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READ: Mueller's Letter Expressing Concern About Barr's Summary Of His Report | Three days after Attorney General William Barr sent Congress a four-page summary of Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, the special counsel wrote to Barr to voice concerns about that memo. In a letter dated March 27, Mueller told Barr that the Justice Department's summary "did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this Office's work and conclusions." He urged the Justice Department to release selected materials immediately in an attempt to address "public confusion." Ultimately, Barr waited to release the full report at one time, with redactions. That material came out on April 18. Barr is testifying before Congress this week about that process and the investigation overall. Read the full letter from Mueller below. See it in its original form here. March 27, 2019 The Honorable William P. BarrAttorney General of the United StatesDepartment of JusticeWashington, D.C. Re: Report of the Special Counsel on the Investigation Into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election and Obstruction of Justice (March 2019) Dear Attorney General Barr: I previously sent you a letter dated March 25, 2019, that enclosed the introduction and executive summary for each volume of the Special Counsel's report marked with redactions to remove any information that potentially could be protected by Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(e); that concerned declination decisions; or that related to a charged case. We also had marked an additional two sentences for review and have now confirmed that these sentences can be released publicly. Accordingly, the enclosed documents are in a form that can be released to the public consistent with legal requirements and Department policies. I am requesting that you provide these materials to Congress and authorize their public release at this time. As we stated in our meeting of March 5 and reiterated to the Department early in the afternoon of March 24, the introductions and executive summaries of our two-volume report accurately summarize this Office's work and conclusions. The summary letter the Department sent to Congress and released to the public late in the afternoon of March 24 did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this Office's work and conclusions. We communicated that concern to the Department on the morning of March 25. There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation. This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the Department appointed the Special Counsel: to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations. See Department of Justice, Press Release (May 17, 2017). While we understand that the Department is reviewing the full report to determine what is appropriate for public release — a process that our Office is working with you to complete — that process need not delay release of the enclosed materials. Release at this time would alleviate the misunderstandings that have arisen and would answer congressional and public questions about the nature and outcome of our investigation. It would also accord with the standard for public release of notifications to Congress cited in your letter. See 28 C.F.R. § 609(c) ("the Attorney General may determine that public release" of congressional notifications "would be in the public interest"). Sincerely yours, Robert S. Mueller, IIISpecial Counsel |
Muslims On Boston Bombings: We're All Disgusted | Host Michel Martin continues the conversation about how Muslims are responding to the Boston bombings and handling backlash from the events. |
What's Next For The Russian Airliner Investigation? | Rachel Martin talks to NPR's Leila Fadel about the latest on the Russian airliner that went down in Egypt last weekend. |
Decades Later, A Medal Of Honor For Hispanic-American Hero | At the White House on Tuesday, President Obama will award the Medal of Honor to two-dozen soldiers whose service ranged from World War II to the Vietnam War. These soldiers are being commemorated after congress mandated a review to make sure that no one was overlooked because of prejudice. One of them is Santiago Erevia, who risked his life on a May afternoon in 1969, charging toward bunkers held by the North Vietnamese. Erevia was a cook back in 1968, working in small restaurants in Nevada and his native Texas. He says he first decided to join the Army to better himself, and maybe go to school. This was during the height of the Vietnam War — and his decision only became reinforced when one of his friends returned home horribly wounded. "He was missing both ears, and lips and nose and part of his leg," says Erevia. "And so I said, well, poor kid, maybe I can do something to help him out." Erevia's way of helping out was to continue his plans to enlist and fight, with a sense of fatalism. "I had already made up my mind that I was going to sign up — what's meant to be is meant to be," he says. Erevia signed up and arrived in Vietnam with the 101st Airborne Division. And then, in late May 1969, Erevia and the rest of Charlie Company loaded onto helicopters and swept low over the rolling hills and jungles. Helicopter pilots nicknamed the area Death Valley. Two North Vietnamese regiments were dug in on the outskirts of Tam Ky, a market town on the South China Sea. The soldiers' job was to clear them out, but one of their reconnaissance platoons just disappeared into the jungle. That's when chaos erupted. "This platoon came up missing. I got the orders from my battalion to attack," says David Gibson, then-commander of Charlie Company. Gibson, Erevia and a few hundred soldiers stood at the edge of a rice paddy — they had to cross two hundred yards of open ground. The troops charged ahead, climbed a ridge and fanned into the trees. Suddenly, North Vietnamese troops rose from the earth: from bunkers, from spider holes, from trenches. "We were in amongst them," says Gibson. "We were fighting at 5 and 10 feet." Gibson remembers the North Vietnamese soldiers covered in branches and leaves to conceal themselves. "Explosion after explosion — they were firing RPGs at us, throwing grenades and AK-47 fires," Gibson says. "You know, to this day I say it was a damn miracle; I don't know how any of us made it." Gibson says he caught glimpses of Spc. Erevia just off to his left. Erevia and another soldier, Cpl. Patrick Diehl, slammed themselves against a tree for protection. "Diehl stuck his head out and he got a bullet right in his forehead," says Erevia. "You know, I said, well, what am I going to do, just stay here and get killed?" So Erevia left the cover of the tree and ran straight toward the North Vietnamese, hidden in bunkers. "I zigzagged, firing my M-16," says Erevia. "I thought I was going to get killed instantly, you know." Erevia says he was scared, but he just focused on what he had to do: take out the bunkers — with his grenades and rifle. There were four bunkers. And he had to take them down one by one. "One of the NVA soldiers stood up — I was about maybe 2 or 3 feet away from him," says Erevia. "I shot him point-blank with my M-16. End of story." That was the end of the battle. Erevia helped care for the wounded, and loaded the dead on helicopters. He was put in for the Medal of Honor by his platoon leader, and Capt. Gibson signed off on it. But in the end it was downgraded to the Distinguished Service Cross. Back then, the Medal of Honor often seemed out of reach. "You just about have to be shot up or killed to get it," says Gibson. That May afternoon outside Tam Ky faded to memory for Erevia — until his phone rang last summer. "President Obama called me back in July of this past year," says Erevia. "He was looking into my citation and he truly believed that I should have gotten the Medal of Honor, and he was going to see that I would get the Medal of Honor." This afternoon, in the East Room of the White House, nearly 45 years later, Obama will present that medal to Santiago Erevia. |
Russian Airplane Crash | Host Bob Edwards talks with reporter Valeria Korchagina with the <EM>Moscow Times </EM> about the crash this morning of a Russian jet into the Black Sea. |
Trump Justice Department Subpoenaed Apple For Info On Former White House Counsel | The Justice Department secretly subpoenaed Apple in February 2018 for account information of then-White House Counsel Don McGahn, as well as his wife, and secured a gag order barring the company from telling them about it, according to a person familiar with the matter. It is unclear what the Justice Department was investigating or whether prosecutors actually obtained any of McGahn's account information, the individual said on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter. Apple informed the McGahns of the subpoena last month after the gag order expired. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Justice Department declined to comment. It is highly unusual for the Justice Department to subpoena the records of a sitting White House counsel. The news of the subpoena, which was first reported by the New York Times, comes days after it emerged that the Trump-era Justice Department had also subpoenaed Apple for communications metadata of at least two Democratic members of the House Intelligence Committee, as well as current and former staff and family members as part of a leak investigation. Those seizures are now under review by the Justice Department's inspector general. The two lawmakers who had their data seized were Reps. Adam Schiff, the committee's top Democrat, and Eric Swalwell. Both Schiff and Swalwell were outspoken critics of former President Donald Trump, and both served as impeachment managers against the former president during his two impeachment trials in the Senate. Schiff presided as a manager during Trump's first impeachment in 2020; Swalwell during the second impeachment trial earlier this year. McGahn left the White House in late 2018, but during his time in the counsel's office he was a central figure in Trump's orbit and in the investigation by former special counsel Robert Mueller into Russian interference in the 2016 election. While the Mueller investigation concluded in 2019, McGahn was called earlier this month to testify before the Democratic-led House Judiciary Committee following a protracted two-year legal battle. Testimony from that appearance was made public last week, and revealed the degree to which McGahn felt he was being pressured toward wrongdoing by Trump. McGahn told the committee he was made particularly uneasy by Trump's repeated requests that he facilitate the dismissal of Mueller, who had been tasked with investigating possible ties between Trump's 2016 campaign and Russia. Top Democrats in Congress are now calling on former Attorneys General William Barr and Jeff Sessions to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the subpoenas — calls that are all but certain to grow louder following the revelations about McGahn. "The revelation that the Trump Justice Department secretly subpoenaed metadata of House Intelligence Committee Members and staff and their families, including a minor, is shocking," said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., in a statement on Friday. "This is a gross abuse of power and an assault on the separation of powers." |
Pritzker Says She's Not Heading To Commerce | In an email to Lynn Sweet, Obama campaign finance chair Penny Pritzker says that -- contrary to rumor -- she is not a candidate for Secretary of Commerce. |
Sandwich Monday: The Mother-In-Law from Johnnie's | Today we try a legendary Chicago sandwich: the Mother-In-Law. It's basically a Chicago style hot dog, but instead of the weiner, there's a tamale. Why is it called a mother-in-law? No one seems to know. Ian: It's like a sandwich within a sandwich. Eva: Yeah, it's a play within a play. Mike: If this was A Midsummer Night's Dream, the tamale would be Pyramus and Thisbe. More mother-in-law, after the jump... Ian: The cucumber really doesn't belong here. Who invited the cucumber? Mike: It's the nerd hanging out with the cool kids. Ian: The tamale just seems like a bad replacement for a hot dog. Like when they brought in the new lady to play Becky on Roseanne? Except in this case, Becky is covered in chili. Eva: Why is it called a "mother-in-law"? Peter: Maybe because it's going to stick around longer than I want it to. Mike: No, I think unlike a real mother-in-law, this leaves after a couple hours. Ian: This is inferior to both a Chicago hot dog, and a plain tamale. It's less than the sum of its parts. Peter: Yeah. The tamale really gets lost in there. Ian: Maybe it's called a "mother-in-law" because your mother-in-law is disappointed in you and it's ultimately a disappointing sandwich. To your mother-in-law, you are a hot dog without the weiner. |
A Selection From One Of | A selection from one of the first concert's of the Juilliard String Quartet's 50th anniversary season. The ensemble performs the String Quartet in G, K. 387, by Mozart. (Juilliard School Audio Institute) |
U.S. Killing Of Iran's Gen. Soleimani 'Was Unlawful,' U.N. Expert Says | The U.S. killing of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani in January "was unlawful and arbitrary under international law," a U.N. human rights investigator says, calling the drone strike in Baghdad a violation of Iraq's sovereignty. The investigator also says the U.S. has not produced any proof to back its claim that the attack was justified by the need to stop an imminent attack. Soleimani was the highly influential commander of the Quds Force unit of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The U.S. killed him in a targeted drone strike on Jan. 3, as Soleimani and others traveled in a convoy from Baghdad's airport. President Trump, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of Defense Mark Esper have said the U.S. targeted Soleimani — a key architect of Iran's strategy in conflicts involving the U.S. — to prevent a looming threat. After ordering the strike, Trump said Soleimani was "plotting imminent and sinister attacks" against American interests. But Agnes Callamard, the U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, says U.N. investigators found nothing to justify the U.S. rationale. She also says that because the January attack in Baghdad took place without Iraq's consent, it violated Iraq's sovereignty. "No evidence has been provided that General Soleimani specifically was planning an imminent attack against US interests, particularly in Iraq, for which immediate action was necessary and would have been justified," Callamard wrote in her report, which is being presented to the U.N. Human Rights Council later this week. The U.S. will not take part in the Human Rights Council session — the Trump administration withdrew from the U.N. body two years ago, citing its controversial inclusion of countries such as Saudi Arabia and China. Callamard says the U.S. attack in Iraq violated Article 2(4) of the U.N. Charter, which "prohibits the threat or use of force and calls on all Members to respect the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of other States." Noting the acrimony that exists between the U.S. and Iran, Callamard say that in the tense days after the military leader's death, statements from both governments focused more on past disputes and clashes than on any future or imminent threats in which Soleimani may have played a role. Soleimani's killing is the first known time a nation has invoked self-defense in an attempt to justify "an attack against a State-actor, in the territory of another state," the rights investigator said. The January strike on Soleimani's convoy killed at least 10 people. Five members of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces, which is backed by Iran, were among the dead. Four other members of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were also killed in the blast. Noting that the Iranians had arrived on what was reportedly an official visit at the invitation of Iraq's prime minister, the U.N. investigators say the Popular Mobilization Forces' deputy commander met Soleimani at the airport moments before the convoy was targeted. Iran retaliated for Soleimani's death by launching ballistic missiles at Iraqi bases housing American military forces, leaving more than 100 U.S. service members injured. Many of them were diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries. The attacks by the U.S. and Iran are linked to scores of civilian deaths, the report says. Most directly, in the tense days that followed the exchange of attacks in Iraq, Iran's armed forces unintentionally brought down a Ukrainian jetliner, killing all 176 people on board. And the report notes that protesters in both Iran and Iraq were killed during demonstrations fueled by outrage over the strikes and the downing of the passenger jet. In her report, Callamard also calls for new restrictions around the use of drones, saying their combination of efficiency and advanced technology raises complicated moral and legal questions that the international community has yet to answer. "As a number of drones' strikes have demonstrated, a country's ability to take-out big-name targets, without any casualties on its side, is a political gain for the government at the time," she writes, "even though it may not see 'military victory' in the longer term." |
Saggy Pants: Not A Privilege, But A Right | This week's story to not quite make it out of our editorial meeting... As Britain's parliamentary elections draw to a close, there's been much talk of the little people - of the common man and his right to fight for his basic human rights. Take for example Ellis Drummond, an 18-year-old from London. When he stands up for his rights, his trousers stay firmly on the floor. He recently fought for the right to wear his pants way below his waist...thanks to him, Brits have retained the claim to Life, Liberty, and a full view of Ellis Drummond's bum. Ellis Drummond, we salute you, for the strength of your convictions, and your mission to expand what's considered a basic human right. What will we fight for next? |
Budget Battle - Analysis | It's playoff season again, and NPR Senior News Analyst Daniel Schorr is settling back to watch the contestants in the annual Battle of the Budget. |
Domestic-Surveillance Subcommittee Members Named | The Senate Intelligence Committee names the seven members who will be briefed on the administration's domestic-surveillance program. The new subcommittee was formed to handle questions about the program's legality. Panel Republicans approved the added oversight in a closed door session Tuesday. |
The Root: Why Obama's Speech Needs To Play It Safe | David Swerdlick is a regular contributor to The Root. After his inaugural address; his first State of the Union; his speeches in Philadelphia, Denver, Springfield and Oslo; and the 2004 Democratic convention speech, during which he proclaimed "there's not a liberal America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America," everybody knows that President Barack Obama can give a great speech. If any doubters remained, they were gone after the president's rousing tribute to Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the victims of the Tucson massacre. If he's re-elected in two years, we'll look back on Tucson as the moment Obama stopped governing the country and started leading it. People like the president. But there's still a question about whether the broadest part of the electorate has confidence that he's getting the job done. Speeches won't help him with that anymore. After the "shellacking" Democrats took in the 2010 midterms, a consensus was forming that Obama needed to hit a home run with his State of the Union to bolster his chances for 2012. But with polls showing Obama's favorability at 53 percent, his fortunes are already rising. Now all he really needs is a base hit to keep his streak going — a State of the Union that's solid but unspectacular; that covers the subject but keeps it brief; that's sober but optimistic; that doesn't try to change people's lives, and merely seeks to reassure them that they're in capable hands. At Tuesday's State of the Union, Obama needs another good performance — but not a great one. This State of the Union will succeed if he does five things to convince voters that he is focused on what matters most to them: Keep It Short The president will be competing for eyeballs with college basketball and reruns of Two and a Half Men. With round-the-clock political coverage going on three cable networks and kids to get to school in the morning, folks don't have all night to hear what Obama has to say. If he can't cover everything in a half hour, he's saying too much. Don't Make a List Obama has racked up a lot of wins so far: The stimulus, Race to the Top, Lilly Ledbetter, Wall Street reform and New START all prove that he knows how to push laws through Congress. But if anything's been shown in the last two years, it's that voters aren't impressed by lists of legislative victories. Obama should resist the urge to recap all the laws he's passed. Avoid Health Care After telling a joint session of Congress in 2009 that he was "determined to be the last" American president to deal with health care reform, Obama didn't get the boost he was seeking. The bill passed, but his speech only made the health care issue bigger, not better for him. Last week the House of Representatives voted to repeal "ObamaCare," but Republicans didn't get the bounce they were hoping for, either. The lesson: When it comes to health care talk, less is more. Own the Debt Commission There's going to be a lot of focus on the politics of debt and taxes for the rest of Obama's term, and whoever sets the tone and tenor of the debate is going to have the upper hand. This speech is Obama's chance to remind Americans that the bipartisan deficit commission, which presented its report in December, was convened at his insistence in the face of Republican opposition in Congress. Invest Wisely Early buzz says that Obama will be calling for "investment" in America's future — a chord he repeatedly struck in his remarks six weeks ago at Forsyth Technical Community College in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. It was a good speech, meant to tie in with Obama's recent appointment of General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt to his Council on Jobs and Competitiveness and emphasizing that, "We don't want to be a nation that simply buys and consumes products from other countries. We want to create and sell products all over the world that are stamped with three simple words: 'Made In America.'" But unless the president knows exactly how he plans to move ahead with high-speed rail or getting the nation's schoolkids to buckle down in science and math, he should careful, because it's a safe bet his opponents will say investment is "big-government" spending by another name. Obama will ultimately be judged by how he performs in the next two years, not by his kick-off speech, so Tuesday is as good a time as any to let his inner policy wonk take the night off. When he takes the initiative, Obama often loses. He usually wins when he finds a way to manage expectations. His most popular achievements so far — last month's tax deal with Republicans and the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell — turned out to be hits partly because no one expected them. For the president to come out ahead, he'd be wise to apply a different theme from the business world and use the State of the Union to under-promise. He's still got two years to over-deliver. |
