need to be in housing. Tell them that is what's important.
FESSLER: Or maybe to talk with Simmons, now volunteering at a help desk by the front door, doling out flyers for free dinners as well as lots of advice.
SIMMONS: They provide all kinds of services, and they cater to single moms and children. That's what they do.
Well, you know if you're on SSI, you can go to any senior building that you want.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #3: I thought it was 60 and over.
FESSLER: Professionals at the clinic say Simmons reaches people they sometimes can't, that he knows where to get help, how to cut through red tape. He's now staying with a friend, but he spent three years in a shelter. So he's got lots of credibility.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Right now, I'm having problems with food.
SIMMONS: With food?
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: 'Cause I don't get food stamps.
SIMMONS: OK...
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: They cut me off.
SIMMONS: 'Cause you know there are places like Franciscan Center. They have a food pantry up there.
One thing I try not to do is tell them what to do. I just give them the avenues - these are the resources that's out there. Choose something that's right for you, and I will help you navigate through that system.
FESSLER: And the demands here do seem endless. Several clients use walkers or wheelchairs. Some are missing limbs. Many need addiction or mental health services. One woman by the door hops nervously as she brushes her teeth. Outside, it's cold and rainy. Two dozen people sleep on the clinic's front porch each night or across the street by the interstate. That's where Theodore Maddox first saw Simmons over a year ago.
THEODORE MADDOX: He never knew that I was watching him, but every day I saw him. And I used to inquire about, who's that dude there? Who's that dude there? And everybody was telling me - and I just said, man, that's a person I would like to emulate.
FESSLER: Maddox was in bad shape - on drugs, an ex-con, homeless for 15 years. But when he heard Simmons say he'd rather be homeless than living inside while others were on the street, it got Maddox thinking.
MADDOX: Here's a dude that's unselfish. So he taught me how to be unselfish, you know? Don't just think about me. I have to think about other people, too.
FESSLER: He started to clean up his life. Now at age 56, Maddox has his first apartment. And he's joined Simmons and a homeless speaker's bureau to share his story at local colleges. Simmons seems to be involved in just about everything. He lobbies city hall and at the state Capitol and mentors homeless youth. He also just got a part-time job helping those who face eviction. But Simmons says what people need most from him is encouragement.
SIMMONS: I'm glad you here, my friend.
JAMES: All right, man. Thanks for your time. I'll see you later.
FESSLER: Simmons hugs a big bear of a man named James, who tells Simmons he's no longer living out on the street. When he leaves, Simmons starts to tear up.
SIMMONS: Every day I hear these stories. People come to me, like, you know, I'm not out here anymore. Thank you, you know? I'm like, I didn't do much. I just said get up. That's all. Just get up.
FESSLER: Pam Fessler, NPR News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Fare jumping is one of the few transgressions the NFL has not been accused of lately. The league has been criticized for tolerating everything from domestic abuse to concussions. But commentator Frank Deford has found some redemption in another sport.
FRANK DEFORD, BYLINE: More than a half-century ago, there was a best-selling book and then a movie entitled "The Ugly American." The title was a twist though because the plot featured attractive-looking Americans who were, however, boorish and haughty, acting most unattractively when they were sent abroad to represent the country at a time close to World War II, when the United States had never been richer or more powerful. Meanwhile, a plain, almost homely lower-level staffer who was assigned to work out in the boondocks was selfless and courteous, popular with the local people. That was the title's irony, that it was the ugly American who was, in fact, the hero. If there is anything that describes the National Football League recently, it is ugly. And yet, the NFL has never been more popular or more powerful. Despite a hopelessly inept commissioner, nothing that embarrasses the NFL seems to dent its success. The latest brouhaha, where there is a widespread feeling that one of the teams that will play in the Super Bowl deflated its way to the championship game, will probably only add to the audience. It's not a stretch of an analogy to say that the imperial NFL is to sport in the United States today as the mighty United States was once upon a time to the world. By contrast, tennis is a sport like golf or boxing. It's only on the fringes of the big time. And if you're tennis's 112 in the world, you're - well, you're out in the boondocks. Last week, while NFL footballs somehow ended up deflated for the benefit of the smug New England Patriots, an American named Tim Smyczek somehow took the magnificent Rafael Nadal right to the fifth-set limit at a grand slam, the Australian Open. This was Smyczek's moment of a lifetime. But when Nadal served at a crucial point, someone in the crowd screamed, and the serve went awry. What did the 112th player in the world do? He signaled to the umpire that his opponent, the great Nadal, should get help, another chance, another first serve. Nadal promptly won the do-over with a terrific serve. And soon enough, the match and Smyczek's one hope for glory was gone. But you see, he simply thought he had to be fair or victory wouldn't be worth the candle. So we should all watch the Super Bowl Sunday as America puts its favorite game on display, while the glamorous NFL preens and postures, invulnerable to its violent sins and excesses. But if you will, think for a moment about Tim Smyczek, the loser American.
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Negotiations over multibillion-dollar trade deals mostly focus on issues like manufacturing tariffs. So you might be surprised to hear about wildlife trafficking as part of a major trade pact. As NPR's Jackie Northam reports, the U.S. is hoping an Asia-Pacific deal will help slow the poaching of animals like elephants, tigers and rhinos.
JACKIE NORTHAM, BYLINE: If you want a sharp dose of reality about the scale of wildlife trafficking, just come here, to the National Eagle and Wildlife Repository on the outskirts of Denver. The cavernous building sits in the middle of a national reserve.
COLEEN SCHAEFER: We have a 16,000 square foot warehouse that's completely full. We have approximately 1.5 million items in there.
NORTHAM: Coleen Schaefer heads up the repository. There's everything from taxidermied polar bears to tiny seahorses turned into keychains. An area devoted to elephants is framed by a pair of enormous tusks.
NORTHAM: You can see just right there. Those are elephant feet.
SCHAEFER: Yeah, elephant feet. People either make those into trash cans or foot stools.
NORTHAM: In 2013, more than 20,000 elephants were slaughtered. Last year, the repository crushed six tons of confiscated ivory. The repository is packed with poached wildlife used for fashion and medicines. Schaefer says some of the animals are just used as trophies.
SCHAEFER: This is probably the saddest item we have. This is a tiger fetus that was carved out of its mother and then stuffed, placed on a shelf.
NORTHAM: I'm just walking down just one row here, and I'm seeing shelf after shelf of stuffed heads and the skins of cheetahs, leopards, jaguars, lions, snow leopards and tigers. And when you look around this enormous warehouse, which is just stuffed to the rafters with endangered species, it gives you a good indication about the challenge in trying to curb wildlife trafficking.
The Obama administration is now trying a new approach to tackle wildlife trafficking by incorporating it into the Trans-Pacific Partnership, known as the TPP. That's a massive, multilateral trade agreement currently being negotiated among a dozen Asia-Pacific nations. Michael Froman, the U.S. trade representative, says if it passes, countries found to be involved in illegal wildlife trafficking could face trade sanctions.
MICHAEL FROMAN: What we're doing through the Trans-Pacific Partnership is, first of all, making sure that environmental issues are central to the agreement, including on dealing with things like wildlife trafficking, and then making them fully enforceable, just like any other provision of the trade agreement.
NORTHAM: The U.S. is also trying to make it part of a trade deal with the European Union. But Leigh Henry, senior policy advisor for the World Wildlife Fund, says the Asia-Pacific trade deal is key because much of the demand for the endangered wildlife comes from Asian countries negotiating the TPP.
LEIGH HENRY: Vietnam is huge. They are the primary consumer of rhino horn that's driving this 3,000 percent increase in rhino poaching in South Africa. Malaysia is a huge transit route for illegal wildlife trade.
NORTHAM: Henry says when it comes to fighting wildlife, international law has no teeth. She hopes the TPP and the potential of trade sanctions will change that. But Henry knows tradition trumps all in many Asian nations, where endangered wildlife is used to make aphrodisiacs or cures for cancer and stomach ailments. Henry says what's really feeding the demand is Asia's growing middle class - people with disposable incomes who want to display their wealth and success.
HENRY: If you can go out and party all night and turn around the next morning and provide your friends and colleagues with rhino horn to combat your hangover, it shows success. It shows that you have the money to spend on this incredibly expensive luxury item.
NORTHAM: Rhino horns reportedly fetch more than $30,000 a pound - worth more than their weight in gold. Enforcement is difficult in areas where poverty and corruption are common. The U.S. is trying to better coordinate with international law enforcement agencies and hopes to beef up customs and border patrols and the number of fish and wildlife inspectors if the TPP trade agreement is signed. There are thousands of packages of every shape and size arriving here in the international mailroom at New York's JFK airport. Naimah Aziz, an inspector with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, says illegal wildlife is often bought online and shipped by mail. There's so much mail coming in on any given day. It's easy to skip detection.
NAIMAH AZIZ: I mean, there's a lot of packages, and they move through here really fast. Sometimes mail comes in the morning, and it's out in the afternoon. You got to be fast. You got to be when it comes in, and you have to be on it.
NORTHAM: Aziz one of only 11 Fish and Wildlife inspectors monitoring JFK, LaGuardia Airport, and Port Elizabeth, where cargo ships dock. She says there are certain things to look for. A package that's leaking could be caviar or a freshly skinned animal - or suspicious paperwork or labels. Today, Aziz spots a package heading to Austin, Texas.
NORTHAM: Where did it come in from?
AZIZ: It came from South Africa - (reading paper) gift carpet.
NORTHAM: The paperwork says it's a carpet. But that's not what Aziz finds when she opens package.
AZIZ: Yeah, there's about one, two, three, four - there's five zebra skins here. No one really needs five zebra skins.
NORTHAM: As she surveys the stacks of parcels and packages surrounding her, Aziz says any help slowing the tide of illegal wildlife would be welcome, even if it comes from a most unlikely of places - an Asia-Pacific trade deal. Jackie Northam, NPR News.
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Every city that has public transportation has fare jumpers, people who sneak on to the subway or the bus without buying a ticket. In Sweden, fare dodging is a movement with a name and a philosophy and a logo. And fare jumpers do not hide as NPR's Ari Shapiro discovered in Stockholm.
ARI SHAPIRO, BYLINE: We're at the entrance to the university subway station in Stockholm. Students are streaming out in their backpacks and winter coats. Some people have set up a booth here. It has a hot pink logo of a man jumping a turnstile. The sign says Planka.nu. In Swedish, that means dodge the fare now.
CHRISTIAN TENGBLAD: We're distributing some leaflets about free public transportation - our free public transportation - some stickers. We have coffee and some biscuits.
SHAPIRO: This is Christian Tengblad, one of the founders of the fare-jumping movement. He's 33 and his infant son is asleep in the baby carriage next to him. Tengblad explains that his group, Planka, has basically set up an insurance system.
TENGBLAD: We have a fund and that's like the membership of Planka. And people pay 100 krona each month.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: That's about $10 a month, roughly.
TENGBLAD: Yeah. And then if they receive any fines, the fund finances this mutually.
SHAPIRO: The fine is about $120. This group has enough income from its members to pay everyone's fines with money left over. It started 14 years ago as a protest movement. Now it's evolved into something Tengblad describes as almost a think tank.
TENGBLAD: We write serious stuff like reports. We made a book about the traffic hierarchy as we call it.
SHAPIRO: The members of this group believe that public transportation should be paid for by taxes with free tickets. The idea may not be so far-fetched. Nearby Tallinn, Estonia recently went that route, and a handful of other cities in Europe and the U.S. have experimented with the same thing. These fare jumpers complain that subway tickets in Stockholm cost 75 percent more than they did a decade ago, so members of the group just don't pay. Kristoffer Tamsons is Stockholm's commissioner for public transportation.
KRISTOFFER TAMSONS: I would consider them thieves.
SHAPIRO: He says free riders cost the system about $30 million a year.
TAMSONS: Most people in Stockholm agree that you should pay for yourself and you should contribute to society. And if you are not contributing, then you have actually no right to use our public services.
SHAPIRO: But back at the university subway station, we found a good deal of sympathy for the movement, even from some people you wouldn't expect, like a subway driver, who wouldn't use his name because he could get fired for talking to us.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: (Laughter). Yes, it's so expensive.
SHAPIRO: He likes that this group is doing something, not just complaining about ticket prices. Lots of people told us that while they might respect the movement, they are not about to join. Annika Ylamaki and her friend, Fanny Vallen, go to school here.
ANNIKA YLAMAKI: I think I'm kind of nice person so I couldn't do that.
FANNY VALLEN: Yeah, that's illegal...
SHAPIRO: Finally, it's time for a demonstration. Christian Tengblad and his friends go into the station.
TENGBLAD: (Foreign language spoken).
SHAPIRO: He waves his coat to trick the system and it opens the gates.
TENGBLAD: I can get through.
SHAPIRO: No jumping. No shouting. Nobody even seems to notice as the fare dodgers blend into the crowd and disappear. Ari Shapiro, NPR News, Stockholm.
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In a century that has embroiled America into two long wars, it's been much talked about that few Americans actually serve, less than 1 percent in fact, and that is more remarkable when set against past wars - World War II and Korea - when millions of men were drafted and both men and women volunteered. We're going to meet one of those veterans in this report by NPR's Quil Lawrence on what it takes to care for them near the end of their lives.
QUIL LAWRENCE, BYLINE: You've seen places like Woodland Assisted Living in Hallowell, Maine - little white cupola with a weathervane, circular driveway, no steps, an automatic sliding door.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: B-15. B-15.
LAWRENCE: And, yes, there is bingo.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: N-42.
LAWRENCE: But it's not for everyone.
FLORENCE KELIHER: I'm not a bingo player. I love cribbage.
LAWRENCE: Cribbage was sort of the official game of anyone who was on a ship in World War II, like Florence Keliher.
KELIHER: I served during World War II in the Army Nurse Corps, and I was on Tinian, the little island in the South Pacific.
LAWRENCE: Keliher sailed across the Pacific to Tinian in 1945, a year after the U.S. took the island and set up an airstrip and a hospital.
KELIHER: We had a ward full of patients - airplane crashes and things like that. They flew from Tinian to Japan to bomb. Some of them had trouble taking off sometimes. I didn't call my work hard because I did a lot of chatting and things like that.
LAWRENCE: Keliher came home to Maine and worked as a VA nurse for 30 years. Now she's 92, and she needs some nursing help herself these days. So do a lot of veterans.
SCOTT SHREVE: This past year, out of all American deaths, 1 in 4 have been a veteran.
LAWRENCE: Dr. Scott Shreve directs hospice care for the VA nationwide. The VA took notice about 10 years ago when millions of World War II and Korea vets reached old age. One result has been a program called We Honor Veterans. Shreve says it's set up to help hospice workers ask patients the right questions.
SHREVE: Are you a veteran? How did that military experience impact your life? And how can we help work with you in perhaps dealing with some very difficult and intrusive memories as you come to the end of your life?
LAWRENCE: At the end of life, for example, PTSD can sometimes show up for the first time. VA hospitals have palliative care and hospice wards, but the vast majority of vets aren't in those hospitals; they stay near their families. The program aims to reach them where they live - people like Florence Keliher, who lives up the road from her son, Pat.
PAT: I've got the girls this weekend, so I'll bring them by.
LAWRENCE: Pat stops in all the time, sometimes brings the grandchildren. They talk, but only in recent years has Florence said much about the war.
KELIHER: I don't remember talking about it. Do you remember hearing me tell a story?
PAT: Not until you wrote it down that one time. That's the first time I'd ever read it.
LAWRENCE: Her grandson typed up her stories about crawling under bullets in basic training and 16 days on a ship to the South Pacific, and about caring for young men as they lay dying of war wounds or malaria, calling out for their mothers. And now she's got more people she can talk with about all that.
KATHERYN ZWICKER: Hey, there. How are you?
KELIHER: Good.
ZWICKER: I haven't forgot about our cribbage game.
LAWRENCE: That's Katheryn Zwicker, she's a hospice volunteer who comes by as part of the We Honor Veterans campaign.
ZWICKER: We share an interest in reading, and we've swapped books and stories.
KELIHER: She has some interesting stories, too.
ZWICKER: Not as good as yours.
LAWRENCE: But only half the community hospices nationwide are taking advantage of the free program. VA officials say they'd like to get more on board. That's because half a million vets will be needing end-of-life care every year for the next five years. Quil Lawrence, NPR News.
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Some of the first civil rights protesters to serve jail time for sit-ins at all-white lunch counters were back in court today. A judge in Rock Hill, S.C., cleared their trespassing convictions, convictions dating back more than half a century. NPR's Debbie Elliott has more.
DEBBIE ELLIOTT, BYLINE: These days, Clarence Graham is welcome at this lunch counter in downtown Rock Hill, S.C.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Hey, how are you doing?
CLARENCE GRAHAM: I'm back.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: I see that.
GRAHAM: (Laughter).
ELLIOTT: He's a bit of a celebrity here at the Five and Dine.
GRAHAM: The same lunch counter we sat in in 1961 - 54 years ago.
ELLIOTT: It was a McCrory's Five and Dime drugstore back then, and blacks were forbidden from sitting at the lunch counter. Graham, 17 years old at the time, was part of a group of students from Friendship College who sat down.
GRAHAM: I was in that fourth chair. As I can recall, before my bottom touched that seat, they had me on the floor and swooped me right out of the door - out the back door - dragged me out.
ELLIOTT: Instead of agreeing to pay a fine, which typically happened during civil rights protests, they tried a new strategy.
GRAHAM: Jail, no bail.
ELLIOTT: Jail, no bail became a new tool in the fight against Jim Crow. And these young protesters became known as the Friendship Nine. They'll be in a Rock Hill courtroom again today after a South Carolina children's book author, Kimberly Johnson, urged the county solicitor to clear their trespassing records.
KIMBERLY JOHNSON: This is something that needs to be rectified.
ELLIOTT: She cited Martin Luther King Jr.'s writings about unjust laws. Solicitor Kevin Brackett says the county will agree to a defense motion to have the Friendship Nine's convictions vacated under the same rules that might exonerate someone based on new DNA or other evidence that casts doubt on the validity of a conviction.
KEVIN BRACKETT: We don't have a DNA report. What we have in this case is not something you can hold in your hand. It's more of an evolving consciousness, an evolving awareness of the wrongfulness of the policies of that time. What flew in 1961 would never fly today.
ELLIOTT: For 72-year-old Clarence Graham, it's an acknowledgement of something the Friendship Nine have lived with for decades.
GRAHAM: We were wrongfully jailed - I mean, arrested and imprisoned.
ELLIOTT: Today, their records will be clean. Debbie Elliott, NPR News.
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Let's report next on a battle between law enforcement officials and a navigation app called Waze. It gives you advice about traffic problems ahead other drivers report in. Some police are at odds with this app and the company's owner, which is Google, but not because of the traffic advice. NPR's Sam Sanders tells us why.
SAM SANDERS, BYLINE: Waze is kind of like Google Maps but with more.
(SOUNDBITE OF APP, "WAZE")
COMPUTER GENERATED VOICE: In a quarter of a mile, turn left on Venice Boulevard.
SANDERS: Besides getting directions, you can report things to ways in real time like traffic or construction, but that's not all you can report.
(SOUNDBITE OF APP, "WAZE")
COMPUTER GENERATED VOICE: Police reported ahead.
SANDERS: That feature - the police-tracker - is what upsets Sergio Kopelev. He's one of those behind the push to get Waze to ditch the feature. Kopelev is a reserve sheriff in Orange County, Calif.
SERGIO KOPELEV: I saw my wife using the app when she picked me up from the airport, and I saw her tag a location of a police officer.
SANDERS: He didn't like that.
KOPELEV: And then as the officer was moving, I saw her update the location. And so she told me about Waze and I said look, this isn't good.
SANDERS: Kopelev ended up giving a presentation about Waze at the National Sheriffs' Association Winter Conference. Law enforcement officers across the country have come out against the police-tracker. The chief of the Los Angeles Police Department even sent an open letter to Waze, saying it endangers police officers' lives. Dave Maass is with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and he says Waze and its police-tracker really aren't anything new.
DAVE MAASS: The idea of sharing information on where speed traps are and police officers are on the road is ingrained in road culture. Waze is just basically the new CB radio.
JOHN THOMPSON: In the '70s and '60s, when we used CB radios, times were different. People weren't assassinating police officers.
SANDERS: That's John Thompson, the deputy executive director of the National Sheriffs' Association. He and a lot of other officials point to the recent killings of two NYPD officers in an ambush-style attack. The shooter shared a screen grab of the police-tracker hours before the killings. But officials haven't directly linked Waze to the crime. In a statement, Waze wouldn't say what might happen to their police-tracking feature, but they did say it lots of police support it because people drive more carefully when they think police are around. John Thompson says he wants the tracker gone immediately, but he knows that might not happen.
THOMPSON: We'd like to talk with them. Ask them to listen to us, what our concern is and see if we can find a middle ground to fix this.
SANDERS: In the meantime, Thompson says, the National Sheriffs' Association will start hosting Waze trainings so police can better watch the app that's watching them. Sam Sanders, NPR News.
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It's a good moment to remember something President Obama told us in December. The president said he'd reached a moment that was quote, "liberating."
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He said the receding economic crisis left him free to focus on goals he did not have time for in the past. In recent days, the president has made moves on the environment.
INSKEEP: He put millions of acres of Alaskan wilderness off-limits to development.
MONTAGNE: He challenged India on climate change.
INSKEEP: And now he's made proposals on offshore oil and gas drilling, expanding it in some areas while limiting it elsewhere. Here's NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson.
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: President Obama has used his executive authority on the environment aggressively, changing fuel standards for cars, making a greenhouse gas agreement with China and clamping down on dirty power plants. In India this week, the president didn't make a big climate deal like the one he made with China, but he did nudge his Indian hosts on climate change.
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PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Here's the truth. Even if countries like the United States curb our emissions, if countries that are growing rapidly, like India, with soaring energy needs don't also embrace cleaner fuels, then we don't stand a chance against climate change.
LIASSON: And while the president was in India, he was moving to protect millions of acres of wilderness back home in Alaska.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
OBAMA: Alaska's National Wildlife Refuge is an incredible place, pristine, undisturbed. It supports caribou and polar bears.
SALLY JEWELL: This is intended to be set aside as a whole ecosystem, and we want to make sure that the president is on record as the administration's position that it is inappropriate to drill there.
LIASSON: That's Interior Secretary Sally Jewell. But if the president wants the protected Alaskan wilderness, or ANWR, to be part of his legacy, he'll need congressional approval. And that will be very difficult, says Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski.
SENATOR LISA MURKOWSKI: What the president is proposing has the potential to thwart any development there. I can almost guarantee that this Congress will not approve placing ANWR into wilderness status.
LIASSON: Murkowski was also unhappy about the administration's announcement yesterday to ban offshore drilling in large areas of the Arctic. But the Interior Department, in what it called a balanced approach, also decided to open offshore drilling along the Atlantic Coast from Virginia to Georgia, giving the oil and gas industry a victory. That seemingly contradictory package of drilling regulations had environmentalists cheering and jeering at the same time.
If the president's legacy on the environment looks complicated, on balance, he's given the environmental community plenty to celebrate. Bob Deans with the Natural Resources Defense Council points to doubling gas mileage, regulating coal-fired power plants and cutting the climate deal with China.
BOB DEANS: No president anytime, anywhere, on the face of the planet has done more to protect future generations from the dangers of climate change than Barack Obama.
LIASSON: And Deans says even though the president's executive and regulatory actions can be overturned by a future Congress or president, as a practical matter, they'll be hard to reverse because they're creating facts on the ground, new rules that industry will adapt to. And that may be why almost all the president's moves on the environment enrage his opponents, particularly in oil and gas states. But they're not the president's target audience. Greg Dotson at the Democratic think tank Center for American Progress points out that for the White House, the political benefits outweigh the negatives. The president is eager to cement the support of younger voters, crucial to the Democratic Party's future.
GREG DOTSON: If you think about the court constituency that a Democratic candidate is going to want in the next election, they're going to want an energized community that sees solutions to climate change, that sees policies that can cut pollution and having those positively demonstrated by the current administration is going to be helpful to the next candidate.
LIASSON: Helping to smooth the way for a successor of his own party is the best way any president can try to ensure his own legacy. Mara Liasson, NPR News, Washington.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
And President Obama's treasury secretary, Jack Lew, is in Kiev this morning. He's announcing new financial support for Ukraine. Fighting has pushed Ukraine into a financial crisis. And that fighting has intensified in the east of the country, where Russian-backed militias are trying to seize even more territory in areas they already control. NPR's Corey Flintoff joined us from one of those enclaves, the city of Donetsk. Good morning.
COREY FLINTOFF, BYLINE: Good morning, Renee.
MONTAGNE: So fighting - what are you seeing?
FLINTOFF: We're actually hearing a lot more of the fighting. I'm in central Donetsk right now. And we've been hearing shelling from the direction of the Donetsk airport last night and this morning. And in fact, I've been hearing it now every few minutes; you hear a burst of artillery fire. Ukraine's defense ministry said three more Ukrainian soldiers were killed and about 15 wounded in the past 24 hours. And unfortunately, that's a lagging indicator. I mean, it's old news already, and there's probably more casualties. The fighters on both sides are hunkered down in bunkers and trenches in this terribly cold weather. And they're exchanging artillery fire on each other's positions. It's kind of a war of attrition. And it's a very horrible way of fighting.
MONTAGNE: Although, is Donetsk - is it not behind the front lines? I mean, how did you get there?
FLINTOFF: It's possible to get into Donetsk. It's a matter of a long drive from the nearest major airport. It's about an eight-hour drive to cover a distance that we used to cover in three hours. You pass through a great many checkpoints on both sides, Ukrainian and separatist troops. And of course they're jumpy. They're edgy. They're worried about infiltration across the lines. So it takes a long time to do it. And we see, you know, a lot of military positions here. Although, we came by the back roads, so we didn't come into any places that were actually under fire.
MONTAGNE: And, Corey, we're also hearing about shelling in another city that's south of where you are. Tell us about that.
FLINTOFF: Yes, that's Mariupol. It's the last remaining big city in this area that the separatists don't control. It's a city of about 500,000 people. It's an important port. It would give them access to supplies by sea. But more importantly, it's on a strategic highway between the Russian border and the Russian-occupied territory in Crimea. And as it is right now, the Russians don't have road access to Crimea. They can't supply it very easily. So this would be an important thing for them. And of course, the United States and NATO are saying that the Russians are deeply involved in this fighting, that they're providing money and active-duty troops and heavy weapons, high-technology weapons, to the separatists.
MONTAGNE: Well, the U.S. and the European Union are also talking about financial support and other kinds of support for Ukraine. So let's get back to the U.S. treasury secretary, Jack Lew, and the deal that he signed there in the capital this morning.
FLINTOFF: Yes. Just this morning, he signed an agreement that would provide the Ukrainian government with about $2 billion in loan guarantees. And that money would be used to help the government to take care of some immediate needs right now for social spending, things like paying pensions.
Significantly, too, Secretary Lew said that the United States is ready to increase sanctions against Russia if it's necessary. One very serious sanction might be to block Russia from getting access to the SWIFT international banking system. That would be something that would make it very difficult for Russia to move money internationally. And the Russians take that quite seriously. Some top Russian officials recently have warned that they would consider it a very dangerous threat if the international community were to do that.
MONTAGNE: Corey, thanks very much.
FLINTOFF: Thank you, Renee.
MONTAGNE: That's NPR's Corey Flintoff, joining us from the city of Donetsk in Ukraine, a city controlled by Russian-backed separatists.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Some other news now, a global Internet company is becoming a little less global. Yahoo! is getting rid of a huge piece of itself. It's making a move to spin off its valuable stake in Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce giant. NPR's Aarti Shahani reports.
AARTI SHAHANI, BYLINE: Yahoo is worth about $50 billion. And about 40 billion of that - that is, 80 percent - comes from the shares it owns of Alibaba, the Chinese company that went public last September. Now CEO Marissa Mayer is going to take that Alibaba stake and spin it off as a separate company. She explained on an earnings call yesterday she's been planning this move almost since she arrived at Yahoo.
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MARISSA MAYER: For over two years, we have worked with leading tax, accounting, legal and financial advisers to identify and design an optimal transaction that could maximize the value of our Alibaba stake in a tax efficient manner.
SHAHANI: And by tax efficient, she means tax-free. Mayer says if Yahoo had sold its Alibaba stake, there would have been $16 billion in taxes to pay. This spinoff company, called SpinCo for now, is a huge win for Yahoo stockholders who will get shares in the new company.
COLIN GILLIS: Absolutely correct.
SHAHANI: Colin Gillis is a technology analyst with BGC Financial.
GILLIS: This way, the shareholders who truly own the company will get the stake directly. And they can do with it as they wish.
SHAHANI: Alibaba is a behemoth, a rising star. Yahoo is waning as it struggles in the mobile age to make more ad revenue and gain more users. And the company's management has been sinking its cash into acquisitions like Tumblr to try to save its own skin. Gillis says so far, it hasn't worked.
GILLIS: Yahoo now has to stand alone when this deal is done. You will no longer have that Alibaba stake to lean back on. And people are going to start paying a lot more attention to the core business results.
SHAHANI: Turning around that business is not easy. Revenue declined 1 percent in the December quarter, the holiday season, when it should have been up. But, Gillis says, being smaller could benefit Yahoo.
