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Walk This Way: Let Your Shoes Tell You Where To Go | You're visiting Rome and though you've never been there before, you feel pretty confident in making your way around the place. After all, you've got your smartphone's GPS and map app to guide you through the city. But if you're constantly staring at your phone screen to see directions, you're probably missing some of the sights. A European airline called easyJet says it's working on a solution: smart shoes called Sneakairs that will tell you which way to go by sending vibrations to your feet when it's time to make a turn -- one of the latest attempts at a tactile navigation tool. "Synchronize your shoes with your phone, choose your destination, put your phone away and enjoy the views," a company video says. If you need to go left, your left shoe will vibrate. And, you guessed it: The right shoe will vibrate when it's time to turn right. If you've missed a turn, both shoes will vibrate twice — a signal to turn around and go back. Three vibrations mean you've reached your destination. The prototype is built with open-source hardware — a miniaturized Arduino clone, a tiny vibration motor and a Bluetooth module to connect with your phone, the company says. It says it used the Google Maps API to create its own pedestrian navigation app. It runs in the background, "so you can put your mobile away and you don't have to be constantly minding the directions on the screen," the demonstration video says. The airline doesn't say how soon the Sneakairs will be available, only that its passengers could buy them aboard flights in the future. The concept of using vibration or haptic feedback to help people find their way isn't new. A number of other projects have used the concept in recent years. Anirudh Sharma, a researcher in Bangalore, India, designed a vibrating navigation device built into a shoe to help visually impaired people. In 2014, Sharma and his business partner Krispian Lawrence announced a production version of the shoe, called Lachal, and they say it's now designed for all people to use. Dhairya Dand, who was then a researcher at the MIT Media Lab, developed a similar concept he called SuperShoes — insoles that can be tucked into a regular pair of shoes and connect with your smartphone's location and data services. "The shoes are based on a tickling interface," Dand says on his website. "Left toe tickles - turn left, right toe tickles - turn right, no tickle - keep going, both tickle repeatedly - reached destination, both tickle once - recommendation, both tickle twice - reminder." Dand envisions a cloud service called ShoeCentral that would collect users' "likes and dislikes (food, people, shopping, weather, places, hobbies, activities, interests, etc.) and social preferences. The ShoeCentral keeps learning about user preferences as you use the SuperShoes to go around." It can recommend places to go (a nearby sushi place, for instance) and deliver directions via the shoes. Using haptic feedback for directions isn't limited to footwear. The Apple Watch has a feature for haptic directions. A crowdfunded project called smrtGRiPS offers bicyclists turn-by-turn directions using special handlebar grips that connect to a smartphone via Bluetooth. The left grip will vibrate to turn left and ... you get the idea. But all this leaves us with one thought. Many of us experience phantom phone vibrations in our pockets. Will these new shoes, watches and bike grips mean we'll get them in our feet, wrists and hands, too? |
Top Stories: Britain's U.N. Resolution; Yosemite Fire Harms Water | Good morning, here are our early stories: -- Britain To Seek U.N. OK For Military Action Against Syria. -- Click Here For 'The New York Times' While It's Being Hacked. -- Fire's Threat To Bay Area's Water Supply May Come Later. And here are more early headlines: Ft. Hood Shooter Presents No Evidence In Trial's Penalty Phase. (Associated Press) New Bombings In Baghdad Kill Dozens. (BBC) Alert Level Increased For Damaged Fukushima Plant. (Asahi Shimbun) U.N. Troops Battle Rebels In Eastern Congo. (Reuters) U.S. Envoy Going To North Korea To Plead For American's Release. (Seattle Times) "Selfie", "Twerk" Among New Oxford English Dictionary Additions. (Time) Reminder: Book News is on vacation this week. But Annalisa Quinn is keeping an eye on her Twitter messages. She asks that "hot tips, scurrilous attacks and existential questions" be directed to @annalisa_quinn. |
Cringe! Miss Utah Fumbles On Income Inequality Question | We promise to get back to the real news in a bit. But first: The most cringe-inducing moment in pageant history since Miss Teen South Carolina Caitlin Upton fumbled an answer to a question about why many Americans don't know geography. The most recent incident occurred last night during the Miss USA beauty pageant. Miss Utah USA Marissa Powell was asked: "A recent report shows that in 40 percent of American families with children, women are the primary earners, yet they continue to earn less than men. What does this say about society?" Powell appeared stumped. Watch: We'll leave you with Upton's 2007 answer: Oh yeah, 25-year-old Erin Brady, or Miss Connecticut, was crowned the 2013 Miss USA. Update at 1:41 p.m. ET. A Defense: Over at Monkey See, our friend Linda Holmes has a defense — kinda — of Miss Utah USA. |
Why Christmas Trees Are So Expensive? | To figure out why evergreens are so costly this year, the Planet Money team decided to get into the tree business. NPR shares what they've found. |
RadioShack Files For Bankruptcy; Sprint To Share Space With Some Stores | For decades the brand was best known as a convenience store for techies. Now it's trying to salvage some of its stores by partnering with Sprint, one of its biggest creditors. |
University Of Illinois Engages Chinese Students With Mandarin Football Broadcast | For the first time, Illinois football will have a Mandarin play-by-play and color team calling the game for streaming in China. The University of Illinois has a huge number of Chinese students, and the activity has been getting the community more involved in campus culture. |
Festival of the Kalends | Michael Ellis looks at an ancient Roman festival with a modern message for the Christmas season. |
Spelling Bee Heads to Last Word | The Scripps National Spelling Bee concludes Friday. The 81st edition of the competition began Thursday with a record 288 contestants. |
Teen Found With Map Of Camp David, Guns | Police are currently investigating what a map of Camp David with presidential motorcade routes and explosives were doing inside a Maryland teen's home. Collin McKenzie-Gude, 18, was arrested last week for attempted car hijacking. When police searched his home, they found an arsenal of guns, explosives and fake government IDs in addition to the mysterious map. "This kid knew stuff he shouldn't have known," Washington Post reporter Dan Morse tells Alex Chadwick. The teen was scheduled to begin his freshman year at American University in the fall. ALEX CHADWICK, host: This is Day to Day. I'm Alex Chadwick. MADELEINE BRAND, host: I'm Madeleine Brand. Coming up, Beijing's army of Olympics volunteers, a force to be reckoned with. But first... CHADWICK: If you remain anxious about the state of our national security, this next story is not going to help. A kid in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C. - he just graduated from high school - is under arrest for attempted carjacking. At his home, police found bomb-making equipment, 50 pounds of explosives, high-powered guns, armor-piercing ammo, and a map with the motorcade route the Secret Service uses to drive President Bush to the Camp David retreat in the nearby mountains. The suspect is named Collin McKenzie-Gude. He's 18 years old. Dan Morse has been covering the story for the Washington Post. Dan, I just called this young man a suspect. What exactly do authorities suspect him of? Mr. DAN MORSE (Reporter, Washington Post): Well, the big question is why. They found all these things inside his house. A lot of it was actually found in his bedroom. And then, you know, it's also revealed that they found this map, they found some other things, some instructions that purport to show how to kill someone from 200 meters. So they've found all this stuff. You know, the question is why and what his intentions were. One detective told me yesterday that what's gotten his attention and everyone's attention is, he said this kid knew stuff he shouldn't have known. CHADWICK: He graduated from high school, a private high school with kind of a military element to it. His dad is an Air Force veteran and, I guess, accused also by police authorities of buying guns for his son? Mr. MORSE: Right, right. They've accused him of that, and they've technically charged him with making a straw purchase of weapons, where you buy the weapons, but you're essentially buying the weapons for someone else. Investigators have told me that the dad, you know, one of them described him as a fairly straight shooter, but also someone who would buy things for his son. So they now have charges against three people, the dad, his son, Collin, who you mentioned, and also a juvenile, a 17-year-old friend of Collin's. CHADWICK: A friend of Collin's, who he apparently had, well, they were working on something together. Mr. MORSE: Yes, they were. They were doing something and the big mystery here, you know, on one extreme, these are kids doing, well, you know, certainly not ordinary to be setting off pipe bombs in a field. But, you know, are they doing that, or do they have something much more sinister in mind? And right now, I don't know, and I think a lot of the investigators don't know at this point. They're still trying to get to that. CHADWICK: He had a fake CIA identity card. He had another kind of odd identity card. He was arrested last week in a carjacking attempt of some kind. Something set him off, drove him to a local mall, where he tried to steal a car from someone. Mr. MORSE: Right, and that certainly caught the attention of a judge here. On Tuesday, there was a bond hearing, and in that bond hearing, the prosecutors had to argue to the judge why he should remain in jail and at a very high bond. And the two things they argued were that he was a danger to the community and also a flight risk. So that's where a lot of these things came out. During that hearing, this carjacking came up, and the victim in that case was a 78-year-old man who was trying to lock this little Geo Prism, and Collin is accused of coming up and elbowing him and knocking him to the ground. They've also got a witness who heard, you know, screams of help. So this is a 78-year-old man in a parking lot outside a shopping mall, and that certainly caught the attention of the judge, who, you know, from the bench sort of cut through all the stuff about Camp David and the map and everything and just, you know, keyed on that. CHADWICK: What is it that set off the police last week? How was it that they were going to his house to search his house? MORSE: They got a tip from a citizen in the community of Gaithersburg, which is just outside of Rockville. I've talked to a woman who is a relative of the 17-year-old, who said it was her that brought this to the police's attention at one point in the form of a long letter to the police chief here. She noticed through her relative, you know, some things about Collin McKenzie |
The Sound Of A Stradivarius | The sound of a Stradivarius from 1699. Violinist Gil Shaham (shah-HAHM) performed the scherzo from the Violin Sonata No. 1 by Johannes Brahms at last summer's Aspen Music Festival. His sister, pianist Orli Shaham, accompanied him. (Aspen Festival Recording Institute) |
Circus Accident Blamed On Clamp Failure | Officials now say that a failed clamp was behind the accident that injured several acrobats and performers at a Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus performance in Providence, Rhode Island. Eight acrobats were hanging by their hair from a platform that suddenly fell from the ceiling. Some performers on the ground were also injured. Two of the injured were still in critical condition, as of this morning. Three are listed in serious condition and three others in good condition. Local authorities and officials from the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration are investigating. Tonight’s final performance in Providence has been canceled. [Youtube] Guest
Elisabeth Harrison, reporter at WRNI. She tweets @elis_harrison.