Political Junkie: One Day Left in Iowa | Ken Rudin, NPR's political editor, discusses what's at stake with just one day left before the Iowa caucuses. Also, a meeting scheduled to take place in Oklahoma on Saturday is widely interpreted as an effort to generate an independent third-party campaign with New York mayor Michael Bloomberg at the helm. Guests: Ken Rudin, NPR's political editor, writes the "Political Junkie" column and has a weekly podcast called "It's All Politics" Ann Selzer, president of Selzer & Company, the research and polling firm that conducts The Des Moines Register's poll Christine Todd Whitman, former head of the Environmental Protection Agency; former governor of New Jersey NEAL CONAN, host: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. One day before Iowa caucuses, we have new polls, a new senator from Mississippi, and new talk of a third-party. Time for another edition of the Political Junkie. (Soundbite of past political speeches) President RONALD REAGAN: There you go again. Representative GERALDINE FERRARO (Democrat, New York): My name is Geraldine Ferraro. Vice President WALTER MONDALE: When I hear your new ideas, I'm reminded of that ad, Where's the Beef? President RICHARD NIXON: You don't have Nixon to kick around anymore. Senator JOHN KERRY (Democrat, Massachusetts): I'm John Kerry, and I'm reporting for duty. President GEORGE W. BUSH: But I'm the decider. Governor HOWARD DEAN (Democrat, Vermont): Byaah. CONAN: Every Wednesday NPR's political editor Ken Rudin joins us. He's got a New Year's bonus for us, not one but two trivia questions this week. You're going to have to wait a little bit for that. In just a moment, we're going to talk with the head of the Des Moines Register's Iowa poll, which puts Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee at the head of their respective classes. Plus, the Huckabee attack ad that wasn't, the appointment of Trent Lott's successor, TV debates for just the top four. And a bit later on the show, we'll focus on a meeting in Oklahoma next week that some interpret as an effort to generate a non-partisan independent campaign or in other words, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, are you ready for a militantly moderate third-party presidential candidate. Our number here in Washington is 800-989-8255. E-mail us, talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation on our blog, that's at npr.org/blogofthenation. Later in the hour, it's the first day at work for many this new year. Got a little cough? We'll tell you how sick is too sick to clock in. And we've got an e-mail challenge for you, ever elevated a sniffle to the full-blown flu? Practiced your sore throat before you called the boss? Confess; we'll forgive you. The e-mail address is talk@npr.org. But first the political junkie Ken Rudin is with us here in Studio 3A. Happy New Year, Ken. KEN RUDIN: And to you too, Neal. CONAN: And we have to begin in Iowa where most of the polls says it's a three-way toss-up on the Democratic side and closer than it was between the two top Republicans. RUDIN: Well on the Democratic side we've been saying that for months, it's been Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, and whatever iteration of those three and nothing has changed, of course, the whole thing is, and we say this over and over again, is turnout because caucus is not the same as a primary. It's - you have to be really dedicated to go out. And all the candidates are really trying to get that - get out that caucus vote as the last day today. As a matter of fact, rallies tonight at 9:30, 10 o'clock, 10 p.m. tonight. CONAN: And just a reminder on the Democratic side, this can take a couple of hours. RUDIN: It could only because on the Republican side it's basically a straight straw poll that the Republican voter will go into a caucus site and vote for Smith or Jones or whatever candidate he or she prefers. Whereas on the Democratic side, there - you need to be - have some kind of a math degree to figure out what happens because if your candidate - if candidate Smith doesn't get 15 percent at an individual precinct caucus, that the supporters of that candidate could decide to merge with another candidate to make that candidate viable in that caucus. That's what Dennis Kucinich announced, yesterday, that if in any event that he is not a precinct where his supporters are not viable, he will have some kind of a collision with Obama's supporters to raise their stakes. CONAN: And why is it that in Iowa the Democratic Party and the Republican Party have different rules for an event they call the same thing that happens on the same day? RUDIN: Good question. Although, why is Iowa having a caucus and everybody else seems to have primaries? But Iowa is different. They've been on the first on the calendar since 1972. And you know, we've been talking on this program for so long that this process is going on for so long; it takes forever and yet it's here already and somehow you wonder how long it will last after Iowa because the |
Suit Challenges Los Angeles' Smog Control Program | Los Angeles is famous for its smog, and despite decades of effort, the bad air seems to be getting worse in the region. Environmental groups have filed suit against the South Coast Air Quality Management District, claiming that mismanagement of an emissions-trading program has aggravated the problem. Patrick Hirsch reports from Los Angeles. |
Unlikely Heroism: Leslie Uggams And Other Mishap Survivors | When NPR's own Trey Graham directed me to this fantastic and quite well-known clip of Leslie Uggams doing her best to perform "June Is Bustin' Out All Over," in spite of forgetting the words or not having the teleprompter or entering a fugue state or whatever happened to her, it seemed kind of mean. And then it started to seem heroic. (And in fairness to Leslie Uggams, her words aren't that much more ridiculous than the real words. And she's kind of close...up to a point.) This is the kind of disaster that only a true professional can withstand without simply running off the stage. Think of Mike Myers trying to figure out what to do after Kanye West came up with "George Bush doesn't care about black people." (Not because of the politics, but because it clearly was not what Mike Myers thought was going to happen.) It takes me back to "Fiasco!", my favorite-ever episode of This American Life, which I have listened to at least ten times, linked to repeatedly and played for almost everyone I know, because if you can get through the first twenty minutes of that show and not collapse into giggles over the stories of the disastrous performance of Peter Pan, you are a much stronger person than I am. (I just stopped to listen to it again. I love it that much.) So I present it as an open question: Who are your favorite mishap survivors? I'm not talking about real trainwrecks where something honestly terrible happens; I'm talking about the people who soldier on no matter what. They fall off the stage; they get back on. Because they are professionals, people. |
Billy Bragg And Joe Henry On Mountain Stage | On this treasured Mountain Stage archive performance from 2016, British folk activist Billy Bragg and Grammy-winning artist and producer Joe Henry roll in full-steam ahead with poetic authority, moaning America's canon of railroad blues from times gone by. Though Bragg and Henry had already made multiple separate trips to Mountain Stage, this performance at Pitttsburgh's Byham Theater defied space and time. The dynamic folk heroes came together like porters from the past carrying iconic songs from Shine a Light: Field Recordings from the Great American Railroad, recorded during a train ride from Chicago to Los Angeles. Nominated for the 2017 Americana Music Award as duo/group of the year for their railway journey, they set forth straight away from the station sharing songs recorded on loading docks, compartments, cramped sleeping cars, platforms and depots across America. "So we got on this train in Chicago and 3,000 miles and 65 hours later we had recorded 12 songs," Bragg told the audience of their four-day slow roll to L.A. "Not all of the trains in these songs are a train that you are riding on. In American music the train is metaphorical and it is about loss and freedom and hope and aspirations." With their rough-hewn vocals pitching about as if they'd jumped out of a boxcar to sing around a sooty campfire, the duo moved the crowd cross country via "Railroad Bill," "In the Pines" and a cover of the original field recording of "Rock Island Line," made famous by Huddie Ledbetter or Lead Belly, who Henry said was their patron saint. Tenderly, they shared one of Woody Guthrie's favorite songs, Goebel Reeves' "Hobo's Lullaby." Henry told the audience he and Bragg's spirits first connected 30 years ago when they accidentally met in New York City bonding over a deep love of Guthrie. In the midst of the seven-song set, Bragg shared a bit about their mobile recording process. "We wanted to take people on a journey with us so we had two mics pointed outward to record our environment ... so you get trains going by, people getting off and on the trains, and grackles attacking us in Fort Worth," Bragg said before his baritone muscled up a mountain incline toward nothing but the Rockies and open sky for The Carter Family song, "Railroading on the Great Divide." The duo closed out swinging and shining a spirited light on the "Midnight Special," a traditional song about the train of the same name, made famous in 1934 by Lead Belly, then an Angola Prison inmate, who knew the Texas-born song. "At the Sugar Land Prison, the train comes out of the bottoms of the Brazos River and the light would sweep across the prison and if it would flicker through the windows of your cell, legend had it that you would be the next one getting paroled," Bragg said. "That's what they believed." This Mountain Stage performance was originally published Sept. 6, 2017. |
A View From China, India On Carbon Dioxide Emissions | In the coming decades, carbon dioxide emissions from China, India and other rapidly developing countries are expected to grow rapidly. China and India have said they won't commit to controlling their carbon dioxide emissions. So how are international concerns about climate change viewed in China and India? |
Confusion Reigns In Search For Missing Airliner | Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 disappeared Saturday. Five days later, there's no word about what happened to it or the 239 people on board. What has emerged, however, is a pattern of contradictory and erroneous information from Malaysian authorities that has angered families of the passengers and irked the country's neighbors. But, says Patrick Smith, a commercial pilot who runs the popular Ask The Pilot website, such contradictions are "somewhat common," given how many entities, countries and statements are involved. There can be language problems, he says, as well as terminology issues. "In the attempt to simplify the confusing vernacular of aviation, the messages get garbled," says Smith, the author of Cockpit Confidential: Everything You Need to Know About Air Travel. Here are some examples of contradictions and erroneous facts in Malaysia: -- When Contact Was Lost: On Saturday, Malaysia Airlines said Flight MH370 disappeared from radar at 2:40 a.m. On Sunday, after six statements the previous day, the airline said the plane was last heard from at 1:30 a.m. -- Stolen Passports And Off-Loaded Luggage: Also Saturday, it emerged that two men listed as passengers on the flight — an Austrian and an Italian — weren't on the plane. News reports said their passports had been stolen in Thailand. Malaysia's government then said it knew of the reports, and it then raised the number of people traveling on the flight with false passports to four. It later revised that number to two. Both of these travel documents used to board the flight were on Interpol's list of stolen passports, and the agency expressed frustration that passports weren't checked against its database. A Malaysian official responded that this is difficult to do because there are millions of names on the list. On Monday, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, the head of Malaysia's Department of Civil Aviation, said five passengers never made it on the flight, and their luggage was off-loaded before Flight 370 took off. That statement turned out to be wrong. It emerged, instead, that four passengers who bought tickets never checked in. -- Identities: At a news conference Monday, Azharuddin said the two passengers who were using false passports were "not Asian-looking males," contradicting his country's home minister who previously said they were. When pressed by a reporter what the two men looked like "roughly," Azharuddin replied: like Mario Balotelli. This is what Balotelli looks like. This is what the men who boarded the flight using false passports looked like: The men, it turned out, were Iranian. But the images released by police had one other thing in common: their lower halves were identical. On Wednesday, Malaysian authorities denied that they had doctored the photographs, saying it was a photocopying error. -- Location: The plane went missing over the Gulf of Thailand, and that's where the search was initially targeted. A day later, Malaysia's air force said the plane may have turned around before it disappeared. Malaysia Airlines said Tuesday the search was now focused on the west of the Malay Peninsula. Indeed, it was expanded to the Strait of Malacca and the Andaman Sea. But Azharuddin said that didn't mean that officials believed the plane was off the western coast. He said the search was taking place on both sides. Also Tuesday, a local newspaper quoted Malaysia's air force chief as saying a military radar had detected the plane at 2:40 a.m. in the Strait of Malacca. On Wednesday, he denied making those comments, but said the military hadn't ruled out the possibility that the plane turned back. Who's To Blame? One reason for so much confusion is that this story is fast-changing. "In a dynamic situation like this, there's opportunity for misinformation," says Anthony Brickhouse, a trained air safety investigator who has worked at the National Transportation Safety Board and is now an associate professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla. He says it's not anybody's fault. In addition, responsibility for a crash investigation lies with the country where the wreckage is found. In this case, there is no wreckage, making jurisdictional oversight difficult to establish. Under international treaties, if the wreckage is found in international waters, the state where the airline is registered — in this case Malaysia — is in charge of the investigation. "This is a special case," he says. "Usually, within a few hours or days, you have some evidence. With this situation, because we don't know where the plane is, there's more confusion, and it's hard to say how it's going to play out." |
In Key Senate Races Like North Dakota's, Money Is Still Pouring In | This story is part of our Senate Tracker series, looking at Senate races across the country ahead of the 2018 midterm elections. Check out all of our election coverage. North Dakota Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp raised $12.5 million in October, but it might not be enough to defeat her challenger, Republican Congressman Kevin Cramer, who is ahead in the polls a week away from Election Day. Here & Now‘s Robin Young speaks with Dave Thompson, radio news director at Prairie Public Broadcasting in Fargo. |
The Nation: In Egypt, A President Without Power | Sharif Abdel Kouddous is an independent journalist based in Cairo. He is a Democracy Now! correspondent and a fellow at The Nation Institute. Last week's presidential elections in Egypt were supposed to mark the final step in what has been an arduous transition from military rule to an elected civilian government. Instead, sixteen months after President Hosni Mubarak was ousted in a popular uprising calling for freedom and social justice, the Supreme Council of Armed Forces has assumed near-full control of all of the key branches of state. Minutes after polls closed Sunday evening in the country's first-ever competitive presidential election, which pitted the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsi against Ahmed Shafik, Mubarak's last prime minister, the SCAF issued a set of constitutional amendments that strip the incoming president of almost all significant powers and cement military authority over the post-Mubarak era. The move by the ruling generals came days after the dissolution of the popularly elected parliament by a court packed with Mubarak-appointed judges, as well as a decree by the Minister of Justice reintroducing elements of martial law to the country by granting the military broad powers to arrest and detain civilians. "Egypt has completed its full transition into a military dictatorship," wrote Hossam Bahgat, head of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, after the amendments were made public. The eleventh-hour declaration awards the ruling generals sweeping powers, including the right to issue legislation in the absence of a sitting parliament, and total control over the military's affairs, shielding the army from any presidential, parliamentary or public oversight. Most prominently, the amendments remove the president's role as commander-in-chief — with SCAF head Field Marshall Hussein Tantawi assuming that power — effectively transforming the SCAF into a fourth branch of state, constitutionally separate from the executive, legislative and judiciary. "The provisions really do constitutionalize a military coup," writes Nathan Brown, an Egypt expert at George Washington University. The military also tightened its grip over the drafting of Egypt's new constitution by granting itself an effective veto over any clauses that don't meet with its approval. It can even go further and directly handpick the 100-member body that will write the constitution. The Constituent Assembly, elected by the Muslim Brotherhood–dominated parliament two days before it was dissolved, faces allegations by secular forces that it is dominated by Islamists who have secured themselves the lion's share of seats. The new amendments allow the SCAF to dissolve the current body if "encounters an obstacle" — a disturbingly vague condition — and select the Constituent Assembly themselves. The military council further eroded the authority of the executive with another decree, made public on Monday, to form a seventeen-member National Defense Council, to be chaired by the incoming president, but which will include eleven senior military commanders and will make decisions based on a simple majority vote. Meanwhile, the head of the SCAF Advisory Council, Sameh Ashour, suggested the winner of the election might only serve on an interim basis, until the new constitution is written. "The newly elected president will occupy the office for a short period of time, whether or not he agrees," Ashour told Al-Jazeera. Activists and rights campaigners decried the series of moves by the military, which they said render the SCAF's promise to hand over power by June 30 effectively meaningless. The sentiment was reflected in the front-page headline of the privately owned daily Al-Shorouk the morning after the election: "A president without powers." The runoff itself was deeply divisive, marked by heavy negative campaigning by both sides. Shafik, a stalwart of the former regime, campaigned on a law-and-order platform, vowing to use force to crush protesters, while vilifying the Brotherhood and pledging to act as a bulwark against the rise of Islamists in government. Meanwhile, Morsi sought to portray himself as the revolutionary candidate facing off against the remnants of Mubarak's regime. Both men were polarizing figures, and their candidacies evoked the binary political landscape that prevailed in Egypt in the decades leading up to the revolution. Enthusiasm among the electorate was clearly low, with many voters saying their choice of candidate was based largely on preventing the other from reaching the presidency. The Brotherhood has claimed it won the poll, releasing figures that show Morsi with nearly 52 percent of the vote to Shafik's 48 percent. The results appear to coincide with reports from local media outlets and independent observers. However, the Shafik campaign is vigorously denying their candidate has lost and insists Shafik came out ahead with a tally of 51 percent. Both sides have launched appeals against the conduct of the vo |