GILLIS: But if you have a streamed and Alibaba-free Yahoo that's trading around 8 billion, then, you know, people may be more interested in partnering or acquiring with the company, given it's a much more manageable size.
SHAHANI: If regulators approve, the spinoff is expected to spin off by the final quarter of 2015. Aarti Shahani, NPR News, San Francisco.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne. The Seattle Seahawks' Marshawn Lynch hates talking to the press. He's been fined thousands for skipping media sessions, though he did show up to the Super Bowl's media day yesterday.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MARSHAWN LYNCH: Hey, I'm just here so I don't get fined. I'm just here so I won't get fined. Just so I won't get fined, boss.
MONTAGNE: Lynch had more to say in a web video for Skittles.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: Would you want to hang out with a talking rainbow?
LYNCH: I wouldn't want to hang out with nobody who talks at all.
MONTAGNE: It's MORNING EDITION.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Now an update on that measles outbreak that started at Disneyland in California. The number of cases has risen to 88. Most of those infected live in California, and most were not vaccinated. NPR's Patti Neighmond reports.
PATTI NEIGHMOND, BYLINE: California health officials want to prevent the disease from spreading further, but it's a difficult task. Measles is highly contagious. Dr. Eric Handler is public health officer for Orange County, Calif., home to most of the state's measles cases.
ERIC HANDLER: Individuals are infectious four days before they come down with symptoms, which are fever, cough, runny nose and red eyes. And they're contagious four days after the rash appears.
NEIGHMOND: So people can spread the disease even before they know they have it and after they think they're better. The two-dose vaccine is nearly 100 percent effective, but children under the age of 1 are too young to be vaccinated. So Handler says parents should be cautious when taking their infants on outings.
HANDLER: Crowded areas, in particular, that you would kind of hope to avoid, and not just Disneyland, but malls and things like that where there are crowds of people. I would be cautious taking my infant into those environments.
NEIGHMOND: If infants are in a room with someone who has measles, Handler says they have a 90 percent chance of becoming infected. There can be serious complications, like middle ear infections, pneumonia and brain infections that require hospitalization. At the beginning of school, Handler told parents if there was a measles outbreak, they'd have to prove their child was vaccinated, or their child would be excluded from school for 21 days. At one county high school, 24 students have been told to stay home.
HANDLER: We gave them plenty of notice. I'm sure they're not happy, and hopefully, this will incentivize them to get vaccinated.
NEIGHMOND: A recent study from Kaiser Permanente found under-vaccinated children in Northern California tended to live in the same area, which can magnify outbreaks. Pediatrician Tracy Lieu headed the study, which found a greater likelihood of under-vaccinated children in neighborhoods were more parents had higher education.
TRACY LIEU: Anecdotally, pediatricians tend to find that parents with high education levels often come in with many questions about vaccines and vaccine safety.
NEIGHMOND: The vaccine has been shown to be safe. Side effects are usually mild, such as a fever or rash. More serious side effects, including high fevers, are uncommon. Lieu's study also found more under-vaccinated children in low-income neighborhoods.
LIEU: In lower-income communities, there tends to be more competing priorities that parents face in their lives. So just getting your child to the doctor for a well child visit may be more of a challenge.
NEIGHMOND: California health officials say the best prevention for this highly contagious and often serious disease is to get fully vaccinated. Patti Neighmond, NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
You know, there's a theory that if you know more than one language, it makes your brain stronger. That theory has shown up in scientific journals and newspapers and magazines. Es impresionante pero es la verdad. The truth is it's a bit more complicated. And that fact might expose a flaw in how scientific research reaches the mainstream. Our own David Greene spoke about that with NPR's Shankar Vedantam.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Hey, Shankar.
SHANKAR VEDANTAM, BYLINE: Hi, David.
GREENE: Well, let's start with this theory. What is it?
VEDANTAM: Well, the theory is that speaking multiple languages - being bilingual - actually has benefits to your brain. And there's lots of people who are really excited about this idea. And it's based on the fact that there have been dozens of studies that show that when you learn multiple languages, you have better executive control.
GREENE: Executive control. What exactly is that?
VEDANTAM: Well, executive control is like the traffic cop function in your brain.
GREENE: OK.
VEDANTAM: It helps you do lots of other things.
GREENE: So this is, like, the part of your brain that helps you sort of multitask. And people who might have better control are able to multitask. And other people might get totally distracted.
VEDANTAM: Precisely. Here's the problem with that construction, David. In 2009, researchers at the University of Edinburgh in Britain - they published a study showing that bilingual speakers could resist distraction better than monolingual speakers. So that totally fits with the theory. But I recently spoke with Angela de Bruin. She's recently revisited the subject based on her personal knowledge of what actually happened. It turns out the researchers in that 2009 paper actually conducted four experiments. Three out of the four did not show that bilinguals were less distractible than monolingual speakers. I let de Bruin explain what happened next.
ANGELA DE BRUIN: One of those tasks showed an effect of bilingualism. And that's the task that was published. Now, the three other tasks did not show any effect of bilingualism at all. And those tasks never made it into a publication. They were just put in a file drawer. So we had four studies, but only one was published. And that's the successful one, showing an effect bilingualism.
GREENE: Isn't that kind of misleading - to just publish the study that sort of backed up this theory?
VEDANTAM: It is misleading, David. And full credit to de Bruin for coming clean about what happened. In fact, one of the authors of the 2009 paper tried to replicate the experiment that found a positive benefit for bilingualism. And that replication failed to work. So in other words, there were four experiments. Three did not show benefits, and they weren't published. One showed a benefit and was published. But it couldn't be reproduced. And then the reproduction was not published.
GREENE: So why not publish any of these negative studies?
VEDANTAM: Well, there are multiple reasons David. But the first is that when a study doesn't produce a result, it's hard to know if that's because there wasn't an effect or just because the study was somehow not conducted properly. And the second problem is that scientific journals really want to publish studies that find something. They want to publish studies that have a positive result.
GREENE: They want news.
VEDANTAM: Exactly. And so negative studies - as they're called -tend not to get published.
GREENE: Is this a widespread problem in science?
VEDANTAM: De Bruin actually thinks this is a problem that goes beyond just the one set of papers that are co-authors worked on in 2009. She went back and analyzed studies of bilingualism that were presented at scientific conferences. Scientists often present the first look at their work at these conferences. And you're more likely to find eclectic work presented at scientific conferences. She analyzed how often these presentations at scientific conferences ended up in prestigious journals. And what she found was that the quality of the studies was not important. What mattered was whether the study found bilingualism had brain benefits. Here she is again.
DE BRUIN: What we found was that 63 percent of abstracts supporting a bilingual advantage were published compared to only 36 percent of the challenging studies.
GREENE: You know, Shankar, just listening to that, it makes me less likely to trust a scientific study.
VEDANTAM: I think that's exactly right, David. There's been a lot of concern in science about this kind of publication bias affecting the integrity of science and the perceptions of integrity of science. There's been a lot of efforts to try and clean it up in recent years. On the specific question of bilingualism, this study doesn't debunk the idea that learning multiple languages can be good for you. It can allow you to read a different kinds of literature and travel more widely. So there's all kinds of benefits to learning multiple languages. What it does suggest, though, is that the brain benefits of bilingualism - that idea might be a little more complicated than has been presented so far.
GREENE: That's Shankar Vedantam. He regularly joins us here on Morning Edition to talk about social science research. You can follow him on Twitter @hiddenbrain. And while you're at it, you can follow this program at @NPRInskeep, @NPRGreene, and @MorningEdition.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Occasionally, our friends at NPR Music come by to talk about the artists they're listening to - part of the series First Listen. Today, we'll hear new music from one of Israel's most popular singers, thanks to All Songs Considered hosts Bob Boilen and Robin Hilton. Singer Asaf Avidan's new album is called "Gold Shadow."
ROBIN HILTON, BYLINE: Bob Boilen, let's have everyone listen to this music and just paint a picture of who we're hearing. Is it a man? A woman? Young, old?
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "OVER MY HEAD")
ASAF AVIDAN: (Singing) I'm in over my head, dragged back from the dead.
BOB BOILEN, BYLINE: I had the same issue. I was driving down the road - didn't know what I was listening to and assumed this was a older, female bluesy singer - actually hit a red light, did the quick Google search at the red light and up popped this photograph of this sort of young, very handsome, bearded fellow and discovered that Asaf Avidan is - something every Israeli probably knows - one of the biggest-selling artists there and an amazing singer with a remarkable voice.
HILTON: You mentioned the blues. And the song that we're hearing now has a lot of early-'60s soul in it. And those are just a couple of the sounds that he channels on this record. In fact, I don't know that I've ever heard so many different sounds and genres come together on a single record. There's the blues. There's folk. There's hip-hop, electronica, even flamenco guitar. But as you mentioned, at the heart of it all is Asaf Avidan's voice.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ODE TO MY THALAMUS")
AVIDAN: The clouds are gathering in the sky above. I know this one's going to hurt my love. Birds are shouting through the mangrove trees. They know the difference between a storm and breeze.
HILTON: Such an arresting singer. And it's this odd mix of Bob Dylan and Billie Holiday crossed together.
BOILEN: Yeah, well, you mentioned them. And I also think of Leonard Cohen, one of the greatest poets in all of music I'll say. His fascination with Leonard Cohen with his first lover. And she had heard the song with the word Eskimo in it. This is pre-Internet. They buy every Leonard Cohen record and listen, song-by-song, to try to find it. This is before Asaf Avidan was a singer. The love and this music all inspired him to become a singer. You'll hear it in the song right away.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE LABYRINTH SONG")
AVIDAN: (Singing) Evening rises, darkness threatens to engulf us all. But there's a moon above. It's shining. And I think I hear a call.
BOILEN: Even in the inflection, even in the melody, you hear Leonard Cohen. And what a lyricist Asaf Avidan is. It's totally captivating - chilling.
HILTON: Yeah. Some very powerful lines on this record. I think of a track called "Bang."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BANG BANG")
AVIDAN: (Singing) I love you like the roots in the sand. And I love you like God loves his plan. I love you like death loves a man. And I love you like a gun in my hand.
HILTON: It is so unsettling - these lines. But I think it captures very evocatively what it's like when you love and lust after someone or something so much that it just feels like it's going to eat you alive.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BANG BANG")
AVIDAN: (Singing) I love you like chisel and stone.
MONTAGNE: Bob Boilen and Robin Hilton are the hosts of All Songs Considered. They were talking about the new album from Asaf Avidan, "Gold Shadow." And you can hear the whole thing on our website this week before it goes on sale. It's an NPR Music First Listen.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BANG BANG")
AVIDAN: (Singing) And I love you like my hand on a gun.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Pro football continues paying penance for some players' involvement with domestic violence. A couple of weeks ago, we told you of an ad campaign involving the NFL and advocacy groups.
(SOUNDBITE OF AD CAMPAIGN)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: No more boys will be boys.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: No more what's the big deal?
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
And now the ad campaign called No More will make it to the Super Bowl. It's a good guess the message will cause some living rooms to fall silent.
INSKEEP: You see no people, just shots of a home in chaos. You hear the sound of a woman who calls 911 and pretends to order a pizza.
(SOUNDBITE OF AD CAMPAIGN)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #3: OK, ma'am. Is everything OK over there? Do you have an emergency or not?
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: Yes.
(SOUNDBITE OF BEEP)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #3: And you were unable to talk because...
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: Right. Right.
MONTAGNE: The operator eventually figures out she needs a cop. The message urges all of us to listen to those who can't speak up. It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.
INSKEEP: And I'm Steve Inskeep.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Nobody expects this to be an easy day for Loretta Lynch. President Obama's choice for attorney general is appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. That committee, like the rest of the Senate, is now led by Republicans who are at odds with the president. The man leading the hearings is not precisely a new face. Senator Charles Grassley has been deeply involved in policy debates for decades. But Grassley is in a new job as chairman, the first non-lawyer to chair the judiciary committee. Here's NPR's Ailsa Chang.
AILSA CHANG, BYLINE: Republican Chuck Grassley is at the age where people like to use numbers to describe him. He's shown up for more than 7,240 consecutive votes in the Senate, the most of any current senator. At 81, he runs at least 3 miles four times a week and says he's never had a running injury.
SENATOR CHARLES GRASSLEY: Well, see, I didn't start running until I was 65. So I've only been running 16 years.
CHANG: Another notable number - he's been with his wife, Barbara, for 60 years. Grassley picks up a small copper music box in his office. It's a replica of a small church in Nashua, Iowa.
GRASSLEY: My wife and I were married at the Little Brown Church. I don't know the song.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC BOX)
CHANG: He was 20 at the time.
GRASSLEY: The Iowa law said that if you were under 21, your parents had to sign for you to get married, but the woman could get married at 18 without her mother's signature...
CHANG: (Laughter).
GRASSLEY: Without their parent's signature. Now obviously that's been changed.
CHANG: There's one thing that hasn't changed during the entire 34 years Grassley has been in the Senate. He has always served on the judiciary committee, a committee he now finally gets to chair. And in a chamber where more than half the members are lawyers, Grassley is the first guy without a law degree to lead judiciary. He's a corn and soybean farmer.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: I think all the non-lawyers see themselves, including Chuck Grassley, as bringing some common sense to the debate, not meaning lawyers don't have common sense, but that the legalese by which they think of public policy is a little bit different than us non-lawyers think of public policy.
CHANG: Today, Grassley will get to put that on display. Republicans expect to go hard at attorney general nominee Loretta Lynch about the constitutionality of the president's executive action on immigration. They'll also press her about political decision-making at the IRS and other things. Grassley says he'll keep the hearing going until the senators run out of questions. And as for the farmer shtick - Grassley's good friend, Republican Orrin Hatch of Utah, says don't believe it.
SENATOR ORRIN HATCH: He plays the innocent farmer about as well as anybody I've ever seen, but he's not innocent. He really knows his stuff.
CHANG: Grassley's invited critics of the Obama administration as witnesses to Lynch's hearing, including a group that's advocated for more voter ID laws. And last weekend, at a conservative Republican rally in Iowa, Grassley previewed what his main theme will be at today's proceeding - executive overreach.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
GRASSLEY: The president is not above the Constitution. Congress is a co-equal branch of government. The Constitution established a system of checks and balances precisely in order to check abuses of power. We remember George III, one person telling 13 colonies what they could do or not do.
CHANG: Grassley says more rigorous oversight of the government will be his priority. Friends note the senator has always been an equal-opportunity watchdog. Matt Whitaker served as the U.S. attorney in Des Moines during the Bush administration and says even then Grassley wouldn't let up.
MATT WHITAKER: I'd go out to Washington, D.C., and I would have, you know, the executives in Main Justice asking me, you know, what Senator Grassley's problem with the FBI or with the Department of Justice because, you know, he was asking difficult questions.
CHANG: Somehow a man who's been in federal office for four decades still maintains he's an outsider keeping government in check, just a farmer from Iowa. Ailsa Chang, NPR News, the Capitol.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Bomb-sniffing dogs were on hand during the sentencing yesterday of twin brothers in Chicago. They were once key figures in Mexico's violent and powerful Sinaloa drug cartel. A U.S. district judge agreed to reduce their sentences for drug smuggling, giving them 14-year prison terms. Prosecutors had asked for even less time, calling the brothers the most valuable traffickers turned informants in U.S. history. NPR's Cheryl Corley reports.
CHERYL CORLEY, BYLINE: When 33-year-old identical twins Pedro and Margarito Flores stepped into the courtroom, it was their first public appearance since they began cooperating with authorities. U.S. District Attorney Zach Fardon says for years the twins ran the largest drug network in the city as a Chicago hub of the Sinaloa cartel, run by Mexican drug lord Joaquin El Chapo Guzman.
ZACH FARDON: And they pumped literally tons of kilograms of cocaine into our city as well as distributing cocaine to various other cities across the country.
CORLEY: Like Columbus, Ohio, Cincinnati, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. DEA officials have called the Sinaloa cartel one of the biggest trafficking organizations ever. So Fardon says when the twins became government informants in 2008 at the height of their criminal activity, it was a striking turnaround.
FARDON: The Flores brothers' cooperation allowed law enforcement to seize substantial quantities of drugs, substantial sums of cash and help lead to charges against Chapo Guzman and other senior members of the Sinaloa cartel.
CORLEY: The amount of drugs the Flores brothers smuggled into the city could have meant life in prison if not for their cooperation. But Fardon says it may, indeed, be life for the twins.
FARDON: 'Cause as the judge said, there is never a day in their lives where they won't have to look over their shoulder.
CORLEY: Before the judge imposed the 14-year prison term, the brothers apologized. With credit for time served, they could be out of prison in much less time. Cheryl Corley, NPR News, Chicago.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep. Here's a sign of how we've progressed - Super Bowl ticket prices. When the first Super Bowl was played in 1967, the cheapest ticket was $6. For decades, cheap seats were under 100. But no longer must we tolerate tickets that most people can afford. The cheapest tickets for Sunday's game are $800 at face value. On the resale market, the actual value for those cheap seats that used to be $6 is 4,000. It's MORNING EDITION.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
News is like the weather. If you don't like it, wait a little while; it'll change. Yesterday, we told you about a controversial plan from the president to get rid of a tax break on college savings accounts known as 529s. Well, as NPR's Tamara Keith reports, the White House is now dropping that proposal.
TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Currently, when families pull money out of 529 accounts to pay for college, any investment earnings are tax-free. President Obama wanted to change that as part of an effort to simplify and expand education tax breaks. But lawmakers on both sides of the aisle hated the proposal, including House Speaker John Boehner.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
REPRESENTATIVE JOHN BOEHNER: For the sake of middle-class families, the president ought to withdrawal this tax increase from his budget when he submits it.
KEITH: Meanwhile, aides confirmed that on Air Force One, on the way to Saudi Arabia, Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi pressed administration officials to drop the 529 provision. A White House official says it had become such a, quote, "distraction," the administration is no longer asking Congress to pass it. Tamara Keith, NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Much of Europe is watching Greece closely after an anti-austerity party won elections there last weekend. And Spaniards are paying particular attention because Greece may be influential. A similar new political party - left-wing, anti-establishment - has formed in Spain over the past year. And polls show that it could win power in elections this fall. Lauren Frayer reports from Madrid.
(SOUNDBITE OF CAMPAIGN AD)
PABLO IGLESIAS: I'm Pablo Iglesias from Podemos, and my message to the...
LAUREN FRAYER, BYLINE: The leader of Spain's newest political party is 36-year-old Pablo Iglesias, a former communist, now a political science professor with a ponytail. His party, barely a year old, is called Podemos, echoing Barack Obama's old yes, we can slogan.
(SOUNDBITE OF RALLY)
UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: Si, se puede. Si, se puede. Si, se puede. Si, se puede.
FRAYER: Si, se puede. It's a refrain you hear at protest rallies across Spain, including at Madrid's Complutense University where Iglesias teaches.
JORGE IGUERA: He's really good at speaking. He gets you. I mean, his idea is different from the other guys.
FRAYER: Jorge Iguera is an 18-year-old marketing student, here with his classmate Hannah Emeki.
HANNAH EMEKI: He's like one of us. Like, his ideas are what we would talk about it. It's the kind of ideas - we say we need to change this, we need a change that. And that's what he's bringing to us. It's a change from the big parties that have been ruling at the moment.
FRAYER: Many Spaniards are disgusted by corruption in Spain's two main political parties - the conservatives and the socialists. They're also frustrated that while the economy here is growing, unemployment still tops 23 percent and double that for youth. Polls show voters are switching to Podemos. It promises to raise the minimum wage, hike taxes on the rich and re-evaluate whether Spain should pay its debts.
(SOUNDBITE OF RALLY)
FRAYER: Iglesias was in Athens last weekend dancing at a campaign rally with his friend Alexis Tsipras, who's since become the Greek prime minister. The two are leftist allies from the European Parliament.
(SOUNDBITE OF RALLY)
IGLESIAS: First, we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin.
FRAYER: The crowd responded to Iglesias with cheers of first, we take Athens, then we take Madrid. On arrival home, he vowed to do just that.
IGLESIAS: We are very happy because the political force of change has win elections in Greece.
FRAYER: The politics of austerity don't work in Greece or in Spain, he continued. Unemployment, debt and inequality have only grown. The policies of the two main parties in Spain have only led to disaster, he said. Polls show as much as a third of Spanish voters plan to vote for Podemos - enough to unseat the ruling conservatives in elections this autumn.
WILLIAM CHISLETT: They're the only party that's capitalized on this anger. They've stunned the political class.
FRAYER: William Chislett at Madrid's Elcano think tank says Podemos is untested with no experience in power. It could roll back austerity and renege on agreements with Europe.
CHISLETT: If Greece gets a debt deal, who knows, Spain might get one as well. You kind of open a Pandora's box of everyone asking for a deal.
FRAYER: Podemos is planning a million man march for change across the Spanish capital this Saturday. For NPR News, I'm Lauren Frayer in Madrid.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
California would seem to be an Obamacare success story, but even their insurance options depend on where you live. One major insurer decided not to sell on the exchange in some areas, leaving nearly 30,000 Californians with few options for health insurance. Pauline Bartolone from Capital Public Radio in Sacramento has more on that decision by Blue Shield and its repercussions.
LORI LOMAS: OK. So now I find out what my hold time is going to be.
PAULINE BARTOLONE, BYLINE: Lori Lomas has been selling insurance in rural Northern California for over 20 years, and she spends a lot of time on the phone with insurers and Covered California.
LOMAS: There are 101 callers ahead of me in the queue. (Laughter).
BARTOLONE: When she started running quotes for people through the exchange website, she noticed that in some areas, only one insurer popped up.
LOMAS: There used to be at least two, and now one company has pulled out. And so many areas have no choice at all between insurance companies.
BARTOLONE: In 2013, Blue Shield of California sold policies to individuals in every California county. But the company pulled out of 250 zip codes in 2014. The coverage gaps are particularly felt in Northern California where no new carriers stepped in on the exchange. So now thousands of people from the border of Oregon to the Sierra Nevada mountains have only one carrier in Covered California. Lomas says that's unfair.
LOMAS: I have had clients from other areas of California. They live in the Bay Area or here or there, and I do it for them and wow, look all the choices that pop up. There's six insurance companies or seven insurance companies. And I think that was when I first realized, you know, how truly we were getting the shaft up here.
BARTOLONE: Blue Shield of California declined an interview, but it said its goal is to keep health premiums low. So the company says when it offered doctors certain rates to keep plans affordable, not enough providers accepted the payment amount. That's when the insurer decided not to sell policies in areas where there's no contracted hospital nearby.
SHANA ALEX CHARLES: There's no public charge that says that they have to be in the zip code.
BARTOLONE: Shana Alex Charles is Director of Health Insurance Studies at the University of California Los Angeles.
CHARLES: And if they determine that it's not in their company's best interest to remain there and sell their products there, then they won't be there.
BARTOLONE: That's generally allowed under the federal health law. Plans don't have to sell in an entire state, for example. Consumer advocates say part of the problem, though, may be the lack of doctors in rural areas, and insurers shouldn't sell policies where there isn't a good network. But UCLA's Charles says consumers lose when there's not many insurers to choose from.
CHARLES: Competition breeds choice, and people who are competing against each other work to try and make the consumer the most happy as possible so that the consumer will then choose them. Competition in the marketplace is a good thing and that it does keep companies in some sense honest.
BARTOLONE: Two other companies are selling in Northern California but not on the exchange. So if consumers choose those plans, they can't get subsidies offered through the health law. For NPR News, I'm Pauline Bartolone in Sacramento.
MONTAGNE: That story is part of a reporting partnership with NPR, Capital Public Radio and Kaiser Health News.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
If you are committed to a big goal at work, here is some advice on getting it done. Don't get trapped in a meeting.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Bad meetings are a consistent corporate problem. It's one that Bryan Stockton knows well.
INSKEEP: As CEO of the toymaker Mattel, Stockton blamed the stagnation of Barbie and other brands on the company culture. People failed to innovate and held useless meetings. Whatever he tried to fix, it apparently wasn't enough, and this week, Stockton resigned.
MONTAGNE: Fortunately, we have a meeting scheduled right this minute to talk about this.
INSKEEP: Whose meeting is it?
MONTAGNE: NPR's Yuki Noguchi.
YUKI NOGUCHI, BYLINE: Scott Ryan-Hart is a cartographer for the Ohio Department of Transportation, where a typical meeting can last more than two hours.
SCOTT RYAN-HART: I would be needed for 15 minutes in the middle of it. So I have an hour before and an hour after that I'm still kind of sequestered in this meeting and I can't get out of it.
NOGUCHI: This annoyed Ryan-Hart until about a year ago, when he took up superhero doodling during meetings, which he says help him focus and which he tweeted under the hash tag #meetingfromhell. His boss wasn't a fan.
RYAN-HART: He was not super happy with it.
NOGUCHI: Then again, his colleagues have their own vices.
RYAN-HART: I'm usually sketching, and, you know, the person next to me is doing email. Someone else is reading reports that they have to get done.
NOGUCHI: This behavior, says Stephen Rogelberg, should sound alarms to the meeting leader. Rogelberg teaches organizational psychology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
STEPHEN ROGELBERG: You're basically getting tremendous amounts of feedback. You're getting feedback that you're running a really bad meeting.
NOGUCHI: The average American office worker spends more than nine hours of every week preparing for or attending project update meetings, according to a survey released last week by software firm Clarizen and Harris Polls. That's up nearly 14 percent from the last survey four years ago. Experts say poorly run meetings grind away at employee engagement and make companies less reactive by bogging decisions down in human red tape. Some companies, including Mattel, tried to create limits around the size, duration or frequency of meetings. But meetings often last longer than they need to, Rogelberg says, because managers don't understand Parkinson's Law. This is the idea, backed up by research, that tasks take as long as the time allotted. You budget two hours, it takes two hours. But...
ROGELBERG: They give the group half as much time and lo and behold, when they're given half as much time at the onset, they finish in half as much time. And the quality of the meeting is just as good.
NOGUCHI: Al Pittampalli is an author and an expert on meeting culture. He says at their best, meetings are the lifeblood of an organization.
AL PITTAMPALLI: They're the place where we make the most important decisions, express the most important messages, the most important communications on the most important matters of the day.
NOGUCHI: But as a consultant, Pittampalli sees meeting culture run amok.
PITTAMPALLI: Not just marathon meetings but meetings that are done to prepare for meetings and meetings that are done to prepare for meetings to prepare for meetings. It is a waste of time. It's what I call a weapon of mass interruption.
NOGUCHI: It's also expensive to waste employee time. So why does the practice persist?
PITTAMPALLI: One of the biggest problems in organizations is that the meeting is a tool that is used to diffuse responsibility.
NOGUCHI: Pittampalli says meetings alleviate the anxiety of making tough calls by delaying decisions instead of making them. Bad meetings also recur because in many cases the people leading them don't know how to run a good one. There's a lack of self-awareness among meeting leaders. The vast majority self-report they believe they're conducting meetings well. The vast majority of participants disagree. Yet Pittampalli says no one speaks up.
PITTAMPALLI: Nobody is willing to give feedback to their boss.
NOGUCHI: And so the endless meetings go on and on and on. Yuki Noguchi, NPR News, Washington.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
It's hard to know where it will end, but here's the latest number on plunging gas prices. According to gasbuddy.com, a gallon of regular gas sells for less than $2 in more than half of all states - that's less than $2. As NPR's Uri Berliner reports, that will be especially welcome in areas of the country where there's no avoiding getting behind the wheel.
URI BERLINER, BYLINE: Sue Beates pays close attention to energy prices. It's part of her job. She's the curator at the Drake Well Museum in Titusville, Pa., where the exhibits explain the history of the oil industry. But it's outside of her working hours when those prices become personal.
SUE BEATES: I drive 46 miles each way, so up through two snow belts to get to work.
BERLINER: Gas prices falling by nearly half.
BEATES: It's had a huge impact.
BERLINER: What do you do with it?
BEATES: Buy meat.
(LAUGHTER)
BEATES: Instead of beans and rice, there's meat on the menu.
BERLINER: Because so many household costs are fixed, Beates says when gas was nearly $4 a gallon, it affected what she put in her cart at the supermarket.
BEATES: When you're paying mortgage, car payments, utilities, that fuel cost makes a huge difference, and the only place to cut back would be food.
BERLINER: The average American household should save around $750 this year from lower gas prices according to the Energy Department. But Thomas Kinnaman, an economist at Bucknell University, says that word average - it doesn't tell a full story.
THOMAS KINNAMAN: It's not that we're not all average families. We're not average drivers. We have very different driving habits.
BERLINER: So, for example, he says in rural Pennsylvania, where I've come for this story and where Kinnaman teaches, people typically drive twice as much as they do in, say, a suburb of Philadelphia, Washington and New York. And if you live in a rural area and money's tight, those savings from cheap gas make an enormous difference. I caught up with Regina and Lawrence Wilson in a shopping center outside their hometown of Lewisburg, Pa.
REGINA WILSON: Well, weekly, it costs us, like, $80 a week to fill up our tank. So we are saving, like, half of that.
BERLINER: What can you afford to do that you didn't do before?
WILSON: I can buy me a pair of shoes (laughter). I can buy my grandkids stuff. Like, it saves a lot.