ROBIN YOUNG, HOST: From NPR and WBUR Boston, I'm Robin Young. It's HERE AND NOW. And today, Rhode Island's commissioner of Public Safety said it might have been a broken clamp that sent Ringling Bros. Barnum and Bailey performers right to the ground yesterday in Providence, Rhode Island. You've probably seen the video. The female acrobats are hanging by their hair in the air in a stunt called the Human Chandelier. They're attached to an umbrella-like device which suddenly just fell from the ceiling. (SOUNDBITE OF VIDEO) UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Suspended only by strength. YOUNG: Just terrible. The eight acrobats who fell were injured. Performers on the ground were injured, as well. Elisabeth Harrison of Rhode Island Public Radio is in Providence. And, Elisabeth, what more do we know about these performers who were injured? ELISABETH HARRISON, BYLINE: Well, as of this morning, two performers are still in critical condition at the hospital. Three are listed in serious condition, and three others in good condition. It appears their injuries are mainly fractures and skull and back injuries. It doesn't appear that anyone in the audience was injured as a result of this. As you could hear in that audio from the video, you can hear some gasps in the crowd. You can also hear people asking: Was that supposed to happen? So people stayed pretty calm. It seems like they weren't really sure what was going on. The lights went out right away on the performers as people rushed to try to help them. YOUNG: Well, Elisabeth, nobody in the audience injured, but it had to be traumatic for them to see this. HARRISON: I'm sure it was extremely frightening, and you had a lot of children in that audience. You know, this was a Sunday matinee performance of the circus. But I think a lot of people really were wondering what did happen. And we're still wondering, to some extent. I mean Providence officials are saying they believe it was a clamp failure, but they're still investigating. And that investigation includes the Federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, federal OSHA officials who have jurisdiction over workplace accidents. YOUNG: Well, and what will they be looking at? What sort of inspection requirements are there that might have been missed? HARRISON: I don't know about the inspection requirements. I do know they've told the Providence Journal they expect the investigation could take several weeks. And we're also told that the circus workers themselves put together this rig. And, in fact, the circus's website, which is down right now, but earlier, it said that the act has been running for some time. It was created by husband-and-wife team, and the wife is actually one of the performers who is injured. She's listed right now in serious condition. And according, at least to this website, her husband actually welded part of the apparatus that he acrobats were hanging from. And so I guess we'll know more as this investigation continues about what really caused the accident, and whether there's any negligence in terms of the circus doing what it needs to do to keep its performers safe. YOUNG: Well, meanwhile, they've cancel tonight's performance. And now more Americans know about hairialists, which is what these acrobats are called. They hang from hoops. They roll down wrapped silks. They use their own hair, which is really thick. And we've heard performers all day describing it as a, you know, strong as a rope when it's tied like this to apparatus. But is there any sense that maybe these hairlialists - many are injured right now - but that there will be rethinking about the act? HARRISON: That's really unclear. As far as we know, they're still planning performances coming up this week in Connecticut, although, of course, that could change. So it's not clear to me whether they have backup performers who can take over. And, again, you know, the equipment appears to be the reason that this act failed. So whether or not they can continue performing it is a real question. YOUNG: Elisabeth Harrison of Rhode Island Public Radio, there in Providence, talking about that circus accident yesterday. Elisabeth, thanks so much. HARRISON: Thank you. YOUNG: It is so easy to forget how dangerous it can be |
High Court Hears Detainee-Rights Case | The U.S. Supreme Court is due Wednesday to hear arguments on the rights of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, marking the third time it has taken up the matter. In each of the previous cases, the Bush administration lost. But in those cases, President Bush acted unilaterally, without Congress. Since then, though, Congress has passed laws allowing the president to do pretty much what he'd been doing all along. The Guantanamo prisoners challenging their detention come from all over the world. Most were arrested in Afghanistan. The lead group was not. They are Bosnian citizens arrested in Bosnia shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, after U.S. officials said the men were involved in a plot to blow up the U.S. Embassy. Bosnian authorities then joined with Interpol and the U.S. to conduct a three-month investigation, at the end of which the Bosnian Supreme Court — with the concurrence of the Bosnian prosecutor — ruled that the charge was not supported by the evidence. The court ordered the men released, but they were quickly rearrested and taken to Guantanamo where they have remained for six years, despite repeated statements from the Bosnian government that it is willing to take them back. The detainees claim that they have the right to challenge their imprisonment in the U.S. courts, using the constitutionally guaranteed procedure called a writ of habeas corpus. Historically, the writ has been an important mechanism in safeguarding individuals from arbitrary imprisonment by the state. It guarantees the prisoner a chance to rebut charges against him in front of a neutral judge. But Guantanamo detainees contend no neutral judge is at Guantanamo, and no chance to know and rebut the evidence against them. The Bush administration counters that detainees have no Constitutional rights because they are not being held in the United States and that even if they do have some basic rights, the congressionally approved system of hearings for each prisoner at Guantanamo, plus review by a court of appeals here in Washington, is sufficient. "It is literally unprecedented in the history of the world that an alien enemy fighter gets habeas corpus rights when they've been captured and held abroad," said Brad Berenson, a former associate White House counsel in the Bush administration. But lawyers for the detainees say that their clients are not enemy fighters, that in fact they were erroneously scooped up, whether in Bosnia or Afghanistan, where many were turned over by warlords for bounty. "All we want is a process to determine whether they're terrorists or not. If they're terrorists, or enemy fighters, hold them," said Tom Wilner, a lawyer for the detainees. But, Wilner adds, the process for evaluating the detainees was rushed into existence in 2004, nine days after a Supreme Court ruling, and, he says, the combat status review tribunals (CSRTs) are a sham with the deck stacked from the get-go. That view is backed by a variety of lawyers, including top-ranking retired military officers who have filed briefs in this case. They contend that the officers on the tribunals are not neutral as a military judge would be; that instead they are routinely pressured by higher-ups to ratify the detentions, and that the detainees have no realistic chance to prove their innocence since they are denied access to most of the evidence against them. "I've been down to Guantanamo 12 times. I've seen this evidence. This evidence is the flimsiest stuff you have ever seen. It's a joke," Wilner said. With less colorful language, that is the same thing that two officers have now said in affidavits. One, Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham, was for six months in charge of seeing to it that exculpatory evidence was transmitted to the tribunals from intelligence and defense agencies. He says in his affidavit that the evidence seen by the tribunals was incomplete, dated and inaccurate, and that the officers serving on the panels were not able to question or test it. "It's not that truth was never a goal. But it was the first victim," Abraham said. Abraham, an experienced intelligence officer, says that most detainees have names that are extremely common in their part of the world. And, that the U.S. has little or no knowledge as to whether to use a typical name. For example, do we have the right Mohammad Assam in custody? "The odds are nil that they will have information about him. They may have lots of material on the other 57 Mohammad Assams from his region and the other 3,000 worldwide. So what you're going to get is every single report dealing with Mohhman Assam, Achmed Assam, Muhammad Asahma," said Abraham. "You get literally a dozen name variants. God help the person who had the same name as a famous person because all that information would be ascribed to him and presumed to be valid." The lawyers representing the detainees all have stories to tell. In the case of the Bosnians, the Supreme Court brief recounts a CSRT hearing where a detainee is charged with assoc |
Gamers Rejoice Over Playstation, Wii Release | Sony's Playstation 3 is in hot demand and short supply this weekend. And to make it an official video gamer weekend, on Sunday, Nintendo releases its coveted Wii gaming system. Weekend Edition's Andrea Seabrook tried out Nintendo's latest game box the Wii in NPR's studio with Ralph Cooper and Kyle Orland the co-hosts of NPR's video-game podcast "Press Start." |