First These Kentuckians Couldn't Drink The Water. Now They Can't Afford It | Jasper Davis stoops to tilt a plastic bottle under a drip of water that's trickling from a crack in the mountainside. "Tastes better than what the city water does," he says. "Way better." The spring is innocuous, a mere dribble emerging from a cliff face that was cut out to make room for a four-lane highway. But there's evidence of frequent visitors. A small footbridge has been placed over the muddy ground, and some enterprising soul shoved a rubber tube into the mountain to make filling jugs easier. "You just stick your jug under there and just catch the water as it comes out, one jug at a time," Davis says. This has become routine for some in Martin County, a rural, mountainous community on Kentucky's border with West Virginia. The area has made news for decades for its notoriously dirty water supply. But now, efforts to fix that have led to another crisis: Many are unable to afford their water bills. The water that comes out of Martin County taps can be cloudy at times. There are boil-water advisories and pipes so leaky that most of the water is lost before it reaches residents' taps. For years, residents received monthly advisories that some people exposed to the chemicals in their water "may experience problems with their liver, kidneys, or central nervous system, and may have an increased risk of getting cancer." Local officials are trying to fix all that, and they say the water is now safe to drink, save for occasional problems. But this has taken a lot of money, and the cost of that has been passed on to customers. After a series of increases, water rates went up 41% last year alone. Lingering distrust, higher rates Davis has been wary of his tap water since he was 15. That's when, in 2000, a massive coal slurry impoundment broke in Martin County, sending 306 million gallons of toxic sludge oozing into the county's water source, leaching into groundwater and seeping into residents' wells. "It was horrible," Davis says, pointing at a creek near his home where all the fish turned up dead amid the spill. The slurry has been cleaned up. But most people in Martin County remain deeply distrustful not only of the water that comes out of the pipes but of the authorities who are tasked with providing it. A 2018 rate increase made Martin County's near-undrinkable water the eighth most expensive in the state, according to a recent affordability analysis. Since then, Mary Cromer, an attorney who represents Martin County residents in their battle with water regulators, says she sees more people struggling to pay their bills. Last year, the county made news when it arrested a man accused of stealing water by illegally hooking his home to another family's meter. This past summer, authorities sent disconnect letters to 300 houses, about 10% of all homes served. The Martin County water board is stockpiling bottled water for the neediest, but it faces significant challenges. Major coal companies have recently declared bankruptcy, leaving hundreds of miners in the region out of work. Once a coal-producing powerhouse, Martin County has seen total employment fall by 32% since July 2010. Industry troubles also mean Martin County's annual revenue from the coal severance tax fell 81% from 2012 to 2018. Similar declines in neighboring coal-reliant communities have prompted some to cut back on services like trash collection. A recent report from the Brookings Institution and Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy noted that the loss of coal revenue could send at least 26 U.S. counties into financial insolvency. Billions needed for water infrastructure But water problems here and elsewhere go beyond the decline of coal. "We are dealing with systems that are old," says Colette Easter of the American Society of Civil Engineers. The group has found that America's drinking water infrastructure needs a $105 billion investment in repairs, including more than $8 billion in Kentucky. And Easter says declining population can compound the challenges facing all rural systems, as fixed costs are spread among fewer ratepayers. "The only way you can fix infrastructure without affecting rates is if someone gives you the money," says Andrew Melnykovych, a spokesperson for the Kentucky Public Service Commission. But federal and state grants for repairs are harder to come by. "Absent some dramatic change at both the state and the federal level, that grant money is just not out there in the kind of quantity needed to address water infrastructure needs," he says. Local officials say they understand the hardship this means for residents. "Affordability is the biggest thing we worry about," says Jimmy Don Kerr, treasurer of the Martin County water board. And he knows there's the risk of a vicious cycle. "We lose customers, so we have to raise rates again to cover expenses. More people can't pay, so we get more cutoffs." A rain barrel and hard choices Jasper Davis has not been cut off, but he works hard to keep his water bills as low |
Mothers and Daughters | This program will feature stories and poems that explore the relationship between mothers and daughters: The Unnatural Mother by Charlotte Perkins Gilman; The Sempstress by Colette; Girl by Jamaica Kincaid; Where Is the Water by Jan Shoemaker; and Anne Sexton's poems Pain for a Daughter and Mothers. January 4, 2008 |
A School's Balloon Goes Cross-Country | Gradeschool students in California launched a balloon with a message attached in December to learn about weather patterns. The balloon made it across the country and was found last month in North Carolina. Guest: Gary Nash, fifth-grade teacher, Richland Elementary School in San Marcos, Calif. |
Knife Wielding Squirrel Shocks Toronto Woman | Andrea Diamond has seen lots of squirrels in her backyard, but when she saw one wielding a blue paring knife, she had to do a double-take. |
Allergies and Asthma | Allergies and Asthma — As many as 50 million Americans suffer from allergies, and 20 million others have asthma. The potential triggers are everywhere - from pollen to peanuts - and the impact can sometimes be deadly. Why have allergy and asthma rates, especially in children, risen so dramatically in recent years? The program explores the causes, prevention and treatment of allergies and asthma. |
No Confirmation Battle Seen for Gates | A Senate confirmation hearing is scheduled Tuesday for Robert Gates, the nominee to replace Donald Rumsfeld as defense secretary. Democrats plan to ask Gates about his role in Reagan administration's Iran-Contra scandal, but in general they're vowing a "fair and fresh" look at a man who has served under six presidents. |
A Pass to Ride the Bus for Free | We hear the thoughts and tales — as told by storyteller David Greenberger — of an elderly resident of Erie, Pa., an adventure that began with a free bus pass. |
18,000 Pounds Of Sandbags Weren't Enough To Protect This Houston Home | It took two commercial trucks to deliver the 18,000 pounds of sandbags Kristin Massey deployed to anchor plastic sheeting around her home, but it wasn't enough to stop the massive amount of water brought by Harvey. Massey posted new images of her flooded home Tuesday. "We did all that we could, but it would never have been enough," Massey wrote, providing an update that included photos of her flooded neighborhood of Meyerland, in southwest Houston. The update was posted to Facebook from Massey's neighbor's house, which is elevated higher than her own. The images and video included scenes of a rowboat tied to the railing of the house's front steps, with water rushing by in the background. Massey was one of millions of people in eastern Texas who rushed to prepare for Hurricane Harvey last week, as warnings went out about the large and powerful storm. Now a tropical storm, Harvey has brought unprecedented rain. The total (so far) of 49.2 inches that was reported in Houston's southeast Tuesday set a new national record for total rainfall from a tropical system. Hours before Harvey made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane, Houston Public Media reported on Massey's preparations, which she said she spent nearly $5,000 to put in place. "The bags stack 11 inches high with a sheet of waterproofing 5 feet high," HPM's Marissa Cummings reported. "This surrounds her entire one-story home." But Massey's street in Meyerland was one of many in Houston that flooded badly. Describing the water levels on Tuesday, Massey wrote, "My home (4.5ft inside home, 9ft in street) and community in Meyerland and my parents' home ... and community in Memorial are completely devastated." Massey continued, "After watching days of helicopter and boat rescues and hearing my son cry over the phone, my heart physically hurts." Last week, Massey told HPM that she was trying to protect her house because it had already been hit by flooding twice in the past year. She had moved to the area because of its good school district, she said. In today's update, Massey added, "If your home wasn't affected and after the water recedes, I encourage everyone to continue to give manpower wherever they can. My prayers continue to go out to everyone and [for] the safety of Houston." |
Tinariwen Makes Music a Powerful Weapon | Tinariwen formed in the refugee camps of Libya and Algeria. They've carried instruments and rifles in their lives, and fought for the freedom of their Tuareg people. Their music is a mix of North African blues and at times reggae-influenced. Chris Nickson reviews their CD, <em>Amassakoul</em>. |
Online Shopping Grows in Popularity | NPR's Renee Montagne talks with an online shopping expert about how the industry has grown over the years. Chuck Davis, CEO of BizRate.com, says online shopping is more popular than ever because of its convenience and broad selection. |
'Simpsons' Voice Actor Hank Azaria | Azaria plays a colorful baseball announcer in the IFC comedy series 'Brockmire,' which is now in its 4th and final season. Azaria spoke with 'Fresh Air' about sobriety, his flamboyant character in 'The Birdcage,' and why he doesn't voice the Indian American convenience store owner Apu on 'The Simpsons' anymore.<br/><br/>Also, John Powers reviews the Hulu series 'Little Fires Everywhere,' starring Kerry Washington and Reese Witherspoon. |
Supreme Court Temporarily Blocks Questioning Of Ross In Census Lawsuits | Plaintiffs in cases concerning a 2020 census question that asks if census-takers are U.S. citizens had hoped to depose the commerce secretary. The court on Tuesday sided with the Trump administration. |
All Saints Day Brings French Families Together | While Americans spent the Halloween weekend dressing up and dishing out candy, families in France have a different tradition. On All Saints Day they gather at family graves, in a gesture of remembrance. The occasion is usually not somber and melancholy, but more a celebration of family ties. |
The Democratic Credibility Of The U.S. Has Taken A Hit. Here's How To Fix It. | The assault on the U.S. Capitol is causing much harm to America's image abroad as a promoter of democratic values. |
For Stopping A Pandemic Of Gun Violence, Let's Look To The Flu | It's still summer and school's still out for most people, so it's understandable if you're not thinking about the flu. But we all will be soon. Your pharmacist, your doctor, your boss, maybe even your colleagues — they'll all be pushing you to get that annual flu shot, as well they should. Flu is serious business; it causes thousands of hospitalizations each year. There is no exact number of how many people die from the flu every year. It comes in different strains, and people don't always recognize that flu is the cause. But there are estimates: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says between 3,000 and 49,000 people die every year from the flu. You're probably thinking: Why am I talking about the flu? I am talking about it because it's something we've lived with all of our lives. It's something that existed before we were a country and something that remains with us to the present day. It's something that touches everyone, but harms some people — the elderly and the very young — more than others. I am talking about it because in this way the flu is like gun violence, but with one significant difference: With the flu, we fight back hard. We refuse to accept it as inevitable — the price we must pay for living in a free and mobile society, for going to school or living in a certain kind of place, or having a certain kind of lifestyle. We try things, and if those things don't work, we try other things. We exhort, we cheerlead, we make it everybody's responsibility. We remind each other to wash our hands, to avoid certain places if we are sick. We make it easy to get vaccines and to pay for them. And perhaps most importantly, we don't pit one form of flu against another and say we can only try to address one — we recognize that they all kill, and their victims are just as dead no matter which strain it is. Remember when the H1N1 strain hit a few years ago? Where I live, there were flu shot clinics set up all over the city. Yes, I heard some grinching about whether people from another jurisdiction were getting "our" vaccine. But most people recognized there was no fence keeping people from the next county over from breathing on their kids — they all needed to be protected. There were also bigger discussions about why people were sending their sick kids to school. That led to legislation in some cities making it easier for people to stay home when they or their children are ill. The fixes were not and still aren't perfect. For example, there remain what I consider legitimate disagreements about how these efforts should be paid for and how they should be run. But it's a start. We didn't sit there and throw up our hands and say, "Oh well." Nor did we throw away our civil liberties in the process. Can I just tell you, in this country that we love, homicide is the leading cause of death for black males aged 20 to 34, and the second leading cause of death for black females aged 15 through 24. That's what Black Lives Matter activists are talking about: These are people that they love and they want it to stop, no matter who is pulling the trigger. But this grief is not one they bear alone: Homicide is the third leading cause of death for white males aged 15 through 24, and the fourth leading cause of death for white females the same ages. Not only that, suicide is the second leading cause of death for white males aged 10 through 34. Guns are a factor in all of this. This weekend alone, at a party in suburban Seattle, three young people were shot to death by someone they knew who invaded the party and started shooting. Two police officers were shot Friday in San Diego during a traffic stop. One of them was killed. The virus is here and it is not contained. MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: Finally, today, it's still summer. And school is still out for most people, so it's understandable if you're not thinking about the flu. But we all will be soon. Your pharmacist, your doctor, your boss, maybe even your colleagues - they'll all be pushing you to get that annual flu shot, as well they should. Flu is serious business. It causes thousands of hospitalizations each year, and while there's no accurate number of how many people die from flu each year because there are different strains, people don't always recognize if flu's the cause and so on, there are estimates. The Centers for Disease Control says that somewhere between 3,000 and 49,000 people die every year because of the flu. So now you're probably thinking, why are you talking about the flu? I'm talking about it because it's something we've lived with all of our lives. It's something that existed before we were a country and something that remains with us to the present day. It's something that touches everyone, but harms some people - the elderly and the very young - more than others. I'm talking about it because in this way, the flu is like gun violence. But with one significant difference. With the flu, we fight back hard. We refuse to accept it as inevitable. The p |
Senate Finance Chair Reacts To Leak Of How Little America's Wealthiest Pay In Taxes | NPR's Ailsa Chang talks with Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., chair of the Finance Committee, about the <em>ProPublica</em> report revealing tax information for the wealthiest Americans. |
President Trump Ends Another Round Of Trade Negotiations With China | President Trump met with the vice premier of China on Friday, capping another round of high-stakes trade negotiations. The countries face a self-imposed deadline next week to strike a deal. |
Manuscripts Suggest Jane Austen Had A Great Editor | Can't remember the "i before e" rule? Don't worry, neither could Jane Austen. The beloved novelist -- author of Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park and Emma -- is known for her polished prose, her careful phrasing and her precise grammar. "Everything came finished from her pen," Austen's brother, Henry, said in 1818, a year after his sister's death. But now -- though it may pain die-hard Austen fans -- it turns out that Austen may have simply had a very good editor. Kathryn Sutherland, a professor at Oxford University, has been studying more than 1,000 original handwritten pages of Austen's prose. She's found some telling differences between the handwritten pages and Austen's finished works -- including terrible spelling, grammatical errors and poor (often nonexistent) punctuation. Sutherland talks about the manuscripts -- now compiled in a digital archive -- with NPR's Mary Louise Kelly. |
Georgia Employs High School 'Graduation Coaches' | Every high school in Georgia has a new "graduation coach." The coaches' mission is to identify students at risk of dropping out of school and help them graduate on time. Georgia Public Broadcasting's Susanna Capelouto reports. |
Tres Chic Tres Chicas | Don't let the Spanish name fool you –- only the number and gender hold up in translation. The members of Tres Chicas -- Lynn Blakey, Caitlin Cary and Tonya Lamm -– are not the latest Latin thing, but a trio of female singer-songwriters with impressive alt-country pedigrees. The three have recorded and performed over the last decade with Whiskeytown (Cary), Hazeldine (Lamm) and Glory Fountain (Blakey), among other groups in their neighborhood of Raleigh, N.C. Chris Stamey, a founding member of seminal southern pop groups the Sneakers and the dBs, produced and played guitar on the debut Tres Chicas CD Sweetwater. The women are close friends and their earlier bands often shared a stage. Then one fateful night in a ladies room, Blakey was staring in the mirror, nursing a recently broken heart. Cary and Lamm walked in together. "I already had a band (Glory Fountain), but for some reason, I wanted a band with them," says Blakey. Tres Chicas was born. Sweetwater, released in June, is a collaborative effort. It features songs written by all three artists plus a few well-chosen cover tunes, including tracks by country legend George Jones and alt-country queen Lucinda Williams. |
Farewell to Studio Nine | Some of the most significant sounds of the 20th century emanated from CBS Radio's Studio 9 in New York City and veteran broadcaster Robert Trout remembers them. In this edition of Lost and Found Sound, Trout says that between 1938 and 1964 he presented world events to the nation from that perch high over Manhattan. Recently when he was preparing to ship more than 100 boxes of his personal papers and broadcasts to the University of Texas at Austin, he found a long forgotten transcription of the program in which he said farewell to Studio Nine -- 35 years ago. In it -- among other things - is the last ever chat with Edward R Murrow. |