BERLINER: Those savings were a big deal because they don't have cash to spare. Lawrence Wilson says he's been shoveling snow for the local housing authority and doing the occasional restaurant job. Regina used to be a home health aide until she got sick. Now she drives to the doctor nearly 20 miles away three times a week.
WILSON: So now I put $10 gas in this car, it'd get me at least almost to half a tank. And I can get to the doctor, and I can get back home, and still have gas left to go do a little food shopping if I want.
BERLINER: About 15 miles away, just off I-80, long haul trucker Teresa Arevalo is sitting in her cab at a Flying J truck stop. She's on a break, just delivered a load of toilet paper. Her 53-foot trailer is empty.
TERESA AREVALO: What do I normally carry? Anywhere from water to vodka to toilet paper to kitty litter to flour to plastic bottles to - basically general commodity. Everything that goes to your stores except for - I don't do hazmat loads.
BERLINER: Cheap fuel is helping her employer, JB Hunt, but it's good for Arevalo, too, when her deliveries are done and it's time to drive home. That's five hours from the company terminal in Dallas to her place in San Antonio.
AREVALO: Oh, it's great. I can go more places and less money out of my pocket.
BERLINER: Arevalo says lately, she's been saving more than a $100 a month. Forecasters are predicting that gas will stay cheap throughout the year. But if history is a guide, there's no counting on these low prices for the long haul. Uri Berliner, NPR News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
And recycled sounds from brand-name musicians have always been a fundamental part of pop music. This week brought an especially clear example of that. The blue-eyed soul singer Sam Smith agreed to give classic rockers Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne writing credit and a percentage of the royalties for his hit song "Stay With Me" because its chorus sounds so much like Petty's 1989 hit "I Won't Back Down."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "STAY WITH ME")
SAM SMITH: (Singing) Oh, won't you stay with me 'cause you're all I need?
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I WON'T BACK DOWN")
TOM PETTY: (Singing) No, I'll stand my ground - won't be turned around.
MONTAGNE: And you can hear right there why. NPR music critic Ann Powers joined us to talk more about how sounds from the past infiltrate the pop charts of today. Good morning.
ANN POWERS, BYLINE: Hey, Renee. How are you?
MONTAGNE: Pretty good. I'm wondering if you were surprised when you heard that Sam Smith would pay Tom Petty?
POWERS: I wasn't surprised. Actually, back-room deals around song similarities happen a lot in pop. But, Renee, Sam Smith's sound in general is indicative of a bigger shift that's happening on the Top 40 right now. The throbbing beat of electronic dance music that's dominated for the past couple of years seems to be giving way. And we have all these artists mining the past in many different ways without any sense of context - sometimes, it seems - or rules.
MONTAGNE: And when it comes to mining or borrowing from the past, Anna, I gather you have a bunch of examples.
POWERS: I'm thinking about this as kind of a new take on retro. People just seem to be playing around in the great playground of pop music. Ariana Grande borrows from Mariah Carey. Taylor Swift names her album "1989." And then there's the brand-new album by the band Fall Out Boy. It's a rock album, but it's just as much about sampling, pulling things out from old hits. The Munsters theme is on one of the songs. And then there's this song "Centuries" that the huge hit that takes from Suzanne Vega, the folky.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CENTURIES")
FALL OUT BOY: (Singing) We are the poisoned youth.
MONTAGNE: All right, so you're suggesting this is a sort of rule-breaking recycling. I'm wondering if there is any way for musicians to do this recycling in a respectful way?
POWERS: Look at Mark Ronson, who's had the number one single in the country with Bruno Mars on vocals for the past several weeks. It's called "Uptown Funk."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "UPTOWN FUNK")
BRUNO MARS: (Singing) Don't believe me. Just watch. Don't believe me. Just watch.
POWERS: On one level, this song borrows directly from The Time and Prince and even further back from funk bands of the '70s like the Average White Band. But Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars also have this way of mixing and matching. You know, Ronson was a DJ for a long time. And I think they put their own very contemporary stamp on it through the production. I think musicians are treating the past like a playground right now. But when you're somebody like Mark Ronson, you're also playing by the rules in a way. And in the end, I think it's a really positive thing.
MONTAGNE: All right. Well, mining the past in music - NPR music critic Ann Powers, thanks very much for joining us.
POWERS: Thanks so much for having me, Renee.
MONTAGNE: And this is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.
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And I'm Steve Inskeep.
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We have a story this morning that says something about the paralysis of the European Union. A new government in Greece has underlined the difficulty of moving an entire continent in one direction. The leftist government won election protesting the EU's tough austerity measures. Now Greece's new government is speaking out on another issue. Every European Union member state has veto power. And tiny as it is, Greece says it could use its veto to stop further European sanctions on Russia. Joanna Kakissis reports from Athens.
JOANNA KAKISSIS, BYLINE: Previous Greek governments have gone along with sanctions in the past despite a close trading relationship with Russia. But the new foreign minister of Greece, Nikos Kotzias, told an Athens radio station earlier this month that Greece will no longer rubberstamp EU foreign policy decisions.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
NIKOS KOTZIAS: (Through interpreter) The Germans, the French and the British want to negotiate with countries like Russia but have smaller countries like Greece simply follow their lead. But I say we should have our own policy within the structure of the European Union.
KAKISSIS: Kotzias, a politics professor and former Communist, has criticized a Europe dominated by Germany and advocated for Greece having closer ties with Russia.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
KOTZIAS: (Through interpreter) Greece can be a bridge between the European Union and countries like Russia. We share history with Russia. We share religion with Russia. We have had the same battles, the same enemies.
KAKISSIS: Last year, Alexis Tsipras, now the prime minister, echoed Moscow's claim that the government in Ukraine is made up of neo-Nazis. Tsipras and Kotzias visited Moscow last spring and condemned EU sanctions on Russia. EU foreign ministers meet today to consider communique to broaden sanctions. But the new Greek government claims the communique was never shared with them says Alexandra Voudouri, diplomatic correspondent for Athens Municipal Radio.
ALEXANDRA VOUDOURI: It seems that there has been a problem, especially with the way the communique was circulated within the member states. And Athens has a real problem with that.
KAKISSIS: The EU says Greece was consulted. But the leftists have been in power less than a week, and there's been confusion as they put together a government. There's speculation that Greece would try to use its veto on Russia sanctions as a bargaining chip to force Germany to lighten the Greek debt load. But that's not the case, Voudouri says.
VOUDOURI: In fact, government sources have said that Greece would not try to link EU-Russia policy and Greece's quest for financial oxygen. These are two separate issues.
KAKISSIS: The new Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, wrote on his blog today that the government has made no decisions on sanctions yet. It simply wants to be respected, he wrote, and consulted on major decisions. For NPR News, I'm Joanna Kakissis in Athens.
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Let's talk now about the major decisions that an American has made in his career and in his life. It is Super Bowl weekend, and we're going to listen to Bill Parcells, who won two Super Bowls with the New York Giants. He also mentored coaches, including Bill Belichick, who's taking the Patriots to the Super Bowl Sunday. Parcells has a book out called, "Parcells: A Football Life," and he spoke with our colleague, David Greene.
DAVID GREENE, BYLINE: We sat down with him near his winter home in Jupiter, FL. Surprising thing, Parcells almost didn't coach football.
BILL PARCELLS: You know, I thought about law school a little bit. My dad had his law degree. I was working for a franchise called Pizza Hut when I was in school. And I was really in on the - literally the ground floor of that company.
GREENE: Wait a minute. This isn't the Bill Parcells I know. This is the Bill Parcells I know.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PARCELLS: (Yelling) I'm going to tell you, those [bleep] linemen are standing around, wandering around. O'Leary don't even know to get on the [bleep] line of scrimmage.
GREENE: With these fiery tirades on the sideline, he was known as one of the fiercest coaches in the game. Parcells says he got a lot of that from his upbringing in N.J. His mom had what he called a big heart and short fuse. And his players might say the same about him.
PARCELLS: You can't be pretentious in this business. It's easily identified by the players. So you kind of have to be who you are. And yet, if you're forthright and honest and trying to do the best for your team, it doesn't really matter how you deliver the message.
GREENE: I read, and it struck me, that you weren't totally satisfied with that being the image that people are kind of left with.
PARCELLS: Well, I think when you're on television and they're seeing you on the sidelines and they see you in moments under duress and in moments where you are angry and frustrated, I think they form an opinion that that's you. And that, in reality, is just a very fragment of what you are. And I am that way in some respects, no doubt. And I'm not always proud of that.
GREENE: Take me to a moment that you're not proud of.
PARCELLS: I would say I was an average parent at best. I cared about my children a great deal. But I wasn't always there for them. And I missed a lot. And I was too busy chasing my dreams.
GREENE: And his book focuses a lot on his regrets, missing graduations and precious time with his three daughters. And yet, he sounds so much like a father when he talks about his players, like Lawrence Taylor, a Hall of Fame Giants linebacker who struggled with drug abuse.
PARCELLS: The thing about Lawrence - he would never not tell me the truth. So when I couldn't get a hold of him for some reason, then I always worried.
GREENE: Listening to how you talk about him, it almost sounds like he's a son to you.
PARCELLS: Well, there's a lot of sons out there. He's not just the only one. He's just one of the - he was one of the squeakier wheels. And there are a lot of them out there - a lot. But that's what this game does. People don't - they don't understand. Inside these locker rooms, those are great laboratories for human behavior. You see it all there. And it's not all - it's not all what people think. There's a lot of sensitivity there. There's a lot of care in there. And those championship teams, they - they're kind of attached together.
GREENE: What about losing teams - perpetually losing teams...
PARCELLS: I don't know.
GREENE: (Laughter). I guess that's a good point.
PARCELLS: Really, I don't know that. Now, have I been through some disappointing seasons? Absolutely. And I have had a lot of heartache games that could have meant another championship and just didn't quite get to it.
GREENE: In his three decades as coach, Parcells won those two Super Bowls with the Giants. But the sweetest moment in his career, he says, was the game that got the Giants to the big stage the second time.
PARCELLS: We won the NFC Championship in 1990 against the San Francisco 49ers with three seconds on the clock.
(SOUNDBITE OF FOOTBALL GAME)
UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER #1: And the kick is good. The Giants win it, 15-13.
GREENE: But then there are the low points. Late in his career, he felt like he still had a Super Bowl run in him. His Dallas Cowboys were in a 2007 playoff game against the Seattle Seahawks - fourth quarter, a minute left, they're down by one point.
(SOUNDBITE OF FOOTBALL GAME)
UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER #2: So if you're Parcells, now, I mean, you're almost compelled to go for the field goal.
UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER #3: You have to kick the field goal.
GREENE: It's a really short field goal, almost automatic. Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo is going to hold the ball for the kicker.
(SOUNDBITE OF FOOTBALL GAME)
UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER #2: Nineteen-yard field goal attempt. (Yelling) Oh, and it's fumbled by Romo. And then Romo's going to run to the end zone. And he's going to get tackled by Jordan Babineaux.
(CROWD CHEERING)
UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER #2: Amazing.
PARCELLS: Of course, that was the last game I ever coached. So obviously, it had an effect on me.
GREENE: I mean, now that - now that you're away from football, not coaching, out of the front office, are you watching football...
PARCELLS: Oh, sure.
GREENE: Every weekend?
PARCELLS: Oh, yeah. And right now, this time of year, my phone's blowing up.
GREENE: Who's calling?
PARCELLS: It's blowing up every day.
GREENE: Who's calling?
PARCELLS: Coaches, general managers, owners, a lot of people that are still involved in the game. And that's a nice part of having been there and done it. When people are calling you and asking you for advice on certain subjects, it's nice, you know?
GREENE: How important has it been to watch some of these coaches who you've brought up, the Bill Parcells coaching tree? I mean, I think of Tom Coughlin with the Giants...
PARCELLS: Well, listen...
GREENE: And Belichick with the Patriots and...
PARCELLS: I want to say this. They're their own men. They are - they're their own men. You can say Parcells coaching tree, but they're their own guys. And they've done it basically on their own. But all of us need a - just a little push in the right direction - not that my way was the right way for everybody or even the right way for very many. But it's nice to see that guys came up with you to go on and be successful.
GREENE: And win Super Bowls.
PARCELLS: And win Super Bowls. That's - yeah, I take a great deal of pride in that.
GREENE: And when Bill Belichick, a member of that Parcells coaching tree, leads the New England Patriots on Sunday against the Seattle Seahawks, going for his fourth Super Bowl title, you can understand what's on the line just by listening to a speech from Bill Parcells. It's from his induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2013.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
PARCELLS: We've got happiness. We've got humor, practical jokes, hilarity, success, achievement. And then we've got that momentary time of exhilaration when you hoist that championship trophy over your head. And I don't know what happens, but some mystical blood kinship is formed. And although it's a fleeting moment, that kinship lasts for the rest of your life.
GREENE: That's Bill Parcells. His book is called "Parcells: A Football Life."
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We've heard a lot lately about Americans trying to go to Syria to join the Islamic State, also known as ISIS. Mostly, they are arrested just before stepping aboard a plane and charged with supporting terrorists.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Now a twist on that scenario. In Minneapolis, an 18-year-old Somali American had tried to go to Syria. He was arrested. And then this week, a judge ordered the young man be held at a halfway house and receive counseling rather than sit in jail. The judge's choice could signal a new approach to preventing radicalization. NPR's Dina Temple-Raston has our report.
DINA TEMPLE-RASTON, BYLINE: Abdullahi Yusuf did two things last year that he'd never done before. According to court documents, first, he applied for a passport. And then he opened a bank account. A few weeks later, though he was just a part-time employee at a local Best Buy, he made a large deposit - $1,500 in cash. And then using a debit card linked to the account, he bought a round-trip ticket to Turkey. He didn't get that far.
JEAN BRANDL: He was arrested and brought to court with a complaint of providing material support to a terrorist organization - in particular, ISIS.
TEMPLE-RASTON: That's Jean Brandl, Abdullahi Yusuf's lawyer.
BRANDL: They had what they thought was probable cause to arrest him for going to aid a terrorist organization in Syria.
TEMPLE-RASTON: There have been more than a dozen cases involving Americans who have been radicalized on the Internet and then decided to go to Syria to fight for or live in the so-called Islamic State. But instead of keeping Abdullahi Yusuf in jail while he awaits trial, Chief U.S. District Court Judge Michael Davis sent him to a halfway house where, among other things, counselors will see if they can figure out why he got attracted to radical Islam in the first place. His terrorism case is still moving forward, but the judge said he could try this program while he waits. And that's new.
MARY MCKINLEY: Well, we are starting very slowly with Mr. Yusuf.
TEMPLE-RASTON: Mary McKinley is the executive director of Heartland Democracy, a Minneapolis nonprofit that works with people who've been involved with gangs or drugs or the law.
MCKINLEY: He'll be extremely limited with his movement, his association - no Internet or cell phone use. So we're starting with him very slowly with just some one-on-one mentoring and counseling.
TEMPLE-RASTON: Counseling that looks at the problems he sees with being Somali Muslim in America.
MCKINLEY: Figuring out where he is ideologically if that's an issue, whether deradicalization curriculum needs to be brought in - but really just kind of exploring how he sees his future on kind of a one-on-one basis.
TEMPLE-RASTON: McKinley and her organization, Heartland Democracy, haven't handled this kind of case before. Everyone seems to agree it's a giant experiment, but an experiment worth trying. Bruce Hoffman is a terrorism expert at Georgetown University. He says sending young men to jail can't be the only solution to the problem.
BRUCE HOFFMAN: So in this case, I think the judge is looking at it as a community and even a social problem, not just a criminal problem and that perhaps there are different approaches that might yield better long-term benefits.
TEMPLE-RASTON: Long-term benefits that include not just avoiding jail time but also allowing young men who may have joined ISIS a way to come home and admit they've made a terrible mistake.
HOFFMAN: I think by holding out the opportunity of some form of redemption - that gives them the hope of reclaiming the life that they had turned their back on - is a positive development.
TEMPLE-RASTON: Abdullahi Yusuf was one of the lucky ones. Authorities caught him before he left. His case may be about trying to help more than just one defendant. The judge's decision could help keep young Americans from trying to leave in the first place. Dina Temple-Raston, NPR News.
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People are looking closely at just what the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints meant by a historic announcement. Church leaders voiced support for laws to protect gay and transgender people from discrimination. That was considered a major move. The question is just how far-reaching it is. Andrea Smardon reports from our member station KUER in Salt Lake City.
ANDREA SMARDON, BYLINE: In a rare news conference, Mormon church leaders said it's time to break the stalemate between advocates of religious freedom and those seeking laws to protect LGBT rights. Jeffrey Holland of the church's Quorum of the Twelve Apostles called for a balanced approach.
JEFFREY HOLLAND: We must find ways to show respect for others whose beliefs, values and behaviors differ from our own while never being forced to deny or abandon our own beliefs.
SMARDON: Church leaders say doctrine still does not permit same-sex marriage. But they called for protections in housing and employment for LGBT people. It was a cause for celebration outside the Utah Capitol building. Troy Williams is executive director for Equality Utah, an organization that has been pushing for a statewide nondiscrimination law for more than six years.
TROY WILLIAMS: We welcome at the LDS Church's statement of support for a nondiscrimination bill. It means a lot to LGBT Utahns who grew up in Mormon households. And truly, the so-call culture war has devastated these homes the hardest.
SMARDON: But at the same time as church leaders denounced discrimination, they also insisted that religious people should not have to compromise their beliefs. Church leader Dallin Oaks said religious freedom is under increasing threat.
DALLIN OAKS: It is one of today's great ironies that some people who have fought so hard for LGBT rights now try to deny the rights of others to disagree with their public policy proposals.
SMARDON: And those disagreements go beyond issues like gay marriage. Church leader Jeffrey Holland used medical providers as an example.
HOLLAND: A Latter-day Saint physician who objects to performing abortions or artificial insemination for a lesbian couple should not be forced against his or her conscience to do so, especially when others are readily available to perform that function.
SMARDON: Law professor and Equality Utah board chair Cliff Rosky says that's a dangerous and slippery slope. And he rejects the idea that religious liberty is under attack.
CLIFF ROSKY: Equality Utah has grave concerns about the idea that our healthcare providers could pick and choose which patients to treat and which laws to follow.
SMARDON: Regardless of this disagreement, Rosky called the church statement this week a huge step forward. He and other advocates are hoping that the church's support will lead to a statewide antidiscrimination law that includes LGBT citizens. For NPR News, I'm Andrea Smardon in Salt Lake City.
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Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep with a free advertisement for duct tape. You really could not make this up. A man was kicked out of a bar in Florence, Mont. Witnesses say he returned to that bar and tried to hit the bartender with a glass. But she grabbed his arm, and the man was no match for the rest of the clientele. Other customers wrestled the man to the ground, and in the absence of handcuffs, they duct taped his wrists until police could arrive. You are listening to MORNING EDITION.
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The Department of Veterans Affairs has settled a landmark lawsuit brought by homeless vets with mental illnesses. They wanted housing on the sprawling VA Medical Center campus in West Los Angeles so that they could access the treatment they needed. After more than three years of legal wrangling, it looks like the vets will get the help they need. NPR's Ina Jaffe reports.
INA JAFFE, BYLINE: At the center of the dispute were nearly 400 acres and an affluent section of West Los Angeles. It's the VA's largest medical center. The campus also has a lot of undeveloped land and vacant buildings. Over the years, it's made it attractive to both commercial developers and to advocates for homeless vets. At a news conference yesterday, VA Secretary Robert McDonald said the settlement will result in a new plan for the property with housing for homeless veterans.
(SOUNDBITE OF PRESS CONFERENCE)
ROBERT MCDONALD: Including underserved populations, such as female veterans, aging veterans and those who are severely physically or mentally disabled.
JAFFE: Los Angeles County has the largest number of homeless veterans in the nation, and the homeless vets struggling with mental illnesses and brain injuries deserve all the support we can give them, said Ron Olson, one of the lead attorneys for the plaintiffs.
(SOUNDBITE OF PRESS CONFERENCE)
RON OLSON: Every one of these clients answered the highest calling of their country, and they came home worse for it. I think we owe them a massive effort to meet the needs that they have today.
JAFFE: Meeting the needs of veterans, however, was not the legal sticking point in this case. It was a bunch of commercial rental deals on the campus that had nothing to do with veterans. An NPR investigation found that the VA has taken in at least $28 million and perhaps more than $40 million from such enterprises as a hotel laundry and a storage facility for the sets of TV shows. A federal judge ruled the rental deals were illegal. But the government appealed, and there things stood until McDonald took over as VA secretary.
MCDONALD: I became familiar with the lawsuit, and immediately as I did, I said, this doesn't make any sense.
JAFFE: So part of the settlement is a so-called exit strategy to get rid of the commercial enterprises that aren't involved in serving veterans. McDonald said the department has begun an accounting of these rental deals to figure out exactly how much money came in and where it went. That is likely to take longer than the single month it took to hammer out this settlement. McDonald says he had no time to waste.
MCDONALD: The president has committed to ending veterans' homelessness by December 31. So I'm not a good cabinet secretary if I don't get this done.
JAFFE: And McDonald says he can't get it done without helping the nation's largest population of homeless veterans here in Los Angeles. Ina Jaffe, NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Next we have an update on a Super Bowl scandal. No, we do not mean that story about the deflated balls; however, they may have been deflated. But it is a cheating scandal about people cheating themselves. NPR's Shankar Vedantam joins us each week on this program. He's here now to talk about it. Hi, Shankar.
SHANKAR VEDANTAM, BYLINE: Hi, Steve.
INSKEEP: Who's being cheated?
VEDANTAM: The corporations that are paying for Super Bowl ads are paying somewhere north of $4 million for each 30-second spot, Steve. And I've recently come by two different pieces of research that suggests that these companies are either getting ripped off or they are ripping themselves off.
INSKEEP: What do you mean by that?
VEDANTAM: Well, it's a great time to be making ads if you're an ad company. And the ad companies clearly do very well at the Super Bowl because these ads get a lot of buzz and attention.
INSKEEP: Sure, for some people it's the whole game, people who don't care that much about that much about football.
VEDANTAM: Exactly, but for the companies that are actually paying the bills, it's not clear to me whether they're actually getting their money's worth. And here's why I think so. Martin Geisenberg (ph) recently analyzed how effective ads were around major sporting events in driving sales. Now, there's no question the ads drive sales. The question is, are you better off spending $4 million at the Super Bowl for a 30-second ad or buying several spots for that same amount of money at a less expensive time of the year?
Geisenberg analyzed 206 brands in the United Kingdom over a four-year period which featured these big sporting events, such as the Summer Olympics and the World Cup soccer finals. And he finds, in general, companies get less bang for their buck when they advertise during major sporting events. Now, it's possible that the companies are not looking for immediate sales; they are looking for brand recognition, and the sporting events allow them to do that. But looking specifically at the question of sales, it seems that companies can spend their money in smarter ways than spend their money at big sporting events.
INSKEEP: Trying to figure out why that would be because the cheaper ads in other programs or in other times of the year are just not reaching as many people. That's why they're cheaper. So why would the Super Bowl ad not be as effective as you would imagine for that $4 million?
VEDANTAM: Well, there are a couple of different reasons. One, Geisenberg thinks that being in sort of the hyper-excited state that people are as they're watching these big sporting events might not actually make you very conducive to processing the content of the ads. But there's also something else. Sascha Topolinski in Germany recently conducted a study. He wasn't studying the Super Bowl, but his research is spot on when it comes to describing how most Americans watch the Super Bowl. He finds that eating while you watch advertisements reduces the effects that advertising messages have on you.
INSKEEP: (Laughter) Because the crunching of the potato chips makes it hard to hear the message.
VEDANTAM: He also has a fantastic name for this. He calls this oral interference. And he finds that the more people eat, the longer they chew...
INSKEEP: (Laughter) I'm trying to imagine the Super Bowl referee and what this signal looks like for calling oral interference on the field.
VEDANTAM: (Laughter).
INSKEEP: Anyway, go on, go on, go on.
VEDANTAM: Well, he finds that the more people eat, the longer they chew, the less likely they are to remember the names of consumer products being advertised. And I don't know about you, Steve, but my Super Bowl this weekend is going to involve significant amounts of oral interference.
INSKEEP: (Laughter) I wonder if something else is going on here. And that is salesmanship. It is image, the very thing that companies are selling. You're a car company; you buy an ad in the Super Bowl because you want people to feel good about Chryslers or Chevrolets or whatever it might be, and so you buy this ad. I wonder if the allure of the Super Bowl itself is drawing in advertisers to pay way too much for these commercial spots just 'cause they want to be part of that special.
VEDANTAM: Yeah, I think that's spot on, Steve. I think one thing as a listener and as a member of the audience I've often noticed is I remember the ads without actually remembering what they're advertising. So I know the ad is beautiful. I remember the story. I can remember the narrative of the ad without actually remembering what the consumer product is that's being sold to me.
INSKEEP: NPR's Shankar Vedantam.
VEDANTAM: Thank you, Steve.
INSKEEP: A definite brand name here. You can follow him on Twitter @HiddenBrain. Follow this program @MorningEdition. Follow me @NPRinskeep.
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Argentina buries a prosecutor today. His mysterious death came just after he made accusations against Argentina's government. He was found with a bullet to his head. He said the president was involved in covering up the bombing of a Jewish center in 1994. And as we're about to hear, the story reaches back even farther than that. We begin on the streets of Buenos Aires with NPR's Lourdes Garcia-Navarro.
(SOUNDBITE OF PROTEST)
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting in Spanish).
LOURDES GARCIA-NAVARRO, BYLINE: Shouting for justice and lighting candles, protesters stood outside Alberto Nisman's wake last night. Jose Abel came to voice his outrage.
JOSE ABEL: (Speaking Spanish).
GARCIA-NAVARRO: "There's an institutional crisis in this country. We want what happened to Nisman to be made clear," he says.
It's still anything but. In death, Nisman has become a hero for many people, a symbol of the fight for justice. But in life, he was often a divisive figure in a country which is already highly polarized along political lines.
CARLOS ESCUDE: He was a brilliant man. He was a sensitive man. He was also a man who worked for the American embassy.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: That's Carlos Escude, a political scientist here who worked in the 1990s with Argentina's Foreign Ministry. The proof Escude and others who believe he was taking direction from Washington offer are a series of cables released by WikiLeaks. The U.S. government denies that and says they only provided technical assistance when it was asked for. The cables show Nisman had many meetings with embassy officials over the years. In one in particular, they ask him to focus his attention on the perpetrators of the terrorist attack and not on the local mishandling of the earlier investigations. That's been interpreted as a directive to focus on Iran as the culprit of the 1994 bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association. Again, Carlos Escude.
ESCUDE: The American government was not interested in anything except the Iranian dimension of the affair.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: But others who knew him say neither was Nisman. Many of the people we spoke to used the word obsessive to describe his belief that Iran was behind the attack.
PABLO GITTER: (Speaking Spanish).
GARCIA-NAVARRO: "Nisman was an obstacle to finding out the truth about the bombing," Pablo Gitter says. Gitter belongs to one of the groups representing the family of the victims. And he contends locals planned and carried out the attack. He felt Nisman ignored other leads in the case - the Syria connections and those who stood to gain in Argentina, for example. Recently what made Gitter and his group furious was Nisman's salvo against the government, which Gitter felt was yet another distraction if the main goal of finding those responsible.
GITTER: (Speaking Spanish).
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Gitter says he met with Nisman in December. "We told Nisman you are doing the same thing by playing politics with the Argentine government as you did with Iran. This isn't the way forward," Gitter says he told them.
Nisman, though, had his ardent supporters who felt he galvanized the investigation when he took it over 10 years ago. Up until then, it had been marked by incompetence and wrongdoing. Patricia Bullrich is an opposition lawmaker who knew Nisman.
PATRICIA BULLRICH: He was always thinking about what he was doing. He was always concentrating in the investigation. I know that the Jewish community here in Argentina, they trust him.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: By that she means the main Jewish groups. Jorge Knoblovits is the secretary general of the Delegation of Argentine Israeli Associations. They believe the evidence shows Iran was behind the night 1994 bombing. He says Nisman's death must be honored by continuing the case of which he was such a big part. This bombing, he notes, has been unresolved for 20 years.
JORGE KNOBLOVITS: (Speaking Spanish).
GARCIA-NAVARRO: "I want this to end," he says, "with the judgment of those responsible." Lourdes Garcia-Navarro, NPR News, Buenos Aires.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Speaking to the nation this week, Argentina's president blamed a spy agency. It's called the Intelligence Secretariat. And the agency is involved in this case, though there is much debate about how.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
What is known is that the agency eavesdrops on people, and it's believed to have provided Nisman with evidence in the Jewish center bombing. In particular, Nisman said Argentine officials participated in covering up the bombing, offering to shield five Iranians from prosecution in exchange for Iranian oil.
INSKEEP: President Christina Fernandez de Kirchner now wants to disband that agency, and a top official there has already been fired. The roots of the agency go back to the aftermath of World War II. Argentine journalist Uki Goni says its first mission was rescuing Nazis fleeing Germany and seeking shelter in Argentina. In later years, the agency kept evolving.
UKI GONI: The thing is that as the decades went by, and especially during so many years of military dictatorship that we had here, it actually became a tool to spy on its own citizens. And with the return of democracy, it's been often used by the presidency to spy on journalists, to spy on judges and to spy on opposition politicians, so it has a very sinister background.