Academy Investigates Alleged Sex Assault Of Female Midshipman | The U.S. Naval Academy is investigating allegations that a female midshipman was sexually assaulted last year by members of the academy's football team, a Pentagon spokesman says. The woman alleges that three men from the team assaulted her at an off-campus house in April 2012. She says she was "ostracized" on the Annapolis campus after reporting the attack, according to Susan Burke, a lawyer for the woman. Burke says Naval Academy Superintendent Michael Miller closed an investigation without charges last year even though some of the alleged attackers admitted their involvement. That investigation was reopened and Navy criminal investigators have submitted a report with "additional corroborating evidence," according to The Associated Press. "The entire [Naval Academy] community knows about this," Burke said in an interview with AP. The names of the players were not made public and the Naval Academy declined further comment. Burke said her client woke up with bruises after a night of heavy drinking. She "later learned from friends and social media that three football players — whom she considered friends — were claiming to have had sex with her while she was intoxicated and blacked out," according to the AP. The allegations are the latest in a spate of incidents in recent weeks that have embarrassed the military, including accusations of abuse against a member of the Fort Hood sexual assault response team and the arrest of the head of the Fort Campbell sexual-harassment program on domestic dispute charges. The incidents have led to an order that all U.S. military branches "retrain, re-credential and rescreen all sexual assault and response personnel and military recruiters." And President Obama, speaking to Naval Academy graduates last week, said that "those who commit sexual assaults are not only committing a crime, they threaten the trust and discipline that make our military strong." |
Do Orchestras Really Need Conductors? | Have you ever wondered whether music conductors actually influence their orchestras? They seem important. After all, they're standing in the middle of the stage and waving their hands. But the musicians all have scores before them that tell them what to play. If you took the conductor away, could the orchestra manage on its own? A new study aims to answer this question. Yiannis Aloimonos, of the University of Maryland, and several colleagues recruited the help of orchestral players from Ferrara, Italy. They installed a tiny infrared light at the tip of an (unnamed) conductor's baton. They also placed similar lights on the bows of the violinists in the orchestra. The scientists then surrounded the orchestra with infrared cameras. When the conductor waved the baton, and the violinists moved their bows, the moving lights created patterns in space, which the cameras captured. Computers analyzed the infrared patterns as signals: Using mathematical techniques originally designed by Nobel Prize-winning economist Clive Granger, Aloimonos and his colleagues analyzed whether the movements of the conductor were linked to those of the violinists. The scientists hypothesized that if the movement of the conductor could predict the movements of the violinists, then the conductor was clearly leading the players. But if the conductor's movements could not predict the movement of the violinists, then it was really the players who were in charge. "You have a signal that is originating from the conductor, because he is moving his hands and his body," Aloimonos explained. "And then the players, they perceive that signal, and they create another signal by moving the bows of the violin appropriately. So you have some sort of sensorimotor conversation." (The research study is part of a larger project where Aloimonos is trying to figure out if human movements share something in common with human language; he suspects both are not only governed by a grammar, but that both may be based on similar processes in the brain.) Aloimonos said the study found that conductors were leading the violinists — the movement of the conductors predicted the movement of the violinists, not the other way around. But the study found more: The scientists had two conductors lead the same orchestra. One was a veteran who exercised an iron grip over the violinists. The other was an amateur. "What we found is the more the influence of the conductor to the players, the more aesthetic — aesthetically pleasing the music was overall," Aloimonos said. Music experts who listened to the performance of the orchestra under the control of the two conductors found the version produced by the authoritarian conductor superior. Remember, these experts didn't know which version was being led by the veteran conductor and which by the amateur. All they heard was the music. |
For Seniors Looking To Stay Sharp In The Pandemic, Try A Game Of Spades | When you hear the sound of cards being shuffled in the South, there's a good chance that a hearty, yet competitive game of spades is underway. This definitely holds true for 94-year-old Molly Garris of Skippers, Va., and her family. Full disclosure, I'm one of the newest members of the family by way of marriage. My wife, Kandis Wallace Fuller, is the granddaughter of Garris. So, I'd heard how engaged and cerebral she is when it comes to spades, but never witnessed her play until recently. Masked up and socially distanced, I sat down with Garris, whom I affectionately call Granny, to be her partner in a game of spades. We played at the home of her oldest daughter, Carolyn Dixon, in Chesapeake, Va. Granny has been living with Dixon since October when her daughters convinced her to move so she wouldn't be so isolated during the pandemic. "It was difficult for her because not only has she always lived within 10 miles of her home, but she still cooks her own breakfasts, bathes on her own and washes her own clothes," says Sheila Garris Wallace, Granny's youngest daughter and my wife's mother. While it's difficult to measure social isolation and loneliness, recent studies found that social isolation is associated with an almost 50% increased risk of dementia. As the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths grew so did the concern from Granny's daughters. But since the move they say Granny's been upbeat. She now has consistent company and ample opportunities to partake in one of her favorite pastimes: a game of spades. On this particular day, 0ur opponents were none other than my wife and my mother-in-law. For those of you unfamiliar with the premise of spades, it's a hierarchical game where the two of spades serves as the ultimate trump card, followed by the ace, king, queen and jack. Spades is a game within a game requiring you and your partner to be on the same page without communicating with each other. Judging from Granny's expression, she wasn't overwhelmed during this hand. It's also worth noting that she has more than 80 years of experience playing cards. Spades, crossword puzzles and the Game Show Network keep her stimulated and abreast with current events. It's a steady routine for someone her age. "I've been playing cards since I was a teenager," Granny said to me. "But we weren't playing this. We were playing bid whist. But it's just like spades." While there's no age cutoff for spades, witnessing a 94-year-old play at such a high level was impressive and warranted a conversation with Denise Park, who researches the cognitive neuroscience of aging at the University of Texas at Dallas. Park says spades is a highly demanding cognitive game. "You have to keep track of all the cards, there's a huge memory load. It's really fast," says Park. "So there's a huge speed load, it's a multitasking situation that really, I would say, overloads or loads the cognitive system to its maximum ability." Granny demonstrated her keen judgment when it came to card selection, regardless of the cards she'd been dealt, and which cards to hold for the end. Park says what I witnessed was Granny's frontal cortex operating with precision. "That's where working memory resides," Park says. "So it's exercising the part of your brain that involves a lot of reasoning and processing of information and evaluation and decision making." At the end of the day, Granny and I lost to 301 to 313, but the wit she displayed was impressive. Park admits that the setting and the people Granny plays with likely contribute to the seemingly sharp reflexes demonstrated during the game. "Well, certainly, when you see your family and you haven't seen them for a while the pleasure centers and all sorts of rewards centers light up," Park says. While moving in with children isn't an option for all seniors, Park says incorporating routines that are both fun and challenging keep the mind exercised and sharp — at least until more families are fully vaccinated and those affectionate embraces called hugs are in greater supply. |
Week In Review With Daniel Schorr | The oil spill has now been going on for about seven weeks. Last Tuesday, women candidates came out strong in primaries across the nation, and Israel slightly eased its blockade on Gaza. Host Scott Simon reviews the week's news with NPR Senior News Analyst Dan Schorr. |
'It Was Just Complete Madness': Photographer Describes Witnessing Las Vegas Mass Shooting | Dennis Guerrero, a photographer from Montebello, California, had just finished taking pictures of the Route 91 Harvest Festival for a Palm Springs, California, radio station when he heard gunfire. Guerrero joins Here & Now‘s Jeremy Hobson and Robin Young to describe what he saw. |