In 'Beside Bowie,' Sideman Mick Ronson Takes The Foreground | A new documentary film celebrates the life of the late guitarist Mick Ronson. Never heard of him? Starting in 1969, he was David Bowie's onstage and in-studio foil, arranger and co-producer. The film, called Beside Bowie, makes the case that Ronson deserves equal credit for Bowie's rise to superstardom — but never got it before his death from liver cancer in 1993. The very first voice you hear in the film belongs to David Bowie — it's a voice-over he recorded for the documentary before his death last year. Bowie describes his first encounter with his future sidekick in the film Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. "I started playing some of my songs on a 12-string, and he plugged in his Gibson," he says. "And even though he was playing at a very low volume, the energy and grit cut through the room and he immediately established himself as a very well-defined player." There was a natural synergy between them, according to just about everyone who appears in the film. Ronson's widow, Suzi, argues that the bond was even stronger: that her late husband and Bowie were two halves of a musical whole. "There's just not one without the other. There never was," she says in the film. "Those five records, all those tours — that was Mick and David [in] combination, just like Keith and Mick or The Who." Ronson was born and raised in Hull, a port town in the North East of England. He made a name for himself as Hull's answer to Jeff Beck, but kept his day job as a landscaper for the city government. A former bandmate convinced Bowie to hire Ronson. In the film, producer Tony Visconti remembers recording the future superstar's third album, The Man Who Sold the World. "What I didn't realize was that Mick was a trained pianist and he studied violin when he was a kid," Visconti says. "So he had these two other major instruments under his belt. And then he noticed that I had scored an arrangement for something on The Man Who Sold the World -- so Mick was like, looking over my shoulder, and he said, 'Can you teach me how you score?' Because he could read and write music." Eventually, Ronson's job became turning songs Bowie wrote on acoustic guitar or piano into veritable rock songs. The very first string arrangement he wrote was for Bowie's epic "Life on Mars." The critical accolades and album sales grew, but Ronson's bank balance didn't. While the Spiders from Mars were selling out arena shows, Ronson was earning less than 100 British pounds a week. The director of the documentary, Jon Brewer, began working with Bowie and Ronson around that time. Brewer says he made Beside Bowie to try to set the record straight because Ronson was denied the respect he deserved. "With respect to the money, he most certainly didn't get what he was supposed to have done," Brewer says. "And I just feel that that was something that went under the bridge, and people went, 'Oh, we must sort that out,' but nobody actually ever did. And that's one of the struggles I think David was faced with." Ronson never got songwriting or arranging credit on any of the early Bowie albums. Suzi says she and Ronson lived paycheck to paycheck after Ronson's solo career fizzled — even though he arranged John Mellencamp's No. 1 hit "Jack and Diane." "David should have gone to his grave thinking he should've righted a great wrong — he certainly should have," Suzi says. "Mick was never credited and never paid. Never credited!" And perhaps, Brewer says, his documentary will help restore Ronson to his rightful place in rock history. "Mick Ronson was probably one of the greatest arrangers of all time," Brewer says. "You know, he did his day's work, and in that day's work was making hit records." |
1812: The War That Forged A Nation | Guest: Walter R. Borneman, Writer (archive from 10/25/04) |
Letters: Live Earth, Parrots and Harry Potter | We read letters from our listeners about our coverage of the Live Earth concert, parrots and war veterans, cringe readings in New York, and Harry Potter. |
NPR Bestsellers: Week Of September 11, 2014 | The lists are compiled from weekly surveys of close to 500 independent bookstores nationwide. |
Halliburton, U.S. Reach Settlement In Bribery Probe | Halliburton Corp. has announced it will pay out more than $560 million to the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission to settle a probe into bribery and bid-rigging in contracts around the world. Investigative journalist Lowell Bergman talks about the settlement. |
New Year's Day Quake In Oklahoma City Amid Increasing Seismic Activity | Oklahoma City residents woke early New Year's Day to a magnitude 4.2 quake. Earlier this week, a magnitude 4.3 quake struck the same area. The state isn't historically known for earthquakes, but NPR's Nell Greenfieldboyce told our Newscast unit that Oklahoma "has recently seen a dramatic rise in seismic activity." Here's more: "If you think of a U.S. state associated with earthquakes, it's probably California. But really, you should think Oklahoma. In 2015, Oklahoma hit an all-time high, with more than 800 quakes of magnitude 3 or greater. That busts the record set in 2014, which topped the previous record set the year before. State officials have said this rise is very unlikely to represent a naturally occurring process. The concern is that these quakes may be linked to oil and gas drilling — specifically, the way wastewater produced by the drilling is pumped into deep underground disposal wells. Oklahoma is trying to address the issue. It has a coordinating council on seismic activity that includes regulators, scientists and industry representatives." Joe Wertz of StateImpact Oklahoma further explained the connection between the oil and gas industry and the increasing number of quakes, on Weekend Edition Saturday in November: "Oil and gas production creates a lot of toxic wastewater. To keep it from contaminating drinking water, oil companies inject the fluid into underground disposal wells. That can put pressure on faults, causing them to slip, which scientists say is responsible for Oklahoma's massive earthquake spike." And even as scientists blame the oil and gas industry for the new seismic activity, "researchers say the earthquakes could compromise the economically vital energy hub." StateImpact says the National Research Council advises "investigating any potential site's history of earthquakes and its proximity to fault lines." Other scientists suggest "that companies look for new ways of disposing of wastewater altogether." |
Julián Castro Ends His Presidential Bid | NPR's Steve Inskeep speaks with campaign reporter Scott Detrow about former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro ending his campaign for president. |
Show 232 | College Park, MD | We’re at Dekelboum Concert Hall at the University of Maryland in College Park this week, where a young bassoonist plays the music of Alexandre Tansman and shares an inspiring story about determination, and a young pianist reminds us what it feels like to practice music when you’re only five. You'll also meet a spectacular piano trio from the Juilliard Pre-College Division and hear a 17-year-old play Baroque music on an authentic Baroque violin. |
Americans' Lottery Spending: Who Spends Most And Where? | Americans spent $70 billion on the lottery in 2014, according to the North American Association of State and Provincial Lotteries, which looked at spending in the 43 states where lotteries are legal. The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson calculates that’s more than $230 for every man, woman and child in states where the lottery is legal – more than Americans in all 50 states spent on sports tickets, books, video games, movie tickets and recorded music sales. He writes in The Atlantic that the national average for lottery spending hides a lot of the variance: In North Dakota, per-capita lottery spending is a pittance at just $36 a year. In South Dakota, however, it's an egregious $755 per head. Lotto games bring in the most money per person in the mid-Atlantic and northeast: number-one Rhode Island (nearly $800 per capita!), Massachusetts, and Delaware are among the top five states, while New York, Maryland, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania join them in the top 13 (so does Washington, D.C.). Thompson joins Here & Now’s Jeremy Hobson to discuss the states where lottery spending is highest, and the morality of states earning money this way. Guest Derek Thompson, senior editor at The Atlantic. He tweets @DKThomp. |
Biden Then And Now: A Look Back At His 2016 Convention Speech | Joe Biden's speech Thursday night to the Democratic convention will not be his first. He's done several, most recently four years ago when Hillary Clinton was the party's presidential nominee. |
High School Friend Calls 'D.C. Madam' Shy, Serious | Debbie Hudspith Blozik recalls her friend Deborah Jeane Palfrey. When the news broke Thursday that "D.C. Madam" Deborah Jeane Palfrey had been found dead in mother's Florida home, an apparent suicide, Debbie Hudspith Blozik was home in Alabama sorting through papers. Blozik looked up to see that her high school friend was gone. Blozik and Palfrey grew up together. They attended Charleroi Area High School in Pennsylvania's Mon Valley. "I wouldn't say that we were at the top of the class," she remembers, "but our grades were important to us." Blozik describes her friend as caring and loyal. Palfrey was convicted last month on federal racketeering charges stemming from what prosecutors described as a high-end prostitution ring. Palfrey told her friend she didn't know the women who worked for her were trading sex for money. Blozik expected her to appeal. "She felt like she didn't do anything wrong," Blozik says. "She truly believed that. I felt that she would be one that would want to prove that, and I felt that this was where this was headed." |
Atlantic Ocean Current Slows Down To 1,000-Year Low, Studies Show | An Atlantic Ocean current that helps regulate the global climate has reached an 1,000-year low, according to two new studies in the journal Nature. While scientists disagree about what's behind the sluggish ocean current, the shift could mean bad news for the climate. The Atlantic Meridional overturning circulation [AMOC] – often called the conveyor belt of the ocean – exchanges warm water from the equator with cold water in the Arctic. "The last 100 years has been its lowest point for the last few thousand years," Jon Robson, a researcher at the University of Reading and one of the study's authors, told The Washington Post. "These two new papers do point strongly to the fact that the overturning has probably weakened over the last 150 years." The AMOC "plays a key role in the distribution of heat" across the Earth, but that is being disrupted by melting ice, particularly from Greenland, causing larger volumes of freshwater to flow through the oceans, says David Thornalley, a geologist at University College London and the lead author of one of the new studies. "A key part of the overturning circulation, this AMOC, is the formation of dense water," he tells Here & Now's Lisa Mullins. "The problem is that freshwater isn't very dense and it stops you forming those dense waters." Meltwater from the Greenland ice sheet is lighter and floats on the surface, disrupting the ocean's circulation, research recent shows. Some scientists are concerned the influx of freshwater could cause the current to shut down altogether. This was the premise of the 2004 film, The Day After Tomorrow, but Thornalley says the impact of the slowdown likely won't be as catastrophic as depicted in the film. Scientists are worried about the AMOC shutting down "because evidence from the past suggests that it actually did happen during the last ice age, and it is possible that it could happen in the future, although at the moment we consider it very unlikely," he says. The challenge for scientists is to monitor when the AMOC may reach a tipping point when the system can't recover quickly. "What we don't really know is: Are we close to one of those tipping points where runaway processes could suddenly allow the mark to weaken much quicker than it has been doing?" Thornally says. As the system weakens, scientists are observing "a kind of surprising response to global warming, where you can actually get regional cooling in parts of the globe," climate scientist Max Holmes told NPR in 2006. In the study led by Thornalley, researchers collected ocean sediment and measured the size of the grains to determine how the strength of the current has changed. Larger grains mean a faster flowing current. "You can think about a mountain stream and how that stuff is often associated with boulders and rocks because there's a lot of energy to move those boulders; whereas if you think about sort of the sluggish Mississippi, that's a muddy bottomed river," he says. The other study examined the pattern of ocean temperatures, which researchers concluded has contributed to pockets of record warm and record cold right next to one another. While there is an ongoing dispute about what is causing the slowdown, scientists agree that it could have a dramatic impact on ocean ecosystems, such as coral reefs and deep-sea sponge grounds. "These delicate ecosystems rely on ocean currents to supply their food and disperse their offspring," Prof Murray Roberts, who co-ordinates the Atlas project at the University of Edinburgh, told BBC News. "Ocean currents are like highways spreading larvae throughout the ocean, and we know these ecosystems have been really sensitive to past changes in the Earth's climate." Much like other issues concerning climate change, Thornalley say preventing the AMOC slowdown depends on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. "The only thing we really can do is obviously try and prevent global warming because that's the root cause of why we think it's weakening now with increasing temperatures," he says. |
Flint Activist Wins Major Environmental Prize | A Flint activist who worked to expose the Michigan city's lead crisis is being hailed as an environmental hero. She's one of the winners of the 2018 Goldman Environmental Prize. The honor, announced on Monday, recognizes grass-roots environmental activists from around the world. Shortly after the city of Flint switched its water source to save money in April 2014, LeeAnne Walters spotted a rash on her twins. Walters is a mother of four, and when she and her children started experiencing other health problems such as hair loss, she suspected the brown water flowing out of her tap. She demanded action from local officials, confronting them with bottles of discolored water. "Walters first informed the city of the water problem in late 2014, but it was not until February 2015 that the city sent someone to check on her complaints,"according to the prize administrators. "Tests revealed that lead levels in her drinking water were at 104 parts per billion (ppb)—unprecedented levels for Flint, so high that a city is required to alert residents immediately, per federal law." Still, state authorities continued to tell residents that their water was safe, even as one of Walters' children was diagnosed with lead poisoning and all of them tested positive for lead exposure. "We were going into city council meetings," Walters told Michigan Radio, "and being told we were liars, we were stupid, that this wasn't our water." Walters educated herself about water chemistry. She worked with Miguel del Toral, an EPA official, and teamed up with Marc Edwards, a professor at Virginia Tech. They helped her to track the crisis and test homes in Flint. "Walters methodically sampled each zip code in Flint and set up a system to ensure the integrity of the tests," the Goldman Prize said. "She worked over 100 hours per week for three straight weeks and collected over 800 water samples—garnering an astounding 90% response rate." Some of those samples far exceeded levels that are classified as hazardous waste. Walters and Edwards proved that "one in six homes had lead water levels exceeding the EPA's legal safety threshold," the prize administrators said. Walters suggested that the city had not properly treated the water to prevent the pipes from corroding, causing lead to leach into the water. Eventually, Flint switched back to its original water source from Detroit. A state of emergency was declared by the state and the Obama administration. Walters continues to work on water quality issues in Flint and other U.S. cities. Here are the six other winners and their achievements, according to the Goldman prize administrators: FRANCIA MÁRQUEZ, Colombia: A formidable leader of the Afro-Colombian community, Francia Márquez pressured the Colombian government and organized the women of La Toma, in the Cauca region, to stop illegal gold mining on their ancestral land. CLAIRE NOUVIAN, France: A tireless defender of the oceans and marine life, Claire Nouvian led a focused, data-driven advocacy campaign against the destructive fishing practice of deep-sea bottom trawling. Her work yielded French support for a ban on the practice, securing an EU-wide ban. MAKOMA LEKALAKALA & LIZ MCDAID, South Africa: As grass-roots activists, Makoma Lekalakala and Liz McDaid built a broad coalition to stop South Africa's massive nuclear deal with Russia. Their work resulted in a landmark legal victory against the secret $76 billion deal, protecting South Africa from lifetimes of nuclear waste. MANNY CALONZO, the Philippines: Manny Calonzo spearheaded an advocacy campaign that persuaded the Philippine government to enact a national ban on the production, use and sale of lead paint. His efforts have protected millions of Filipino kids from lead poisoning. KHANH NGUY THI, Vietnam: Khanh Nguy Thi used scientific research and engaged Vietnamese state agencies to advocate for sustainable long-term energy projections and reduction in coal power dependency in Vietnam. Her efforts helped eliminate 115 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions from Vietnam annually. |
'Finding the Truth in the Words, Sighs and Silences' | In this essay, radio producer Joe Richman, whose Radio Diaries projects are broadcast on NPR's All Things Considered, describes the art and craft involved in producing diary-style radio documentaries. The essay was published previously in the Fall 2001 Nieman Reports, published by Harvard University's Nieman Foundation for Journalism. By Joe Richman What made Josh Cutler a great radio diarist was that I never knew what he was going to say. Sometimes he didn’t, either. Josh has Tourette’s Syndrome, a neurological disorder that causes involuntary verbal and physical tics. I first met him in 1995 when he was in the 10th grade. I had just received a grant to produce a series called Teenage Diaries on National Public Radio. The idea was to give tape recorders and microphones to a group of teens around the country and help them report about their own lives. Josh recorded for more than a year. He brought the tape recorder to school (reluctantly at first), kept an audio journal, and recorded all the sounds of his daily life. Josh documented his tics, he taped himself doing everything from preparing breakfast to making prank phone calls, and he recorded one amazingly intense and honest conversation with his mother that became the centerpiece of his audio diary. All together, he collected more than 40 hours of tape, which was edited into a 15-minute radio documentary for NPR’s All Things Considered. The fact that Josh could not always control what came out of his mouth is a kind of metaphor for this type of documentary journalism. The process of going through hours and hours of raw audio diary tapes is like mining for gold. Ninety percent is junk, but then every so often there are little magical moments that are completely unexpected. Things emerge about people that, in an interview, I would never have known to even look for. With all the diarists there comes a point, maybe after the first month of recording, when they get bored with the process. That’s what I’m waiting for. They’re no longer trying to sound like Tom Brokaw. They’re not performing, so they’re less self-conscious. They relax and become themselves. It takes a lot of practice to be natural. Of course, the key to all documentary journalism is time; spending enough time for people to trust you with their stories, hanging out enough so that you’re there when things happen. By turning the tape recorder into a constant companion, the diarists take this process a step further. It's like bringing the microphone backstage, to a place where truth and understanding are found not just in words but between words -- in the pauses, accents, in the sighs and silences. Teenagers make good diarists because they have an abundance of time. It's also an age where people are just beginning to discover themselves and their world. And unlike many adults, teenagers simply have an inherent belief that whatever they say is important and people should be listening. When I ask a teenager to carry a tape recorder around for six months, they don't think I'm crazy. Radio is the perfect medium for these diary-style documentaries. The equipment is relatively inexpensive and easy to use. A microphone is less intrusive than a video camera so people can be more natural, more themselves. Most importantly, radio is intimate. Great radio sounds as though it's being whispered right into your ear. For these reasons, I believe some of the best first-person documentary work is found on the radio. David Isay’s Ghetto Life 101, in which two young boys in a Chicago housing project were given tape recorders, and Jay Allison’s Life Stories series were both direct inspirations for our Teenage Diary series. And during the past five years the public radio show This American Life has reinvented and reinvigorated the form. Radio Diaries is a small, nonprofit company -- me and associate producer Wendy Dorr. Since Josh’s story aired in 1996, we have produced more than 20 diary-style documentaries for NPR. The Teenage Diaries series has included diaries from a teen mom, the daughter of an evangelical minister, a gay teenager, an illegal immigrant, and the running back for an Alabama high school football team. Other projects have included a 30-minute diary-style documentary from residents of a retirement home and, more recently, we produced Prison Diaries, a series of stories from inmates, correctional officers, and a judge. Diarists have to play two roles, both subject and reporter, and negotiating the two can be tricky. So the rules -- my rules, anyway -- are different from traditional documentaries. I give each diarist final editorial control over their story. I also pay most of the diarists a small stipend for their work. In this way, the relationship is closer to the model at NPR and other news organizations: The diarist is the reporter and I am the producer -- although by the time a diary airs on the radio, my job feels more like that of a midwife. The Prison Diaries series, which aired on NPR in Januar |