INSKEEP: You know, people who study governments around the world will often use the phrase the deep state, meaning that presidents may come and go, legislators may come and go, but there's a permanent apparatus of intelligence agencies, military that are there and immensely powerful beneath the surface. Is this part of the deep state of Argentina?
GONI: It's definitely so. And I think the man who epitomizes this idea of a deep state is Antonio Stiuso, who was known by his alias Jaime Stiuso.
Now, Stiuso had very close links with the CIA and with the Mossad in Israel and actually was very well respected and held in high regard by Western intelligence services. And he was the most feared man in Argentina. I mean, his face is really not known because there's only one very blurry picture of him. He is reputed to have held files on all of the most important politicians, journalists and judges and prosecutors in Argentina. He is alleged to have used these files to get important political figures and judges and journalists to toe the political line of whoever the president was in power.
INSKEEP: And what was his alleged involvement in this investigation and reported cover-up involving this bombing in 1994?
GONI: Stiuso worked very closely together with Nisman. He came to the conclusion that it was Iran who was behind the bombing. Stiuso would provide Nisman with the wiretapping of Argentines who were in contact with Iran. And Nisman was able to turn this into international arrest warrants for five Iranians that Nisman and Stiuso believed were responsible for this attack. Now, what happened is that two years ago, when Argentina and Iran signed a memorandum by which Iran would participate in investigating the blast, Stiuso and Nisman became disenchanted with Fernandez. So Stiuso particularly, it is alleged, started feeding Nisman with the wiretaps that allowed him to present this allegation against President Fernandez. The motive behind this memorandum was not seeking the truth about the blast, but actually shielding five Iranians from prosecution in Argentina.
INSKEEP: In exchange for oil, is that right? It was essentially a bribery scheme.
GONI: You know, Argentina has a chronic energy deficit. So what Nisman alleges is that the president ordered some of her closest allies to participate in secret negotiations to offer this deal - oil in exchange for us dropping these charges against you.
INSKEEP: Is there any chance this scandal could cause change in Argentina? For example, changing presidents or disbanding this intelligence agency for real.
GONI: I think the death of Nisman will be a turning point in Argentina. Of course, what's happening now is the president has ordered to dissolve this Intelligence Secretariat. They're going to replace it with something else, which sounds like a lot, but it actually might be the same beast with another name. You know, President Fernandez has been about the most powerful president Argentina's ever had. She's a well-loved president, but I think she might go down in history as rather a darker figure, I think, than she had hoped.
INSKEEP: Uki Goni is an author in Argentina. Thanks very much.
GONI: Thank you.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
And our next story involves no mystery. Sales at McDonald's are way down, and so the CEO is stepping down. Don Thompson has been CEO for just two and a half years. The McDonald's Board of Directors announced he will retire at the age of 51. NPR's Sonari Glinton reports.
SONARI GLINTON, BYLINE: In the last quarter, McDonald's net income fell by about $300 million. It's not just McDonald's that's struggling. Bonnie Riggs is a restaurant analyst with the NPD group. She says fast-food joints are facing competition, not only from fast casual chains like your Chipotles, Shake Shack and Five Guys, but a hurried shopper is even more likely to stop by the grocery store for, say, a prepared sandwich.
BONNIE RIGGS: Or I might go get a shake and bake pizza. Or I might go and get a rotisserie chicken and a salad and everything prepared, and I just take it home and put it on the table.
GLINTON: Riggs says there is a shift in taste as Americans look for more fresh food and healthier foods. Burger restaurants, though, have tried to compete.
RIGGS: What has happened is that it slowed down service. It's not as fast as it was. And, you know, people go to fast-food restaurants for convenience.
GLINTON: McDonald's gets a new CEO, company veteran Steve Easterbrook, next month as it cuts its construction budget for new restaurants to the lowest point in five years. Sonari Glinton, NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Seattle Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch is headed to the Super Bowl. And as we've heard on this program, he's even meeting the media, which he hates to do.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MARSHAWN LYNCH: I'm just here so I don't get fined.
INSKEEP: That was Lynch's response to every question at media day.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Just so you know, Steve, I'm just here so I don't get fined.
INSKEEP: I thought it was the coffee.
MONTAGNE: Well, that, too.
INSKEEP: So Mr. Lynch does not like talking but does make noise in his hometown of Oakland. Here's Youth Radio's Catory Goodman.
CATORY GOODMAN, BYLINE: Marshawn Lynch got his start in football here at Oakland Technical High School. He's a star on campus. His picture is up in classrooms, and everyone knows he went to Tech. Lynch led our school to Oakland's interleague championship game and then got a full ride to play football at UC Berkeley in 2004. From there, he went on to the National Football League.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TOM HAMMOND: What a run. Marshawn Lynch still on his feet for the touchdown.
GOODMAN: In this play, Lynch ran 67 yards against the New Orleans Saints for a touchdown and broke through nine tackles along the way. Lynch's high school coach, K.C. O'Keith, still coaches at Tech and to this day, raves about that play.
K.C. O'KEITH: He went ballistically crazy. Do you hear me? He just - pow. I mean, that's beast mode. Get out of my way because here I come.
GOODMAN: Coach O'Keith says he's proud that Lynch is still a presence in the community. Lynch started a foundation called Fam 1st that runs a summer football camp for kids. As he told ESPN in 2013, he wants to give back to Oakland kids who had it tough like he did. My classmate, junior Bessie Zolno, says Lynch is a role model.
BESSIE ZOLNO: I think his whole career and everything that he stands for just shows that no matter, like, what your background is and no matter where you come from, you can succeed if you, like, work at it hard enough.
GOODMAN: Lynch has gotten a reputation for misbehaving. He pled guilty to a hit-and-run and went to jail for driving under the influence. He's also recently been fined for obscene gestures on the field. And the most recent controversy is his ongoing refusal to answer media questions. San Jose Mercury News sports columnist Mark Purdy says it doesn't bother him that Lynch won't talk to the media.
MARK PURDY: But I don't know how that helps promote the good stuff he does in the community or in Oakland's case, the good stuff that goes on in Oakland.
GOODMAN: I may not be into football but like Marshawn Lynch, I'm all about repping Oakland. So maybe I'll even watch him in this Sunday's Super Bowl. For NPR News, I'm Catory Goodman.
INSKEEP: A story produced by Youth Radio.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Now, it would seem the whole point of buying stocks is for them to go up. But you can bet against a stock, hoping that it will drop. It's called shorting. Most people don't short stocks. Our Planet Money team wondered why and decided the best way to find out was to short something themselves and see what happens. Here's David Kestenbaum.
DAVID KESTENBAUM, BYLINE: We had no idea how to short something or what to short. So we consulted one of the best-known short-sellers, a guy named Andrew Left. He publishes a newsletter called "Citron Research." He was really helpful.
ANDREW LEFT: No. Don't do it.
KESTENBAUM: Why?
LEFT: It really is not for the average investor. It's dangerous. You can lose too much money doing it. The forces of Wall Street are against you.
KESTENBAUM: But everyone buys stocks. Why can't I do the opposite - bet against one?
LEFT: You can lose an infinite amount of money - infinite.
KESTENBAUM: If you buy a stock for $10, the most you can lose is $10. A stock can't go any lower than zero. But if you short a stock, you can lose a lot more. A $10 stock can shoot up to $50 or $100 or $200. The more it goes up, the more you lose.
LEFT: You can lose an infinite amount of money - infinite.
KESTENBAUM: Also, Andrew Left warns us, nobody likes short-sellers. They are betting a company's stock will drop or that a company will fail. He told us about this one time the CEO of a small company got really, really mad. Andrew's wife noticed a black truck parked across the street.
LEFT: And she went out, and they said, does Andrew Left live here? And she said, yes. And they said, OK, fine. They made comment - we're friends of - and they said the CEO's name.
KESTENBAUM: They just sat outside the house in that black truck.
LEFT: I called the CEO right there on the phone. I'm, like, what do you think you're doing? This is Wall Street. This is business. Like, what world do you live in?
KESTENBAUM: What did the guy say after you said that to him on the phone?
LEFT: Typical thuggery-type stuff - you don't know who I am. Like, what does that mean? I know who you are. You're the CEO of a publicly traded company.
KESTENBAUM: This, frankly, was a problem for us. As journalists, we can't bet against a company. But we came up with a solution that seemed clever and fair to everyone. Instead of shorting one stock, what if we shorted every stock? What if we bet against the entire stock market? What if we shorted America?
SAHM ANDRANGI: Yeah, that's a terrible idea.
KESTENBAUM: This is Sahm Andrangi, another well-known short-seller. He runs a hedge fund called Kerrisdale Capital.
ANDRANGI: It is very dangerous, and it's a great way to lose lots of money - especially American companies because I think 40 percent of their revenue comes from outside of the U.S.
KESTENBAUM: I'm shorting the whole planet.
ANDRANGI: Yeah. So it's why it usually doesn't work.
KESTENBAUM: I like the ridiculousness of it. Sahm Andrangi even had a name for what we were proposing. He called it the Armageddon trade. Andrew Left, our other expert, was actually OK with the idea. In the short-term, he said, the stock market could go down. But he was not comfortable with the term shorting America. He really objected to it.
LEFT: Do we have problems? Of course. But as for shorting America, I don't the way that sounds. We've really have done an amazing thing in this country.
KESTENBAUM: It's nice to hear a pep-talk from a guy who specializes in shorting.
LEFT: Yeah, listen - that's what's part of - amazing about this country is the ability to short. I mean, how great is that - that we live in a country that says - you know what? - you can buy a stock - you don't like the stock? You can short the stock.
KESTENBAUM: And that's what we did.
(SOUNDBITE OF PHONE RINGING)
STEPHEN PEARSON: E-TRADE elite client services. This is this Stephen Pearson.
KESTENBAUM: I did it through an E-TRADE account. We used $400 of our own personal money, not NPR's. I want to short something.
PEARSON: All right.
KESTENBAUM: I want to short the entire stock market.
PEARSON: The entire stock market.
KESTENBAUM: We shorted this thing that tracks the S&P 500. It has little slices of the 500 largest companies in it. It just took a minute.
PEARSON: All right. I've got that trade placed for you.
KESTENBAUM: America, your bad news is now our good news. I'm David Kestenbaum, NPR News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne. In the rugged terrain around LA, you really do not want to come face-to-face with a bear. And when Sheriff's Deputy Ricky Hernandez was lowered by helicopter to check out an abandoned car in the brush, he didn't realize the chopper had scared off a big bear. But inside the car, he spotted baby bears. KABC reports the upholstery with shredded into a cubs' nest. The deputy made a quick exit before mama bear spotted him. It's MORNING EDITION.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
For Loretta Lynch the goal is clear. She is the nominee to become the first African-American woman to lead the Justice Department. The obstacle is also clear. Republicans who control the Senate are not happy with the administration Lynch would join. So she faced a full day of questions at a confirmation hearing. NPR's Carrie Johnson reports.
CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: The temperature in the Senate office building stayed cool. Loretta Lynch had support if she needed - from her elderly father named who beamed from the front row behind her, the Navy Seal Trident pin that belonged to her late brother and sat on a table beside her and her Delta Sigma Theta sorority sisters, who turned out in full force wearing their trademark red suits. Lynch appeared before the Republican-led Judiciary Committee with a peace offering.
(SOUNDBITE OF ATTORNEY GENERAL CONFIRMATION HEARING)
LORETTA LYNCH: I look over to fostering a new and improved relationship with this committee and the entire United States Congress.
JOHNSON: GOP Senators spent much of the day bashing her predecessor, Eric Holder, who once called himself the president's wingman. Here's John Cornyn of Texas.
(SOUNDBITE OF ATTORNEY GENERAL CONFIRMATION HEARING)
SENATOR JOHN CORNYN: Let me just stipulate - you're not Eric Holder, are you?
LYNCH: No, I'm not, sir.
(LAUGHTER)
CORNYN: So no one's suggesting that you are, but of course, Attorney General Holder's record is heavy on our minds now.
JOHNSON: Lynch mostly made common cause with Republicans on national security. She called government surveillance programs legal and effective. She promised terrorists who attack Americans here or overseas would face justice. But there was this exchange with Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy.
(SOUNDBITE OF ATTORNEY GENERAL CONFIRMATION HEARING)
SENATOR PATRICK LEAHY: Do you agree that waterboarding is torture and that it's illegal?
LYNCH: Waterboarding is torture, Senator.
LEAHY: And thus illegal.
LYNCH: And thus illegal.
JOHNSON: Her handling of questions about the White House action on immigration didn't go quite as smoothly. Lynch said she agreed with the legal opinion backing temporary reprieve from deportation for 4 million people. That conclusion didn't go over well with many Republicans, including Iowa Senator Charles Grassley, the committee chairman.
(SOUNDBITE OF ATTORNEY GENERAL CONFIRMATION HEARING)
REPRESENTATIVE CHARLES GRASSLEY: What are the outer limits of the doctrine of prosecutorial discretion, and why don't the president's actions exceed those boundaries when we're talking about millions of people?
JOHNSON: And then Lynch initially signaled people in the country illegally may have some kind of right to work, a statement that left Republican Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama gaping.
(SOUNDBITE OF ATTORNEY GENERAL CONFIRMATION HEARING)
SENATOR JEFF SESSIONS: Is a civil right for a person who enters the country unlawfully, who would like to work and like to be a citizen, to demand that on contrary to the laws of the United States?
JOHNSON: No, Lynch said, clarifying her position with help from an ally, New York Democrat Charles Schumer.
(SOUNDBITE OF ATTORNEY GENERAL CONFIRMATION HEARING)
SENATOR CHARLES SCHUMER: And I would like to remind my colleagues that the president's immigration policies are not seeking confirmation today. Loretta Lynch is.
JOHNSON: Other Democrats inquired about how she'd work to repair relations between police and minority communities after officers killed unarmed African-Americans in Ferguson, Staten Island and Cleveland. Lynch, who's won support from federal agents and police groups, went out of her way to praise the bravery of good law enforcement officers.
(SOUNDBITE OF ATTORNEY GENERAL CONFIRMATION HEARING)
LYNCH: I have served with them; I have learned from them; I am a better prosecutor because of them. Few things have pained me more than the recent reports of tension and division between law enforcement and the communities we serve.
JOHNSON: One senator, Republican David Vitter of Louisiana, has already threatened to block Lynch's nomination over the immigration issue. But she appears to have enough support in the committee to advance to the full Senate - a process that could take weeks. Carrie Johnson, NPR News, the Capitol.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Let's hear some early themes of the presidential campaign. Three possible Republican contenders appeared last weekend at a forum. It was organized by the billionaire Koch brothers and moderated by ABC's Jonathan Karl.
JONATHAN KARL: They're usually completely in secret. But this time, they invited me to come out and agreed, as one of the conditions we put on me participating, to make it publicly available to any media organization that asked for the live stream.
INSKEEP: GOP donors attended the forum. So much attention is focused on the money in that room. It's also worth listening to the messages. Senators Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul ended up promoting traditional Democratic concerns like the widening gap between rich and poor.
KARL: Well, the Republicans have a real problem on their hands because the economic record now for the Democrats, by the traditional measures, looks pretty good. Unemployment is way down. You have 7 million jobs that have been added. Gas prices are down. The economy is booming. The stock market's up. But where is the economy not working? And it's in terms of the rising gap between rich and poor, which is undeniable under Obama - wage stagnation for the middle class. These are the issues that Republicans can hit Democrats on. And it's not where they're used to fighting a campaign. So it's going to be interesting to hear Republicans like we heard at this forum talking about the problem of income inequality.
INSKEEP: I also noticed that there was, on some issues, a struggle to contrast themselves with President Obama. Of course, they are strongly opposed to President Obama negotiating with Iran over its nuclear program, or some of them are, anyway. But when you began asking questions, things got more complex. You asked Marco Rubio about Senate proposals to impose new sanctions on Iran. And he told you actually the senators that he's talking to are going for something a little bit less.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
SENATOR MARCO RUBIO: Whatever deal he cuts, there has to be congressional approval of it. I think we all agree on that. And the second one is sanctions that are put in place. If the deal fails, those sanctions kick in...
KARL: OK.
RUBIO: ...Which is what the president said he wants to do anyway. So all we're saying is fine. Then let's put it in place so it'll happen the minute the talks end.
KARL: Well, the president also says that the minute you pass that, the deal - the negotiations will collapse. Senator Paul, are you going to support the sanctions bill?
SENATOR RAND PAUL: I think new sanctions now has two problems. And most of all, in fact, all of our allies have said it may break apart the sanctions regime.
INSKEEP: So you have one senator saying, I'm more moderate than you thought I was. You have a second senator saying, I'm actually OK with diplomacy and negotiation. Then the third senator, Ted Cruz, jumps in. He sounds very strong here until you pose a question to him. Let's listen to this.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
SENATOR TED CRUZ: The problem is if Iran ever acquired nuclear weapons, I think the odds are unacceptably high that it would use those nuclear weapons either in the skies of Tel Aviv or New York or Los Angeles.
KARL: But Senator Paul's not endorsing Iran having nuclear weapons. He's saying negotiate with them.
CRUZ: OK. But...
KARL: Senator Paul...
CRUZ: All right. All right. Then negotiate smart because this is the worst negotiation in the history of mankind.
INSKEEP: John Karl, did you end up with a situation where even these three conservative senators ended up saying negotiating with Iran is OK? I would just be doing a better job than Obama.
KARL: To a degree, although I have to say Senator Cruz and Senator Rubio made it clear that they are so distrustful of the government in Iran that effectively, you can't negotiate. So there was a real difference of opinion on this stage here because Rand Paul actually uttered the phrase - which I liked - give diplomacy a chance. Rand Paul kept on coming back to a point that you hear the White House making over and over again, saying, look, if negotiations fall apart, what's our alternative? And in Rand Paul's formulation and in the White House's formulation, the only two real paths beyond that is you either let Iran get a nuclear weapon or you have military action, another war in the Middle East.
INSKEEP: Jonathan Karl of ABC News, thanks very much.
KARL: Thanks, Steve.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
And we are heading into Super Bowl weekend at the end of a season that has at times been pretty embarrassing for the NFL. There's been a lot of attention paid to player behavior off the field. And that came up when our colleague David Greene sat down with Hall of Fame coach Bill Parcells. Let's hear more of their conversation.
DAVID GREENE, BYLINE: Parcells coached four different NFL teams in a career that spanned three decades. He dealt with his fair share of bad actors. Sometimes, he kicked them off his team; sometimes, he tolerated them. So when we sat down recently, I brought up former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice, who was seen on TV punching his then fiancee. The Ravens released him. The NFL suspended him. But he's now eligible to play again. And I asked Parcells a simple question.
Could he play for you if you were coaching today?
BILL PARCELLS: Well, I'm pretty much a second-chance guy. I think if someone has demonstrated a true alteration of his behavior and true remorse for some of the things that happened, you could understand how you could kind of say, OK, let's see. I think unfortunately for Ray, it came at a time in his career when he was well down the road. I mean, running backs' longevity isn't that long usually anyway. And...
GREENE: You're saying if he were earlier in his career, he might have a better shot at coming back and...
PARCELLS: I think so.
GREENE: If you brought him onto your team and gave him a second chance, as you say, what would you say to the naysayers who are like, coach Parcells, this is a guy who the entire country watched beating up a woman? I mean, isn't that a distraction to your team? Isn't he a terrible role model to...
PARCELLS: I think...
GREENE: The world, to young people?
PARCELLS: I think he would have had to evaluate that. It was a very, very unfortunate incident. But they're young people, highly emotional, alcohol involved. Sometimes, stuff happens that you wish wouldn't happen. So I wouldn't say I could overlook it. But if all things appear to be in order - and they seem to be now, between the two of them - you know, you'd have to say, well, you know, maybe this guy deserves the right to try to make a living and make a better life for them - I mean, maybe.
GREENE: That maybe gets to an important point. From the outside, the NFL can look like a culture with no firm rules about behavior. Now, Parcells, as head coach of the New York Giants in the 1980s, was a pioneer in confronting off-the-field behavior, especially when it came to drug abuse. He was criticized for playing favorites, showing more patience with players who performed on the field. He denies that. Still, I wanted to understand what motivated coach Parcells when he had to decide whether a player using drugs could stay on the team or not.
How much of that was about your players' well-being, and how much of it was about winning?
PARCELLS: I'm glad you didn't ask me which came first. I knew that environment, if allowed to flourish, would eventually act as a deterrent to winning.
GREENE: But I hear you saying - when you said you didn't want me to ask you which came first...
PARCELLS: Well, because...
GREENE: That it might have been about the winning.
PARCELLS: No because in all honesty, I don't like to see some kid on drugs, OK? And if - especially if he's one of your players, you like to see it less. Now, are you worried about the kid? Yeah, there's a degree of worry about what's going to happen to him should he continue. But are you worried about your own situation as well? The answer's yes. Did I save some kids? Absolutely. Did we fail with some? Absolutely. Regardless how it turned out, I'm glad I made the effort.
GREENE: What do you tell someone who would hear this and say, coach, it should be about saving these kids as the number one priority. It shouldn't be about winning.
PARCELLS: Well, this isn't high school football we're playing here. You know, you're - that's what you're charged with doing when you become a professional coach. I would probably, deep down, agree with that person. If you're a human and you see these guys going the wrong way - I felt an obligatory responsibility to try to stop it.
GREENE: That's former NFL coach Bill Parcells. We spoke to him near his winter home in Jupiter, FL.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
More than a billion people around the world have been infected with a virus you likely have never heard of. It's called GB virus C. One scientist suggested GB could stand for good boy because the virus actually seems to be helpful in some circumstances. NPR's Richard Harris reports it might even benefit people with Ebola.
RICHARD HARRIS, BYLINE: It's hard to imagine that having two viral infections would be better than having just one. But sometimes, that may be the case. Before we get to Ebola, listen to this story about HIV. Dr. Jack Stapleton treat AIDS patients at the University of Iowa. Years ago, he went to a meeting and heard that people infected with both GB virus C and HIV were actually less likely to develop AIDS. He was skeptical.
JACK STAPLETON: When I went back home from this meeting, I pulled out samples from the freezer and tested them. And lo and behold, if you had this virus when you walked in the clinic door, you were about three times more likely to be alive nine years later.
HARRIS: That may be because GB virus C infects cells in the immune system. And in the process, it actually dials down some immune system reactions.
STAPLETON: It's not severe. It's not enough that it makes people immune-suppressed. But it does reduce the inflammatory response of immune cells. And in diseases that are mediated or caused by over-inflammation or immune activation, this would be a good thing.
HARRIS: And what diseases other than AIDS over-activate the immune system? Well, Ebola, for one. And here, Dave O'Connor at the University of Wisconsin becomes part of the story. He'd been studying people and wildlife in Africa. And he'd found that GB virus C was even more common there than it is in the United States. Another team of scientists had gathered blood samples from Ebola patients in Africa and dumped a huge amount of data about those samples in a public database. O'Connor realized that he could search that database for signs of genetic material from a second virus, GBV-C.
O'CONNOR: The numbers are still very, very small. But it was provocative. We found about 13 people who were infected with both viruses. And among those, about half the people survived.
HARRIS: That's a better-than-average survival rate. So it provides a hint that GBV-C could be helping people fight off Ebola. Or it could simply be that 20- to 40-year-olds are more likely to have GBV-C infections and more likely to survive Ebola, as he says in a study published in the Journal of Virology. O'Connor needs more data to sort this out. Whatever the case, he's found huge quantities of this virus in the people who were infected with it.
O'CONNOR: So the cells are being hijacked. They're being used as factories to produce lots of virus. And yet, for reasons that we completely don't understand, the immune system seems to think that's OK and ignore it.
HARRIS: That contradiction intrigues Jack Stapleton, a virus multiplying like crazy but not doing any harm. And he's prepared to believe it could actually be helpful for Ebola patients.
STAPLETON: To me, this is perfectly logical. It's something that you would predict, although, often what you predict doesn't happen. So I wouldn't have predicted it. (Laughter).
HARRIS: It was Stapleton who suggested that the GB in the name of this benign - or possibly even beneficial - virus really stand for good boy. But last year he was part of a study that found people with a cancer called non-Hodgkin's lymphoma were more likely to carry GBV-C than people who hadn't been exposed.
STAPLETON: Like everything in life, there's probably some bad things. But I would say that overall, the scientific community would say this is not a bad virus.
HARRIS: Do you have a sense of how many other viruses are out there like this one that are lurking in our bodies and not doing anything harmful but we are just completely oblivious of them?
STAPLETON: You know, I actually think it's not that many. And I wouldn't have said that 10 years ago.
HARRIS: That's because technology is getting so good at detecting genetic material from viruses that Stapleton suggests there may not be many more new ones to discover, at least floating around in human blood. Richard Harris, NPR News.
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For decades, the Catholic Church has been dogged by scandals involving money. The Vatican, a sovereign country, controls its own finances through the Vatican Bank. That bank developed into a cross between the Federal Reserve and an offshore bank. And in the new history "God's Bankers," Gerald Posner writes its roots go back to the mid-19th century when the church found itself desperate to bring in cash.
GERALD POSNER: They had 15,000 square miles of what was central Italy with thousands of subjects, and they levied taxes, and they paid for this lavish lifestyle with 700 servants and a big and a growing bureaucracy around them. And then in 1870, Italy's nationalists had a revolution. They throw the pope out. They get rid of the papal states, and the Vatican goes from being an empire - an earthly empire - to a little postage-stamp size of property called Vatican City.
MONTAGNE: By World War II, Posner says, the church created the Vatican Bank in order to hide from the U.S. and Britain its financial dealings with the Nazi, something many would find shocking.
POSNER: I was surprised the extent to which the Vatican was deeply embedded with German companies in which they bundled together life insurance policies of Jewish refugees who had been sent to Auschwitz and other death camps. They escheated these policies early on, meaning they took the cash value of them, and later after the war, when the survivors - the children showed up or the grandchildren who said by the way, my parents are dead. They were sent from Budapest in 1944 to Auschwitz, and they died. These insurance companies would refuse to pay out, saying show us the death certificate, which they knew was impossible. They would keep the money. And I lay out sort of what I call the blood money that came into the church.
By the way, Renee, they were equal opportunity profiteers. It wasn't as though they did business with the Germans because they wanted the Germans to win. They did business with everyone because they called themselves neutral and decided that somebody would win at the end of the war, and they were going to keep the business connections open to everybody. And then when they saw the war was going against the Germans, they started to hide the connections. And after the war, they said, we didn't do anything wrong.
MONTAGNE: Is there a simple answer that you were able to arrive at, though, as to how much the church knew about the extermination of the Jews and others?
POSNER: The bank officials and those who ran the bank knew very little because in part, all they wanted to know was what was happening in terms of the war effort and what was happening in terms of business and profits. But on the church end, there's no doubt. They had churches - local churches - in all of the countries that were the ground zeros for the killing zones. The local priests who were not in favor of the slaughter still reported back to their bishops what was happening on the ground. That came in in daily reports, and they had unfortunately a very clear sense of what was happening early on. They were just frozen by indecision and fear. They were afraid that if they spoke out, the Nazis might in fact move against Catholics and Germany and even move against the pope and take him back to Germany as a prisoner. But that fear meant that they abdicated their moral position as the head of the world's largest religion, especially the time that they continue to make money with the people committing the murder.
MONTAGNE: Then, of course, it's quite well known that for decades, the Vatican has been motivated by anti-communism. Stalin also targeted priests. The church was very much behind the solidarity movement in Poland in the 1980s. How much of that played in to these connections?
POSNER: Oh, Renee, you're absolutely right. One of the reasons that the Vatican was frozen in fear against the Nazis and had made their alignment with the fascists in the first place was that they feared the Bolsheviks more. And when John Paul II came in - the first Polish pope, the first non-Italian pope in more than 450 years - and there's still a communist government in Poland, you're right. He formed an alliance with Ronald Reagan. The head of the CIA used to be going over regularly to the Vatican to give him briefings. I describe a new incident in this book in which an Italian intelligence agent, they take $3.5 million in gold ingots from a Swiss bank. They put it into the side panels in a false bottom on an SUV, and a priest drives it back in to Gdansk from Italy so that it can feed the resistance against the communists in Poland. So there was a real alliance between American intelligence, the right wingers and the Vatican on this meeting of minds against communism.
MONTAGNE: How much has the Vatican Bank operated like any other bank? Because people think of Swiss banks, offshore banks, how much more secret would the Vatican Bank be, and how similar was it to them?
POSNER: The thing about the Vatican Bank that makes it different in my view is that it's essentially an offshore bank in the middle of a foreign country, so that once that bank was formed, it meant that somebody sitting over in Italy who had a lot of money, all they had to do was find a priest or a cleric inside Vatican City to take their money in suitcases of cash across the street, just wait for the red light to green, walk it over on a cart, deposit it into the Vatican Bank and it no longer could be taxed. It no longer could be followed by Italian authorities. It couldn't be followed for a drug investigation.