Turnberry Hosts British Open | The British Open golf tournament is underway in Turnberry, Scotland. Ireland's Padraig Harrington is the defending champion, but all eyes are on Tiger Woods. |
Top Stories: New Trump Cabinet Picks; Deadly Southern Tornadoes | Good morning, here are our early stories: -- Trump Taps Steve Mnuchin To Lead Treasury Department. -- Trump Taps Billionaire Investor Wilbur Ross For Commerce Secretary. -- Strong Storms, Including Tornadoes, Hit Southeast, Killing At Least 3. And here are more early headlines: Thousands Fleeing From Aleppo, As Bombing Continues. (New York Times) Trump To Announce Deal To Keep 1,000 Jobs In Indiana. (CNBC) Three Killed, Thousands Flee Tennessee "Firestorm". (CNN) Bodies Recovered In Colombia Crash That Wiped Out Soccer Team. (NBC) Mass Rally In Cuba Eulogizes Fidel Castro. (BBC) Tenn. Co-Workers To Share $420 Million Powerball Jackpot. (Tennessean) |
High School, the Reunion | Commentator Kevin R. Free hadn't been in high school for years. But, during his reunion, he found himself seeking approval from his former classmates. Free is an actor and career coach living in New York City. |
British Playwright Peter Shaffer, Who Wrote 'Equus,' Dies At 90 | Playwright Peter Shaffer has died. He was best known for <em>Equus</em> and <em>Amadeus</em>, both of which became movies. |
Musician Salman Ahmad | He is the lead guitar player for Junoon, Pakistan's first and most famous rock band. The group is made up of one U.S.-born Christian and two Pakistani Muslims. Junoon performs in Urdu, Punjab and English. Their lyrics blend Sufi mysticism with political activism. The band has been playing in the United States since Sept. 11, 2001, and they have recorded an anti-terrorism anthem, "No More." The band is the subject of a new PBS documentary called <EM>Junoon: The Rock Star and the Mullahs</EM>. |
Awaiting The Apple Key Note | UPDATE 1:38 PM: So far Apple has announced a 15" MacBook Pro, a new 13" one and Snow Leopard, a "refined" operating system with Microsoft Exchange support. ($29 for Leopard users.) NPR's Joshua Brockman points out that "iPhone purchases are not possible as Apple is 'busy updating the store.' The message says they will be back shortly." Original Entry: All eyes are on San Francisco this morning, where Apple is hosting their annual Worldwide Developers Conference. New product announcements are expected and NPR's Laura Sydell will be on hand for the key note speech, which starts at 1 P.M. ET. We'll keep you up-to-date on the big announcements, but plenty of other places are live-blogging the event: Endgadget, Macworld, AppleInsider and Gizmodo to name a few. |
Library Of Congress To Preserve Twitter Posts | Twitter is donating its archives of tweets to the Library of Congress. The tweets go back to the first one posted by co-founder Jack Dorsey on March 21, 2006. Fifty million tweets are sent each day including some @MorningEdition. |
Roundtable: Rice Responds to Powell on Iraq | Topics: the impact of Monday's massive immigration protests, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's reactions to Colin Powell's Iraq war comments. Guests: Mary Frances Berry, professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania; Roland Martin, executive editor of <em>The Chicago Defender</em>; and Jeff Obafemi Carr, host of the radio show <em>Freestyle</em>. |
Americans Host Their Own Royal Wedding Festivities | Across our country, people are hosting royal wedding parties. Of course they had to get up pretty early to make it happen. |
John Prine To Release His First Album Of New Songs In 13 Years | Over nearly 50 years of making albums, John Prine's been able to turn the sense that he's slightly underappreciated into a trademark. He's the secret favorite everybody can agree on, never quite in the middle of the conversation but always poking around in the corners for a modest truth that will linger after the noise dies down. It's hard to believe it's been 13 years since the last album of new John Prine songs. Maybe because his old songs retain the power to say something new when you revisit them; maybe it's just that in the time since Prine released Fair & Square in 2005, he's become a mentor to a rising class of songwriters who poke at Nashville convention the way he has throughout his career: playing with Jason Isbell, sharing a songwriting office with Sturgill Simpson and singing, on his 2016 album of classic country duets, with Miranda Lambert, Kacey Musgraves, Amanda Shires and more. Either way, it's nice to have Prine back among the mess of active songwriters — today he announced that he'll be releasing a new album, The Tree of Forgiveness. The ten-song album was produced by Dave Cobb, who has worked with Isbell, Shires and Simpson, and will be out on Prine's own label, Oh Boy Records, on April 13. The album also features contributions from Isbell and Shires, Dan Auerbach and Brandi Carlile. "Summer's End," the first song we're hearing from The Tree of Forgiveness, is classic Prine, full of wry observations that accrue weight as they pile up. "Summer's end's around the bend, just flying / The swimming suits are on the line, just drying," it opens. Everything here is familiar and minor, worn in like a foot path trampled into grass, stuff you could take for granted until it's gone. Even celestial bodies are just hanging out, waiting for something to happen. Except something has happened, and it's only in the aftermath that the stuff of a life that has built up over time takes on meaning. "Come on home," Prine repeats in the chorus. "You don't have to be alone." His voice and guitar are warm and heavy in the front of the mix, and strings, drums and Carlile's backing vocals sneak into the song before you quite notice they're there. It's easy to read "Summer's End" as a plea from one estranged lover to another, but other relationships fit the puzzle too: siblings, parents, close friends. If you miss your dog, this song will probably choke you up. When Prine played this song at the Tiny Desk in November (stay tuned), I missed some of the details for the sheer joy of just having the man in front of me, singing songs that feel familiar and new at the same time. That joy is real — he'll be on a long tour starting in April with a string of Nashville up-and-comers — but it's also a treat to have new songs to linger on. |
Autobiography of Santa | Guest: <br /><br /> <STRONG> Jeff Guinn </STRONG><br /> *Author <EM> The Autobiography of Santa Claus</EM> <br />*Books editor of <EM> The Fort Worth Star-Telegram </EM> |
Name Your PAC, Courtesy Of Watchdog Group | The Sunlight Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based watchdog group, decided to have a little fun while making a serious point, that the massive flow of money into political campaigns and astroturf lobbying efforts has created a dizzying proliferation of groups whose motherhood-and-apple-pie names often don't come close to telling the whole story of what they're actually about. To drive home this point, Sunlight has created a PAC name generator that allows you to come up with your own clever (or not) PAC name. How about "Anonymous Donors for Different Strokes" or "Agreeable Individuals for Purple Mountains Majesty." You get the picture. From a Sunlight post that introduces the name generator: Read More The Citizens United Supreme Court ruling that led to the explosion of independent expenditures in the midterm elections also spurred a growing list of meaningless titles for organizations. Here at the Sunlight Foundation we will continue to advocate for strong disclosure laws, but we also thought we could have some fun with these vacuous names that simply serve as filing fodder. As we trolled through the spending records from the midterm elections we were shocked at how many people seem to $peak out in favor of common sense, families and the future! Political Action Committees often have bizarre names, but as more and more groups pop up to shield the identity of the donors, the names seem to get even more off topic. Take the generator for a test drive. It's a diversion with a cause. |