Preservation of Digital Art Poses Challenges | An increasing number of artists are working with digital technologies and that's posing some new and especially difficult preservation problems for museums. One difficulty is what to do when a work of art needs to keep a hard drive running, or maintain an Internet connection. |
Giant Sand: Dirt, Dust And A Flash Of Weirdness | Giant Sand often gets lumped in with the many alternative rock acts that, in Nirvana's wake, enjoyed a surge in popularity. But unlike its grungy peers, the Arizona band found its inspiration in the rich history of Western music, mixing in electric guitars for a modern touch. Three decades later, it's still cruising. It even survived musical mitosis in 2004, when members Joey Burns and John Convertino left to focus on Calexico. Undeterred, Giant Sand has veered into more experimental territory under the direction of frontman Howe Gelb. Occasionally, the detours produce something special. On Giant Sand's new album, Blurry Blue Mountain, Gelb takes a sharp turn toward the bayou in "Brand New Swamp Thing." Intoning dryly over an electric guitar, Gelb shares a roadside love story about a woman unafraid to make the first move: "She said, 'Honey, I can help you with your flat tire.' I said, 'I don't have one,' but she pulled out a blade and made me a liar." The track offers a loose take on Southern rock without quite mimicking a particular era. It's more focused on drawing the blues-roots parallels between the genre and the band's dirt-and-dust fare, such as the straightforward storytelling and prominent rhythm guitar. And it wouldn't be a Giant Sand song without a flash of weirdness. In this case, that'd be the brash guitar reverb in the bridge — more typical of noise-punk indulgence than love-song standards — but it comes and goes without seeming like much of an interruption. |
Broadway Star Audra McDonald | Singer and actress Audra McDonald. She grew up in Fresno before heading to the Julliard School in New York for classical voice training. By the age of 30, she'd won an unprecedented three Tony Awards for her roles in "Carousel," "Master Class" and "Ragtime." She later added another for "Raisin in the Sun." Audra McDonald stopped by our studios recently to talk with us about her newest album "Build A Bridge." |
Russia's Debt Rating Downgraded Over Protests | Fitch rating agency has downgraded its outlook on Russia's debt rating from positive to stable. The agency indicated the recent widespread protests in Moscow and other cities were behind the downgrade. |
Will Jobs Report Predict Economy's Future? | Financial markets await the Friday release of the March employment report. So far, labor figures have discouraged the idea that the U.S. is headed for a recession. But recessions are notoriously hard to predict. David Wessel of The Wall Street Journal talks with Renee Montagne. RENEE MONTAGNE, host: We get another clue to the strength or weakness of the U.S. economy tomorrow when the government issues its snapshot of unemployment and hiring. To find out how the economy is doing and what to look for in the new numbers, we turn to David Wessel. He's deputy Washington bureau chief of the Wall Street Journal and a regular on our program. Good morning. Mr. DAVID WESSEL (Deputy Washington Bureau Chief, Wall Street Journal): Good morning. MONTAGNE: So let's begin with, at the moment, how healthy is the U.S. economy? Mr. WESSEL: Well, the U.S. economy is growing, but there are more storm clouds gathering on economic horizon. People had been hoping that the housing market had touched bottom and that's now not looking to be the case. Businesses are being surprisingly tight with capital spending, another surprise. The federal reserve has signaled it's less confident than it was just a few weeks ago, that's its optimistic forecast for moderate growth is playing out and the stock market is certainly showing lots of signs of worry. MONTAGNE: And how much then does slow growth in the U.S. economy suggest slouching towards a recession? Mr. WESSEL: Well, you know, it's hard to predict a recession. Economists are really bad at it. It doesn't appear that we're in recession now. When the economy is growing very slowly, it's more susceptible to a shock that puts it into recession, which is, of course, a contracting economy. Alan Greenspan, the former fed chairman, puts the odds at about one in three that we're going to have a recession this year. MONTAGNE: One in three sounds high. Mr. WESSEL: It is high. The hopeful sign is that despite all the bad things that have happened to the economy, despite the collapse of the housing market after so many years of a housing boom, consumers are still spending, they're sort of defying all those gloomy predictions that when the value of their houses got a little soft, that they'd start pinching pennies and they haven't done it yet. MONTAGNE: So back to that report on unemployment and hiring, what might those numbers tell us about the economy? Mr. WESSEL: Well, one of the mysteries in the economy right now is why has the labor market been so strong? Hiring has been relatively strong, unemployment at a historically low, 4.5 percent. How can that happen at a time when the economy is growing so slowly? We don't really know the answer. But this is obviously one of the things that's keeping consumer-spending going. So if we get another good set of numbers tomorrow, if we get hiring at a 150,000 jobs perhaps, if the unemployment rate goes up by just a little bit, that'll be seen as a very strong sign that somehow we're going to weather the storm, consumer spending will keep us sailing along. On the other hand, if this is a negative number, if the job-hiring numbers are disappointing, if unemployment goes up a lot, if the length of the average work week shrinks a little, I think that's going to be read as a sign that a recession watch is really at hand. MONTAGNE: David, is there some sort of pattern to recession, something that history tells us that we can use as a cue to what will happen? Mr. WESSEL: You know, people sometimes have the sense that you have to have a recession every so many years. The economy has been growing since November 2001, that's 65 months of expansion, longer than the 57 months expansion on average in the postwar period, but not nearly as long as the past two expansions. When Ben Bernanke, the fed chairman, was asked about this on Capitol Hill the other day, he said that economic expansions do not die of old age. By which he meant there isn't any reason that the economy needs to have a recession - that somehow, like a flowering plant that has a cycle in which it lives and dies on a certain calendar. Rather, it takes something bad to happen to the economy in order to have a contraction in a very vibrant and dynamic economy like the U.S. I think he expects a recession to occur someday, but I don't think that he expects it to occur at any kind of natural cycle, and the evidence says that he's right on that. MONTAGNE: David Wessel is deputy Washington bureau chief of the Wall Street Journal. Thanks very much. Mr. WESSEL: Thank you, Renee. (Soundbite of music) MONTAGNE: This is NPR News. |
Neera Tanden Withdraws As Nominee For Office Of Management And Budget | Updated at 7:24 p.m. ET Neera Tanden, President Biden's controversial nominee to head the Office of Management and Budget, has withdrawn her nomination. Biden said in a statement Tuesday he had accepted her request. "I have the utmost respect for her record of accomplishment, her experience and her counsel, and I look forward to having her serve in a role in my Administration," Biden said. "She will bring valuable perspective and insight to our work." It had become increasingly clear that Tanden's nomination was in trouble after multiple key senators said they wouldn't support her, citing her tweets criticizing some members of Congress. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., was the most significant opponent. Without his support, Tanden needed to find a Republican to support her in the equally divided Senate. Tanden, in her withdrawal letter to the president, wrote that she was grateful for the White House's support but did not want controversy surrounding her nomination to become a "distraction" from his administration's work. "I appreciate how hard you and your team at the White House has worked to win my confirmation," she wrote. "Unfortunately, it now seems clear that there is no path forward to gain confirmation, and I do not want continued consideration of my nomination to be a distraction from your other priorities." Tanden had served as head of the Center for American Progress, an economic think tank, when she issued her tweets, among them calling Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., "Voldemort," the Harry Potter villain; labeling Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, as "the worst;" and saying that "Vampires have more heart than Ted Cruz," the Republican senator from Texas. She was also critical of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and some of his supporters. Collins was among the Republican senators who said she would not support Tanden's nomination, saying Tanden "has neither the experience nor the temperament to lead this critical agency." When questioned during her confirmation hearing, Tanden said that she regretted her language and took responsibility for it. The White House publicly stood by the nomination despite the criticism. The OMB is in charge of the budget-drafting process in the White House, as well as having a large role in the issuance of new regulations. Tanden's defenders noted that Manchin and Collins voted to confirm Trump nominee Richard Grenell as ambassador to Germany, despite his tweets critical of some lawmakers, and many Republicans defended or chose to look the other way when the former president tweeted harsh criticisms of lawmakers from both parties. The White House did not immediately name Tanden's replacement for the role, but Biden is considering several names, a congressional source and a source familiar with the deliberations tell NPR's Franco Ordoñez. The diverse slate of candidates include: John Jones, a former chief of staff to Rep. Emanuel Cleaver Shalanda Young, Biden's nominee for deputy OMB director, who had her first Senate confirmation hearing for the job on Tuesday Jared Bernstein, a longtime adviser to Biden, who is on his Council of Economic Advisers Gene Sperling, who was top economic adviser to former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton and Anne O'Leary, former chief of staff to California Governor Gavin Newsom, and a former adviser to Hillary Clinton |
The success of The Simpsons TV show | Why The Simpson's remain so popular. Tomorrow the Simpson's first feature film opens in theaters. This follows 18-seasons on the Fox Network making it the longest running sitcom on American TV. We'll talk about how this show has not only changed the television industry, but also has become so ingrained in American pop-culture. Our guest is MATT McALLISTER who wrote the latest entry on The Simpson for the Encyclopedia of Television. He is an associate professor of film, video and media at Pennsylvania State University. |
Music Stars Rock The National Mall For Obama | Yesterday, the biggest names in music, including Bono, Beyonce and Stevie Wonder, performed in front of thousands at an inaugural concert on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Hear some of the event's hottest moments. |
Photographing White, Blue Or Greenland? | To call James Balog a photographer would be an understatement. He has been a nature photographer for 25 years, published 7 books and won numerous awards, and was the first photographer ever commissioned to create a full plate of stamps for the U.S. Postal Service. More than a photographer, Balog is an explorer and a conservationist; his most recent undertaking is called the Extreme Ice Survey. Founded by Balog in 1996, the project documents extreme glacial melt, using time-lapse cameras planted across the Northern Hemisphere. Last year he was on NPR's Fresh Air to discuss a PBS documentary. This month, his photos of Greenland's changing colors can be found in National Geographic magazine. If you're anything like me, you have a pretty rudimentary understanding of glacial melting. But one interesting thing I learned from this article is that the melt isn't just a result of "global warming." There's also this stuff called cryocronite — a fancy term for airborne dirt and sediment that finds its way to glaciers. It's black, so it absorbs sunlight (i.e., heat), which accelerates melting. "It's like pulling a black curtain over the ice," a researcher is quoted as saying in the article. Cryocronite itself is nothing new. It's the result of volcanic eruptions and distant deserts and has been trapped in the ice for ages. But it's also a byproduct of fires, diesel engines and coal-burning plants that we have yet to really harness. And the faster the ice melts, and the more we pollute, the more cryocronite eclipses what's left of the white, reflective surface of glaciers — and, in turn, hastens the melt. That's news to me. But then again, what do I know? I just look at pictures all day. |
Cash Shortage Could Stall Horse Races At Saratoga | Despite all the excitement surrounding the May 1 Kentucky Derby -- and the unofficial start of the thoroughbred racing season -- the sport is in big financial trouble nationwide. In New York state, the $2 billion horse racing industry is in free fall and there are growing fears that this summer's season at Saratoga Springs could be canceled altogether. A Turnaround That Wasn't Horse racing in New York state has never been an easy ride. The sport has been plagued by scandal, bankruptcies and federal investigations for years. But during the past decade, it seemed like things were turning around. New York-bred horses like Funny Cide and Tin Cup Chalice were winning big races. Wall Street was booming, which meant more people buying and racing thoroughbreds. The New York Racing Association -- the nonprofit that runs the state's tracks at Saratoga, Belmont and Aqueduct -- reorganized and cleaned up its act. But like a gambler's run of good luck, it all came down in a crash. "You know at this point, there's not a lot to be optimistic about in New York racing," said Jack Knowlton, who runs the stable that trained Funny Cide. Knowlton loves racing here, he said while standing on Union Street in Saratoga Springs, where the Victorian-style racetrack and gorgeous 19th century mansions are framed by blossoming pear trees. But he said shrinking prize money and a new round of scandals have pushed the sport to the brink. "A lot of people are reluctant to jump in because they're concerned that maybe there isn't going to be racing. And they're concerned that the purses have gone down, and it's a very cloudy future," he said. What Went Wrong For New York Horse Racing First, the state's decade-long effort to build a casino at the Aqueduct track got tangled up in state politics. That meant fewer gambling dollars to pour into prize money at the track. And yes, there's a new federal investigation under way into that mess. Then, New York City's off-track betting parlors went belly up this year, with critics blasting them for mismanagement. The joke in New York is that this is the only state in the country where even the bookies can't turn a profit. Without that revenue, the state racing association says it could literally run out of cash before this year's summer meet in Saratoga. Former Saratoga Springs Mayor J. Michael O'Connell turned up for a protest rally outside the track gates that drew more than 200 people. "I go back to a time when [during] World War II, they closed down for three years," O'Connell said. "But Saratoga without horse racing is just unbelievable." Thousands of jobs are on the line if the season is canceled -- but so is Saratoga's international reputation as a thoroughbred mecca. "Saratoga would fall apart," said Molly Gagne, who has run the racetrack's telephone switchboard for a quarter century. "This is the summer place to be because of the track." The economic pain has already spread well beyond Saratoga's posh neighborhoods and high-end shops. In The Red During the good years, the horse-breeding industry here grew dramatically. Scott Van Laer, who owns a stable in Ray Brook, N.Y., spent $100,000s on his latest batch of yearlings. Now he's not sure they'll find buyers. "It's definitely hurt us. We were very much in the red for 2009. What I need is a good sale horse this year," he said. Finding buyers willing to bid-up prices on one of his horses won't happen, he says, if there's not a season at Saratoga Springs. "The question is how many farms are going to be left operational," he said. "Three of the top four breeding farms in the state area already shuttered." New York's Legislature is considering a $17 million bridge loan that would allow the Saratoga season to go on this summer. If lawmakers approve the deal, opening day is scheduled for July 23. |
Chief Justice John Roberts Set To Be At Center Of Impeachment Trial | The timing of the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump is still up in the air, but one thing is certain, the person presiding over the trial will be Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. Here & Now’s Robin Young speaks with CNN legal analyst Joan Biskupic (@JoanBiskupic) about the role and other areas of the trial. This article was originally published on WBUR.org. |
Toledo Mayor Seeks Volunteers For City Services | Like many municipalities, the city of Toledo, Ohio, is suffering a financial crisis. Mayor Carty Finkbeiner is asking residents to mow the grass in parks and cemeteries, and he led by example over the weekend. He talks with Michele Norris about the initiative. MELISSA BLOCK, host: From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block. MICHELE NORRIS, host: And I'm Michele Norris. You could call it a sign of the times. Residents in Toledo, Ohio, might have spotted a man pushing a mower on Saturday morning and wondered, gee, that guy looks like Mayor Finkbeiner. Upon closer inspection, they would have discovered that it was Carty Finkbeiner, the mayor of Toledo, doing the work usually reserved for grounds crews. Faced with a budget crunch, Toledo has been laying off city employees, and has hired only about half of the seasonal workers it usually brings on to take care of city parks and cemeteries. When the grass got too tall, the mayor decided to get the job done himself. He's inviting city residents to grab their mowers and join him. Mayor Finkbeiner told us why cutting the grass matters so much. Mayor CARTY FINKBEINER (Toledo, Ohio): People want their cities to look like the way their front yard looks like. Everybody wants their neighbors to see the best foot forward in the front yard. Well, they want the same thing in the boulevards, the cemeteries and the parks in the city, and you darn well better do your best to keep them happy on that. NORRIS: Now, I want to ask you about Saturday and your mowing expedition. Did people recognize you out in the park when you were mowing the lawn? I did spot your picture in the Toledo Blade, and I see that you did take off your suit and your tie for this task. Mayor FINKBEINER: Oh, I certainly did. (Soundbite of laughter) But you notice I had my Toledo cap on, and my Toledo T-shirt on. NORRIS: I did notice that. (Soundbite of laughter) Mayor FINKBEINER: Yes, people did notice it. So, you know, in addition to myself, there were eight other high-ranking city employees. I think there was -the law director was out there, utilities director was out there. There were eight volunteers out there from the city, and three from the neighborhood. NORRIS: Now, I think you know that some people are saying that this was a bit of a publicity stunt, and not everyone applauds this new, do-it-yourself spirit. Some critics say that you're potentially violating union contracts by calling on volunteers or trying to bring on a nonprofit company to do some of the upkeep, a nonprofit company that actually uses adults who are developmentally disabled. Mayor FINKBEINER: Well, actually, the union tried to block that. The developmentally disabled Lott Industries is what we would have loved to have had in place... NORRIS: That's the name of the company, Lott Industries. Mayor FINKBEINER: Lott Industries, L-O-T-T. We would love to have had them. They have been very, very significant contributors to our grass-cutting, but the union blocked them because some layoffs had been taken in that given union, and they wanted us to bring back laid-off workers before we hired the Lott Industry people that are regular, part-time workers in the spring of the year. We have moved forward in the meantime. Those Lott Industry workers were hired back effective Monday of this week, and we'll probably get grieved for that, and so we'll have to put up with the grievance and hopefully, win the case. NORRIS: Sounds like a tough position that you're in there. You either have to -you try to stoke the spirit of volunteerism and get people to come out and help you, or you wind up angering the unions, who say, wait a minute, we're supposed to be doing those jobs. Mayor FINKBEINER: It's impossible. It's impossible. But the more on that we do, the more we're showing our voters two things. One, there is a need in the city at the moment that we are hurting. And that two, the big guys, who they are always critical of, are willing to roll up their sleeves and go to work doing some of this stuff rather than just lay off the little guy down the line. NORRIS: Now, Mayor, do you mow your own lawn? Mayor FINKBEINER: I have to be honest and say rarely. (Soundbite of laughter) NORRIS: Well, who does mow the lawn at home? Mayor FINKBEINER: My wife. NORRIS: Aha. (Soundbite of laughter) Mayor FINKBEINER: No, I did more last Saturday than I've probably done in three summers put together. NORRIS: Well, Mayor Carty Finkbeiner, thank you so much for talking to us. Mayor FINKBEINER: It's always a joy to talk to a great radio station. NORRIS: That was Toledo, Ohio, Mayor Carty Finkbeiner. And there's more on this story at the NPR blog. It's called the Two-Way, and you can find it at npr.org. |