So what does that result in? It results in the Vatican Bank being one of the top banks in the world for money laundering, a haven often for these business executives involved in scandals in Italy. And then just in the last decade, we learn that the Vatican Bank had an account for Andreotti, who was the seven-time prime minster of Italy, the most powerful postwar politician in Italian history. He had a secret bank account through which over $50 million passed at a certain time, most of which was doled out for political favors to friends. That's what the Vatican Bank had come to be, and it's what I call its cocaine cowboy days. The equivalent of that - you know, I live in Miami. The crazy period here was the 1980s, when the cocaine cowboys sort of ran the roost. The question is now whether the new sheriff has arrived in town. Is that sheriff Francis, and can he really bring them to heal or not?
MONTAGNE: Well, may I ask then. The new Pope Francis, he is a reformer, and that does include the Vatican Bank. What has he managed to do, and what are the hurdles?
POSNER: I've been impressed by him. He has changed the structures so that it won't have the ability to be at the center of those scandals and he's brought in some outsiders. They've closed hundreds of accounts that have been open that were tied to people that shouldn't have had them. They are abiding by the rules set by the Europeans for financial transparency because they used the euro. So it's a different era. What could upend it? He needs to be there long enough that these changes can't be reversed by a new pope who gets in and can be pushed around by the strong dominant bureaucrats.
MONTAGNE: Gerald Posner is the author of the new book "God's Bankers: A History Of Money And Power At The Vatican." Thank you so much for joining us.
POSNER: And thank you so much for having me, Renee.
MONTAGNE: This is NPR News.
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Elsewhere in this program, we heard about the Russian economy tanking and how that's got some of its high-rolling oligarchs worried. Also hurting - the Alpine ski resort where better-off Russians once flocked. NPR's Eleanor Beardsley sent this report from the mountains near Mont Blanc.
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: The Russians have been coming in large numbers to ski the fabled Alpine slopes around Mont Blanc for the past decade. But the drop in the ruble is now keeping them away, and that's impacting the wintertime economy in this region.
(SOUNDBITE OF CARRIAGE BELLS)
BEARDSLEY: In the cozy and chic village of Megeve, horse-drawn carriages jingle through the snowy streets. People gather around a steaming cauldron of mulled wine in the town's central plaza. And the boutiques are lit up and full of shoppers. Megeve's mayor, Catherine Jullien, looks over the scene from her upstairs office in the town hall. Jullien says Russians make up just 10 percent of Megeve's winter tourists, but they play a key role.
MAYOR CATHERINE JULLIEN: (Through interpreter) They're an extremely important clientele because they come right on the tail of Christmas and the New Year because of their later Orthodox celebrations. They spend big and allow the resort to prolong the holiday season well into the month of January.
BEARDSLEY: Jullien says the plunging ruble has hit middle-class Russian families especially hard, and many haven't returned this year. Frederic Vepierre is the manager of Le Fer a Cheval, one of Megeve's most exclusive five-star hotels.
FREDERIC VEPIERRE: (Through interpreter) We began to worry way last spring when we saw what was going on in Ukraine and the standoff between Russia and the West. And then we heard all kinds of rumors, like President Vladimir Putin wasn't going to let people leave with their money. We are all worried.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHURCH BELLS)
BEARDSLEY: Towns and resorts all through the Alps are being affected by the ruble's collapse, which has cast a pall over Russian tourism across Europe. The French resort of Courchevel is perhaps the biggest mecca for Russian skiers in the region. Tourism bureau director Adeline Roux says they won't know the real impact until the season is over, but the signs are not good.
ADELINE ROUX: At the moment, we have some availabilities in the most luxury chalets - what's never happened before. And in March, usually we have again Russians. And I think this year, they will not come.
BEARDSLEY: For now, you can still hear Russian on the slopes and drifting through the crisp Alpine air. Muscovite Natalia Resiska is having a smoke before taking the ski lift. She says her group was lucky. They booked and paid for their trip six months ago. Resiska says Russians love skiing in the Alps.
NATALIA RESISKA: First, it's not so far from Russia. And second, it's very comfortable here - good slopes, good food, you know, very nice - nice atmosphere so - and so on.
BEARDSLEY: I asked them if they felt any hostility over the Ukraine conflict and the standoff between the West and Russia.
LILIYANA ASYANAVA: (Speaking Russian).
BEARDSLEY: "No," says Liliyana Asyanava. "It's all just a political game."
SERGEI GOUCHEV: (Speaking Russian).
BEARDSLEY: Sergei Gouchev says Putin and Obama should just sit down and talk and drink some vodka together.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: Vodka, no. Champagne, champagne.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: No, Champagne.
BEARDSLEY: But there'll be no vodka for this group. They plan to enjoy their apres-ski the French way, with oysters and champagne. Eleanor Beardsley, NPR News, the French Alps.
MONTAGNE: This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News here in the studio. I'm Renee Montagne.
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And I'm Steve Inskeep.
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It's Friday, when we hear StoryCorps. The NASCAR Hall of Fame today will induct its first African-American driver. His name is Wendell Scott. He drove in the 1950s, during the Jim Crow era and was the first African-American to win a race at NASCAR's elite level. Mr. Scott's racing team was his family. They would travel to races together from their home in Virginia. His sons were his pit crew. Wendell Scott died in 1990. But his son, Frank, and grandson, Warrick, sat down to remember him.
FRANK SCOTT: He started racing in 1952. And, you know, it was like Picasso, like a great artist doing his work. He was in that car, and he was doing his work. And as children, we didn't have that leisure time. You know, we couldn't go to the playground. He said to us, I need you in the garage. I can remember him getting injured. And he'd just take axle grease and put it in the cut and keep working. But he wasn't allowed to race at certain speedways. He had death threats not to come to Atlanta. And daddy said, look. If I leave in a pine box, that's what I got to do; but I'm going to race. And I can remember him racing in Jacksonville. And he beat them all. But they wouldn't drop the checkered flag. And then, when they did drop the checkered flag, then my father was in third place. One of the main reasons that they gave was there was a white beauty queen, and they always kissed the driver.
WARRICK SCOTT: Did he ever consider not racing anymore?
F. SCOTT: Never. That was one of my daddy's sayings; when it's too tough for everybody else, it's just right for me. Like, I can remember one time when we were racing the Atlanta 500. And he was sick. He needed an operation. And I said, daddy, we don't have to race today. He whispered to me and said, lift my legs up and put me in the car. So I took my arms and put them behind his legs. And I kind of acted like I was hugging him and helped him in the car. He drove 500 miles that day.
W. SCOTT: How did his racing career officially end?
F. SCOTT: Well, finances... You know, he couldn't get the support where other drivers we were competing against had major sponsorship providing them engineers, as many cars as they needed. He did everything that he did out of his own pocket. He always felt like someday, he was going to get his big break. But for 20 years, nobody mentioned Wendell Scott. At one point, it was like he never existed. But he didn't let it drive him crazy. In fact, that's what made him so great. You know, he chose to be a race car driver. And he was going to race until he couldn't race no more.
INSKEEP: Frank Scott remembering his father, Wendell Scott. Today, Wendell Scott will become the first African-American inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame. Frank spoke with his own son, Warrick, in Danville, VA. And their conversation will be archived with all the others at the Library of Congress. As always, you can get the podcast on iTunes and npr.org.
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We're nearing the point where President Obama may really use the veto pen, as he's called it.
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The president has issued just two vetoes since taking office. No president has vetoed so few bills since James Garfield, who was in office for less than a year.
INSKEEP: President Obama's total may soon increase because the Keystone pipeline bill is moving toward his desk. The Senate voted yesterday to require extending the pipeline 62-36. The president said he will veto that plan to force his hand on that energy project.
MONTAGNE: For the record, 62 votes in the Senate is enough to overcome a filibuster and reach the president. But it is short of the two-thirds majority required to override a veto.
INSKEEP: With Republicans controlling all of Congress, more vetoes may be coming. Here's NPR national political correspondent, Mara Liasson.
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: President Obama spent his first term and a half making very few veto threats and even fewer actual vetoes. But as he warned in his State of the Union address, that will no longer be the case.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: We can't put the security of families at risk by taking away their health insurance or unraveling the new rules on Wall Street. We're refighting past battles on immigration when we've got to fix a broken system. And if a bill comes to my desk that tries to do any of these things, I will veto it.
LIASSON: And those aren't the only things. They aren't even going to be the first. That dubious distinction will apparently go to the Keystone pipeline. All told, Obama has issued nine veto threats, a modern record for the start of a congressional session. There are good reasons why it's now veto season at the White House. Instead of a divided Congress, where a Democratic Senate kept almost anything undesired from reaching the president's desk, we now have divided government. And a Republican Congress will be passing things. But if Congress is freer, so is the president, says former Clinton White House aide Michael Waldman.
MICHAEL WALDMAN: When the president has an opposition party controlling Congress, it's sort of - freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. You know, it's the Janis Joplin doctrine.
LIASSON: Now the president doesn't have to worry about the political fate of pro-Keystone Democrats in red states, like senators Mary Landrieu or Mark Begich. They both lost their seats in November, so he's free to stand with the environmentalist base of his party. Still, the White House says it's not threatening a veto over the merits of the pipeline itself. Here's spokesman Eric Schultz.
ERIC SCHULTZ: This Keystone project is undergoing review at the State Department. We are opposed to any legislative maneuver that would circumvent that process.
LIASSON: So it's about the process. It is not about the Keystone pipeline.
SCHULTZ: Again, we are opposed to any legislative maneuver that would circumvent a process that's been in place for decades.
LIASSON: The State Department has long had the authority to approve cross-border pipelines, like the Canadian Keystone XL project. But after six years of review, the State Department hasn't made a final recommendation. The president is described as leaning against Keystone, but his public comments on the project have been less than clear. Here's what he said in the State of the Union.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
OBAMA: Twenty-first century businesses need 21st century infrastructure, modern ports and stronger bridges, faster trains and the fastest Internet. Democrats and Republicans used to agree on this. So let's set our sights higher than a single oil pipeline.
LIASSON: Does that mean he thinks Keystone is not important enough to build or not important enough to block? That's what makes this first Obama veto threat of the new Congress so unusual. In the past, presidents used vetoes not just to block legislation, but as a negotiating tool to force changes. Bill Clinton, for instance, vetoed welfare reform twice before he got a version he was willing to sign. But that's not what's happening now, says political scientist Jennifer Selin.
JENNIFER SELIN: I think that here, the dynamics between Congress and President Obama right now are just so contentious that I don't think we're thinking about shaping legislation. I think it's more a question of actually making a statement to the public.
LIASSON: And, says Selin, the statements the president and Congress are making in this veto fight are completely different. In Congress, the Keystone debate is all about the merits of the pipeline itself, whether it helps the economy, hurts the environment, creates jobs. But at the White House...
SELIN: President Obama's really talking about something different. And I think that boils down to this idea of executive power.
LIASSON: Republicans say the flood of veto threats show the president is not serious about bipartisanship. Ken Duberstein, former chief of staff for Ronald Reagan, who issued plenty of vetoes himself, says President Obama needs to be careful not to diminish the power of the veto threat by issuing so many of them so publicly himself.
KEN DUBERSTEIN: They're not leaving themselves any wiggle room. You always need to leave yourself a side door or a back door. But by saying firmly the president will veto means, I'm not negotiating.
LIASSON: So the big threat approach might make sense so long as the vetoes are meant to send a political message. But if they're meant to help shape legislation, they're not as likely to be effective. Mara Liasson, NPR News, Washington.
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In San Francisco on Tuesday, a deputy public defender made news when she challenged police who were trying to take pictures of her client. The police arrested her. Now, on a video of this incident, a police sergeant warns her, quote, "I will arrest you for resisting arrest." So how is a charge like that possible? Our law enforcement correspondent Martin Kaste explains.
MARTIN KASTE, BYLINE: Arrested for resisting arrest - it's kind of like being kicked out for refusing to leave. But this logical head-scratcher has a long track record. Criminology professor David Carter says it's usually an aggravating offense when you're already being arrested for something else.
DAVID CARTER: If you do not comply with that and you fight me off, it's a resist. You got to have the arrest to have a resisting arrest.
KASTE: But as a standalone charge? He says that's rare. San Francisco police spokesman Albie Esparza says it was justified in this case because the public defender was interfering with police work.
ALBIE ESPARZA: We stand behind the sergeant's actions, and it appears that there is no violation of any department policy or any law.
KASTE: The public defender hasn't been charged yet, but she's being investigated for violating a California law that includes resisting arrest and obstructing police. Some see this incident as part of a larger pattern of police using charges like these as an excuse to arrest people unjustly. In Seattle this week, police apologized for the way this officer treated an African-American man who was walking down the street with a golf club.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
CYNTHIA WHITLATCH: If you do not put the golf club down, you will be subject to arrest for obstruction.
KASTE: The man dug in. Why should he drop his golf club? But by arguing, he may have made the cop feel compelled to arrest him. New York criminal defense attorney Nathaniel Burney calls this the boss dog mentality.
NATHANIEL BURNEY: I'm in charge, and you shall not resist me. You shall not contradict me. You're going to do what I say at all costs.
KASTE: And when you don't show the expected degree of compliance, that's how you can end up being arrested for resisting arrest. Martin Kaste, NPR News.
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Many people gathered here at NPR's headquarters in Washington, D.C., last night to say goodbye to one of our own. Ellen McDonnell is leaving. If you don't know that name, you should. She's been involved with this program and other parts of NPR News for 35 years.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
INSKEEP: That's an old version of the theme of this program.
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Ellen McDonnell was an original staff member when MORNING EDITION debuted in 1979. She rose to become executive producer of the program and then executive editor of all radio programs.
INSKEEP: Here's one way you can think about Ellen's role at NPR News. If you hear something you hate on the radio this morning, you are welcome to blame us.
MONTAGNE: If you hear something you love on this program, give a good part of the credit to her.
INSKEEP: She's an energetic, straight-talking force of nature. We had many honest conversations that will never be repeated on the air here.
MONTAGNE: Absolutely not. Our own Cokie Roberts described Ellen McDonnell as a manager who had a rare talent for putting round pegs in round holes. Now she's moved to another chapter in her life and losing no time. Yesterday, Ellen's last, she attended meetings like any other day and today, she boards a flight for vacation in Europe.
INSKEEP: In 35 years, Ellen McDonnell never lost the ability to remember what matters most. There's a show today. It's a chance for us to share information with you, to connect you to a little piece of the world. And whatever happens, we'll be back trying to do it a little better tomorrow.
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Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep. Richard Sherman is in suspense. The Seattle Seahawks' cornerback is preparing for the Super Bowl Sunday. He's also preparing to be a father. His girlfriend is expecting a son. Mr. Sherman says he's hoping the boy will wait to make an appearance until after the game. And he's right to hope that. Telling the mother of your child the you missed the birth because of the Super Bowl is a pretty good excuse, and yet we suspect not quite good enough. You're listening to MORNING EDITION.
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Our Planet Money team is exploring the world of short selling and short sellers. A short is a bet against something, a bet that the price of a stock will plunge, for example. And not everybody likes short sellers. David Kestenbaum has the story of one short seller who made a lot of money betting against a stock that a lot of people liked.
DAVID KESTENBAUM, BYLINE: One of the tricks to short selling is that you have to find something that everyone else loves - loves too much. And in 2010, a bunch of Chinese companies were getting listed on the U.S. stock exchanges. Investors loved them. China, after all, was booming.
SAHM ADRANGI: One company was a paper manufacturing business; another one made seafood snacks in the Fujian province.
KESTENBAUM: This is Sahm Adrangi. Today, he runs a hedge fund called Kerrisdale Capital. Back then, Sahm was just starting out, and one of the companies, called China Education Alliance, caught his eye. It was like Princeton Review, helping students in China to prep for college entrance exams, which seemed like a winner, but Sahm got a guy he knew who could read Chinese to try out the company's website. And he found something odd.
ADRANGI: What he came back with was he couldn't actually purchase any products, despite the fact that this business generated half of its sales from selling testing on its website. When you tried to go to the part of the website where you would put in your credit card, an error screen popped up.
KESTENBAUM: The company also claimed to have a building filled with classrooms. This was harder to check. The building was in a province in northern China near Russia, but Sahm found someone who lived up there to go check out the building.
ADRANGI: And we asked them to take a camera. So we went there and saw that it was a completely vacant building. When you went to each of the floors, there were six floors. There were no chairs; there were no chalkboards. It was just a completely vacant building.
KESTENBAUM: Sahm knew something the market apparently did not. So he shorted the company - bet over a half million dollars that the stock price would tank. It was remarkably easy to do.
ADRANGI: It's just a matter of pressing the red button instead of the green button on your account.
KESTENBAUM: Was there really just a button - a red button you press?
ADRANGI: It is a red button, yeah. I think it was - or it might say short.
KESTENBAUM: Do you remember how it felt pressing that button?
ADRANGI: Slightly dangerous.
KESTENBAUM: Placing the bet, shorting a company, doesn't do you any good if the stock price keeps going up. So Sahm had to convince the world that he was right, persuade the market that China Education Alliance was not what it seemed. Sahm's team posted a video of the empty building online and wrote up a detailed report.
ADRANGI: And I think we released it on 10 a.m. on November 30, 2010. And within two hours the stock had declined 50 percent.
KESTENBAUM: Sahm made a bunch of money. But he says he didn't really celebrate. When you short something, your profit is everyone else's loss. There were, after all, lots of people who had invested in the company, expecting its stock to go up. Now thanks to Sahm, the stock had collapsed. It felt weird to pop open a bottle of champagne.
ADRANGI: There's a lot of investors that become blindsided when we put out these reports, and we'll say, you know, you invested in a company that was committing fraud and so you should be blaming the management instead of us. But most guys blame us.
KESTENBAUM: This is the argument for short selling. Most investors are looking for the next hot stock to buy. Short selling provides a financial incentive for people to do the opposite - to look for stocks that seem overvalued or worse.
ANDREW LEFT: People always said, why did no one ever discover Bernie Madoff?
KESTENBAUM: This is Andrew Left, another well known short seller.
LEFT: The reason why is because you couldn't short Bernie Madoff. Trust me, if there was a way to short Bernie Madoff, he would've been found out 15 years ago.
KESTENBAUM: Andrew Left thinks we're wired to be over-optimistic, which is a nice thing, but it can get you into trouble. David Kestenbaum, NPR News.
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The pre-Super Bowl clock is winding down. Only two days left to hype America's biggest sports spectacle. And then the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks will actually play the game. NPR sports correspondent Tom Goldman is in Phoenix for the pre and post of it all and joins us now to talk about it. Good morning.
TOM GOLDMAN, BYLINE: Hi, Renee.
MONTAGNE: Tom, we thought we'd take a break from talking about Marshawn Lynch's silence and deflated footballs - stuff we've been talking about all week - you know, and actually talk about the big game. It sounds as if it really is going to be big.
GOLDMAN: Yes, absolutely. There's a great deal of anticipation for this. The consensus is these are the best two teams in the NFL. Now, Las Vegas has the Patriots the slightest of favorites, probably based on New England having the more complete offensive unit, with quarterback Tom Brady playing in his sixth Super Bowl, talented pass catchers from tight end Rob Gronkowski to receiver Julian Edelman, a pounding running game with LeGarrette Blount and a very stout offensive line.
MONTAGNE: Defense has been Seattle's strength during its title run last season and then most of this season as well. What impact will the defenses have on this game?
GOLDMAN: Well, the traditional saying, of course, defenses win championships, and that was certainly the case last Super Bowl when the Seahawks obliterated Peyton Manning and the Denver Broncos. Now, Seattle has the best defense again - fast and physical and fairly simple in its approach. But the New England defense isn't far behind.
Now, here are their challenges - both defenses need to stop or slow the run. It's a big challenge since both teams have battering rams for running backs - Seattle's Marshawn Lynch and New England's Blount. And then each defense must do what it can against outstanding, yet different, quarterbacks. Brady is the best quarterback in the league at dropping back, setting up and throwing from that safe pocket provided by his outstanding offensive lineman. New England, on the other hand, faces Russell Wilson. He's very dangerous when he runs out of the pocket. He's so smart, always with his head up looking for receivers, who, in turn, become more dangerous when Wilson runs. New England defensive back Kyle Arrington told me yesterday you don't have to be a defensive genius to know that containing Wilson is a key for the Patriots.
MONTAGNE: And, Tom, something new in this Super Bowl - hand signals by the on-field officials. And that's in response to something the Patriots did earlier in the playoffs.
GOLDMAN: Yeah, it has to do with New England's use of players who are either eligible or ineligible to catch the ball. Patriots' head coach Bill Belichick showed his knowledge of the rulebook by throwing some tricky plays at Baltimore and Indianapolis in the playoffs that designated certain eligible and ineligible receivers. New England confused those opponents but didn't break the rules. Now in Sunday's Super Bowl, as you say, for the first time the officials will use hand signals to alert the defense exactly which players on offense can or cannot catch the ball. And that will let defenses know which players it has to cover.
MONTAGNE: Tom, thanks very much.
GOLDMAN: You're welcome.
MONTAGNE: That's NPR sports correspondent Tom Goldman getting us ready for Super Bowl XLIX Sunday in Glendale, Ariz.
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The shock of the Paris attacks may have moved much of Europe to pump up its counterterrorism efforts, but not Turkey. That majority Muslim country on the edge of Europe shows no sign of increased security measures, even though just weeks ago, a suicide bomber attacked a popular tourist attraction in Istanbul. Some Turks think the government should be more on its guard, as NPR's Peter Kenyon reports from another tourist site.
PETER KENYON, BYLINE: Even in January, Istanbul's Taksim Square is throbbing with life.
(SOUNDBITE OF TRAM BELL)
KENYON: A tram eases to a stop, spilling out tourists and locals under the already crowded pedestrian plaza. Two Americans, Valerie Frey and Brad Gehringer, put down a Turkey guidebook to consider how safe the country is. They have more reason than most here to have thought about this. They live in Paris and were shocked by the attacks against cartoonists and shoppers in a kosher market. But they say Turkey doesn't strike them as a particularly dangerous place.
VALERIE FREY: We weren't too worried, I think, about terrorism. I mean, it's not something we're really worried about, I think, when we travel.
BRAD GEHRINGER: Yeah, terrorism's obviously something you can't plan for. And, you know, you understand that it happens, and I think we honestly just don't really think about it.
FREY: Probably a greater risk of food poisoning, you know. (Laughter).
GEHRINGER: Right.
KENYON: Even before the attacks in France this month, a woman wearing explosives blew up her device in front of tourist police building in the heart of Istanbul's Old City, on any given day, one of the most crowded places in the country. One policeman was killed, and officials rushed to downplay it as a one-off random attack. It turned out the bomber was Russian from Dagestan near Chechnya and had reportedly recently been married to an al-Qaida supporter. Risk analysis consultant Mete Yarar has been advising investors on security risks in Turkey for a decade now. He says if anyone believes this country is exempt from terrorist attacks because of the current government's roots in political Islam, they haven't been paying attention.
METE YARAR: (Through interpreter) This idea just is insensible. Most of those killed in these jihadist attacks have been Muslims, and most of the fighting in the countries next door is between Muslims. So Turkey may be a Muslim country, but this is a very threatening regional environment.
KENYON: Political scientist Ersin Kalaycioglu at Sabanci University says besides several hundred Turkish fighters involved in the Syria conflict, there are thousands of Sunni Muslims in Turkey who are, to some degree, sympathetic to message of jihadist groups, such as al-Qaida or the self-described Islamic State.
ERSIN KALAYCIOGLU: Turkey is deep in this, up to its throat. So they can't simply assume that, you know, these are non-issues for Turkey.
KENYON: But acknowledging the risk doesn't make addressing it any easier. The traditional approaches - tightly securing borders and investing heavily in intelligence gathering - are costly and time-consuming. In addition, Kalaycioglu says this government isn't particularly focused on jihadist violence as a primary threat. It seems more focused on quashing a corruption investigation that threatened several cabinet ministers and stifling any dissent that probe might inspire. And that, Kalaycioglu argues, actually may make it harder to keep track of nascent terror threats.
KALAYCIOGLU: One good policy would be, of course, to have more freedom - freedom of debate - so that they can see these people coming out and making their arguments in larger audiences, and then you can engage them and try to explain that, you know, this is not only a matter of religion, but also politics.
KENYON: For now, however, the government in Ankara seems more interested in talking about the rising Islamophobia in Europe rather than whatever threats Turks may be facing at home. Peter Kenyon, NPR News, Istanbul.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Eleven news organizations are trying a new way to make sure their content reaches you. That, of course, is the central challenge for many in the media. They can't just put programming on TV or on a website or on the radio.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
They want to be on whatever screen you're staring at, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Instagram. Now they're diving into one of the most ephemeral social media programs of all. People use Snapchat to send messages that seemingly disappear shortly after they're viewed.
INSKEEP: The 11 news organizations want their stories to pop up there, however briefly. NPR's David Folkenflik spoke with one of the news executives trying to make this happen.
DAVID FOLKENFLIK, BYLINE: I reached Andrew Morse in San Francisco International Airport on his way back from meeting tech company executives in Silicon Valley. Morse is senior vice president and general manager for Digital for CNN, a partner for Snapchat's new Discover feature.
ANDREW MORSE: Look. I think the mission is consistent for us across every platform, and that is to deliver the most compelling stories, the most compelling content that we can.
FOLKENFLIK: To celebrate the start of its partnership with Snapchat, CNN interviewed Kentucky Senator Rand Paul by smartphone on Snapchat itself.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: What is it that we're doing here today?
SENATOR RAND PAUL: A little bit of Snapchat.
FOLKENFLIK: In a youthful version of the are you running question, CNN's Ashley Codianni sent Paul a picture of colorful arrows pointing to the White House with the caption, do you want to live here?
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PAUL: Maybe. But I think they may have to make the fence and guard the fence a little bit better than they've been doing lately.
FOLKENFLIK: Paul has been interviewed by CNN for TV and the website too. For each platform, Morse says, the approach is different.
MORSE: Just because we are programming on a messaging platform doesn't mean that the quality of our reporting or the quality of our content's going to change. It's not about waterskiing squirrels and cute kittens.
FOLKENFLIK: On its first day, CNN offered a story on the big snowstorm, aerial pictures of Auschwitz on the 70th anniversary of its liberation and a feature on designer drugs and sex in Silicon Valley. Raphael Poplock is vice president of Partnerships at ESPN, which has its own presence within Snapchat Discover.
RAPHAEL POPLOCK: We're going to aim to provide our fans with the best possible highlights, the best possible photo that we have, articles. And we're going to do it in a custom way that rings true again to the Snapchat platform.
FOLKENFLIK: Everyone wants a piece of these guys. Facebook reportedly offered billions to buy Snapchat not too long ago. For now, media executives say, the idea's not simply to profit, but to experiment with ways to reach Snapchat's new and younger users. David Folkenflik, NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
So much for the cease-fire in eastern Ukraine. We've told you in recent days that cease-fire barely deserved the name, as artillery shells landed on civilians. Now Russian-backed separatists have launched an offensive. Civilians are fleeing their homes. NPR's Corey Flintoff joins us from eastern Ukraine to talk about the situation. And, Corey, what are the separatists attacking?
COREY FLINTOFF, BYLINE: Well, they're attacking right now a town called Debaltseve. It's strategically important for the Ukrainians because it's a hub for railway lines and roads in this region. And right now, it's controlled by Ukrainian troops. But if you look on a military map, you could see that it's a finger of territory that extends down into land that's mostly controlled by the separatists.
We tried to get in there yesterday. The troops at the checkpoints we passed warned us that it was really dangerous. The road itself was empty of civilian vehicles. We did see Ukrainian army trucks going in with soldiers and supplies and then empty trucks coming back out. So they're obviously really determined to hang on to this. About 15 kilometers from the town, we started hearing artillery fire and very heavy artillery fire, I might add. So we decided not to push on. Later in the day, I talked with a Ukrainian TV journalist who had gotten out of there earlier, and he said the place was under near constant shelling, and everybody there was taking shelter in the cellars.
INSKEEP: And we should mention this may be part of a broader offensive. The Associated Press is reporting that Ukrainian officials admit that they've lost control of at least one other town that's been overrun by tanks here, not a minor operation. And, Corey, if journalists cannot move around in this situation, particularly in this town you are trying to get to, I suppose civilians must be stuck as well.
FLINTOFF: Yeah. In a situation like this, of course, it's dangerous for them to stay in place. But it's also really risky to move and especially when large numbers of people are trying to move. I talked to a Ukrainian military officer who's working with civilian relief groups. He says they managed to get about 125 people out in buses yesterday. But they've been having trouble getting more buses in there. And the worry, obviously, is that people could be hit as they're trying to load up the buses.
INSKEEP: Why didn't people flee earlier?
FLINTOFF: We got some sense of that just yesterday. Even though we didn't make it all the way to Debaltseve, we stopped in a small town that's close by. In fact, it would probably be the next town to fall if the separatists take control of Debaltseve. And we talked to several people on the street there. They told us that about half the population has already gone. The people who are left say they're stuck for several reasons. One man we talked to said he has no car. So he'd have to leave most of his possessions behind if he left. Some people say they're afraid that if they left, their apartments would be looted. And, you know, we're talking about people who don't have very much to begin with. So if they left, they're afraid that they'd be just totally destitute.
INSKEEP: NPR's Corey Flintoff is reporting on fighting in eastern Ukraine. Corey, thanks very much.
FLINTOFF: Thank you, Steve.