Episode 535: Humanitarians, For A Price | When a famine swept through Somalia in 2011, it was hard for aid workers to get food distributed. Most of the country was too dangerous for non-Somalis to do the work. Instead, the United Nations looked at satellite images of camps filling up with tents and dispatched locals to deliver the food. A local industry around distributing aid and sheltering the poor sprung up. On today's show, we visit a country with almost no government, but a lot of entrepreneurs. And we see what happens when locals decide to make money by becoming humanitarians for profit. Music: Dur-Dur Band's "Dooyo." Find us: Twitter/ Facebook/ Spotify. Download the Planet Money iPhone App. UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Hey, PLANET MONEY listeners, if you're looking for other great shows, other great podcasts to check out, we recommend the TED Radio Hour, hosted by Guy Raz. They recently did a show all about the end of privacy, asking the question whether privacy will soon be a relic of the past. You can find this show and all their other episodes on iTunes along with a bunch of other NPR podcasts. ROBERT SMITH, HOST: A few months ago, we got a phone call from Gregory Warner. Gregory is the East Africa correspondent for NPR, and he said, hey, guys, I have just been to Somalia. I traveled on a reporting trip to Mogadishu, the capital. And, Greg, give us a little flavor for what it's like to be in Mogadishu these days. GREGORY WARNER, BYLINE: Well, my journey started out in a bulletproof SUV, compliments of the United Nations. With me in the back seat was Justin Brady. He works for the U.N. That's why I was in his car. But, look, we're both wearing body armor, and there's a second car behind us with more guys with guns. And we're allowed to stop wherever we want, but there's this rule that we can't stay in any one place for more than 15 minutes. SMITH: Which I take it as a safety thing so you don't get attacked. WARNER: Yeah, because the longer you're in any one place, the bad guys might know where you are. They might kidnap you or, you know, blow you up. And Brady assures me that where we are is actually one of the safer parts of Mogadishu. JUSTIN BRADY: In this area we wouldn't expect anything major, any major problems. It's a relatively peaceful area, part of the city. We did hear a few stray gunshots. That could very well just be somebody testing out there gun to make sure it still works. WARNER: Now, Justin Brady is a big guy. He's got a bald head. He used to clear landmines for a living. I mean, he looks tough, and he talks tough. And when I met him last year, his job was - well, it's more dangerous than his job title would suggest because he was then the head of the U.N. agency that coordinates humanitarian aid to Somalia's poor people. SMITH: Now, normally when a country's in crisis - if there's famine, if there's war - aid workers tend to have this routine. They send in teams. They create a system to get food to starving people. I picture guys with beards and clipboards handing out sacks of rice. But you were telling us that in Somalia, it was so dangerous for such a long time that nobody wanted to stand around out in the open for more than 15 minutes with a clipboard handing out rice, that essentially there was no easy way to get this food to the people who needed it. WARNER: That's right. And this became a huge problem in 2011, when this massive famine swept the country. It was the worst famine in 60 years. You had starving villagers walking for days just to get to the nearest city for a handout, 7-year-old children looked the size of toddlers. And yet at the same time, most of the country was just too dangerous for non-Somali aid workers to travel. So you have this situation where U.N. workers are literally looking at satellite images of camps. They're counting the number of tents to try to figure out the number of people down there that they need to send in food to feed, and then they dispatched local Somalis to deliver the food and just hope it got where it's supposed to go. This is, of course, not ideal. But Edem Wosornu at the U.N. said back then, they just had no choice. EDEM WOSORNU: All we could think about was save lives, save lives. Get the assistance in. We knew that some of the assistance would be diverted. But what could you do? In the absence of a perfect system, assist the people, save lives. That was your mantra. WARNER: Now, after the famine ends in 2012 and you have this Islamist militant group al-Shabaab kind of getting pushed out of Mogadishu, things got a little bit safer, at least enough that a guy like Justin Brady from the U.N. could actually be based in the - Mogadishu. He's the first guy in his position to do that. And so he could strap on his body armor and drive around to see, hey, what happened to all that food we sent? SMITH: Now, what Justin Brady found was that some Somalis had turned all of this humanitarian aid into a business opportunity. The bags of rice from the U.N. had created a whole industry around d |
The GOP Takes Heart From Colorado, But Still Faces 2016 Hurdles | Colorado is one of the battleground states where Republicans made big gains this week. Republicans in the state believe they now have momentum going into the 2016 presidential election. But the GOP has suffered some punishing losses there lately, owing in part to the state's changing demographics. That trend may still be a big factor in 2016. The last time Republicans won a U.S. Senate seat here was when Wayne Allard was re-elected in 2002. Back then, Congressman and now Senator-elect Cory Gardner was a young staffer working behind the scenes for Allard. Tuesday night, Gardner got to take the podium. "As Republicans in Colorado, we've gotten used to the saying, 'Wait until the next election,' " Gardner told his supporters. "Well, I've got news for you, that next election, it finally happened." Gardner's victory Tuesday over Democratic Sen. Mark Udall rested in part on his ability to energize the base and still appeal to moderates in the party, and, according to exit polls from Tuesday, even unaffiliated voters. That's key, because those voters tend to outnumber registered Democrats or Republicans in Colorado. "I think that what it tells us more than anything is that candidates really matter," says Ryan Call, chairman of the Colorado GOP. "That's really where, I think, as we look at the lessons learned in this election cycle, we were able to avoid some of those problems or challenges that our party has faced in the past." One of those past problems was the internal sparring between social conservatives and moderates, which started around 2002. Some of the party's candidates were also seen as weak. But this year, the energetic Gardner made inroads among libertarian-leaning independents. Call says the GOP is rebranding itself and trying to expand the tent. "The invitation that we made, to perhaps communities that in the past the party has not always done a good job connecting with, this year we made tremendous efforts to invite people to join us in this campaign," he says. But the post-game pundits are also quick to lay blame on Udall's campaign. Democrats "went all in, all chips on the table, with regard to that one narrative: the war on women," says Eric Sondermann, a longtime political strategist in Colorado. "I think it left a lot of voters sort of saying to themselves, 'What else do you have?' " In the end, though, Gardner only won by 2.5 percentage points. Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper also held on to his seat. "Republicans should not take anything for granted," Sondermann says. "Demographics are still tough; they're particularly tough in a presidential year. The next two Senate races in Colorado will both be in presidential years." Turnout in presidential years is higher, especially among young voters and minorities. Colorado is becoming a more urban and diverse state — trends that are expected to work against this newfound Republican momentum. In this week's midterm, only half of Colorado's Latino electorate voted. Latinos rallying at a Denver church say they stayed home Tuesday due to frustrations over the lack of action on immigration. Carla Castedo, director of the Colorado chapter of Mi Familia Vota, says Udall missed an opportunity to focus his campaign on immigration. In the campaign's closing months, Gardner began softening his tone on immigration. Castedo says Latinos will watch this new Republican Congress closely. "If they want the Latino vote in 2016, that is something they'll definitely have to think about," she says. "We see this as an issue that will not go away." LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST: This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Linda Wertheimer. Colorado is one of the battleground states where Republicans made big gains this week. The GOP there had suffered some punishing losses in the past, owed in part to the state's changing demographics, but as NPR's Kirk Siegler reports, demographics may still be a big factor in 2016. KIRK SIEGLER, BYLINE: The last time Republicans won a U.S. Senate seat here was when Wayne Allard was re-elected in 2002. Back then, Congressman and now Senator-elect Cory Gardner was a young staffer working behind the scenes for Allard. Tuesday night he got to take the podium. (SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH) SENATOR-ELECT CORY GARDNER: As Republicans in Colorado, we've gotten used to the saying wait until the next election. Well, I've got news for you. That next election? It finally happened. SIEGLER: Gardner's success rests on his ability to energize the base and still appeal to moderates in the party and according to exit polls from Tuesday, even unaffiliated voters. That's key because they tend to outnumber registered Democrats or Republicans in Colorado. CHAIRMAN RYAN CALL: I think that what it tells us more than anything is that candidates really matter. SIEGLER: Ryan Call is chairman of the Colorado GOP. CALL: That's really where I think, as we look at the lessons learned in this election cycle, we were able to avoid some of those problems or challenges that our par |
One Scientist's Quest: Improving The Flavor Of Commercial Tomatoes | Grocery store tomatoes are bred for yield and firmness, not for flavor. And even though taste is relative, researchers at the University of Florida, Gainesville, believe they can come up with varieties of delicious tomatoes that will also appeal to commercial growers. “A large part of the problem here with the American diet is we’ve produced a whole lot of foods that just have lost their flavor, and people aren’t that interested in eating them,” molecular biologist and horticulturalist Harry Klee, who’s leading the tomato research, told Here & Now.
Prof. Harry Klee’s “Tasty Tomato Page”
Guest
Harry Klee, professor of horticultural sciences at the University of Florida, Gainesville.