Make It A Techy Christmas | As we head into the holiday gift shopping season, just about everyone has someone with a technology wish on their list. Tech guru Mario Armstrong offers host Michel Martin some suggestions for the latest hi-tech toys and gadgets for children and adults. |
More Bad News from the Housing Sector | Mortgage lender American Home Mortgage Investment Corp. says it can no longer fund home loans and may liquidate assets. The lender's survival is in doubt, and its shares plummeted about 90 percent Tuesday. What are the ramifications on Wall Street? MICHELE NORRIS, host: For much of the day today, it looked like the stock market was doing well. But that changed quickly when it became clear that there was more bad news from the housing industry. A big lender, American Home Mortgage Investment, indicated that it's running low on cash and has hired an advisor to evaluate its options. That is never a good sign. The company's stock collapsed and the rally that it'd been underway on Wall Street lost all momentum. The Dow closed down 146 points on the day. NPR's Jim Zarroli joins us now from New York. Jim, can you tell us a little bit about American Home Mortgage and what kind of business it's in? JIM ZARROLI: Well, American Home Mortgage is one of those companies that are really a creation of the housing boom. It's not a bank. It's more like a kind of a hybrid lender, a hybrid financial institution. What it does is it originates loans, which means you can go to them and they'll give you a mortgage, but then they'll take your mortgage and they'll sell the debt to investors. American Home Mortgage also invests in mortgages itself. It has been a very successful company. The CEO, Michael Strauss, has been lauded as a visionary, and the company's really grown by leaps and bounds, at least until this year. NORRIS: We've heard so much about the collapse of the subprime mortgage market this year. Is American Home Mortgage involved in that kind of lending? ZARROLI: Not exactly. Subprime loans are for people who have very weak credit histories and maybe couldn't have even gotten the mortgage 20 years ago or so. American Home Mortgage specialized in a different kind of loan that wasn't exactly subprime, but wasn't prime either. It did a lot of interest-only loans; a lot of them have adjustable rate mortgages; a lot of them were for people who didn't want to document their income; a lot of people who speculated in real estate - that kind of person. NORRIS: So how did the company get into all these trouble? ZARROLI: Well, it has just been swept up in general malaise that has hit the mortgage business recently. You know, interest rates rose, there's been a big increase in defaults and delinquencies. So a lot of the banks and the mutual funds that have been buying mortgage-backed securities, which have helped lead to the housing boom have gotten cold feet. So companies like American Home Mortgage have seen their credit cut off. It's said recently that it was starting to get a lot of margin calls, which means it had to pay off its creditors. It didn't have the money. This month, it laid off several hundred people at its headquarters in Long Island. Then today, the company basically said it can't any - fund any more home loans. And it's looking for a way to pay off its lenders. NORRIS: How big is the company and what happens to the company now? ZARROLI: It is considered the 10th biggest mortgage lender in the country. The first six months of this year, it issued about $34 billion worth of mortgages. The company says it's hired some advisors, it's looking at its options, that it has to pay off its creditors. It says it's going to do that in an orderly way. But it's pretty safe that they're going to lose some money. Some of the analysts I've talked to today say that it's almost inevitable that the company is going to have to declare bankruptcy. NORRIS: Jim, the news about American Home Mortgage seemed to send the stock market down very quickly. Is this a sign of just how skittish investors are about the housing market right now? ZARROLI: Yeah, it is. It's the same credit concerns that were hurting the market so much last week. Economy seems to be rebounding, seems to be doing well. We got some very good news about inflation today. Yet, a lot of the people who invest in the stock market are just worried. They see these problems in housing. They're worried that lenders are going to stop lending, not just in housing, but in other areas, too, which would lead to a credit crunch. And every time there's news like this from American Home Mortgage today, it only makes things worse. NORRIS: Thank you, Jim. ZARROLI: You're welcome. NORRIS: That was NPR's Jim Zarroli speaking to us from New York. |
NPR: 07-21-2008 Fresh Air | Stories: 1) Carol Levine, Championing The Caregiver's Cause 2) Nolan, Bale: 'Batman' Franchise's New Dynamic Duo 3) Flying High Again With 'The Hawk' |
Once Thriving Michigan Town Tanked By Recession | Pontiac, Michigan was once a bustling city with a flourishing auto industry and its very own car brand as a namesake. At the heart of the town was its $55.7 million Silverdome stadium, which received famous visitors from Elvis to Pope John Paul II. But the state recently declared a financial emergency in the city and sent in a turnaround expert, Fred Leeb, to oversee its finances. Leeb joins host Michel Martin to discuss his plan to get Pontiac back up and running. |
The 2011 NEA Jazz Masters Awards Concert | In a concert and ceremony held Tuesday at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York, the National Endowment for the Arts recognized its 2011 class of NEA Jazz Masters. The honor is the country's highest award for jazz artistry; those being recognized received a $25,000 grant and an opportunity to perform with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. The event was broadcast live through XM Satellite Radio, WBGO-FM and online -- with a live video stream -- at this page on NPR Music. This year, the NEA recognized four individuals -- three musicians, plus one record producer to be presented the A.B. Spellman Award for Jazz Advocacy -- and an entire musical family. Flutist Hubert Laws and saxophonist David Liebman are known largely for their playing over multiple decades; Laws has extensive experience in many styles, while Liebman is also a noted educator. Johnny Mandel started his career in music as a jazz trumpeter and trombonist, but is primarily known as a composer and arranger for jazz, pop and films. Orrin Keepnews produced and reissued many classic recordings for his own Riverside Records and several other labels. And there's The Marsalis Family, this country's unofficial first family of jazz. Father Ellis Marsalis, the great pianist and teacher, helped to raise the saxophonist Branford, trumpeter and composer (and Jazz at Lincoln Center Artistic Director) Wynton, trombonist Delfeayo and drummer Jason. The Jazz Masters were celebrated with performances by The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, including special collaborations with Liebman, Laws and the Marsalis Family. The orchestra, with special guests -- saxophonist Jimmy Heath and vocalist Roberta Gambarini -- also recognized Jazz Masters who have died in 2010, with a tribute to Hank Jones, Abbey Lincoln, James Moody and Dr. Billy Taylor. Since 1982, the NEA has recognized 119 Jazz Masters (or group awards), all of whom were living at the time of their selection. In addition to the one-time grant, recipients are also invited to participate in NEA-sponsored live performances and education programs across the country. |
Fed Up, A Mexican Town Resorts To Mob Justice | Unprecedented levels of violence in Mexico led residents of a small town in the northern state of Chihuahua to take justice into their own hands. This week an angry mob of citizens pursued and allegedly killed two suspected kidnappers, storming a military base to get at the alleged culprits believed to have nabbed a teenage girl. With police incapable of stopping the violent crime epidemic in Mexico amid the brutal drug war, it seems some locals in the town of Ascension have had enough. Ascension is a farming community of some 15,000 people, about 100 miles south of the border with New Mexico. In the past two years, kidnapping and extortion have been rampant. "Our problems with public security have spoiled our progress in this town," says Rafael Camarillo, the outgoing mayor. The public fury happened Tuesday when an armed group allegedly kidnapped a 16-year-old girl from her family's seafood restaurant. The kidnappers escaped down a gravel road, and word of the missing girl spread quickly. Soon, a group of about 200 residents began the chase. Three of the alleged kidnappers were captured by the Mexican military, who have a presence in the town. Three others fled into a nearby cotton field, where one was later found dead. The other two were hunted down and beaten by the mob from Ascension. "When they found them, it was a direct aggression," says Ignacio Rodriguez, a local kitchen-cabinet maker who was elected to head city council next month. The girl was rescued unharmed by the residents. "We are a small community," says Mari Cruz Salazar Soto, the girl's aunt. "In the past year, we've averaged three kidnappings a week." Rodriguez says he knows many people in town whose family members have been kidnapped, and many of them were among the angry crowd. "In that moment there was a lot of resentment mixed with rage," he says. Rodriguez says people in the mob recognized the two alleged kidnappers, 17-year-old boys who grew up in Ascension. "We don't know why they chose to get mixed up in crime," he says. Federal police eventually took custody of the two young men and drove them to the town's small military base. Residents say at least 1,000 people then caught up with them at the base and broke through the gates. The mob got ahold of the suspected kidnappers and beat them a second time. The crowd then held them for seven hours, locked in a hot vehicle where they eventually died. The next day, Mayor Camarillo fired all 14 of the town's police officers and requested assistance from state and federal police. The camera of a local television station captured residents as they stormed city hall on Wednesday morning and demanded the firings. Jorge Leyva, a representative of the Chihuahua state police, said an investigation into the deaths of the two suspected kidnappers is under way. Three other suspects were detained on charges of kidnapping and illegal weapon possession in the case. Rodriguez, the future city councilman, says he's not proud of how his town responded to the kidnapping. Mob violence is not common in Chihuahua, one of the most violent states in the country. Rodriguez says citizens in Ascension are forming a sort of neighborhood watch committee and are still deciding how the committee will operate. "If the authorities can't protect us," he says, "we must protect ourselves." ROBERT SIEGEL, host: Unprecedented levels of violence in Mexico have forced many innocent civilians into a quiet, fearful existence. But one small town in the northern state of Chihuahua is fighting back. This week, an angry mob of citizens pursued, beat and captured two suspected kidnappers. Monica Ortiz Uribe reports. MONICA ORTIZ URIBE: The town of Ascension has had enough. A local television station captured residents as they stormed city hall Wednesday morning and demanded that the mayor fire all 14 municipal police officers. Ascension is a farming town of about 15 to 20,000 people south of the New Mexico border. In the last two years, kidnapping and extortion have been rampant. Rafael Camarillo is the outgoing mayor. Mr. RAFAEL CAMARILLO: (Foreign language spoken) URIBE: Our problems with public security, he said, have spoiled progress in this town. At the public's demand, Camarillo fired his police officers and requested assistance from state and federal authorities. The Mexican army already has a presence in town. Ms. MARI CRUZ SALAZAR SOTO: (Foreign language spoken) URIBE: The event that set off public fury happened two days ago, when armed men allegedly kidnapped a 16-year-old girl from her family's seafood restaurant. Mari Cruz Salazar Soto is the girl's aunt. Ms. SOTO: (Foreign language spoken) URIBE: We are a small community, she said. In the past year, we've averaged three kidnappings a week. Ignacio Rodriguez, a local kitchen cabinet maker, drives two reporters down the gravel road that was the kidnappers' escape route. Word of the missing girl spread quickly and soon a group of 200 citizens began the chase. |
For Incoming Freshmen, Which Cultural Touchstones Are Out Of Touch? | Beloit College's annual "mindset list" is out. It's a series of historical and cultural references that will supposedly bewilder incoming college freshmen. This year's list, for the Class of 2019, was curated by three professors at the small liberal arts college in Wisconsin. The school says it aims to show professors and counselors which references no longer resonate with younger generations. A few entries on this year's list of 50 factoids about the Class of 2019 include: They have never licked a postage stamp. They have grown up treating Wi-Fi as an entitlement. The announcement of someone being the "first woman" to hold a position has only impressed their parents. Kyoto has always symbolized inactivity about global climate change. The Lion King has always been on Broadway. TV has always been in such high definition that they could see the pores of actors and the grimaces of quarterbacks. The proud parents recorded their first steps on camcorders, mounted on their shoulders like bazookas. The therapeutic use of marijuana has always been legal in a growing number of American states. They have avidly joined Harry Potter, Ron and Hermione as they built their reading skills through all seven volumes. Google has always been there, in its founding words, "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible." According to the college's website, the lists are "wonderful icebreakers for counselors and professors and students" and they "stimulate intergenerational conversations." Because the only thing 18-year-olds like better than one when-I-was-your-age remark is a whole list of them, right? Co-author Tom McBride says the mindset lists often come under criticism for portraying younger generations as "dumb or narrow," when in reality they can be a useful tool for professors. Instead of driving a wedge between generations, the lists are designed to foster collaborative learning. "You don't want to get hardening of the references. You don't want to go to your old yellow notes and draw out all these Watergate analogies without thinking that you have to explain them," he says in a video released along with this year's list. NPR's Linda Holmes wrote about the list five years ago and had these observations: "There's nothing wrong with startling adults with how terribly old they are; it makes for a lovely little joke between 40-year-olds: 'Wait, that movie came out that long ago? I am so old that I am going to go out immediately and price coffins.' (Happy 30th Birthday, Airplane!) "But the fact that we feel old is not the responsibility of the class of 2014. Our sense of displacement when we realize how many years have passed since the last time we checked on something — how old Scott Baio got while we were off getting jobs and having families and voting for a series of presidents — isn't their burden to bear, and assuming that they have ignored everything that happened before they were born is an awfully blunt way to measure 'mindset.' " McBride told NPR that he and his fellow authors spent about six months conducting research, interviewing millennials, and speaking with faculty and parents to put the list together. "The sources for this year's list, as in years past, were fairly eclectic," he said. This year's list also included an epilogue of incoming freshmen's phrases that might baffle their older counterparts. A few of these include "dankrupt," the state of finding oneself out of weed; "trolling," a mild form of cyberbullying; and "textroverts," people who express their feelings via text, usually girded by alcohol, but not in person. McBride compiled this much-shorter list of "millennial jargon" as well, with input from students and UrbanDictionary.com. |
Some 'Caravan Migrants' Allowed To Apply For U.S. Asylum | Updated at 8 a.m. ET A few of the nearly 200 migrants from Central America who traveled by caravan through Mexico to the U.S. border crossing at San Diego have been allowed to apply for asylum. Eight migrants — three women, four children and an 18-year-old — who said they were fleeing violence in their home countries were allowed through the gate at the border separating Tijuana, Mexico, from San Diego on Monday evening, according to caravan organizers. "We began processing undocumented arrivals again on Monday," a Customs and Border Patrol spokeswoman said. "As in the past when we've had to limit the number of people we can bring in for processing at a given time, we expect that this will be a temporary situation." Reuters reports: "The first to enter were part of a small group from the caravan who Mexican officials let walk over a pedestrian bridge on Sunday and who have been camped at the San Ysidro gate ever since, when the CBP said the facility between Tijuana and San Diego was saturated. A larger group of about 150 people has not been let onto the bridge and was preparing for a second night sleeping in an open plaza on the Mexican side." Most of the migrants are from Honduras and El Salvador, and many have harrowing stories of surviving violence in the country of their birth. The journey to the U.S. border has taken many of them a month on foot and by freight train and bus. However, the bar for being granted asylum in the U.S. is very high and many will not be able to reach it. Meanwhile, Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordered the Justice Department to file criminal charges against 11 others, allegedly part of the caravan, who are said to have entered the U.S. illegally. "The United States will not stand by as our immigration laws are ignored and our nation's safety is jeopardized," Sessions said in a statement. The Justice Department complaints allege that the defendants were apprehended a few miles west of the San Ysidro Port of Entry. President Trump has been tweeting about the caravan for weeks and tweeted Monday, "The migrant 'caravan' that is openly defying our border shows how weak and ineffective U.S. immigration laws are." As The Associated Press reports, "Trump administration officials have railed against what they call America's 'catch and release' policies that allow people requesting asylum to be released from custody into the U.S. while their claims make their way through the courts, a process that can last a year." |
Understanding Technology through a Child's Eyes (Rebroadcast) | UNDERSTANDING TECHNOLOGY THROUGH A CHILD'S EYES (REBROADCAST): Kids today rarely think of 'technology' as something separate from themselves. Rather, technology is infused into everything they do and see. So how can grown-ups rethink design ideas based on what the next generation is thinking? Tech Tuesday explores the intersection of technology and child development. (52 min.) |