INSKEEP: And let's follow up on another story on Ukraine. Yesterday, we told you of Europe's struggle to keep pressure on Russia. All European Union nations have to agree on sanctions, and a new government in Greece spoke of using its veto power to block an extension of those sanctions. Now we can tell you the Greek leaders backed down and voted to support sanctions after all.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Even Russia's government admits the country's economy is taking a hit from those sanctions. The plunge in the price of oil isn't helping that oil-driven economy either.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Russia's currency, the ruble, has lost nearly 40 percent of its value since just last month. That's not 14. That's 40 - four zero. And this week, the country's credit rating was reduced to junk.
MONTAGNE: For Russia's President Vladimir Putin, it's a dramatic and perhaps dangerous reversal of fortune. To learn more, we reached Sergei Guriev. He was a senior economic advisor to Putin. Then he voiced support for opposition leaders and two years ago was forced into exile. He is now with the influential political science institute, the Sciences Po, in Paris. Good morning.
SERGEI GURIEV: Good morning, Renee.
MONTAGNE: Why don't you give us a sense, please, of the scale of the trouble Russia's economy is in right at this moment?
GURIEV: Well, Russia has been in trouble like this in 2008, 2009. It was a crisis like this in 1998. It was a crisis like this in 1999 -'91, sorry. But I think this time around, the situation is perfect - perfect as in a perfect storm. And you have sanctions. You have low oil price. And on top of that, you have a lack of structural reform, higher corruption, bad investment climate, the only presence of the government and government companies. All of that together makes Russian economy quite vulnerable.
MONTAGNE: How much does sanctions - those sanctions imposed by the U.S. and the EU - figure into this economic downturn?
GURIEV: The sanctions per se would not be a big problem. But coupled with the oil price, they are a serious issue for the Russian economy. If not for the sanctions, Russia would be able to borrow its way out of this crisis. But sanctions cut Russia off. And in that sense, the fall in the oil price creates an existential threat for this nation. So it looks like reserve fund, the foreign currency - there's also the central bank - will be enough to go through a year or two. But after a couple of years, it's not clear how Russian government will break even and therefore it will have to cut spending quite substantially, which will, of course, have political implications.
MONTAGNE: Well, do you see any indication that Vladimir Putin has a plan to pull Russia out of its crisis. Is he getting the full impact of the political implications here?
GURIEV: If you listen to him and read the documents the government prepared, you can see that the major strategy is to wait until oil price goes up or maybe, for some reason, sanctions are lifted.
MONTAGNE: Again, you were an economic adviser to President Putin, you know, at the highest level. Do you believe what Bloomberg News recently reported? And that's that Putin is no longer even listening to the oligarchs who have backed him and who stand to lose big for more sanctions. I mean, he's not even listening to them.
GURIEV: Yes, I think Bloomberg is correct because both the big business people and economic ministers clearly understand the cost of the foreign policy decisions for the Russian economy. And they do talk about the situation, which is harder than the 2008, 2009 crisis. And they do talk about the public, which, by the way, suggests that they don't get Mr. Putin's ear in private.
MONTAGNE: Is it possible that these oligarchs, these extraordinarily wealthy and - you would think - powerful people around Putin - is it possible that they would turn on him?
GURIEV: Well, that depends on what you mean by turn on him. I think the system that Mr. Putin has created is built in a very different way where everybody understands that if you conspire against the government and the president, you may end up behind bars. And this is one of the explanations of why Mr. Evtushenkov, one of the richest people in Russia, did spend a few months under house arrest in 2014 and lost his oil company to the state-owned company Rosneft. One of the rumors was that there was some sign of disrespect or disloyalty on the side of Mr. Evtushenkov. I think Mr. Putin has centralized all the power to send a signal for oligarchs to understand that if they turn on him, they risk everything.
MONTAGNE: Thank you very much for joining us.
GURIEV: Thank you very much, Renee.
MONTAGNE: That's economist Sergei Guriev. He spoke to us from Paris.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
When it comes to promoting good health, a lot of us turn to multivitamins. More than 1 in 3 American adults, to be precise, are in the habit of taking a daily vitamin, even though we hear mixed messages on whether those little capsules really do any good. A new study sheds light on the potential benefits. NPR's food and health correspondent Allison Aubrey joined us to talk about it. Good morning.
ALLISON AUBREY, BYLINE: Hi there, Renee.
MONTAGNE: This study evaluated, I gather, the effect of taking multivitamins over a very long period of time. What did the researchers find?
AUBREY: So the new study's published in the "Journal Of Nutrition." It's really trying to get at whether taking a multivitamin might help cut the risk of death from heart disease. Now, as you might imagine, many factors influence the risk of disease - right? - everything from your diet, your exercise habits, whether you smoke. So to try to figure out the effect of any one factor is tough. But to try and disentangle this, researchers back in the early 1990s began studying a group of about 9,000 adults, all of whom were in their 40s or older. And the researchers went into the people's homes, interviewed them about a whole range of health habits, asked about diets, smoking. They also asked about multivitamin use and what they have found, 20 years later, is that women who'd been in the habit of taking a daily multivitamin with minerals for three years or longer had a lower risk of dying from heart disease. Interestingly, they did not see this benefit in men.
MONTAGNE: And what might explain the difference between men and women?
AUBREY: Well, it's unclear. And in fact, this is not the first study to show multivitamins don't lower the risk of death from heart disease in men. A large study of physicians came to the same conclusion. And so it's possible that for unknown reasons, women may benefit where men don't. But it's also possible that women who take multivitamins are more proactive in their health. So maybe what's being captured here is the result of healthy living, not just the result of taking a multivitamin. It's hard to suss out.
MONTAGNE: If researchers are not certain that multivitamins help cut the risk of heart disease, are there other reasons to take one?
AUBREY: Well, the answer to that question really depends on who you ask. On one hand, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force - that's a panel of health experts that make evidence-based recommendations - says that there's insufficient evidence on vitamins. And some doctors say, hey, you know, it's a waste of money. There's evidence that taking more than the recommended amounts can be harmful. But what's clear is that this is still a very active area of research. The physicians' health study I mentioned, though it found no heart disease benefit, did find that multivitamin use was associated with reduced cancers and cataracts. So researchers are planning a follow-up study. And I'd say, in a way, the jury's still out.
MONTAGNE: What about overall health? Is there a case to be made that a multivitamin, say, might give us nutrients we miss out on if we don't eat enough fruits and vegetables?
AUBREY: Yes, I think there is a case to be made. In fact, I spoke to Jeffrey Blumberg at Tufts University. He's a senior scientist at the nutrition school there. And he says the argument in favor of taking a multivitamin is that it's a way to sort of plug the nutritional gaps in our diets. I mean, to put this in context, at a time when the government's official dietary advice is that we should all be filling half of our plates with fruits and vegetables, CDC data shows that on average, Americans only eat about one fruit and one vegetable a day. As a result, Blumberg points out, many Americans don't meet target intakes for vitamins. So his view is this.
JEFFREY BLUMBERG: Everybody should eat better. But if you're not, it's a very prudent thing for most people to choose to take a multivitamin.
AUBREY: And I'd say the bottom line is even if you are taking a multivitamin, you should still be trying to eat better as well.
MONTAGNE: All right. Allison, thanks.
AUBREY: Thank you, Renee.
MONTAGNE: NPR's food and health correspondent Allison Aubrey.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
The art world has jumped into the Super Bowl rivalry. While hometown mayors might wager, say, lobster against local beer, Seattle Art Museum and New England's Clark Art Institute are wagering major paintings on a three-month loan - both spectacular seascapes of their regions. If the Seahawks win, Seattle will get a Winslow Homer masterpiece of a peninsula in Maine. If it's the Patriots, a dramatic rendering of Washington's "Puget Sound" will go East. It's MORNING EDITION.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The other day, we stood at the door of one of the many politicians thinking of running for president. Former Senator Jim Webb led us into his office in Arlington, Va., just across the river from Washington.
JIM WEBB: Hey, how are you?
INSKEEP: Senator, hi, Steve Inskeep.
A rifle and other mementos of his military career hang on the walls, though you don't notice at first because your eyes are riveted on the windows.
WEBB: Down the steps, I'll show you the view.
INSKEEP: It's a spectacular view of the U.S. Capitol, the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial and, just downstairs, the Marine Corps Memorial. It shows five Americans hoisting the flag over Iwo Jima. Consider this a view of Webb's career. He served in the Marines until he was wounded in Vietnam. Then he became a best-selling novelist. He served as President Reagan's secretary of the Navy then came to this office to write. He later became a senator over at the Capitol before returning here to write again. Now he's working on a cable TV series on Vietnam.
Why not just focus on that instead of politics?
WEBB: That's been my dilemma since I left the Marine Corps. You know, I just wanted to be a good Marine, you know? Then I got blown up. When I went to law school over here I discovered that I loved to write. So on the one hand, I was raised to lead. And I would get out and write and miss, you know, the leadership environment.
INSKEEP: Which he's missing again. That is why he is exploring a run for president, even though the Democrat would be a huge underdog to Hillary Clinton.
WEBB: The Democratic Party could do very well by returning to its Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Andrew Jackson roots, where the focus of the party was making sure that all people who lack a voice in the corridors of power could have one through their elected representatives.
INSKEEP: When you say all people, who's lacking? Who's missing?
WEBB: Well, I think they can do a better job with white working people. I think this last election clearly showed that. If you look at the candidates that were getting beaten in areas where traditionally they had won, they were getting well less than 40 percent of the white vote. And that doesn't need to happen.
INSKEEP: Is there something about President Obama that's driven people away?
WEBB: No, this was happening before President Obama, you know. And I think that there's a lot of misunderstanding about the motives of people in this group.
INSKEEP: You're saying white voters are misunderstood as being racist in some ways. Is that what you're hinting at here?
WEBB: In many cases, yes.
INSKEEP: But you think it's something different?
WEBB: I think it is different. I think it was going on well before Barack Obama was elected president. You know, and this was not something that was a reaction to Barack Obama. I think that it's true that when you look at 270 electoral votes and how to get there, there were different calculations that took place in terms of how to do that. And I believe that the Democratic Party should reach out to all people...
INSKEEP: Are you...
WEBB: ...Regardless of their background.
INSKEEP: Help me understand what you're saying there. You're saying that President Obama's two campaigns, in trying to assemble a coalition to win presidential elections, reached out to certain groups, often marginalized groups - African Americans, Latinos and others - but somehow lost some broader picture of the country?
WEBB: I think that - what I'm saying is that you're not going to have a situation again where you have 96 percent of the African-American vote turning out for a presidential candidate. We need to get back to the message that was being developed - a return to the principles of the Democratic Party, that we are going to give everyone who needs access to the corridors of power that kind of access regardless of any of your antecedents. I think that's a fair concept. I think it worked when my mother was growing up in east Arkansas in a completely impoverished area, and there was really very little hope. And among other things, the Roosevelt administration built an ammunition factory north of Little Rock. And my grandmother got a job making artillery shells and actually had some income, and the family started being able to have a future. Those are the kinds of things that the Democratic Party's always stood for.
INSKEEP: Some people will know that one of your many books was a history of the Scots-Irish people in America. Listening to you, I'm wondering if that is part of your political thinking, the knowledge of that history. How does one relate to the other?
WEBB: I took a lot of time putting together the cultural journey of the people who largely ended up in the Appalachian Mountains and then spread out and became the dominant culture of the non-slaveholding South. And I think of blue-collar America. And from their migration here came what we have come to call Jacksonian Democracy.
INSKEEP: Named for Andrew Jackson, who was Scots-Irish.
WEBB: Andrew Jackson was the first American president who was not of the English aristocratic descent. He established the principle that you measure the health of your society at the base, you know, not at the apex. He enabled that political philosophy to sort of become the American philosophy, the way that we have looked at political issues since. And it largely grew out of this culture that I wrote the history about.
INSKEEP: You must know, of course, President Obama laid out a number of economic and other proposals in a State of the Union address the other day. How well, if at all, did that list of priorities match up with where you think your party and your country need to be?
WEBB: He laid out a lot of different proposals. And I don't want to sit here and react to every single one of them proposal by proposal. I believe that if you look at our recovery, you will see that if you hold stocks - I hold stocks - you're doing fairly well under this recovery. The stock market has almost tripled since April of 2009. If you are simply a typical wage-earning American, you haven't really done that well. Wages actually are flat and a little down. Loans to small businesses actually have been down since that period. And those are the issues that I think need to be addressed. And we have to find ways to protect the working people.
INSKEEP: If you run for president, there will be a point during the primary season when you would have to say to Hillary Clinton - assuming she runs - here's why it shouldn't be you. Here's why it should be me. What's the answer to that?
WEBB: I really don't have an answer for you on that. She has not announced that she's running. I have not announced that I'm running. If I were to run, it would not be sort of as a counterpoint to her. I have issues that I care about. I want to put them on the table, and we'll see.
INSKEEP: That's as committed as one-time Virginia Senator Jim Webb is for now. He says his big challenge would be raising money to promote his ideas. It's a job he says he doesn't like, though it would be essential if he were ever to reach the White House, hidden somewhere down there in his spectacular office view of Washington.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Just in time for the Super Bowl, the Berkeley Repertory Theater is presenting the world premiere of a play about football, its effects on players and fans. It's based on interviews with former pro players, their families and the people who root for them. April Dembosky, of member station KQED, reports on "X's And O's (A Football Love Story)."
(SOUNDBITE OF WHISTLE)
APRIL DEMBOSKY, BYLINE: Dwight Hicks plays the coach and several other characters in "X's And O's." He also played safety for the San Francisco 49ers and the Indianapolis Colts in the 1980s.
DWIGHT HICKS: I had a ruptured tendon in this finger. I broke my hand, rotator cuff, shoulder injuries, but I never missed a game because of an injury.
DEMBOSKY: He was a four-time Pro Bowler. But it wasn't until the early 2000s that Hicks realized there might be another injury he needed to worry about. That's when more and more retired football players began reporting symptoms of early onset Alzheimer's.
HICKS: It wasn't scary until some of the prominent players - guys that I knew, some guys that I played against - started to have this problem.
DEMBOSKY: Other colleagues were showing personality changes, rage and depression, signs of a condition called chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Playwright KJ Sanchez says these medical discoveries thrust football into an identity crisis and not for the first time.
KJ SANCHEZ: There have been intense conversations about the violence of the game, the brutality of the game and the safety of the players. Through every generation, we knew what the risks were.
DEMBOSKY: Throughout the play, there are breaks in the narrative where the cast marks some of the game's historical moments.
(SOUNDBITE OF PLAY, "X'S AND O'S (A FOOTBALL LOVE STORY)")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: 1869.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTRESS #1: Rutgers and Princeton play the first college football game.
DEMBOSKY: In 1905, 19 high school and college players died playing the game. The president of Harvard at the time, Charles Elliott, wanted to banish football.
(SOUNDBITE OF PLAY, "X'S AND O'S (A FOOTBALL LOVE STORY)")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As Charles Elliott) Today's football is a boy-killing, education-prostituting, gladiatorial sport.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTRESS #1: Teddy Roosevelt, president of the United States, responds. The bruising nature of football instills manly virtues and builds strong bodies. When with each passing day, America risks becoming less rugged and virile.
DEMBOSKY: Playwright KJ Sanchez and her co-writer Jenny Mercein got the idea for the play after a pivotal milestone in today's debate about head injury - the suicide of former San Diego Charger Junior Seau. They wondered whether they as fans - and they both are - Mercein's father played for the Packers - had some responsibility to the players and for the fate of football itself.
SANCHEZ: And we started to talk about how many conflicted feelings we had about loving the game, now understanding the significance of the damage that the game does.
DEMBOSKY: In "X's And O's (A Football Love Story)," they leave it to a table of fans at a bar to work through.
(SOUNDBITE OF PLAY, "X'S AND O'S (A FOOTBALL LOVE STORY)")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTRESS #2: (As fan) If football goes away...
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #3: (As fan) It's not going to go away.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTRESS #2: (As fan) My family, we don't go to church. We're not big on concerts or theater or whatever, so football's our way of being part of something bigger. I have to admit, I'd be lonely.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #3: (As fan) But you've got to ask, why are you watching it?
DEMBOSKY: The question - how violent the game has to be to be entertaining, and what they really get out of that violence.
(SOUNDBITE OF PLAY, "X'S AND O'S (A FOOTBALL LOVE STORY)")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTRESS #2: (As fan) I think I watch it for the moment not when the guy gets knocked down, but rather the moment he gets back up. I think I need to remember we can get back up. I don't know.
DEMBOSKY: After the play runs in theaters, Sanchez wants to take it to colleges and high schools. She wants to start conversations like these in the community, especially among young people who will decide whether to play or not, and how much of their future they want to bet on football. For NPR News, I'm April Dembosky in San Francisco.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Diana Krall's new album is a collection of songs that she first heard on vinyl, from The Mamas & The Papas to Elton John and the Eagles. But the title cut of the album is a song that maybe isn't so well known. It's a Bob Dylan tune - "Wallflower."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WALLFLOWER")
DIANA KRALL: (Singing) Wallflower, wallflower, won't you dance with me? I'm sad and lonely, too.
SIMON: Diana Krall joins us from our studios in New York. Thanks much for being with us.
KRALL: Thank you, Scott. I was really looking forward to the opportunity to speak with you.
SIMON: Well, the pleasure is ours. The honor is ours. Let's begin with this track "Wallflower." What drew you to it?
KRALL: I heard it on a bootleg series and it was the summer time and we had it on in the car. So I was driving around my home in British Columbia on a beautiful summer afternoon. And I was listening to it with my children in the back. And I thought, well, this is a song that we should all be singing together in the car (laughter). And I loved it. There's so much truth and beauty in it. Simple, but it speaks to a lot of people.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WALLFLOWER")
KRALL: (Singing) And I know that you're going to be mine one of these days, mine alone, wallflower, wallflower.
SIMON: I don't hear a dog in the background, though.
KRALL: Yes, well, in the original - in the bootleg I believe there is a dog barking and it's a bit of a broken piano and I can imagine afternoons being played on the piano and just playing it. That was in my thoughts of how warm it felt.
SIMON: Yeah. Well, speaking of warm, let's listen to - I think - if I may, my favorite on this album - "California Dreaming."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CALIFORNIA DREAMING")
KRALL: (Singing) All the leaves are brown and the sky is gray. I've been for a walk on a winter's day.
I started working on that song or listening to it - probably listening to Jose Feliciano actually was my first listen to it, not The Mamas & the Papas. And so it's been sort of sitting in the back of my mind since then. And I think the really exquisite piece to the puzzle of finally recording it was having Graham Nash singing on it. I could never say that Graham Nash sings background vocals, but to have Graham Nash singing with me was - it still kind of hits me, like, oh, my gosh. That's so cool.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CALIFORNIA DREAMING")
KRALL: (Singing) On such a winter's day. California dreaming on such a winter's day. California dreaming on such a winter's day.
SIMON: When do you think, looking back on it, you began to understand that you could sing - that you had a voice that could reach into people?
KRALL: I loved to sing so much, so I think it was in high school where I really felt like I would like to sing. And then when I went to Los Angeles, I went there with my dad. We drove in my old sort of crap Toyota Tercel car. And I was doing a bunch of piano bar gigs and I pull up smoking cigarettes, wearing a Laura Ashley dress, trying to play my three-hour solo piano gig for the wedding party. I don't know. It was like - that was - I was a kid. I was, like, 19 years old, you know? And I got this gig in Long Beach. I auditioned for the piano gig and they said can you sing? And I went hmm. And Ray Brown was like, Krall, I'm getting you this gig. You better sing.
SIMON: Maybe we ought to explain. Ray Brown is a great jazz bass player.
KRALL: Ray Brown , sort of the father of us all, as we say.
SIMON: Let me ask you about another song on here. A lot of these songs, of course, will be familiar to people, but there's a Sir Paul McCartney song on this album that, I gather, he never recorded. Now, let's listen to a bit of "If I Take You Home Tonight."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "IF I TAKE YOU HOME TONIGHT")
KRALL: (Singing) If I take you home tonight I will think of songs to sing to you, music filled with joy and light. If I take you home tonight. If I tell you how I feel.
SIMON: How did this song come into your life?
KRALL: I had the great opportunity to work with Paul McCartney on a record he did called "Kisses On The Bottom," which were a collection of songs that he chose that meant a lot to him. In amongst these songs that he'd chosen he had written a handful of romantic ballads and beautiful songs, like he do so well (laughter).
SIMON: Yeah.
KRALL: And "If I Take You Home Tonight" was one of them and it just didn't make it on the record. And I was - that happens. You end with 20 tunes and you have to choose. And, you know, I think he said, oh, next time. So I still had the sheet music on my piano and I asked Paul if it was OK. At first, I had to muster up the courage to ask Paul, to say can I do this song? And he said sure. He told me he likes it, so that's really....
SIMON: Phew..
KRALL: I hit the ceiling, Yeah, really, phew.
SIMON: Yeah.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "IF I TAKE YOU HOME TONIGHT")
KRALL: (Singing) Oh, my love, let me treat you right. Let me take you home tonight.
SIMON: May I ask you about your - you have two 8-year-old twins, right?
KRALL: I do - very different boys; twins, but very different people.
SIMON: And, of course, you're married to a very famous musician, too.
KRALL: Yeah, I'm married to Elvis Costello, you know, or darling, as I call him (laughter).
SIMON: What do 8-year-old twins do for the music in your household? I mean, do you go between "My Little Pony" and jazz or...
KRALL: No, they are listening to Jack White at the moment. And they - I said what are you listening - playing your piano lessons? Well, we've got Jack White and "Smoke On The Water." That's enough. That's all we need (laughter).
SIMON: They're 8.
KRALL: I'm like, oh, you don't know what's coming to you, kid. But I think they're more aware of what Elvis does, you know, because he's got lots of groovy videos out. And, you know, I'd rather them singing "Every Day I Write The Book" than a tragic torture (laughter) song at this point anyway. They have time to do that. They have time for that later.
SIMON: (Laughter).
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FEELS LIKE HOME")
KRALL: (Singing) Feels like home to me.
SIMON: Diana Krall - her new album "Wallflower." Thanks so much for speaking with us.
KRALL: Thank you so much, Scott.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FEELS LIKE HOME")
KRALL: (Singing) Feels like I'm all the way back.
SIMON: This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Martin Luther King is British, Coretta Scott King, too. So is Lyndon Baines Johnson, Superman, Batman, the last Abraham Lincoln, the ramrod U.S. Marine and chisel-chested CIA operative in "Homeland" and many of the Baltimore cops and hoods in "The Wire." So are Philip on "The Americans," Eli on "The Good Wife" and both of those stealthily adulterous Americans on "The Affair." I could go on. In this entertainment award season, you'll see lots of actors who appear in American cop, doc and spy movies and TV series, who win an award, take the stage, and say, oh, thanks awfully chaps. They're British actors - or maybe Australians - playing Americans.
Now, this has been going on since Leslie Howard and Vivien Leigh played Ashley and Scarlett in "Gone With The Wind." But when you have to hire a couple of British actors, David Oyelowo and Tom Wilkinson, to play MLK and LBJ jawboning in the Oval Office, you may wonder, are all American actors on Tibetan retreats or in rehab? A Hollywood director once told me that British actors get a lot of work here because they tend to be pros, not prima donnas. They know their lines, even if they were up late carousing, and are less likely than American stars to insist that they need their organic colonic cleansing counselor on set before they shoot a scene. American actors will say, I'm from Dayton, I can play a New Yorker, while British and Australian actors work to perfect distinctly American accents that match a role. In fact, some British actors say taking on an accent can help them slip more fully into character.
Carlton Cuse, the director of "Lost," told TV Guide there currently seems to be a big gulf between Australian and British actors and American actors. The American actors just don't seem as well trained or as deep and complex. I think American directors like having British actors around to feel classy. They get to say, you know that guy playing the drug-addled hustler? He studied at the Royal Academy. There are a few Americans who've played signature British roles. Robert Downey Jr. has been Sherlock Holmes, Gillian Anderson is a fixture on the London stage, and of course, Meryl Streep, who changes accents the way some of us change socks, has played Margaret Thatcher. But the balance-of-talent deficit between Hollywood and the British realm doesn't seem to be nearly equal. I won't be happy until Beyonce plays Queen Victoria.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "RUN THE WORLD")
BEYONCE: Who run the world? Girls, girls. Who run the world? Girls, girls. Who run the world? Girls, girls. Who run the world? Girls, girls. Who run this mother? Girls. Who run this mother? Girls. Who run this mother? Girls. Who run the world? Girls, girls. Who run the world? Girls, girls. Who run the world? Girls, girls. Who run the world? Girls, girls. It's hot up in here, DJ.
SIMON: Brilliant. You're listening to NPR News.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon. Australia's Colleen McCullough died this week at the age of 77. She was working as a neuroscience researcher at Yale University when she wrote the novel that would bring her fame and fortune, "The Thorn Birds." It has sold 30 million copies around the world since it was first published in the late 1970s. NPR's Lynn Neary has this remembrance of Colleen McCullough and the book that is her legacy.
LYNN NEARY, BYLINE: Colleen McCullough wrote two-dozen books in her lifetime, many of them set in her native Australia. But in the late '90s McCullough was living in Rome, happily working on a series of novels about the Roman Empire. She had two more books to go, and as she told NPR in 2000, she was fully prepared to stay there.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH: But my agent and my publishers started to bleat that it was time that I got out of Rome. They said, you know, if you don't get of Rome, the world will forget that you ever wrote about anything else.
NEARY: That bit of hyperbole may have catapulted McCullough out of Rome, but there was little chance that anyone was going to forget her most popular novel, "The Thorn Birds." It made publishing history in 1977 when Avon Books bought the paperback rights for $1.9 million. Carrie Feron, who still shepherds the book at Avon, says it has never gone out of print.
CARRIE FERON: We have published the book in all different formats - first in mass-market, then in trade, then in e-book ever since then. And people still come to the book and still love the book.
NEARY: "The Thorn Birds" has not only attracted legions of fans, it's also inspired a generation or two of writers. Sarah MacLean is a romance novelist who also writes about the romance genre.
SARAH MACLEAN: I read that book and I read it over a summer. And I can remember just loving every page of it, just eating it up.
NEARY: MacLean says she's been talking to a lot of romance writers since McCullough died. They say that "The Thorn Birds" was a huge influence on them. Strictly speaking, MacLean says, it doesn't fit the formula of the genre. But that doesn't mean it isn't hugely, dramatically, unforgettably romantic. It's an epic tale spanning several generations and set largely on the Australian outback. At its core is a love story between a beautiful woman and a Catholic priest.
MACLEAN: Which is bonkers (laughter). But wonderful at the same time because of the illicit nature of this romance that you know can't possibly succeed. I mean, she just - she tells a great story.
NEARY: "The Thorn Birds" was an instant best-seller when it was first published, but its popularity grew when it was made into one of the most-watched TV mini-series ever, starring Rachel Ward as Meggie and Richard Chamberlain as the priest.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE THORN BIRDS")
RICHARD CHAMBERLAIN: (As Priest) Meggie, we must make an end of this. My life belongs to God. You've always known that.
RACHEL WARD: (As Meggie) That dear and gentle God, who has taken from me everyone that I've loved most in the world.
NEARY: "The Thorn Birds" has lasted because it was written from the heart, says Avon's Carrie Feron.
FERON: It reminds me of other books like that, such as "Jane Eyre," where you have the journey of a woman, and not all of it's easy and not all of it's pleasant. And it definitely lifts a veil on a life that most of us will never live, so I think that is what makes it an enduring story.
NEARY: Feron says McCullough wrote a wide variety of books, from historical fiction to whodunits, but none had the sticking power of this tale of forbidden romance. Lynn Neary, NPR News, Washington.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The United Nation says it's made an agreement that will gradually release 3,000 child soldiers from an armed group in South Sudan. The children are between 11 and 17 years of age. They have spent their childhoods fighting and killing for a group called the South Sudan Democratic Army Cobra faction. Jonathan Veitch, UNICEF's South Sudan representative, says these children have been forced to do and see things that no child should ever experience. Sudan has a long history of civil war and using children for war. Only a few of the thousands of children who get captured and dragged into the conflict manage to escape. Emmanuel Jal did. He's now an actor and musician in Toronto, who had a role in last year's film "The Good Lie." He was 8 years old when he became a child soldier.
EMMANUEL JAL: Most of us have seen our homes burned down, have seen terrible things happen. So, I mean, I witness one of my aunt raped in our home area. And witnessing and seeing my home village burned down and then when we're told that I'm going to be given skills and a gun to fight the people who did that to my homeland, there was not much for me to be convinced.
SIMON: What was life for you like as a child soldier?
JAL: It's hell seeing 6, 7 years old burying their own dead. Nobody's going to give them questions when they're beginning to ask questions. Simple questions - why are we here? Where's my mommy? That's when you get to know, like, these are children sometimes when the terrible things happen.
SIMON: So on the one hand, they're killing people and on the other hand they're still children.
>>JAL They are still children, but, you know, they've been - they've grown really fast in terms of - to be trained to be killing machines because - the only thing is children don't know you die once. And also - AK is also a terrible gun that has been invented because young people can carry the gun - 8 years old can fire an AK47 that's as good as a 20-year-old.
SIMON: How did you get out of that?