JEREMY HOBSON, HOST: It's HERE AND NOW. And I don't know about you, Robin, but I love tomatoes. (LAUGHTER) HOBSON: In fact, I buy them so often that I actually know the code for vine-ripe tomatoes at the supermarket - 4664. ROBIN YOUNG, HOST: I knew I liked you. (LAUGHTER) YOUNG: And now, even more, I live for tomatoes. HOBSON: Well, our next guest really lives for tomatoes. He thinks that many of the tomatoes we buy are so bad that he wants to create a new tomato that can both ship a long distance and taste great. He is Harry Klee, and he's a professor of horticultural sciences at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Professor Klee, welcome to HERE AND NOW. HARRY KLEE: Thanks for having me. HOBSON: Well, let me start with what I'm looking at in front of me right now, which is two tomatoes, and I want to start with one that came from more than 2,000 miles away. It's kind of orange, pretty firm. And let me take a taste of it really fast here. Hang on. (SOUNDBITE OF CHEWING A TOMATO) HOBSON: All right. Not that good. It's OK. But this is what we normally see. Sorry, excuse me. Let me finish eating my tomato. (LAUGHTER) HOBSON: This is a commercial tomato. Tell me why it tastes the way it does. KLEE: Well, there are a couple of reasons for that. The first reason is that you can think of the modern agriculture as a kind of Faustian bargain. I think no matter how much lip service we give to locavore movements and all that, the reality is most people want their product when they want it and not when it's available seasonally. And so the industry has adopted to produce a tomato that you can get in February in Boston, and they've made some real compromises in terms of quality, in terms of shipability. The other side of the equation I think, though, is that the farmers in Florida and Mexico for the most part are not paid to produce a quality product. They're paid to produce pounds of tomatoes, and there's no necessarily connection between what they taste like and how much the farmer gets paid for. So there's a lack of incentive for them to produce a good product. HOBSON: And do Americans know the difference, for the most part? I mean I guess I could tell the difference between a really great tomato and a really bad one. But most of the time, if I'm getting a tomato at the supermarket, am I getting one that I'll be able to tell is not up to your standards? KLEE: Oh, yeah. I think most of the tomatoes for various reasons be the variety handling practices, shipping, just not are up to the quality. I actually worry a lot that we're producing a whole generation of people who don't know what a great tasting tomato is. HOBSON: Well, let me try this other one that looks really good, I have to say. This is from New Jersey. This is an heirloom tomato. It is a very bright red and let me have a little bite of this guy. (SOUNDBITE OF CHEWING A TOMATO) HOBSON: Umph. A lot more flavor in that one. I can really - that is one that I would like to just sit down and have the whole thing. But while I'm tasting this, why don't you tell me why that's so good? KLEE: Well, it's several things. Basically, tomato flavor is - you have to have sugars, and you have to have acids, and you have to have them in the right balance, that kind of sweet-sour rare balance kind of thing. But you want volatiles. You want the things that you're smelling. And actually, the greatest way to tell you the difference is if you just take that tomato and hold your nose and take another bite of it and chew it and swallow it, you're going to lose all of the volatile chemicals, the things that we smell. And I think that you'll get a completely different reaction. It will probably taste a lot like the supermarket tomato in fact. HOBSON: So you are trying to make it so that the tomatoes that can be shipped a far distance also taste really good. Tell us how you want to do that. KLEE: Well, we're using genetics. We're trying to, number one, understand what is a good tasting tomato. And to do that, we've used a lot of heirlooms and a lot of consumers. We're trying to understand what is the chemistry of a great-tasting tomato. And then we take it at the next step and say, well, what's the genetics controlling that and what got lost a lon |
The Root: Clearing The Way For Parental Involvement | Theodora Chang is an education-policy analyst at the Center for American Progress. Erica Williams is the deputy director of Progress 2050, a project of the Center for American Progress that develops new ideas for an increasingly diverse America. The tale of Kelley Williams-Bolar, an Ohio mother sentenced to jail on Jan. 19 and fined $30,000 for enrolling her daughter in an out-of-district school, has taken on a life of its own. Her story has sparked rallies, petitions and a robust national dialogue about educational equity. But it is more than an illustration of the egregious economic, geographic and racial inequities in our public education system. Williams-Bolar has become the poster parent for a very specific issue in the education-reform movement: parental involvement and choice. Her story stands in stark contrast to the popular but wildly inaccurate narrative of low-income parents of color being uninterested in — and stubborn obstacles to — their children's education. Studies have repeatedly demonstrated that low-income and minority parents strongly value education and higher achievement. The question is, what can engaged parents like Williams-Bolar do right now as the arduous reform process moves along? The current Elementary and Secondary Education Act includes some parental-involvement policies focused on school-parent compacts and parent-teacher conferences. But many parents find these tools inadequate, and they are using more dramatic options. Case in point: Two months ago, African-American and Latino parents at McKinley Middle School in Compton, Calif., pulled what is called the parent-trigger option — a law that forces districts to make radical changes at a school that has failed to meet its benchmarks for four years when at least 51 percent of parents sign a petition for reform. The McKinley School had 61 percent parental support to turn the school into a charter school. Last year California was the first state to enact a law in which parents can choose the level and type of reform that they want: converting to a charter school, replacing the principal and staff, rebudgeting or even closing the school. Six other states have proposed similar policies since then. The federal government should take note. The reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act provides Congress and the administration with a clear opportunity to review existing parental-involvement provisions in the law. Currently, states must set aside a portion of their funds for family-engagement activities, and the Department of Education has proposed increasing that amount. Funding is important, but parents have spoken loud and clear: We need a better national conversation with new ideas for parental involvement. Stories like Williams-Bolar's are more common than we care to admit, while cases like that of McKinley — parents using dramatic, effective policies — should be more common. And both accounts — examples of nonaffluent parents of color taking their children's education into their own hands — demonstrate two key principles that are instructive for education reform. The first is that the process of designing policies around parental involvement should start with the assumption that all parents are invested in their children's learning and safety. Low-income and minority parents are often fierce advocates for their children's education and should be treated as such. And second, parents who feel that there are no other options will go to extreme measures to change their situation. Federal and state governments must design policies that provide options for these parents to be active, productive and powerful agents of change. They deserve better than being stuck between a rock and a hard place. They deserve a voice. |
Writing A Road Map For Ending Sexual Assault In The Air Force | Audie Cornish speaks with Maj. Gen. Margaret Woodward, director of the U.S. Air Force Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office. She's developing training and other programs to help stop sexual assault in the Air Force. |
Chinese Premier Says Foreign Companies To Get 'Equal Treatment' | Chinese Premier Li Keqiang has pledged to treat foreign multinational companies on a par with the country's own state-owned enterprises, but he warned that an economic rebound remains fragile. Li, speaking at a business forum in the northeastern city of Dalian on Wednesday, cautioned that the global economic outlook was a "complex situation" and outlined a series of steps designed to keep the country on a moderate but sustainable growth path. "China will continue to encourage foreign companies to invest and do business in China, and ensure that all companies have equal access ... and equal treatment," he said. Li acknowledged that China is at "a critical stage of restructuring and updating its economy" and that it can sustain growth only by transforming its model, including a move toward converting the currency, the yuan. China's phenomenal growth rates have flattened, partly as a function of a dampening globally, but partly because, as we reported last month, China is at a stage of economic growth that every fast-growing country eventually reaches. As The Wall Street Journal notes, China "is in the midst of putting together a reform plan that's aimed at avoiding what happened to countries like Brazil and Mexico — one-time growth champions whose economies slowed before they made it to the ranks of wealthy nations." Li, who took office this year, has been pushing for getting away from a credit-, investment- and export-driven economy and moving toward one fueled more by domestic consumption. In Dalian, he said slower growth rates were an acceptable price to pay to achieve reform. Li said Beijing was on target for the 7.5 percent growth it aimed for this year, which is substantially slower than the 10 percent annual growth rates it has posted in the past. |
Riordan Joins Call to Elect Arnold | NPR's Karen Grigsby Bates talks to Richard Riordan, former Los Angeles mayor and former candidate for governor. Riordan is officially endorsing Arnold Schwarzenegger. |