'Drug Use For Grown-Ups' Serves As An Argument For Personal Choice | If you grew up scared of what illicit drugs could do to you — hearing about all the horrors that could befall you from everyone from Nancy Reagan to your parents — the threat may have felt very real: If you actually took a puff off that joint that the kid who slept through math class offered you, it could lead to failed relationships, chronic unemployment, self-destruction. The shame would outlive you. But drugs are a more complicated matter than they've been made out to be, according to Dr. Carl L. Hart. In his new book Drug Use for Grown-Ups, the Columbia University professor of psychology and psychiatry zealously argues that drug use should be a matter of personal choice — and that, in more cases than not, personal choice can lead to positive outcomes. His positions may seem quite extreme to some but they also, by and large, make a lot of sense — and are backed up by ample research. A major reason drugs have such a negative public image, Hart asserts, is racism. He notes that after the Civil War, some Chinese railroad construction workers smoked opium and, sometimes, established "opium dens" to do so. Over time, more and more white Americans visited these dens to smoke opium too. That in turn led to broader, bigoted social fear among whites, like, for example, the sentiments captured in H.H. Kane's 1882 report: "The practice spread widely...Many women and young girls, as also young men of respectable family, were being induced to visit the dens, where they were ruined morally and otherwise." Then there was the post-Civil War use of cocaine among some Black day laborers, something Hart writes was at first encouraged by white employers because of the productivity it could promote. Soon enough, however, articles appeared widely that tried to make a connection between African American cocaine use and criminality. One particularly egregious article in The New York Times in 1914, cited by Hart, even reported that some police in the South "who appreciate the vitality of the cocaine-crazed" were switching to higher-caliber weaponry capable of "greater shocking power for the express purpose of combating 'the fiend'." But horrifying history aside, one of the book's most eye-opening aspects is its challenge of the long-running association between drugs and addiction. First the basics: Addiction, according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition (DSM - 5), must be a source of distress for a drug user. It must also interfere with a person's job, parenting or personal relationships. Other indications of addiction may be high tolerance, withdrawal symptoms, or persistence in repeated failed efforts to quit. Hart writes that 70 percent or more of drug users do not meet this criteria for addiction. In fact, he notes "such issues affect only 10 percent to 30 percent of those who use even the most stigmatized drugs, such as heroin or methamphetamine." Hart argues, citing much evidence, that it's a pre-existing kind of personal vulnerability — psychological and/or circumstantial — that precedes the drugs themselves that can lead to addiction. He asserts that: "...the evidence tells us that we must look beyond the drug itself when trying to help people with drug addiction. In fact, regarding the relatively small percentage of individuals who do become addicted, co-occurring psychiatric disorders — such as excessive anxiety, depression, and schizophrenia — and socioeconomic factors — such as resource-deprived communities and un- and underemployment — account for a substantial proportion of these addictions." And when addiction does occur, there should be safe spaces for people to get help, he says. Hart's model for treatment is a Swiss clinic he first learned about while he was in Geneva for a talk in 2014. The clinic gave those addicted to heroin daily doses, in a similar way to how people with hypertension or diabetes would receive beta-blockers or insulin. Hart recalls: "Patients were required to show up at scheduled times twice a day — once in the morning and once in the evening — seven days a week. Like a Swiss watch, so-called junkies were reliably on time. They were almost never late. And as a result of being in the program, their health improved; they were happy and living responsible lives." Hart notes that "people stayed in treatment. The number of new blood-borne infections, such as HIV and hepatitis C, dramatically decreased. Petty crimes committed by heroin users also went down. And no heroin user has ever died while receiving heroin in the clinic." But he's careful to emphasize that this is a treatment, not a cure. He writes: "I don't want to leave you with the impression that heroin maintenance is a panacea. It's not. It's not even a cure for heroin addiction; it's simply a treatment. There are no cures in psychiatric medicine. We don't have a cure for depression, nor do we have a cure for schizophrenia or anxiety. We merely have medications and therapies that treat symp |
Hundreds Of Calif. Homeless March For Land Rights | It has been about three months since city officials shut down a large "tent city" occupied by Sacramento's homeless people. Now, some of the tent city's residents say they feel like refugees, with no place to go. They staged a loud demonstration Wednesday, in hopes of pressuring Sacramento officials to find them a new place to camp. 'Where Am I Supposed To Live?' Philip Grice, 45, has been on the move ever since the tent city closed. "When we moved out, we moved over to a private area two fields over. They wanted us off of there too. Just like shuttling cattle, that's all it is," said Grice, a carpenter by trade, who wears a T-shirt that reads, "Where am I supposed to live?" "We're supposed to be the eyesore, but actually we're citizens and we're human beings. We're supposed to have rights like everybody else; it don't matter what we have in our pockets." Grice joined about 250 other homeless people and their supporters for a march through the northern end of Sacramento. Their action coincided with the closure this week of a temporary shelter where many of the tent city residents had found a roof for the winter. Now these individuals say they need a year-round legal camp on what they call "safe ground." Rodney Frazier, 43, a single father and disabled brick mason, participated in the march. "A lot of these people are brick masons, they are tile setters, they are dentists, they had some very nice jobs," said Frazier. "They contribute to the world, to society, and they had a downfall in life. They need help getting up." No Legal Place To Sleep The march ended up in a hot and dusty city-owned lot next to a police station, where organizers set up a symbolic occupation. Val Jon Farris, founder of a group called iCare America, set up a tent on the lot. "There is no legal place for people to live unless they own, rent or lease a home. So if you're homeless it's illegal to exist. You can't even lay your head anywhere without getting arrested, prosecuted or criminalized," said Farris. "So this is a demonstration in order to create a civil liberty that ought to already exist, which is [that] people have the right to be, to live without the threat of being incarcerated in their own country." Sacramento police officer Mark Zoulas, who has served on the homeless beat for the past decade, said a legal campground makes sense to him. "You need something for that immediate need," said Zoulas. "I like the winter shelter. I'm not saying that's the best answer in the world necessarily. But at least it gives you a choice. And that's now closed and everyone using it is out. And that leaves, for the minute, nothing, and nothing is never the answer." The idea of a safe ground for homeless campers divides officials in city hall. The mayor, Kevin Johnson, has been receptive, but others, including the city manager, Ray Kerridge, is not. There is also a disagreement over how much it will cost at a time when the city and county are already slashing basic services. What is not in dispute is that this week Sacramento has 200 more people with no place to sleep. MELISSA BLOCK, host: You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. It's been about three months since Sacramento shutdown a large tent city of homeless people. Many of the people who were forced to leave say they're like refugees with no place to go. Yesterday, they staged a loud demonstration. They hoped to pressure Sacramento officials to find them a new place to camp. NPR's Richard Gonzales reports. RICHARD GONZALES: Ever since the tent city closed, 45-year-old Philip Grice has been on the move. He's a carpenter by trade. Long hair, tobacco-stained teeth, he wears a T-shirt that reads: Where am I supposed to live? Mr. PHILIP GRICE: And when we moved out, we moved over to a private area two fields over. They wanted us off of there too. Just like shuffling cattle, that's all it is. We're supposed to be the eyesore, but actually, we're citizens and we're human beings. We're supposed to have rights like everybody else. It don't matter what we got in our pockets. GONZALES: Grice joined about 250 other homeless people and their supporters for a march through the northern end of Sacramento. (Soundbite of protest) Unidentified Man: When do we want it? Unidentified People: Now. Unidentified Man: What do we want? Unidentified People: (unintelligible) Unidentified Man: When do we want it? Unidentified People: Now. GONZALES: Their action coincided with the closure this week of a temporary shelter where many of the tent-city residents had found a roof for the winter. Now they say they need a year-round legal camp on what they call safe ground. (Soundbite of protest) Unidentified Man: Safe ground. Unidentified People: Safe ground, safe ground, safe ground, safe ground. GONZALES: One marcher is a 43-year-old single father and disabled brick mason, Rodney Frazier. Mr. RODNEY FRAZIER: A lot of these people who's out here are brick masons, they're tile sett |
18 Long Hours on a Singapore Air Flight | Reporter Benjamin Walker takes the second-longest flight in the world on Singapore Air. He reports on whether the 18 hours of confinement on board relaxed social barriers between passengers. |
D.C. Wants To Make Sure You Truly Want That Tattoo | Washington, D.C., is famed for delays: in Congress, traffic, and now, tattoos. The District of Columbia Health Department has proposed a 24-hour waiting period before anyone can be adorned with what the draft regulation calls "body art." That language is inked inside a 66-page package of proposed provisions, most of which pertain to using fresh needles, safe inks and clean gloves. All of which may make you wonder: "Haven't they been doing that?" But Najma Roberts, a Health Department spokeswoman, says the waiting period is proposed to deter people from getting emblazoned at midnight with a phrase or image — like, say, a heart with Anthony Weiner's name inside — that they may regret the next day. "We're making sure when that decision is made that you're in the right frame of mind," said Roberts. "And you don't wake up in the morning saying, 'Oh my God, what happened?' " Washington would be the largest city in the country to mandate a tattoo waiting period, and tattoo artists are alarmed. They say they already avoid putting the needle into customers who are clearly drunk or on drugs. But a lot of their business comes from people who walk in and want to leave with a dragon on their shoulder. I don't know the tattooees' frame of mind. But I have observed that if you go to a great seaport town, like Seattle or Charleston, S.C., the tattoo parlors seem to be next to bars, not Starbucks. Every few weeks, our daughters bring home the kind of tattoo you can rub on with a wet sponge, usually cats, flowers or princesses; they wash off in the bath. There are even public radio tattoos — using soybean-based ink, of course! — for sale at the NPR Shop, though I doubt that a sailor who lifts a sleeve to reveal an All Things Considered tattoo would intimidate a bar lout. For many, the whole appeal of tattoos is that they are painful and permanent. People may wince years later to see evidence of past loves and allegiances so everlastingly inscribed over their hearts or triceps. But they are indelible markers of youthful passion and undying commitment, even when — maybe especially when — the tattoo lasts longer. But body art may have received a boost this week when Miss Kansas, Theresa Vail, became the first Miss America contestant with a visible tattoo. It's the Serenity Prayer. Maybe instead of a new regulation, D.C.'s Health Department might want to post a version in tattoo parlors: "God grant me the wisdom to know that the tattoo I'm so sure I want to get now will be on my body for the rest of my life, so maybe I should just get a cup of coffee and think about it." |
New Zealand Reflects After Violence Strikes Muslim Community | The Muslim community of Christchurch, New Zealand, is trying to recover after Friday's shooting at two mosques that left 50 people dead. |
Dana Dane: From Hip-Hop To The Printed Page | Hip-hop artist Dana Dane broke onto the music scene in the late 1980s with "Cinderfella," featuring a passable English accent for a guy who grew up in Brooklyn. Since then, he's had chart success, become a father, operated a clothing store and recently released his first novel, Numbers. It's about a boy whose knack for math gets him involved with the drug world. What makes Numbers unusual is that it features a soundtrack. Dane's son came to him one day looking to get into the music business, and while Dane does little with music these days, he saw it as an opportunity to work with his son. So the two collaborated on music to accompany the book. The protagonist, Dupree "Numbers" Wallace, reflects Dane's early childhood: He's a gambler and a "mama's boy that feels like he's the man of the house." He soon meets a mentor, who encourages Numbers' mathematical abilities as a way to become a big-time hustler. "He's really just a loyal person — just trying to make his way through the hood," Dane says. In an interview with Scott Simon, Dane talks about growing up in the projects and how his mother affected his will to succeed no matter the path. Click the audio link above to hear the full interview. SCOTT SIMON, host: Hip-hop artist Dana Dane broke into the music scene in the late 1980s. This song may sound familiar to you. (Soundbite of song, "Cinderfella") Mr. DANA DANE (Musician): (Singing) Once upon a time, Brooklyn was the scene, in the projects that they called Fort Greene, they lived a young man, Cinderfella's his name, to make it interesting it's me, Dana Dane. I lived in a house with my cruel stepdad SIMON: That was Dana Dane singing with a passably good English accent. But, you know, he grew up a long way from the British Isles. He spent his childhood living in a housing project in Brooklyn. Since then, he's continued to have chart success. He's become a father, operated a clothing store and recently released his debut novel, "Numbers," based on a song that he wrote. It's about a boy whose knack for math gets him involved with the drug trade. Dana Dane joins us from our studios in New York City. Thanks so much for being with us. Mr. DANE: Well, thank you very much, Scott. Thanks for the introduction as well. I greatly appreciate it. SIMON: Well, our pleasure. We enjoy having you on. But I do got to ask: what was that British accent all about? Mr. DANE: Actually, some classmates of mine that I went to Music and Art High School here in New York City with, one of the most famous of them, Slick Rick, he was from London via Jamaica, and two other of the group members - Lance Brown and Omega the Heartbreaker - they were Jamaican descent and they had somewhat of an accent. And hip-hop in its early days, everyone wanted to sound more American and they were trying to sound more American, but I loved the accent, so we kind of meshed the American and the London accent together and thus came my style. SIMON: Now, your debut novel, "Numbers," has a soundtrack to go with it. Mr. DANE: Yes. SIMON: Is this something that, god bless, great novelists like Joyce Carol Oates never thought about putting a soundtrack in there. What's the idea with this? Mr. DANE: My son, he's an aspiring actor and singer and he wanted to get into the music business. And he asked, yo, dad, can you help me out. And I'm like, Dane, I don't really do the music thing anymore. But he's like, come on, help your son out. And I said, you know what I can do? We can do a soundtrack for my book and that'll give an opportunity for people out there to hear your music. So, we started working on this endeavor and I'm enjoying the process of working with my son on this project, and it's incredible. SIMON: How old is your son, may I ask? Mr. DANE: He's 18. He's going to be 19 actually very soon. And so far we've done five records together. The album is not really complete, but the lead single, "The Summary," that really gives the whole idea of what the book is about is out right now. They actually can download that song from my Web site. (Soundbite of song, "The Summary") Mr. DANE: (Singing) Numbers Wallace is always about his dollars, since he was eight years old, coming up (unintelligible) ghetto. He started as a runner to make chump change. This was his introduction to the hustling game. From there, he got the knack to memorize numbers, predictions and calculations, no small (unintelligible) SIMON: Are you concerned that people will just download the song and not read the book? Mr. DANE: No, not at all. I'm just trying to do some untraditional things to bring people into my first novel. Because I'm new to this and I want people to know that I'm serious about what I'm doing. SIMON: Tell me about your protagonist, Dupree Numbers Wallace. Mr. DANE: Dupree Numbers Wallace, in the early days, is more of my childhood. You know, some of the things I had him doing or created around his character was more of how I grew up, you know, being a young |
The History And Legacy Of Tulsa Race Massacre | NPR's Ailsa Chang speaks with Jim Goodwin, the <em>Oklahoma Eagle</em> publisher, about the legacy of the Tulsa Race Massacre and the state of race relations today. |
Red Sox Win World Series In 6-1 Rout Of Cardinals | The Boston Red Sox beat the St. Louis Cardinals 6-1 Wednesday to win the World Series, using timely hits by outfielder Shane Victorino, a gritty pitching performance by starter John Lackey, and the feared bat of 37-year-old designated hitter David Ortiz to capture its third world championship in a decade. Victorino, 32, who had missed two games with a bad back, started the scoring in the 3rd with a bases-loaded double that brought in three runs. He drove in another run an inning later. Ortiz scored twice, after being walked in his first three at-bats (twice intentionally). He had gone 11-for-15 for a .733 average through five games. He struck out in the 6th inning, and was walked again in the 8th. For the series, Ortiz reached base 19 times in 25 plate appearances, had among the highest batting averages ever in a series, and was named the Most Valuable Player. Lackey took a shutout into the 7th inning, despite having allowed six hits. Lackey gave up three more hits in the 7th inning — and his second wild pitch of the night — and St. Louis got its only run on a two-out single by Carlos Beltran. St. Louis starting pitcher Michael Wacha, a 22-year-old rookie who had been sensational throughout the playoffs, was hit hard and took the loss. Boston won its eighth World Series dating to baseball's first, in 1903, when it won under the name the Boston Americans. It also won in 1912, 1915, 1916, 1918, 2004 and 2007. This was the first time Boston clinched a series at home since 1918. Ortiz is the only Red Sox player remaining from the 2004 team championship team, which broke an 86-year drought for the franchise. This year, the Red Sox and Cardinals were the league's best teams, with identical 97-65 regular-season records. The Red Sox were just 69-93 in 2012 under manager Bobby Valentine, who was fired. This year, with manager John Farrell, they became the second team to win the World Series a year after finishing in last place. |
Scotus: Doctor Assisted Suicide | The Supreme Court ruled in a unanimous decision that terminally ill people do not have a constitutional right to doctor-assisted suicide. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist wrote that the idea of having someone help end another's life conflicts with "our nation's history, legal traditions and practices." The ruling upholds two laws..one in New York and the other in Washington state...that ban doctor-assisted suicide. NPR's Nina Totenberg reports. |
More Music By The Composer | More music by the composer we're featuring this hour, Englishman John Tavener: His 1993 choral piece "Song for Athene" (ah-THEE-nee) became famous worldwide last September when it was sung at the funeral of Princess Diana. This is another performance from the April 22nd concert at St. James Church in London. Matthew Greenall conducts the Elysian Singers. (Chris Vezey/VIP Broadcasting) |