JAL: Well, what happened is I - we plan an escape. It was really, really dangerous. The movement that we're struggling in became tribal and so, you know, you see soldiers who are turning on each other. And so we decide, look, I rather go and die where my family members are. We were, like, around - between two to 400, I think, and only 16 people survived. And the way some died of starvation, dehydration and a lot of things that attacked us on the way that we weren't prepared for.
SIMON: You wound up at a place called Waat.
JAL: Yeah, when I arrived in a place called Waat and I met a British aid worker called Emma McCune. And so Emma McCune was the one who smuggled me into Kenya and put me in school, so she disarmed me.
SIMON: So when you heard the news that 3,000 child soldiers may be gradually released in South Sudan, what did that make you feel?
JAL: Well, it's exciting on one hand. It's also sad because if the war hasn't stopped those kids are still going to go back because when they have disarmed where are they going to go do? Is there a place safe for them that the U.N. is going to keep them in? Where are their families? The best thing is get them to school. If they are not schooled they'll be idle at home. They'll still get guns and go back. It will be just, like, for publicity stunt.
SIMON: You're a hip-hop star, an actor, a peace activist now - certainly sounds like you're doing well. Do you ever get over what happened to you? Do you have nightmares at night about what happened to you?
JAL: Yeah, I used to - I used to have a lot of nightmares. Life was difficult then, you know, but music became the place I was able to see heaven again. So through music I was able to dance, through music I was able to become a child again. And I did not know that I was going to be a recording artist. I was just doing it for fun because it gave me - it kept me busy.
SIMON: You know, this week, Mr. Jal, a senior commander of Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army went before the International Criminal Court charged with crimes that include murder and sexual enslavement. Apparently he was a child soldier. And without asking you to give a legal judgment, in your human moral terms does he deserve some leniency because of his past? Do you look at someone like him and think there, but for the grace of music, could be me?
JAL: Here, what you see - the way I look at it, most child soldiers - even me, I'm not clean. When I was a child soldier I did stuff, but along the way I got help. I wanted to change and I'm here. So sometimes we need to ask ourselves why do people do extremely terrible things, you know? Why are they be able to do that? Sometime when I look at it's - crime is like disease. You know, we have psychopath governing people and they kill millions of people. They are the same ones - the same general. Getting that guy to ICC, that's a good sign. It gives hope to a lot of people who have been hurt, but at the same time you look - he was a child soldier as well, you know? So where - the way I want it is what do the people say? Is this a situation where we can have the people who have been directly affected to be able to come and testify and talk, and what would they feel would be best way for them to find justice?
SIMON: Does your current life seem a little unreal to you sometimes?
JAL: I feel like I'm dreaming where I am now. I feel like - I don't even know. I mean, I just been nominated here for one of the biggest awards in Canada - the Juno award, so - which mean my music is getting recognized. I just have a new album. I also have acted in a movie with Reese Witherspoon. All these platforms, I'm using them to raise conscious awaking. So even when the nightmare comes, it's not as effective as it used to be.
SIMON: Emmanuel Jal - he is a hip-hop artist and a former child soldier in Sudan. Thanks so much for speaking us.
JAL: Thank you very much.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WE FALL")
JAL: (Singing) Mama left me without saying goodbye. The world crush me, I thought I was going to die. I saw many die, I turned a blind eye. Death never left me it kept passing by. I call on Jesus to come by here.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The story of Paramount Records is rich with contradictions. It was a record label that was founded by a furniture company, a commercial enterprise that became arguably the most comprehensive chronicler of African-American music in the early 20th century.
Now, the second and final volume of a huge Paramount reissue project features what may be the label's greatest contribution to American music. It's recordings of the Miss. style that came to be called the Delta blues. NPR's Tom Cole has the stories of some of the musicians and one of their champions.
TOM COLE, BYLINE: For Paramount executives, music was an afterthought.
JACK WHITE: They didn't really care about any of it. They just wanted to sell record players.
COLE: Guitarist, singer and songwriter Jack White founded Third Man Records, one of the partners along with Revenant Records, in the Paramount reissue project.
WHITE: And by accident, they captured Charley Patton and Mississippi Sheiks and Blind Lemon Jefferson and Son House and Skip James. I mean, these are - these are the granddaddies of modern music.
COLE: The acknowledged granddaddy of the Delta grand daddies was guitarist and singer Charley Patton.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SPOONFUL BLUES")
CHARLEY PATTON: I'm about to go to jail about this spoonful. (Singing) In all a spoon', 'bout that spoon. The women goin' crazy, every day in their life 'bout a...
WHITE: He's the most important figure, in my opinion, in this whole Paramount world because he's the one that all the other blues musicians looked up to. He's almost the beginning of the family tree.
COLE: Patton is believed to have been born around 1891 and was possibly the first musician in the Mississippi Delta to make his living just by playing blues. He was a hero to other musicians, says Peter Guralnick, author of several books on the blues. But he says the man was nothing like his music sounded.
PETER GURALNICK: Just hearing the voice, you would think you were hearing someone who was 6 foot 3, 6 foot 4", someone, weighed 300 pounds, was jet black. And as it turned out, Charley Patton was extremely light skinned, and he was a little guy. (Laughter) And so this voice - he just comes out with this unbelievable energy, this focus and an intensity. There's nothing else that's happening when he singing. That's it. He's there.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HIGH WATER")
PATTON: (Singing) Now, the water now, mama, done took Charley's town. Well, the tell me the water done took Charley's town. Boy I'm goin' to Vicksburg. Well, I'm goin to Vicksburg, for that high of mine.
COLE: Patton was also the consummate entertainer. He clowned around on stage, playing his guitar behind his head, in between his legs. When he decided he was ready to record, Patton wrote a letter to a white man named H.C. Speir, who was a talent scout for Paramount.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
H.C. SPEIR: Patton was one of the best talents I ever had. And he was one of the best sellers, too, on record.
COLE: That's Speir from a 1968 interview recorded by blues historian Gayle Dean Wardlow, now housed in the archives in at Middle Tennessee State University's Center for Popular Music. Wardlow says Patton went to Speir for a reason.
GAYLE DEAN WARDLOW: The word was out all over Miss., that if you want to get on record, you go audition for Mr. Speir. The word was he won't cheat you.
COLE: Unlike a lot of the other record companies' scouts, Speir paid a flat fee for each song, usually around $50; a lot of money for rural musicians at the time. And he had an ear the music because he grew up in the Mississippi Hill country hearing it. He also seemed to understand musicians' polite.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
SPEIR: He's a human being. And when he's forced into things, he can take what we call the blues, you know, be blue. You can imagine that a child that was sick and the white man didn't do very much or couldn't get a doctor. That's what it is - what the blues is - and sorrow.
(SOUNDBITE OF SON HOUSE SONG, "WALKIN' BLUES")
WARDLOW: Nobody was really recording the guitar bluesmen before Paramount. And your great Mississippi bluesmen all came to Speir, almost all of them.
COLE: Gayle Dean Wardlow says one of them was guitarist, pianist and singer Skip James.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DEVIL GOT MY WOMAN")
SKIP JAMES: (Singing) Well, I'd rather be the devil then to be that woman' man.
COLE: He was born Nehemiah Curtis James in 1902 in Yazoo City, Miss. He told an interviewer in 1964 that he got his nickname from all the dancing around he did as a child.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JAMES: I was very active in dancing, and they called me Skippy.
COLE: James learned piano and a little music theory in high school. Peter Guralnick also interviewed James and says the musician took his blues very seriously.
GURALNICK: Sometimes it was just a very cerebral inward-looking person, but under no constraint whatever to be self-deprecating. (Laughter) Skip James felt that he was making music of great impact and seriousness.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SPECIAL RIDER BLUES")
JAMES: (Singing) I ain't got no special rider here. Ain't got nobody to love and feel my care.
COLE: Even though he came out of the same fertile environment as Charley Patton and Robert Johnson, James didn't sound like anyone else. He tuned his guitar differently and would throw is voice into a high falsetto. He's credited with creating the first real guitar breaks in a blues song.
(SOUNDBITE OF SKIP JAMES SONG, "SPECIAL RIDER BLUES")
COLE: James said he recorded more than two dozen songs over the course of just a few days in Paramount's Grafton, Wis. studio.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JAMES: Didn't have but three minutes to make a record. I made 26 songs, eight on guitar and the rest of them on piano.
COLE: What happened afterwards upset him as he recalled in that 1964 interview, which is now at the Southern Folklife Collection's Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JAMES: I got one consideration as a royalty out of all of those records. Well, that just discouraged me. I just give up music for a long time. Give it up completely.
COLE: It could be that James only got one royalty payment because it was 1931; the height of the Great Depression. No one could afford to spend 75 cents on a record anymore. The label made its final recordings the following year. And again, the musicians were from the Delta, the Mississippi Sheiks.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE NEW STOP AND LISTEN")
MISSISSIPPI SHEIKS: (Singing) And I went to the graveyard of love, deep down in her pain. Now don't ya a-hear me talkin', pretty mama? Lord, I went to the grave alone, deep down in her pain.
COLE: Paramount records folded within the year. Skip James lived to see his career revived during the folk boom of the 1960s. Charley Patton, a drinker with heart problems, died two years after Paramount closed its doors. And H.C. Speir got out of the music business, eventually becoming an insurance salesman. Still, Jack White says what they and their record label accomplished was considerable.
WHITE: They were trying to make a dollar and captured American history.
COLE: Tom Cole. NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE NEW STOP AND LISTEN")
MISSISSIPPI SHEIKS: (Singing) Well, I went to the church house, praying on my bending knees. Now don't ya a-hear me talkin', pretty mama?
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Few poets explored the history and concerns of African-Americans like the late Amiri Baraka. Amiri Baraka died last year. He was one of the most important and controversial figures in African-American literature. Next week, to mark Black History Month, Grove Press is publishing a comprehensive anthology of Amiri Baraka's poetry. It's called "SOS: Poems 1961 to 2013." Tom Vitale has more.
TOM VITALE, BYLINE: For Amiri Baraka, poetry was about the sound of the words, that the poems should come alive when they were read aloud.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
AMIRI BARAKA: This is a poem for John Coltrane. It's called "Am/Trak." (Reading) History love scream. Oh. Trane. Oh Trane. Oh. Scream history love. Begin on by Philly nightclub or the basement of a colored church. Walk the bars, my man, for pay. Honk the night lust of money. Oh blow scream history love.
VITALE: In 1980, Baraka told me about his deep interest in jazz. He wrote music criticism and his seminal book "Blues People," written under his given name, LeRoi Jones, is still in print. In his poetry, he incorporated the rhythms and melodies of jazz. He said he looked at the texts of his poems like scores for pieces of music.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BARAKA: I'm trying to make the poems as musical as I can, you know, from the inception so that whether they're read on the page or people read them aloud or I read them aloud, the musicality will be kind of a given.
VITALE: In the poem "Am/Trak," Baraka said he was trying to capture the spirit of John Coltrane's music, as well to show the context that produced that music - the social upheaval of the 1960s.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BARAKA: (Reading) Super sane screams against reality course through him as sound. Yes, it says, this is now and you screaming. Recognize the truth. Recognize reality and even check me, Trane, who blows it. Yes, it said. Yes. Yes, again, convulsive multi-orgasmic art protest.
ARNOLD RAMPERSAD: He, like Langston Hughes before him, like Ralph Ellison to some extent, understood the pre-eminence, you'd have to say, of black music in black American expressive culture.
VITALE: Arnold Rampersad is professor Emeritus at Stanford University and an authority on African-American literature. He says Baraka started out writing poetry as part of the Beat movement in the Greenwich Village of the 1950s - casual and confessional verse, in the style of his friend Allen Ginsberg.
RAMPERSAD: But then gradually he became radicalized and brought race more and more into his work, till it became the central element of his writing. And for that he was vilified in many circles, but I think it was the beginning of a flood of similar poetry, I think, from young black writers who became empowered as a result of the freedoms that he commissioned in the writing of poetry.
VITALE: In the 1960s Amiri Baraka was a leading figure in the black power movement. In the '70s he broke with the black nationalists but remained a committed Marxist. The sound and the fury in much of Baraka's verse is a call to arms.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BARAKA: (Reading) Make you think of all that's been. Make you think of all that's passed. All that flows that won't come back again. Think about, study, study, do it, do it - be about what needs to be. Be about what needs - needs - yeah, please, right now, be about what needs to be. Only revolution will set us free.
VITALE: Most of Amiri Baraka's poetry was first published by small alternative presses. In a 1982 interview at his home in Newark, N.J., Baraka said the major publishers wouldn't touch it.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BARAKA: They would publish you if you had the same story to tell as mainstream white writers. But because no oppressed nationality can tell, you know, that story if you're true to history, then they respond by saying, well, you're complaining too much, or, you're always complaining, you know, we don't want the complaints. People don't want complaints.
VITALE: Baraka said he never worried that his politics were overwhelming his poetry.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BARAKA: As a political artist, you know, I think you have to learn how to create art, no matter what your ideology is. If, you know, as Mao Zedong said, you are successful in what you do as you combine high artistic quality and revolutionary politics. You see? And then I think the real hallmark of an effective political artist is that the politics is accepted with the art and is made influential because of the strength of the art.
VITALE: Scholar Arnold Rampersad says sometimes Baraka went too far in his radical expression - for example, his anti-Semitic lines in a 2002 poem about the World Trade Center bombing that generated a huge controversy and got him removed as New Jersey's poet laureate. But Rampersad says Baraka's emphasis on racial and economic inequality has never lost its relevance.
RAMPERSAD: You have a very powerful and authentic voice writing about the African-American condition in a way that is absolutely memorable and is also, I think, prophetic.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BARAKA: (Reading) You have all of what you need. That assembly line you work on will dissolve in thin air. Oh wow, wow. Oh wow, wow. Just gotta die. Just gotta die. This old world ain't nothing. Must be the devil got you thinking so. It can't be Rockefeller, it can't be Morgan, it can't be capitalism, it can't be national oppression. Oh wow. No way. Now go back to work and cool it.
VITALE: When Amiri Baraka died last year at the age of 79, he left behind a body of work that, says Arnold Rampersad, improved the heart and soul, the texture, of black American poetry.
For NPR News I'm Tom Vitale in New York.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Let's hear now from StoryCorps Military Voices Initiative, recording stories from those who've served since 9/11 and their loved ones. Today, two people connected the invisible wounds of war. Stefanie Pelkey is a former U.S. Army captain. Her husband served in Iraq in 2003 and was diagnosed with PTSD when he returned. Army Sergeant T.J. Hart is also a veteran of the Iraq War. He also struggles with PTSD. Stefanie and T.J. became friends while volunteering at a veteran center in Houston, Texas. At StoryCorps, they talked about what happened once Stefanie's husband came home from war.
CAPTAIN STEFANIE PELKEY: When he came back, he wasn't the same person that left. His light was gone. That's the only way I know how to say it. He just didn't joke around anymore. He had a lot of anxiety. He'd shake his legs a lot while he was sitting there talking, like he'd tap his feet a lot. Also, he started sleeping with a gun, and he would sleep with it under his pillow, so he sought help. And probably about a month after, he took his life. He shot himself in our living room.
Does that sound familiar to you?
SERGEANT T.J. HART: Oh, yeah, it definitely does. I can tell you what was in your husband's mind 'cause it was in mine. I can tell you what it's like to pull that trigger. For me, the round didn't go off. I don't know why. There's no feeling. It's a numbness. I didn't feel like I was doing anything wrong. I thought I was doing my family the right thing. And it's so easy to justify and say maybe the right thing for me is to just disappear.
PELKEY: Well, I hope that I came into your life to show you that that's not the answer. I wouldn't have wanted to sit here and share this with anybody else because I know you understand.
HART: Stefanie, you are my little sister now. You remind me every day of what I could do to my family with one slip. Never once did I think about the aftermath - the sadness, the things that I would miss. And you've reminded me of that.
SIMON: Sergeant T.J. Hart with his friend, Captain Stefanie Pelkey, whose husband Captain Michael Pelkey committed suicide after he returned home from Iraq. He died in 2004. This interview was recorded in Houston as part of StoryCorps' Military Voices Initiative. And it will be archived at the U.S. Library of Congress. You can hear more on the podcast. It's on iTunes and npr.org.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
There was hope in Libya and for Libya around the world after Colonel Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown four years ago, but today Libya is a country torn apart. There are now two competing governments in different cities, each with their own parliament and their own armed forces. A traveler needs a visa from one government to land in Tripoli, then a so-called landing permission to fly east to the other government's territory, and you have to hopscotch around jihadist-controlled areas along the way. NPR's Leila Fadel just returned from a trip to Libya. She joins us now from Cairo. Thanks very much for being with us.
LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: Thanks for having me.
SIMON: Fill us in on this. You began in Tripoli. We kind of think of that as the capital. It's now one of two or three capitals. Who's in charge in Tripoli?
FADEL: Well, in Tripoli it's an umbrella group called Libya Dawn, which is basically loosely affiliated militias and the government and parliament that allies with those militias.
SIMON: And what's it like there?
FADEL: Well, the government really wants to make the case to the world that this is a safe place, that they need to be given support, but it doesn't feel that way. The streets empty out completely at night. The main mall of the city's burned down. And honestly you just kind of feel scared that if something does happen there's no one to call. There are very few diplomatic missions still operating in Tripoli. The U.N. presence is gone, and there's really not a centralized security force. And the checkpoints that are on the streets at night are masked gunmen and you're not really sure who they are. And the latest news was a five-star hotel was attacked that killed at least 10 people, including Americans and - an American and other foreigners.
SIMON: From Tripoli you flew east to the other capital, a city called Baida. Who's in charge there? What's that like?
FADEL: There is an alliance under a former general, Khalifa Haftar, who's taken a lot of the old officers from the old army under him. And he began what he describes as an anti-Islamist, anti-extremist operation in the East. And now this side of the country, it's a smaller town, has more of the feel of a security state with a lot of checkpoints. We were briefly taken by the police when we arrived because they didn't understand why'd we traveled from the West to the East and we had to call a low-level government official to come take us out. And when he did get us out he did say to us, listen, you have to understand it's sensitive. We're two countries now and you came from the enemy's side. And on top of all this fighting between the two sides, extremism is basically growing because of the polarization and the so-called Islamic State is feeding off that polarization. So you need to jump around areas where ISIS has now taken control to get to the relatively safe zones of Libya.
SIMON: How does this affect the people who live in Libya?
FADEL: Well, many just feel really stuck in the middle waiting for the violence to stop. We met a salesman/taxi driver/entrepreneur at the airport in Baida and he says that when he goes to the west side of the country they accuse him of being pro-Haftar, so he feels really in danger. When he comes back to the east they accuse him of being an Islamist, an extremist, and so he doesn't feel safe there. So people feel very stuck in the middle as politicians fight over power and resources. And in this very wealthy country now electricity is scarce, water comes in and out, there's a huge amount of displacement, huge fuel lines caused by the conflict. Tourist villages in Tripoli - there was one tourist village that went from being a place where people are supposed to visit and enjoy the beach to a place where the displaced have come to find refuge.
SIMON: Leila, there were such hopes four years ago and people must wonder, are things really better?
FADEL: Well, right now they're not. There's no centralized power. The men with - that picked up arms to fight Gaddafi four years ago never put them down. There are loosely allied militias that are divided by region, by ideology, by tribe, that control different parts of the country - different city states basically. And we went to a hospital in Baida and we talked to a technician in the dialysis section of the hospital, and he told us how his niece died because they couldn't find a small tube that was needed to filter the blood for a transfusion. It wasn't found anywhere in the country that they could get to. She was only 4 days old and he said to us this was one example of so many tragedies across the country. He said that Muammar Gaddafi was bad, but now things are much worse than they ever were. He asked why the West would help Libya have a revolution and then abandon it to fall into chaos.
SIMON: NPR's Leila Fadel, who's just come out of Libya. Thanks very much.
FADEL: Thank you.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The Greek system at the University of Virginia drew more scrutiny this week. Fraternities in Charlottesville are welcoming their new members. National sorority leaders warned their members to skip those frat parties this weekend for their safety. Now, this comes after a Rolling Stone story of gang rape at UVA that was later discredited. Sandy Hausman of member station WVTF reports on the controversy over tonight's Boys' Bid Night.
SANDY HAUSMAN, BYLINE: Boys' Bid Night is a celebration of new men accepting membership in a fraternity and women from UVA sororities are always invited to join. But this year they're under strict orders from national presidents to stay clear of frat houses tonight. Based on the response, you might think UVA sorority women were fans of the Beastie Boys.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "YOU GOTTA FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHT TO PARTY")
BEASTIE BOYS: (Singing) You gotta fight for your right to party.
HAUSMAN: In fact, students like Sara Surface say this is about much more than a party.
SARA SURFACE: This is not an issue of, we are angry because we can't go out and drink and party, it's an issue over whether or not we have the choice.
HAUSMAN: She admits that Boys' Bid Night sounds like risky business, but Surface has been active in rape prevention programs on campus and says the progressive party where women go from one frat house to the next, often drinking at every stop, is actually quite unsafe.
SURFACE: The ad sounds really dumb, but I think what that doesn't accurately describe is the safety measures that many women and men do take. People are assigned buddies to have them look out for each other. You stay in groups.
HAUSMAN: She has personally helped to educate hundreds of sorority women about how to intervene in situations where friends are at risk, and thinks parties would be safer if sorority members were there. Fellow UVA student Sofia McKewen Moreno adds that even the matching tops women wear on Bid Night help to protect them.
SOFIA MCKEWEN MORENO: They look like we're just trying to show off that we're in sororities, which to some degree I'm sure is true - but when you see a woman in the Tiffany-blue tank top in the back of the room with a guy that she doesn't know, too drunk, and you're wearing that same shirt, you know to go to her.
HAUSMAN: She and Surface declined to say which sororities they belong to, but they defied a ban on talking with reporters to express their objections. They doubt that older women who run national sororities share the values of younger members.
SURFACE: I think that a lot of these national organizations are not used to the university tradition of student self-governance, but that's something that we hold very dear to our hearts here and that we will continue to fight for.
MCKEWEN MORENO: The whole idea of, what was she wearing, what was she doing, where was she and who with is not a concept that's even talked about in a serious manner. And so, to have a policy that specifically addresses who are you with, what are you wearing and where are you going, it does come off as a slap in the face.
HAUSMAN: She plans to observe the ban but hopes officials will consult local chapters before taking future actions. Meanwhile, UVA's student council was deluged with complaints and voted unanimously against the restriction. Representative Abraham Axler says national sororities have long felt women should not be part of recruiting events at fraternities.
ABRAHAM AXLER: I believe what they did was they took a chaotic and emotional time in the University of Virginia's history as an opportunity to pass something that they've been trying to do forever.
HAUSMAN: He and other council leaders asked national sorority presidents to discuss the matter, but they declined. University of Virginia President Teresa Sullivan did speak out yesterday. She affirmed her belief in students' right to self-governance, but said women looking for fun might consider skipping the fraternity functions in favor of tonight's basketball game in which number two-ranked UVA faces its traditional rival, number-four, Duke. For NPR News I'm Sandy Hausman in Charlottesville, VA.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
A new Pennsylvania law allows membership groups like the National Rifle Association to sue municipalities over local gun ordinances. Kate Lao Shaffner reports the NRA has already filed suit against three Pennsylvania cities claiming their gun laws are illegal.
KATE LAO SHAFFNER, BYLINE: Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto says the city consulted legal experts before passing its 2008 lost or stolen gun ordinance - one of the laws the NRA is suing to overturn.
MAYOR BILL PEDUTO: We're not taking away anyone's right to own a gun. We're not taking away anyone's right to own 10 guns. What we're doing is saying is when it's lost or stolen it needs to be reported.
JONATHAN GOLDSTEIN: We think that the state legislature's been very clear that it and it alone reserves the right to regulate firearms. These municipalities have delegated authority from the general assembly and they're exceeding that authority.
SHAFFNER: That's NRA outside counsel Jonathan Goldstein. In sweeping fashion, Pennsylvania state law says municipalities cannot, quote, "in any manner regulate the lawful ownership, possession, transfer or transportation of firearms." But Pittsburgh isn't the only city to have gun ordinances. Many other municipalities also have local laws that, say, ban gunfire within city limits or prohibit carrying in a public park. Gun rights activists have long claimed these ordinances defy state law.
GOLDSTEIN: The municipalities had been warned repeatedly about this. They knew what they were doing was illegal and they did it anyway.
SHAFFNER: Before the new law you had to prove you'd been harmed by an ordinance to challenge it in court. But the new law takes away that requirement and it allows groups like the NRA to sue on behalf of state members.
GOLDSTEIN: Now a municipality can't just ignore the law and get away with it.
SHAFFNER: So far the NRA has filed lawsuits against Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Lancaster, and it's not just the NRA that's taking action. Another gun rights group - Texas-based U.S. Law Shield - has sued Harrisburg, the state capital. Goldstein, NRA's legal counsel, warns that any Pennsylvania municipality with local gun ordinances could be next. Adam Winkler, a professor of Constitutional Law at UCLA, says what's happening in Pennsylvania could affect policy elsewhere.
ADAM WINKLER: If it becomes a model for the NRA to seek special rules to sue local governments that are not gun control laws, it's a relatively radical reshaping of standing doctrine to allow an organization to sue even if they can't prove that they've been harmed by the law at all.
SHAFFNER: Shira Goodman, the executive director of the gun control advocacy group CeaseFirePA, says the legislators who passed the new law have put municipalities between a rock and a hard place.
SHIRA GOODMAN: You have to choose between doing what you thought was right to protect your communities and what you now might be in fear for your public budget, and that's a terrible, terrible thing.
SHAFFNER: Ferguson Township in central Pennsylvania for years had an ordinance banning the possession of firearms in public parks - no longer. The township voted last week to rewrite its ordinances. Here's township manager Mark Kunkle.
MARK KUNKLE: There is no choice here. It's a compliance issue with the state law.
SHAFFNER: Ferguson Township is just one of the municipalities that have changed their laws to avoid the possibility of an expensive lawsuit. The new law also allows challengers to seek financial damages. The three cities sued by the NRA are fighting the law in court along with several state legislators. They say the way it was passed is unconstitutional. State law says statutes up for a vote have to be about a single subject - the gun law amendment was tacked onto a bill about scrap metal. For NPR News, I'm Kate Lao Shaffner.
SIMON: And that story comes from Keystone Crossroads, a statewide public media initiative on the challenges that face Pennsylvania cities.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
People on the radio have to pay attention to the way they speak so that they'll be understood. That's communication, but does that mean that suppressing who you are to be heard? Chenjerai Kumanyika is an aspiring reporter and an assistant professor at Clemson University. Professor Kumanyika is also African-American and wrote, first, for Transom.org and later for All Things Considered about what he perceives as the whiteness of public radio.
CHENJERAI KUMANYIKA: Different hosts with different voices tell different kinds of stories, and vocal styles communicate important dimensions of human experience. What are we missing out on by not hearing the full range of those voices?
SIMON: His commentary struck a nerve inside NPR and also among our listeners. NPR's Code Switch team tapped into that conversation and led a Twitter chat about it using the hashtag #PubRadiovoice. Gene Demby is the lead blogger of Code Switch and joins us in our studios. Gene, thanks so much for being with us.
GENE DEMBY, BYLINE: Thank you for having me, Scott.
SIMON: Tell us more about this discussion - who was in on it, what did they say?
DEMBY: This conversation had the potential to be really navel-gazy because, you know, it's journalists talking about journalists, but it really blew up. A few people, whose names might be familiar to NPR listeners, were in this conversation - Audie Cornish, who is the host of All Things Considered; Sam Sanders, who's a national reporter; as well as Celeste Headlee, who sometimes guest hosts here, and a few other people. What was funny - Audie said to me that one of the jokes she shared with me off-line was sort of that it's not that her voice that people respond to. It's when people google her and realize that she's black that people respond to. And so there was this really robust discussion about the assumptions of who the hosts are, which also inform who people assume the audience is as well. There's this idea that NPR's audience is really white and it is. We know statistically that it is, and I think that informs the way people hear people's voices as well.
SIMON: I assume nothing got settled.
DEMBY: (Laughter) A lot didn't get settled. I think - and I think it was good. I think - I don't think those conversations are meant to settle things. I think they're supposed to unsettle things. One of the things that was surprising was how many people had really strong opinions on this. We should note that Twitter is a much younger and much browner place than sort of NPR broadly. We probably hit right in the middle of a space where people feel some sort of anxiety around this, and who also love public radio. And who probably feel as if their voices, or voices that they're used to hearing, are not coming through their podcasts or coming out of their favorite radio shows.
SIMON: Have you ever felt you had to change who you are on the air - to be on the air?
DEMBY: (Laughter) It's really funny you ask that, Scott. The very first time I was on the air was with David Greene on Morning Edition and we were actually having a conversation about Code Switching, which is this practice by which you sort of jump through different registers, right? The way you speak to your wife is different than the way you speak your boss which is different than the way you speak to your good friends. It's usually racially coded, so the way I speak sort of at work is not the way I necessarily speak in the barbershop. And I remember hearing myself in that conversation and listening to myself and thinking that I didn't sound like public radio. But then I also felt like I didn't sound as black as I would've liked to sound. I remember listening to it and feeling sort of embarrassed, but, I mean, obviously our voices take on all these different parts of ourselves, whatever our sort of baseline is. Whatever our baseline voices are is sort of informed by who we are in all these different spaces. And all those spaces are us, but I just remember sitting there and being very cognizant of just all of the sort of tics in my voice, you know? And I felt very much like I didn't belong.