Fox News Criticized For Coverage Of Trump's Family Separation Policy | NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik (@davidfolkenflik) joins Here & Now‘s Jeremy Hobson and Femi Oke to discuss media coverage of the Trump administration policy of separating parents and children who cross the border illegally. |
U.S. Women's Soccer Team Seeks A Win Over Mexico | The U.S. women's soccer team barely eked out a bid to last summer's World Cup after they lost a crucial qualifying game to Mexico. And the Americans are facing crunch time — and Mexico — again this week, in the CONCACAF Olympic Women's Qualifying Tournament in Canada. "That's obviously the game that's been marked on our calendars this entire tournament," forward Abby Wambach tells the AP. So far, the U.S. team is on a tear. In its first two matches of the tournament, it defeated the Dominican Republic, 14-0, Friday, and then beat Guatemala, 13-0, Saturday. Those results mean that a win or a draw with Mexico will be enough for the Americans to advance to the next round in a strong position. A victory against Mexico would mean more than revenge against the team that nearly kept them from the World Cup — it would also let the U.S. avoid playing Canada, currently ranked No. 7 in the world, until a potential matchup in the final on Sunday. And because the top two teams from this tourney advance to the Olympics, neither team would be under extreme pressure that day. Here's a very reductive way of looking at it: The Americans are currently the world's No. 1 team. They need to beat Mexico (No. 21 in the world) tonight, so they can face Costa Rica (No. 41) on Friday — in the hopes that they'll then meet Canada in the final. Of course, all of that assumes that Mexico doesn't pull an upset tonight, or potentially against host Canada, which is unbeaten in this year's tournament. On today's Morning Edition, sports writer Christine Brennan of USA Today tells NPR's David Greene that the U.S. women's team has done very well in previous Olympics. "Women's soccer has been in the last four summer Olympic Games," Brennan says. "The U.S. has won three of those four gold medals. The one time that they did not win in 2000, they won the silver. So they're very happy that it's an Olympic year." But first they have to face Mexico — and win their next game, as well. Prior to their Nov. 5, 2010 matchup, Mexico had never beaten the American women. Tonight's game begins at 10:30 p.m., ET. It is being televised on Universal Sports. CONCACAF is also streaming the match on its website, as is Universal. The Olympic qualifying tournament games are being played indoors, on the turf of Vancouver's BC Place Stadium. When playing indoors, the U.S. women are 8-0, with two ties. |
Study: Sugar Rules The World And Ruins Teeth | About 95% of 12-year-olds in the Philippines have tooth decay or cavities. And cavities affect 7 in 10 children in India, one-third of Tanzania teens and nearly 1 in every 3 Brazilians. These and other startling oral health statistics are the focus of a two-part series published this week in The Lancet. In it, more than a dozen dentists and public health experts call for radical action to end neglected and widespread oral disease. The culprit? "Sugar is the causative agent for dental decay," says Robert Weyant, one of the study authors and a dental public health expert at the University of Pittsburgh. "Basically, without sugar, you won't develop decay." The Lancet study authors also point at what they call a failed dental system, where many dentists prioritize treatment over prevention efforts — like toothbrushing with fluoride and restricting sugar intake. Coupled with an overwhelming number of sweetened food and beverage options, cavities are on the rise, especially in low- and middle-income countries. That's because residents in those places are undergoing a global phenomenon known as a "nutrition transition," says Habib Benzian, a study co-author and associate director of global health and policy at New York University's College of Dentistry. "Low-income countries usually have traditional diets, more plant- and meat-based foods, less sugar and processed foods," Benzian says. "But as a country's socioeconomic conditions evolve ... there's a transition in terms of what people eat." Benzian explains, "It's a part of convenience. If you work all day and come home, you want quick food. Fast foods that are fried, high in fat, sweet — and very cheap." The sugar industry has been quick to jump on the trend. Weyant says, "I do see effort [by the sugar industry] to break into new areas and foster an interest in high sugar foods in particularly vulnerable populations." According to Marion Nestle, author of the book Soda Politics: Taking on Big Soda (and Winning), by 2020, Coca-Cola will spend $12 billion in marketing in Africa alone. PepsiCo will spend $5.5 billion in India by 2020 to expand operations and develop products "geared toward Indian tastes." Big Sugar's marketing campaigns aren't the only problem, the study says. According to the researchers, the industry currently influences oral research organizations worldwide. For example, the European Organisation for Caries Research (ORCA) is supported by corporate members such as Mars Wrigley Confectionery, a manufacturer of chocolate, mints, chewing gum and other sugary treats. Unilever, whose products include ice cream and sweetened beverages, is a corporate member of the International Association for Dental Research (IADR). These conflicts of interest can potentially sway the direction and results of diet and nutrition research, says sugar politics expert Cristin Kearns, who wrote a commentary about the new Lancet series and is based at the University of California, San Francisco. Kearns has seen this happen before. In a 2015 PLOS Medicine study, Kearns revealed how the sugar industry influenced the U.S. National Institute of Dental Research in the 1960s, diverting attention from the real problem at hand — that sugar is unhealthy. "I uncovered documents showing how the industry cultivated partnerships with leaders and influenced the research priorities of the NIDR," Kearns says. "The NIDR's research priorities ended up focusing on nondietary programs, like trying to develop a vaccine to end tooth decay ... or any method but addressing sugar consumption levels." In response to Kearns' 2015 study, the Sugar Association said to Buzzfeed News, "We acknowledge that Dr. Kearns has devoted significant time to the task of reviewing thousands of documents from over 50 years ago; however, we question her motives and certainly the accuracy of her conclusions. The Sugar Association ... believe[s] that sugar is best enjoyed in moderation, a fact that is supported by decades of scientific research." Up against Big Sugar, what can dentists around the world do? "The real recommendation is to take a hard look at relationships in these [oral health research] organizations and how the sugar industry might be influencing these relationships," Kearns says. "These organizations need to be sure that policies are in place to stop undue influence." Weyant believes that it's time for state and national governments to step in. He points to the tobacco industry and how there is now a global tobacco control agenda through the World Health Organization. The treaty was established in 2003 in response to a global surge in tobacco usage. The WHO treaty demanded reduction strategies, like tobacco tax increases, to dissuade people from using the addictive substance. "However, there is no united global movement against sugar," Weyant says. "I think that model needs to be adapted for sugar." Benzian points to the need for more focused oral hygiene efforts. For example, to combat cavity rates |
The Trump Foreign Policy Doctrine — In 3 Points | When the transition from President Obama to President Trump happened officially at noon ET, a lot changed, including the White House website. Waiting on the new website were six priority areas laid out, including on foreign policy. The entire foreign policy section is literally just 220 words, so it's hard to draw more than a thumbnail sketch about Trump's foreign policy. But it gives the first hint of something of a Trump doctrine. Echoing his inaugural address, "America First" is the organizing theme. To that protectionist point, there's a whole section on trade. And Trump specifically laid out three points on his approach to the world and his priorities: 1. Defeating ISIS2. "Rebuild" the military3. "Embrace diplomacy" ... "We are always happy when old enemies become friends. ..." 1. Defeating ISIS On defeating ISIS, however, it still remains unclear what Trump will do exactly. ISIS was the top concern for Republican primary voters, and his tough rhetoric helped him in the campaign. He declared he would "bomb the s*** out of them" but would not lay out a plan. He said he wanted to be "unpredictable." He never committed to a ramping up of ground troops. But he mentioned the possibility of as many as 30,000 troops to fight ISIS in Iraq and Syria. That's nowhere close to the number of troops the U.S. had at the height of the Iraq war, but — if Trump followed through — it would represent a significant ramping up of U.S. involvement. Currently, there are only about 600 American military personnel in Syria, about 8,400 in Afghanistan and almost 6,000 in Iraq. Russia is also a critical player in Syria. Trump, of course, has said he would be reaching out to Moscow to help fight ISIS and hopes the Russians are helpful. 2. Rebuild the military Trump has repeatedly harped on this throughout the campaign, but the context here is important. The U.S. spends $596 billion a year on its military. That's about three times more on its military than all other NATO countries — combined. While spending, adjusted for inflation, has declined some during the Obama administration, the U.S. remains the largest and most capable military in the world. NPR's Phil Ewing fact-checked this notion here in April of last year. 3. "Embrace diplomacy" — "we are always happy when old enemies become friends" Trump said his foreign policy would be "based on American interests." The new president has been very anti-trade. He has actually been against U.S. trade policies for decades; the rhetoric has remained the same since the 1980s. But back then the bogeyman was different — today, he talks of China; back then, it was Japan that he said was dumping its cars and VCRs. Trump also noted that he would "embrace diplomacy," that the U.S. would "not go abroad in search of enemies," but "that we are always happy when old enemies become friends, and when old friends become allies." The turn of phrase — "we are always happy when old enemies become friends" — could be interpreted somewhat provocatively. It could raise eyebrows politically, given Trump's praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin throughout the campaign and his grudging acceptance that Russian meddling was responsible for the hack and leaks of Democratic emails. "I think it was Russia," Trump said in his first press conference since being elected before adding later: "All right, but you know what, it could have been others also." On "old friends" becoming "allies," ironically, it is precisely America's closest allies — Japan, South Korea and most of NATO — who are most queasy about Trump's provocative talk that has questioned the utility of these decades-long relationships. NPR International Editor Will Dobson and Middle East Editor Larry Kaplow contributed to this post. |