Can You Use That In A Sentence? NPR Readers Can | As promised yesterday in our post about Oxford Dictionaries' new words, here are a few of the most linguistically nimble sentences submitted by NPR readers responding to a call-out to see how many of the words they could cram into one sentence. From Facebook, Carrie Donovan: Mkay, some snackable deets from beer o' clock at my favorite fast-casual digs (if I didn't already pocket dial you during these awesomesauce bants): This manic pixie dream girl and an aspiring social justice warrior just reamed a rando who tried to fat-shame the barbacoa-loving barista at the cupcakery because he got butthurt about the cakeage for a fur baby wedding, so Mx. "social justice warrior" said if he could ditch his weak sauce schedule of spear phishing grandmas, swatting under guise of "butt dial" and ditching deradicalization for a conspiracy theory about a missing blockchain and the Grexit, he could probably MacGyver himself a cake or take his microaggression and his hangry kittens to the cat cafe before the barista rage-quit and induced some major pwnage. From Facebook, Mitzki Kotszki: At the fast-casual eatery, fast approaching beer o'clock (wine o'clock for Mx Chris), as we became increasingly hangry for some barbacoa from the snackable menu, and argued with the weaksauce server over the cakeage fee while considering a run for the awesomesauce cupcakery next door (but feared the fat-shaming that may ensue), someone from the waitstaff began yelling about the fatberg in the ladies room, and I overheard a rando arguing about the Grexit with her butthurt sister (or maybe she was just a distracted Redditor, mkay) as her furbaby waited patiently to leave, until my eavesdropping was interrupted by someone butt-dialing me. From NPR.org, El Stone: Feeling hangry, I set my awesomesauce iphone alarm for beer o'clock with the intent of meeting my bruhs at this new fast-casual cupcakery that I'd read some snackable reviews of and specializes in barbacoa cupcakes but charges cakeage and is rumored to be implicated in spear phishing and/or swatting but was closed last week due to a large subterranean fatberg, but on the way I either butt-dialed or pocket dialed my Redditor social justice warrior (deradicalization has failed!) manic pixie dream girl who after walking our fur baby to the cat café during wine o' clock was Mcgyvering some eyeblockers due to a manspeading weak sauce rando on a park bench and after exchanging mkays, we Euro-bants about Brexit and Grexit until I had a brainfart and in an act of microaggression fat-shamed her mom so she got butthurt, nearly rage-quitting the call until I said NBD, pwnaged her with smooth talk and then did a mic drop breaking my iphone in the process. From Facebook, Anita Kay Wuoti: Mkay, that manic pixie dream girl is a social justice warrior; she over there manspreading at the cat café, hanging out with fur babies, and I'm over here hangry for attention; NBD, I'm just some rando in her eyes. |
Chicago Symphony Tops U.S. Orchestras | A brand new ranking of the world's symphony orchestras hits the news stands today, courtesy of the venerable British publication Gramophone. At the No. 1 spot is Amsterdam's Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. But the top U.S. orchestra may come as a surprise to some. Gramophone asked classical music critics from the U.S., Europe and Asia to come up with their top 20 favorite orchestras. After the lists were compiled, the Chicago Symphony came out on top in the U.S. Gramophone editor James Inverne says Chicago beat out some tough competition. "Actually, this will be a surprise because a lot of people in America would, as a knee-jerk reaction, would rank the New York Philharmonic at the top," Inverne says. "Or, indeed, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which has fantastic technical standards. But Chicago beat a further six orchestras, which were in our top 20, from America." Inverne says he was inspired to conduct the poll because even though the level of musicianship is rising, there are far fewer orchestras these days that have an immediately identifiable sound. "It's the equivalent, if you like, of having fewer great charismatic actors, and many more kind of good-looking actors who are fine playing everything, but you don't want to take away their King Lear." So, what's Chicago's unique, identifiable sound? Inverne has one word: brass. "Chicago famously has this incredible brass sound," Inverne says. "And it just pins you to the back of your seat. And the way that that brass sound shoots out, exemplifies a lot about the orchestra, which is a sense of adventure in music-making." The classical music critic for the Chicago Tribune, John von Rhein, wasn't surprised when he heard the news about his hometown orchestra taking the top spot. "Not to be too Chicago chauvinistic," he says, "but the rankings confirm what those of us here in Chicago have felt for some time." Von Rhein notes that the 107-year-old Chicago Symphony is not only in good health sonically, but also financially — something of a rarity for orchestras these days. "As of June 30, the orchestra not only balanced its books, but turned up a modest surplus. They reported strong fundraising, with ticket sales exceeding 85 percent paid capacity, which is high for American orchestras." While many American orchestras may be struggling financially, they are sounding good, at least according to Gramophone. Seven of the world's top 20, in the new ranking, are U.S. orchestras. And for James Inverne, that's good news. Much better, at least, than the din of backstage drama that sometimes rises above the sound of the music. "Some of the time it feels like what we're hearing, above everything else about the American orchestral scene, is all the gossip and the intrigue, and the back-biting and conductors being ousted and critic being shuffled around, and all of this kind of thing, but when all is said and done [you Americans] do make some fantastic music." STEVE INSKEEP, host: A brand new ranking of the world's symphony orchestras hits the newsstands today, courtesy of the British publication, Gramophone. At the number-one spot is Amsterdam's Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. The number-one U.S. orchestra may come as a surprise to some, as NPR's Tom Huizenga reports. TOM HUIZENGA: Gramophone asked classical-music critics from the U.S., Europe and Asia to come up with their top 20 favorite orchestras. After the lists were compiled, the Chicago Symphony came out on top in the U.S. Gramophone editor James Inverne says it beat out some tough competition. Mr. JAMES INVERNE (Editor, Gramophone): Well, actually, this will be a surprise because a lot of people in America would, as a knee-jerk reaction, I suppose, would rank the New York Philharmonic at the top, or indeed, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which has fantastic technical standards. But Chicago beat a further six orchestras which were in our top 20 from America. (Soundbite of music, Chicago Symphony Orchestra) HUIZENGA: Inverne was inspired to conduct the poll because, even though the level of playing is rising, he says there are far fewer orchestras these days that have an immediately identifiable sound. Mr. INVERNE: It's the equivalent, if you like, of having fewer great charismatic actors, and many more kind of good-looking actors who are fine playing everything, but you don't want to take away their "King Lear." HUIZENGA: So, what's Chicago's unique, identifiable sound? Mr. INVERNE: Chicago famously has this incredible brass sound, and it just pins you to the back of your seat. (Soundbite of music, Chicago Symphony Orchestra) Mr. INVERNE: The way that that brass sound shoots out exemplifies a lot about the orchestra, which is a sense of adventure in music-making. (Soundbite of Chicago Symphony Orchestra, music) Mr. JOHN VON RHEIN (Classical Music Critic, Chicago Tribune): Not to sound too Chicago chauvinistic, but the rankings confirm what those of us here in Chicago have felt for some time. |
Supreme Court: Census | NPR's Larry Abramson reports that the Supreme Court upheld a 40-year-old census technique today. Utah had objected to the use of "hot-deck imputation," which estimates the size of a household when census takers can't reach the residents. They base the estimate on the size of neighboring households. Utah said the constitution requires a headcount, with no estimating. The justices ruled that "hot-deck imputation" is not unconstitutional. So the 2002 census, under which Utah lost a congressional seat, stands. |
Here's How Tech Experts Recommend Organizing Your Photos | We take hundreds and thousands of photos these days, because we can. Long gone are the days of film rolls limited to 24 shots. Storage is trending cheaper and more infinite. You don't want to miss any of your dog's cute moments or your kids' as they grow up. But when we have so many digital images and we want to cull them down a bit and get organized, where do we even start? We spoke with a consumer tech expert, a professional photo organizer and a photo-loving tech entrepreneur to get their tried-and-true methods for sorting digital photo collections — whether you're doing simple, routine prevention of photo bloat or starting a big archiving project. Because there's something so powerful about images, preserving our memories and connecting us across distance and generations. That's if — and only if — we can find 'em. (Note: NPR receives funding from Google and Amazon. The recommendations below came from experts interviewed for Life Kit.) Commit to organizing your photos in the first place. "Organizing your photos takes a lot of time and commitment, and it's something that you can't procrastinate. You actually have to do it," says Kim Komando, consumer tech expert and national radio show host. "Next year you're just going to have more photos. So just bite the bullet and get it done now." Whittle down what you don't need. Remove images like memes your friends shared with you, screenshots and duplicates. If you have similar photos of the same scene, "if you can really do it, you start picking the best two," Komando says. Some software programs do this task for you. A couple of the pros we talked to like a program called PhotoSweeper. Komando recommends Photos Duplicate Cleaner on a Mac or Duplicate Cleaner for PCs. These programs group dupes so you can keep only the ones you need. To get into a regular photo-organizing rhythm, she recommends sitting down and culling those duplicates and unnecessary selfies at least once a month, using a big monitor or your laptop. Do your future self a favor: Keep a regular photo maintenance routine. You can do it by marking favorites on the fly and sitting down to do monthly organization. Komando likes to sort through her photos while she's streaming TV shows. Ana Carvajal, a professional photo organizer and owner of the company Posterity Pro, loves the simplicity of keeping your favorites folder on your phone up to date so you can go to it first for albums, gifts or cards. "You'll start realizing what you really love, what you really want to preserve and what is really important to you," Carvajal says. "That is something that anybody can do on the go, on the fly." But if you have a big project or you decide you want to get your entire photo history organized, organize big archives chronologically. If the photos are really old digital prints or film, she organizes by decade. Then she gets more detailed. Do the tedious work ... of tagging. Tagging means writing to the metadata — information that travels with the digital image file — so that any computer can more easily search and sort, going forward. The photos app that comes with Macs lets you add keywords, and Windows similarly lets you add tags to your photos. Google Photos also allows manual tags. Carvajal likes using Adobe Lightroom to do this and recommends not getting bogged down by an overwhelming number of tags. "So, for example, my personal library is about 100,000 photographs, but I only have about 20 keywords," Carvajal says. "Travel" is one of them. You don't need to get too specific. Since she has organized by date already, she can go to 2016 and click the travel tag, and all the travels of that year will come up. "Whatever system you have, whatever works with you, just pick a software that can keyword or tag," Carvajal says. "The thing is to actually do it and maintain it. By the end of the year, you should have your photographs tagged for the current year," she says. That way, when the holidays roll around, you can easily create personalized gifts or calendars for the upcoming year. No time for tagging? Lean into machine learning and search functions to fill the gaps in your system. These days, most of our phones have software that accurately recognizes faces, places and common visuals, like a hug. Tech entrepreneur Naveen Selvadurai says his family keeps it simple by relying on this machine learning and artificial intelligence to help him identify the what, who and when in his photos. "Something really wild has happened in the last five years," Selvadurai says. "Machine learning and all this stuff is now so good, and getting better every year, that you could actually just use search alone to go back and look at some of your photos." Back up. Back up, back up, back up. No matter how well you're organized, your vast visual memory collection means nothing if it has ... vanished. Carvajal, the professional photo organizer, recommends the 3-2-1 backup standard, which means three copies: two copies on differen |
Tom Adams: Tiny Desk (Home) Concert | The Tiny Desk is working from home for the foreseeable future. Introducing NPR Music's Tiny Desk (home) concerts, bringing you performances from across the country and the world. It's the same spirit — stripped-down sets, an intimate setting — just a different space. One of my top albums in 2017 was Silence, from Tom Adams – that transfixing falsetto set against minimalist piano was a balm. I imagined his Tiny Desk (home) concert to be Tom and his piano; what we have is Tom Adams at his home in Cornwall, England, playing four brand-new songs with minimal electric guitar and an enthralling mix of tech-altered sounds. That box with all the wires in the foreground is a Eurorack modular synthesizer which, in real time, processes his majestic voice in ways unpredictable even to Tom. He wrote to tell me that, "Once the system is set in motion, you never know exactly what will happen next... I like to think of it as being a bit like the waves on the beach; to some extent, they are all predictable, yet each wave is still unique." It's a lovely way to describe this new music from this singular talent. SET LIST "The Turning Of The Year" "A Flower Disappearing" "If My Love Was A Guitar" "Postcards From The Road" MUSICIANS Tom Adams: vocals, guitar CREDITS Video By: Tom Adams; Audio By: Tom Adams; Producer: Bob Boilen; Audio Mastering Engineer: Josh Rogosin; Video Producer: Maia Stern; Associate Producer: Bobby Carter; Executive Producer: Lauren Onkey; Senior VP, Programming: Anya Grundmann |
Names Of San Bernardino Shooting Victims Released | NPR's Kelly McEvers talks with Matt Guilhem of member station KVCR about the San Bernardino shooting victims. The county sheriff's office has officially released all 14 names. |
Rudolph Investigation | NPR's Kathy Lohr reports that the hunt for Eric Rudolph has intensified. More than half a dozen law enforcement agencies have joined forces to pursue Rudolph, who is believed to be involved in the bombing of a women's health clinic in Birmingham, Alabama. |
The Marketplace Report: AIDS Drugs to Africa | NPR's Mike Shuster speaks with <EM>Marketplace</EM> correspondent Tess Vigeland about drug companies who say they have doubled the supply of life-saving AIDS medicines to Africa in the past year, but admit the gap in care remains "unacceptable." |
Elizabeth Arnold Reports On The Disarray Among Republicans In Congress. While | the GOP is arguing over their budget strategy and health insurance legislation, the Democrats in Congress have unified behind raising the minimum wage... a measure suggested by President Clinton last year. |
Face Of Slain BART Rider Reappears In Oakland | Downtown Oakland, Calif., is boarded up as residents await sentencing for the transit cop found guilty of manslaughter for killing unarmed passenger Oscar Grant on New Year's Day. Some graffiti artists are transforming the boarded-up buildings, and some stencils of the slain man are being welcomed by business owners. |
'Inheriting Syria' in the Modern Age | Flynt Leverett is a senior fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. As Syria is prodded to withdraw its troops -- and influence -- from neighboring Lebanon, the region faces potentially drastic changes. A veteran expert on Middle East policy -- from the National Security Council and the State Department to the CIA -- Leverett has also written a new book, Inheriting Syria: Bashar’s Trial By Fire, about Bashar al-Assad's rule of Syria after following his father as the country's leader. |
Mix, Add To Metal Pot, Then Bury In Hot Lava Sand: How To Bake Bread In Iceland | The Blue Lagoon, a quick drive from Reykjavik’s international airport, is a tourist mecca. The man-made pools that draw water from the nearby geothermal plant are open for visitors up to 17 hours a day at the peak of summer. Even in the winter they’re filled long before the sun rises. But 90 minutes northeast of the city, in a largely agricultural region surrounded by mountains and volcanoes, there’s another set of geothermal baths and saunas. “There’s no plumbing, no switch on or off … it’s just a hot spring,” says Siggi Hilmarsson, the managing director of the Laugarvatn Fontana spa. The property is on the banks of pristine Lake Laugarvatn. “You’re just getting the energy directly from underneath; [the] power of the spring is it’s often splashing,” he says, standing inside one of the three wooden huts that serve as saunas and steam baths. “The only way to control the temperature in these rooms is by opening up the doors and release the pressure inside.” The so-called “Ring of Fire” region of Iceland, Hilmarsson explains, is a volcanic hotbed punctuated by tectonic cracks that allow hot water to rise up through the water and soil. And if the baths nourish the soul — and he assures us that they do — another Icelandic tradition, he says, nourishes the body. It’s called both lava or volcano bread. Watch on YouTube. The bread is a favorite at the Laugarvatn spa. To show how it’s baked, he takes us to the lake — not the kitchen. After a short walk on wet black volcanic sand, we arrive at an area of the beach where steam is rising and the sand literally boils. There, Hilmarsson begins to dig. Eventually we hear a clinking sound. “There it is,” he says as he unearths a large metal pot. He retrieves it with the shovel, careful not to touch the steaming hot metal. He opens the pot with a glove and shows us the steaming bread which weighs about seven pounds. It’s the same bread, he says, that his parents and grandparents baked. “When they felt like having a good bread, grandma put down bread here; very often when they were expecting guests from Reykjavik … They would pop up a nice warm rye bread from the hot spring,” he says. Hilmarsson takes half a dozen eggs and places them in a divot in the sand where the water immediately boils around them. The traditional way to eat the bread, he explains, is topped with butter, boiled eggs and smoke trout or salmon. Back inside the spa, Hilmarsson takes great care slicing and assembling the ingredients. He hands the first slice to his mother, who sits nearby. She smiles and gives a nod of approval. The bread, he explains, is not only a popular attraction at the spa but an important reminder of the past at a time when the region is rapidly changing. “We have less snow today than we used to have,” he says. “Climate change is obviously affecting the whole world. … They are estimating that in 200 years all the glaciers are gone here if climate change keeps on developing the way it is today.” He says the farmers who populate the area are affected in a number of ways. For one, some trees are growing faster, while others that have long thrived in the area are no longer growing. “There are farmers that have changed from the original farming,” he says, because warmer, and sometimes erratic, weather has resulted in crop failure. Several miles east up a winding mountain road is Efstidalur Farm, which traditionally produced dairy, hay and some vegetables. There we meet Halla Ros Arnarsdottir. The property, which she runs with her siblings, has been in the family since the 1700s. She says she’s well aware of the issues raised by Hilmarsson — and that her farm is coping by focusing on tourism and the service industry. The farm now features a small hotel, a farm-to-table restaurant and a bustling ice cream stand. Still, she says climate change is top of mind. “I think about it every day and we try all our best with what we can do about it,” Arnarsdottir says. “And there are things we do, for example. We recycle everything on the farm no matter what it is. We do compost, plastic, paper.” While she knows that those efforts help in the long run, the short term issues are harder to navigate. She recalls what happened two summers ago. “We had almost no sunshine the whole summer. It’s hard to believe there was only one little gap which we could cut the hay and dry it. And we were really concerned if we would have enough hay for all our animals,” she says. “And then last year it was totally opposite. We had sunshine every day and we were praying for rain. So we are talking about two crazy years and no one remembers this.” The situation has been brutal for local farmers, she says, to the point where some are even giving up completely. Cow farmers, for example, are no longer certain they can pr |