SIMON: I mean, but you do.
DEMBY: I know, I know. I mean, it's - to sit in front of these beautiful microphones and have a conversation you are much more cognizant of the way you speak. I know I speed up when I get excited 'cause people write and tell me that, but I do think that this conversation sort of raises larger questions about the challenges that public radio faces and - in reaching audiences who don't see themselves reflected on the radio.
SIMON: Gene Demby, lead blogger for NPR's Code Switch team, and you can see those Twitter comments and offer your own by checking out the Code Switch page on NPR.org. Gene, thanks very much for being with us.
DEMBY: This was lovely. Thank you, Scott.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
This winter, Daniel Handler has been acclaimed as brilliant for his writing, but also a boor for making a racist comment when he hosted a prestigious literary event. Mr. Handler is the bestselling and celebrated author of novels for young readers, both as himself and Lemony Snicket. His new novel is "We Are Pirates" in which a rum group of seniors, teenagers and dreamers come together to sail the San Francisco Bay and plunder. Daniel Handler says his writing was interrupted by real life.
DANIEL HANDLER: "We Are Pirates" has a major character who is suffering from Alzheimer's. That was a condition that I knew very little about. And I thought it would be appropriate if the older man who becomes the head of a ragtag group of pirates - if he had Alzheimer's because losing grip of reality would make it more believable that he might embark on such a voyage. But I didn't know anything aside from the broadest cultural stereotypes about the disease.
And then as fate would have it, my father began to suffer from it. And I had put the novel aside, and then suddenly I, in fact, had a front-row seat with exactly the sort of mind-leaving that dementia provides. I used to think when other writers told me that they put books aside for a year and then return to them - I used to think they were lying. I used to think that was their way of saying that actually they were just running a year behind. But as it turns out, other writers knew something. Who knew?
SIMON: Tell me about your crew. Let's begin them with Captain Errol.
HANDLER: (Laughter) Tell me about your crew - there's something a novelist never gets asked. Errol is an older gentleman suffering from dementia. He is at a retirement center where he is more or less under the care of a man of Haitian descent. And Gwen Needle, our young heroin who's 14. And after she's caught shoplifting, she's forced by her family as punishment to go volunteer at the senior center and to become a companion for Errol. They don't have much in common. But as it turned out, Errol likes to be read from old pirate yarns. And soon they hatch this plan together - Gwen along with her best friend and Errol along with Manny - and they end up kidnapping someone else so it becomes five - steal a boat and commit acts of piracy on the San Francisco Bay.
Their dream of piracy is one of a classical mode of swashbuckling novels and movies that I know we're all familiar with. Of course, the reality turns out to be much more daunting and much more violent and much more depressing. The theme of the book, in effect, is that while we all want to escape from the world, it turns out that there is no escape from the world. You're still attached to the culture that you're in. And if you step outside the bounds of the law, you'll soon regret it.
SIMON: Yeah. There's a line I can't get out of my mind. Gwen says at one point one day you have taken enough and then you begin to take it all back.
HANDLER: Yes, when I first thought of the idea of people who would try to become pirates in a classical mode in the modern day, I began to think of what sort of people it would be interesting to read about doing that. I didn't want to use kind of strapping young men, as that's what we think of as a typical pirate crew. But I looked around and really two groups of people came to me that - adolescent girls and the elderly both are shunted in ways of society. They're respected kind of and encouraged kind of, but have often very hemmed-in realities. And so when I began to think about those two people getting resentful and wanting to go somewhere off the map.
SIMON: Yeah, maybe there's a section in your book that would be good to read here.
HANDLER: Sure. Well, before she becomes a pirate, she tries shoplifting. And when Gwen is shoplifting, she imagines herself as named Octavia. She imagines herself to much more glamorous persons, so there's a little bit in this book that's here.
(Reading) She remembered what it was called - shoplifting - and pictured lifting the whole place, the aisles tilting and tumbling their baubles and trinkety treasures into her pockets. Pink razors for her burnt leg and then a keychain she thought Naomi would like. And when she realized she could steal for other people, it was an avalanche, a chew bone for Toby the II, more stuff for Naomi, a stuffed bear and a tiny license plate that said Naomi. Three flasks of perfume, curvy and shapey like internal organs in her pockets, and she was done with Mother's Day for ages.
Her father liked the electronic things, which were behind locked cabinets. But she grabbed a slick stereo magazine and managed to slip into one of her boots. It would be a way to warm him for taking the bus by herself. By now she was thirsty and rounded a corner to open a fridge and grab an iced tea in a bottle that felt so good in her hands. It was One Universe Green Tea, which the label said was good for the immune system and for Octavia's skin. No one had stopped her. No one had spoken to her. It was smooth sailing. All for one and one for all.
SIMON: So is there a straight line from that to piracy or just adolescence?
HANDLER: (Laughter). You think shoplifting is the gateway drug that eventually leads people to board other people's ships? It could be. I think the fantasy of wanting things and wanting to evade the law is certainly something that shoplifters and pirates, in this case, have in common.
SIMON: I have to ask this, Mr. Handler. This is the first chance we've had to speak with you since you emceed the National Book Awards in November and made a watermelon joke. Did I say state that incorrectly? I didn't want to tell the whole joke, but if you want to...
HANDLER: Well, it's true. There was a disaster of my own making at the National Book Awards. In my capacity as emcee, when Jacqueline Woodson won the National Book Award for children's literature, which was a wonderful moment for everyone, but certainly also for me, Jackie is a friend of mine. So after her win, I told a story about her and me. And the story did not go out well and many, many people were very upset by it, and rightfully so.
SIMON: Yeah. It certainly made me react a little differently when I was reading this book. One of the first signs we get that Errol, the pirate captain, has lost his ability to track is that he falls into racist jokes.
HANDLER: Anyone who's had someone with dementia knows that terrible things often begin to come out of their mouths, which is shocking and mysterious and, of course, very upsetting and hurtful for their families.
SIMON: Yeah. I think anyone reading this book would decide - not giving anything away - maybe being a pirate isn't the good idea that I thought it was.
(LAUGHTER)
HANDLER: It was - if I can convey one message to the people of the world, it's don't try piracy.
SIMON: Daniel Handler. His new novel "We Are Pirates." Thanks so much for being with us.
HANDLER: Thank you very much for having me.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
An un-poetic analogy now. Rod McKuen was to poetry what cheeseburgers are to haute cuisine - widely mocked and extremely popular, and maybe harder to do well than people think. Rod McKuen died this week at the age of 81 of pneumonia. He was also a singer and songwriter who wrote songs for Barbra Streisand, Perry Como, Dusty Springfield and Frank Sinatra and translated the works of Jacques Brel and brought them to America.
Rod McKuen began to publish books of poetry in the 1960s - "Listen To The Warm," "Lonesome Cities," a score of others. He's sold more than a million books in 1968 alone and recorded his poems, too, including "My Friend The Sea."
(SOUNDBITE OF POETRY READING, "MY FRIEND THE SEA")
ROD MCKUEN: Do you know my friend the sea? He watches everything we do. You, rolling over in your beach bank sleep.
SIMON: Karl Shapiro, the U.S. Poet Laureate, said it is irrelevant to speak of McKuen as a poet. But whatever he was, Rod McKuen sold millions. He retired from performing live in 1981, suffering from depression. But he got better and began to give an annual birthday concert in New York.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon. The new U.S. Congress is in session, but the same old acrimony and the field for the 2016 election campaign got smaller already. Here to reflect on the month in politics is NPR's Washington editor, Ron Elving.
Ron, thanks so much for being with us.
RON ELVING, BYLINE: Good to be with you, Scott.
SIMON: Many wise people - pundits, et cetera, have said, of course he'll run. All this talk about decision, it's just for show. But then Mitt Romney said yesterday in fact he's not going to run for president. Near as you can tell, what happened? What's his thinking?
ELVING: It appears the reality of Romney's situation won out over the romance of Romney's imagination. Last year he traveled around the country in 2014, appeared for many, many Republican candidates. They did very well. And many of them told him that he should be president and that he had all the right answers back in 2012 and that by implication, he should run again. He took that seriously. But once he seemed serious about it, everything seemed to turn on him. He got a lot of pushback from members of Congress leaders in the party, governors, major funders, even some members of his own staff were signing on with Jeb Bush.
SIMON: Where does that leave the Republican field now? Because I gather in his remarks, Mr. Romney talked about a new generation of leadership, which would - well, wouldn't seem to be an endorsement of Jeb Bush, would it?
ELVING: No, Jeb Bush may see himself as a new generation of leadership, of course. But lots of other people may hear his last name before his first name. So yeah, a lot of us are going to hear that as a bit of a swipe - whether playful or not - at Jeb Bush. And I do believe Jeb Bush and his people, broadly speaking, were discouraging this rather effectively because the Republican field now looks a lot less complicated on the center-right moderate establishment side.
SIMON: Well, let's fill in some of the blanks. The moderate side - that's Jeb Bush, maybe Governor Christie.
ELVING: And this week, Lindsey Graham, Republican senator from South Carolina, made it clear that he's testing the waters. But the big part of the field is among more conservative, younger more populist senators and governors, and they're all fighting to be the main alternative to Jeb Bush.
SIMON: Let's ask about the new Congress. They've been in session for about a month. They've seen the State of the Union address, hearings for the next attorney general. This Congress has been issuing speakers invitations. Based on what you've seen so far, what's happened to all the talk of bipartisan cooperation?
ELVING: Reports of greater cooperation were greatly exaggerated. There probably was never going to be that great a chance that after the election they had in November, the Republicans were going to scale back. So they came after the president on a raft of issues and the president has responded essentially by threatening vetoes - nine of them so far. That's highly unusual for the beginning of a Congress. Many of them delivered personally, which suggests he doesn't really have any long-term agenda of trying to work out some kind of compromise. And the Congress has really gone after him on a full range of what would be called, in their minds at least, his vulnerabilities. They're holding up the confirmation of his new attorney general, Loretta Lynch, even though no one's actually raised any objections to her personally. They pushed through the Keystone pipeline, which he says he's going to veto. And they don't have the votes to override. They're also pushing ahead with their attempt to gut his immigration changes from December. All of these things are clearly veto bait from the standpoint of the president, so there doesn't seem to be much common ground at all.
SIMON: Ron Elving, thanks so much.
ELVING: Thank you, Scott.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Russian-backed separatists are pressing an offensive against government troops in Eastern Ukraine. More civilians have been killed on both sides of the line, at least a dozen in and around the separatist-controlled town of Donetsk, and about the same number in government-held areas. The death toll rises by the hour and by the day. NPR's Corey Flintoff joins us from Eastern Ukraine.
Corey, thanks for being with us.
COREY FLINTOFF, BYLINE: Good morning, Scott. Thank you.
SIMON: The fighting seemed especially fierce in recent weeks. Can you begin to tell us what it's been like for the people who live there?
FLINTOFF: Well, right now, the separatists are trying to capture as much territory as they can and push the government forces back away from their cities. And that means that there are a lot of small towns and villages in their way. They've been advancing on these small places and the people in them are trying to escape as well as they can.
You know, in doing the reporting here, we try to focus on the stories of individual people, you know, sort of rather than the casualty numbers. One thing that struck me on this trip is that people's stories tend to sound very much the same, you know, whether they're in Ukraine or in northern Iraq or Haiti or wherever. One lady said to me yesterday that the shelling felt like it was the end of the world. Another one said, my heart stopped, I didn't think we were going to survive.
SIMON: How can we try and make sense of what's happening there?
FLINTOFF: I think we have to focus on those details that anybody can recognize, just show how they become so terribly out of place in the middle of a war, you know? For instance, there was the shelling of a trolley bus in Donetsk last month, and you could do a story about that that focused on, you know, the blood in the streets and the crumpled bodies and all that. But the thing that touched me was that one lady who'd been killed was still sitting upright in her seat on the bus. And you could see, you know, she was a middle-aged lady, respectably dressed, and she was still holding her purse on her lap. I mean, you know, we all know somebody like that lady, and here she is dead with her bus ticket and her purse.
SIMON: Yeah. This is a weekend where a lot of people who play games for a living are going to be called heroes. You and I have both covered wars where we have seen heroes.
FLINTOFF: That's true, you know, and the word heroism gets tossed around a lot. And it's just because we can't find better ways to get at what it is that makes people act that way, you know, really selflessly. I talked to a couple of real heroes yesterday. One of them was a bus driver who volunteered to drive into a town that was under heavy shell-fire and rescue some civilians. And another guy I talked with was one of the people who got out on that bus, and he told me that he and some friends had saved a woman's life the day before. Her house was hit by a shell, and they had to dig her out of the debris while the shelling is going on all around them. And as he told us, you know, he was really proud of it, but he wasn't bragging.
SIMON: As we try and report this conflict, we talk about Russian-backed separatists, we talk about the government, we talk about ideologies, politics. Is that how people connect to this struggle?
FLINTOFF: You know, it's hard to say. To a certain extent yes, but I think it has a lot to do with geography. You know, if you're in a separatist-controlled area, you tend to blame the Ukrainians because the shells seem to be coming from them. If you're on the Ukrainian side of the line, you tend to see this as an assault by the separatists. But for most people, I think it's not really an ideological battle that they can relate to.
SIMON: NPR's Corey Flintoff in Eastern Ukraine, thanks so much for being with us.
FLINTOFF: Thank you, Scott.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon. A new group called the Women's Mosque of America held their first Friday prayer service yesterday in Los Angeles. It was led by women, for women and only women. It isn't the first women-only mosque in the world, but as far as its organizers know, it is the first of its kind in America. NPR's Nathan Rott and Rebecca Hersher report from Los Angeles.
NATHAN ROTT, BYLINE: We'll start with me. I'm at the King Fahad mosque in Culver City, Calif. It's a fairly traditional mosque, and the Friday prayer, or jumma'a, is starting in a few minutes. Men are walking up a set of marble steps, removing their shoes and entering the mosque through the main door. Women walk through the parking lot and enter through a side door.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Singing prayer).
Inside, during the call to prayer, it's only men sitting on the main floor. Women are in a separate room above. Now, it's important to know that not all mosques separate women this much, or even at all. Every mosque has a different way of doing things. But traditionally, there is some degree of separation between men and women and the prayers themselves are almost always ran by men - almost always.
REBECCA HERSHER, BYLINE: Almost.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: (Singing prayer).
HERSHER: A few miles away near downtown LA it's the same prayer, but it's a woman leading it. The Women's Mosque of America doesn't actually have its own mosque. About a hundred women have gathered in this former synagogue. The stained-glass windows actually have Jewish stars on them. It's a safe space - no men. Young and old women kneel side-by-side on the carpet. The sermon is about empowerment as a Muslim woman. At the end, everyone makes a big circle and the floor is open for anyone to ask a question about the Quran. After the service, Noor-Malika Chishti tells me that Q and A session is really different from what happens at her usual mosque.
NOOR-MALIKA CHISHTI: It's so packed that when the imam finishes, there's already a circle of men waiting to ask him a question, and he's out of time by the time he gets through all the men. So pretty much, women don't have an opportunity to ask a question.
HERSHER: Michelle Hashmi brought her daughter Nyla to the service.
How old is Nyla?
MICHELLE HASHMI: How old are you, Nyla?
NYLA: Four.
HASHMI: She's 4.
HERSHER: Hashmi says she doesn't usually go to Friday prayers.
HASHMI: I've grown up in LA and haven't really found a mosque where I really connected. But, it seemed a little more progressive and liberal, so this place - it's a good vibe here.
ROTT: Sana Muttalib and Hasna Maznavi are the co-founders of the Women's Mosque of America. They created it for reasons similar to the ones you just heard. Here's Muttalib.
SANA MUTTALIB: Ever since I was a little girl I, you know, was used to kind of entering through a side entrance and being in a completely separate room. And it was something that never sat well with me.
ROTT: A recent study co-sponsored by the Islamic Society of North America found that only 14 percent of American mosques do an excellent job of being women-friendly. Maznavi says it's not malicious, it's culture and tradition. Many mosques are built with that separation in mind, which is why they decided to establish their own.
HASNA MAZNAVI: When we build this mosque, we are reflecting our own culture - and that's American culture.
ROTT: A diverse culture, she says, Muslims from every part of the world.
MAZNAVI: Sunni, Shia, conservative, progressive. We want everyone's input.
ROTT: Something that both of them say has a precedent. Islam has a rich history of women scholars and leaders. Kecia Ali is a professor of religion at Boston University, and a Muslim herself.
KECIA ALI: The Women's Mosque is one of a number of initiatives towards more inclusive worship.
ROTT: And Ali says the issues they're tackling are not unique to Islam.
ALI: Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhists, Mormon. The question of women's participation and female authority is complicated, it is fraught and it is very much in flux.
ROTT: And of course, that's not unique to religion. Nathan Rott, NPR News.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Time now for Sports.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SIMON: It's the weekend we've been waiting for - Luton Town play Cambridge United in some kind of game. And tomorrow, Katy Perry is the halftime show at the Super Bowl. The New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks play at some point, too. Howard Bryant from espn.com and ESPN the magazine joins us from the studio of New England Public Radio in Emily Dickinson's hometown.
Howard, thanks for being with us.
HOWARD BRYANT: Good morning, Scott.
SIMON: Two best teams in football playing tomorrow, yet most of the week we've talked about court cases, investigations and...
(SOUNDBITE OF DEFLATING AIR)
SIMON: That was a deflating object.
(LAUGHTER)
SIMON: Did you worry?
BRYANT: I thought you took a nap on me, Scott.
SIMON: (Laughter).
(SOUNDBITE OF DEFLATING AIR)
SIMON: Oh - there. There goes the other one. So, what does that mean?
BRYANT: Well, what it says to me is just how badly the NFL has taken their season. It's been a terrible year for them. It really is a shame if you're a big football fan, if you're a football fan at all. Because this is what we are looking for, pretty much since Thanksgiving. You've got the two best teams. The Seahawks are the defending champions. The Patriots were the best team in the AFC. The Patriots have been the team to beat for the last 15 years in the AFC. And really, they are a budding dynasty. They are a dynasty. And what are we talking about? We're talking about inflated or deflated footballs. We're talking about one player, Marshawn Lynch, who doesn't speak to the media and hasn't spoken to the media in years. We're talking about him not talking, when there are plenty of wonderful interviews on the Seattle Seahawks - Richard Sherman, Michael Bennett, Kam Chancellor. There are a lot of great guys on that team, a lot of smart guys on that team. And it's really just emblematic of how poorly the NFL has handled their own product. This is your signature event. And I haven't really heard anybody talking about the game itself. I can't wait till tomorrow so all the rest of this stuff goes away.
SIMON: And yet, like, 150 million people all over the world are expected to see the game. Sponsors are going to pay about as much for a single ad as it costs to build an aircraft carrier.
BRYANT: (Laughter).
SIMON: Well, I - all right, let's get to the game, OK? I see Tom Brady and the Pats on offense and I think, nobody beats them. Then I see the Seahawks on defense and I think the same thing. How do you see it?
BRYANT: I think we're going to get a great game. I have been saying pretty much - even though I am a Bostonian, tried-and-true - I've been saying pretty much since October that I wouldn't bet against the champs. And the Seahawks are the defending champions. And my rule of thumb when it comes to playoff football is I'll take defense over offense any day of the week. And I think that the defense at the end of the day is going to come through for Seattle. And also, it wouldn't surprise me if the Patriots won. And I really don't think that there's a real favorite in this game. Everybody - both teams are motivated, everyone has something to play for here. I think it's going to be a fantastic event. I hope it doesn't turn into the debacle we had last year with Denver. I just want to see a great game and I think we're going to get one.
SIMON: We haven't made predictions in a while. I'm going to try one, OK? I'm going to say New England 31, Seattle 24.
BRYANT: Interesting. I said 31-20. So we're close.
SIMON: Oh - except you're in the other direction, right?
BRYANT: I'm the other direction, yes.
SIMON: OK. Before we go, Serena Williams won - what is it, her 50th Australian open today?
BRYANT: (Laughter). Tremendous. Serena wins her sixth Australian Open. Nineteenth Grand Slam title, breaking the tie with Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert. Sixty-fifth career title. And let's not forget, she's got 13 Grand Slam titles with Venus Williams, as well, her sister. So they've got 32 titles together. It's an amazing effort. She controlled the match throughout, even though it turned in to be a real classic because Maria Sharapova, who hadn't beaten her in the last 15 times, gave a real effort. But at the end of the day, Serena and Venus together - the greatest pair of siblings American sports has ever produced. What a match. Fantastic.
SIMON: Howard Bryant of espn.com and ESPN the magazine...
(SOUNDBITE OF DEFLATING AIR)
SIMON: (Laughter). ...Thanks so much for being with us.
BRYANT: (Laughter). Thank you, Scott.
SIMON: BJ Leiderman does our theme music.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
"Rule, Britannia" was written by Thomas Arne. Maestro, if you please.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "RULE, BRITANNIA")
SIMON: It's 2017, Great Britain's about to vote on whether to stay in the European Union. It looks close, but the prime minister may find it hard to exert his personal appeal to stay in the Union because his head has been cut off. His hands, too. But thanks to the magic of broadcasting, a gifted mimic, digital technology and maybe a press that obsesses about all the wrong things, most of Britain and the world believe that Prime Minister Bill Stephenson is still head of state, which is the title of a new novel, a political satire by Andrew Marr. Mr. Marr is one of the best-known talking heads himself in Britain, former editor of The Independent, political editor of the BBC, host of the Sunday morning "Andrew Marr Show." He joins us from London.
Andrew, thanks so much for being with us.
ANDREW MARR: You're very welcome. Delighted to be here.
SIMON: Just because a man's been beheaded doesn't mean he can't stay active in civic affairs, does it?
MARR: Absolutely not. And that's part of the point of the book. It started with a real incident where a friend of mine who worked with John Major when he was prime minister was in Downing Street one day, and Major came downstairs looking white as a sheet. And my friend thought, my goodness me, he's going to die, he's going to die in office. And they were in the middle of a crisis. So my friend thought, well, if he does die, for how long can we cover this up and keep things going? And he concluded then the answer was - quite a long time. And that, in a sense, is the proposition that this book teases out.
SIMON: And is there a metaphor in there to suggest that politicians sometimes merely intone whatever lines their staff gives them?
MARR: There's a lot of that going on. Like all politicians, my guys are surrounded by the wheelers and dealers and the word spinners and the PR people - above all, the PR people. I don't know about America, but certainly in Britain the big PR companies now have a vast influence on our political system because they're the ones who mediate between where the real power is, big money and the politicians.
SIMON: No, Andrew, it's totally different in the United States, where money has very little influence and politicians always write their own speeches.
MARR: (Laughter). So I gather. It couldn't happen with you, yes.
SIMON: Not getting too much away as to how this is effectively pulled off, you - there is a gifted mimic, who was an actual person - Rory Bremner - who was a great...
MARR: That's right, and he does a very, very good David Cameron at the moment. And you know, frankly, if he phoned you up as David Cameron, you'd assume it was the British prime minister you were talking to.
SIMON: In your book, Rory Bremner the impressionist talks to the Pope, I believe, the president of the United States, and, most effectively, his ex-wife.
MARR: And his ex-wife. And the great thing of course is, if you are the mimic chosen to be the voice of the prime minister, once you're in front of the microphone, you can do anything you like. So this gives Rory Bremner huge, if very brief, power.
SIMON: I have to tell you - I formed a bit of a crush on Olivia Kite, the opposition leader.
MARR: That says a lot about you, I'm afraid because she has elements of kind of Thatcher, dominatrix.
SIMON: (Laughter).
MARR: You know, she's...
SIMON: I was thinking of her flame hair.
MARR: Well, yeah she's got flame hair, but she's always got the riding crop thwacking gently against a boot, as well.
SIMON: (Laughter).
MARR: (Laughter). Sorry about that.
SIMON: I certainly hope my family is not tuned to this. She wants Great Britain of course to...
MARR: She's the leader of the out campaign, yes.
SIMON: ...Yeah, to withdraw from the European Union. And I guess her slogan is, give your children the gift of freedom. Sounds like a very effective slogan.
MARR: Well, I hope it - I think it is. I mean, we're going to see this referendum, I think, within a couple of years in Britain for real. So this is my attempt to try and play out some of how it will be, what would happen.
SIMON: Let me ask you a couple of real-life questions that are suggested by this novel. Do you foresee Boris Johnson replacing David Cameron as Conservative leader and then becoming prime minister?
MARR: In a word, yes. David Cameron's chances of staying on as Conservative leader - if he doesn't win an overall majority, and that's looking unlikely - are pretty slim. And from outside the House of Commons, there is Boris Johnson, who may be - appear to be a buffoon, constantly acts the buffoon, but he's one of the cleverest and certainly the most ambitious people in British public life. And I think he's - well, we know that he's leaving the job of mayor of London and taking a seat in the House of Commons next time around. Once he's there, my prediction is that he will go straight to the top.
SIMON: You had a stroke a couple of years ago.
MARR: I did, yes.
SIMON: How are you doing?
MARR: Well, I'm doing all right. I have a more or less paralyzed left arm and hand, which is very frustrating and I walk like a drunken sailor. But I've thrown away most of the aids and the sticks and so on I had, and I'm doing lots and lots of physiotherapy.
SIMON: Do you find yourself - if you don't mind saying - a changed man in any way?
MARR: Probably not as changed as my family would like. I got the stroke after two years of grossly over-working, flying around the world doing a history of the world, plus my Sunday program, plus writing books, and then overdid it on an exercise machine. I'm a driven guy and I thought after the stroke I would be gentle, herbivorous, relaxed, mildly Buddhist, look at my tummy and my toes and just let the world sweep by. And I'm back to my bad old ways, I'm afraid. There we go.
SIMON: Andrew Marr. He's going to be on the air on Sunday on BBC1. His new novel, "Head Of State."
Thanks so much for being with us.
MARR: Thank you very much indeed.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
An Arctic institution celebrates its 25th anniversary. The original Icehotel is 120 miles above the Arctic Circle in far north Sweden. Now, other hotels made of ice have since popped up around the world - probably in the north - but the first one, this first one, offers something else - it's also an art exhibition that changes every year. NPR's Ari Shapiro braved the cold and paid a visit.
ARI SHAPIRO, BYLINE: The temperature outside is 22 degrees below zero. That's -30 Celsius. Whatever you call it, it's way beyond freezing. And Jens Thoms Ivarsson stands over a block of ice with a razor-sharp chisel. He's turning a bare room into an ornate Spanish mosque made entirely of ice.
And some of it is crystal-clear, some of it looks like snow, some of it is textured, like a rough stone. Are those all artistic techniques that you've learned of how to work with ice?
JENS THOMS IVARSSON: Yeah. So I used to work with stone and wood and concrete. I always like to bring out the qualities that's in the material. For this, I mean, here it's just water.
SHAPIRO: Ivarsson is a sculptor and for the last two years he's been design director at the Icehotel. This 55-room lodge is built from scratch every fall entirely from the frozen Torne River. Every spring it melts back into the water it came from. Ivarsson says as an artist that impermanence frees him from the pressure of carving something out of marble or granite that seems permanent.
IVARSSON: So when I work with the ice and snow, it's very liberating because I know already when I start, you know, on the drawing board, that this will disappear.
SHAPIRO: Every year more than a hundred artists from around the world compete to design rooms here. Fifteen are chosen. The Icehotel then flies them to Kiruna, Sweden.
IVARSSON: And a lot of those had never, ever worked with snow and ice before. And that's what we want. For us, that's important.
SHAPIRO: He says everyone has seen swans and eagles before. He wants artists to find something new in the ice. There are rooms that look like forests or cathedrals. One room has typeface set into the wall. Another is pure angles, telescoping and spiraling inwards. Each room has a bed in a center covered in reindeer hides because people actually sleep here. Tour guide Paola Lappalinen says the building provides a level of insulation - she's talking Celsius.
PAOLA LAPPALINEN: Even though the temperature outside at the moment is about -30, inside the hotel rooms, it's never colder than -5 or -7.
SHAPIRO: So warm.
LAPPALINEN: That's really warm. Even sometimes when we go in the morning and wake people up in the hotel rooms, they say that it was too hot to sleep there.
SHAPIRO: (Laughter). I don't believe that.
There is a warm room where people leave their luggage and electronics. The front desk hands out snowsuits, balaclavas, boots and sleeping bags heavy enough for the Arctic. But the minute you step outdoors, the inside of your nose begins to tingle with frost. Your eyelashes become thick and heavy with white ice crystals. Many hotel guests duck into the ice bar to drink Swedish vodka out of glasses made of ice. Gary Armstrong is here with his wife and adult daughter.
GARY ARMSTRONG: I was just saying how crazy it is with the English always complaining about the weather. And then we come here in January. You know, five degrees under for us is a nightmare, and we come to 30 degrees under. I mean, it's bizarre, really.
SHAPIRO: (Laughter). Why do that?
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: (Laughter). We have no idea.
(LAUGHTER)
SHAPIRO: People come because it's like experiencing a fantasy world, borrowed from the river, which will return to the river again in the spring. Ari Shapiro, NPR News.