Week In Politics: Brexit, House Democrats' Sit-In Over Gun Control | NPR's Audie Cornish talks with our regular political commentators E.J. Dionne of the <em>Washington Post</em> and Brooking Institution and David Brooks of <em>The New York Times</em>. They discuss the United Kingdom's vote to leave the European Union, Donald Trump's visit to Scotland and House Democrats' sit-in over gun control. |
Twitter Offers New Dimension To Live TV | A number of celebrities have taken to live-tweeting while their pre-taped shows air — including Survivor host Jeff Probst, Mark Cuban on ABC's "Shark Tank," and Anthony Bourdain on Travel Channel's "No Reservations." The audience that has already sprung up on Twitter to turn watching their favorite show into a communal event can now interact directly with one of the people they're tweeting about. It restores the value of watching TV programming live as it airs at a time when secondary options from Hulu to iTunes to DVRs are draining the value of commercials. |
Episode 700: Peanuts And Cracker Jack | Note: This episode originally ran in 2016. There's not a lot of running in baseball. Mostly the players just stand around. But up in the stands, there is a very different game being played--one that demands hours of nonstop effort. The players in this game are vendors, the ballpark workers who run up and down stairs, carrying cases of water and bins of hot dogs above their heads. They are competing to sell as many snacks as possible, in as little time as possible. In Boston's Fenway Park, the top seller is Jose Magrass. He is a legend. He's been known to sell 500 hot dogs in a single night--$2,750 worth. But slinging that many dogs in one night takes skill, shrewdness, and strategy. On today's show: The secret world of ballpark vendors. It's a game of weather forecasting, ruthless efficiency, sore thighs, and swollen vocal chords. Find us: Twitter/ Facebook / Instagram Subscribe to our show on Apple Podcasts, PocketCasts and NPR One. |
ABC Broadcasts Final 'Monday Night Football' | ABC will broadcast its final episode of <EM>Monday Night Football</EM> Monday evening, 36 years after the long-running, highly rated show revolutionized television sports coverage. ABC's cable sibling ESPN will carry the weekly NFL games next season. |
Buffalo Area Warily Eyes The Renegotiation Of NAFTA | Shortly after World War II, a young Buffalo company — Speed Motor Express — began transporting commercial freight around western New York. As it weathered the ups and downs of the local economy over the decades, the company slowly expanded its fleet of trucks. Then in 1994, the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, expanded trade among the United States, Canada and Mexico. Buffalo faces Canada along the Niagara River. Today, the freight company is called Speed Global Services, and it transports a wide array of goods, from bras to lighting fixtures, many of which were made in China. Speed Global Services also stores the items in more than a million square feet of warehouse space. Most of its customers are Canadian companies looking for a distribution center in the U.S. "We send now probably around eight trucks a day to Canada, and that's just going into the Greater Toronto area," company President Carl Savarino says. "It's the largest population in Canada, and it's 90 miles away. So there's a lot of goods moving back and forth." Global trade has cost plenty of jobs in Buffalo over the years, helping to shrink the region's once-mighty manufacturing base. Today, many in the city view trade pacts with a jaundiced eye. "We've lost hundreds of thousands of jobs in the industrial workforce. This was the third-largest manufacturing city in North America," says Richard Lipsitz Jr., president of the Western New York Area Labor Federation, which represents 100,000 workers. Today, only about 11 percent of Buffalo's workforce is involved in manufacturing, compared with about 34 percent before 1980, he noted. Perhaps as a result of the changes, voters in the greater region turned out heavily for Donald Trump and his anti-trade message in the 2016 election, although the city of Buffalo voted for Hillary Clinton. Lipsitz says NAFTA has helped accelerate the decline of U.S. manufacturing by sending jobs to Mexico, where pay is lower and worker protections are much less rigorous. But that's only one aspect of changes in the local economy. Here's another: because Buffalo is so close to its neighbor, with Ontario just a quick trip over the Peace Bridge, NAFTA has created opportunities for many of the region's companies. And many of them want to be part of a web of international commerce. "You can be a buyer or a seller right here in western New York. You can jump in your car, visit a facility or a supplier or buyer in Hamilton (Ontario), work out a deal and be back here for dinner. That's the beauty of this relationship," says John Manzella, president and CEO of World Trade Center Buffalo Niagara. Buffalo's Niagara Transformer Corp. makes devices that help regulate the flow of electricity from its source to its users. Because transformers cost a lot and take months to build, Canadian customers have long been reluctant to buy them if too much uncertainty were attached to the purchase, says the company's president, John Darby. "Many customers would be worried, for example, that maybe the duties would change. Maybe the taxes would change at the border. So the economic calculation that they did perhaps might not be in effect when that transformer arrives at the border," he says. NAFTA has changed that, stripping away the duties and other costs associated with Canadian trade. Today, Niagara Transformer has customers in more than 80 countries, including a large number just over the Canadian border. The transactions flow in the other direction, too: Darby buys specialty steel from an Ontario mill that would be tough to get elsewhere. Darby notes that companies in low-wage countries such as China can easily undercut him on price, but they lack his proximity to Canada, which means they can't provide the same level of service. The prospect that NAFTA could be renegotiated or even scrapped altogether, as President Trump has sometimes called for, would upend the business relationships Darby's company has built up. "There's a high level of concern about instability. There's also a high level of concern about, well, what does renegotiation mean? What does that mean in terms of cost? What does that mean in terms of duties we might be faced with that we don't know about?" Darby asks. That worries Niagara Transformer employees, such as 56-year-old Craig Duncan. Duncan, who operates a computerized machine that customizes steel parts, has worked at one manufacturing plant after another over the years, only to see them shut down or leave the area. He's been at his current job for 15 years, his longest stretch ever. "I've been put out of work before by other factors. Hopefully, we don't lose business because of a change in trade agreements. Something like that would affect me directly," he says. Lipsitz, of the labor federation, says many of the jobs lost since NAFTA took effect have gone to Mexico, not Canada, where wages and worker rights are comparable to those in the U.S. Still, he sees the renegotiation of NAFTA as a chance to revers |
Don't Panic: Stories Of Coping Amidst Chaos | This week we bring you two very different perspectives on how to deal with life's most tumultuous moments. We begin in 2015, in the West African country of Liberia. Police have just discovered a young man, dead and covered in stab wounds. Tests show he was infected with a terrifying disease that causes raging fever, severe internal bleeding, and kills up to 90 percent of the people it touches: Ebola. Officials realize that the suspects in the case, young men in a local street gang, may have become infected themselves and spread the highly contagious virus across the neighborhood. But the gang members are reluctant to quarantine themselves. And some of them, including a man nicknamed "Time Bomb," are nowhere to be found. What follows is a truly unconventional effort by epidemiologists to contain the chaos and prevent a lethal epidemic from engulfing the country. Then, we get a little messy. We talk with author Tim Harford about the surprising benefits of untidiness and disorder in our everyday lives. This episode was produced by Chris Benderev, Jenny Schmidt, and Maggie Penman. It was edited by Tara Boyle. Our team includes Rhaina Cohen, Parth Shah, Thomas Lu and Laura Kwerel. You can also follow us on Twitter @hiddenbrain, and listen for Hidden Brain stories on your local public radio station. |
President Trump Waffles On Hong Kong Democracy Bill Amid China Trade Talks | President Trump said Friday he supports pro-democracy demonstrators in Hong Kong. But he stopped short of saying he would sign legislation requiring sanctions against China for any crackdown on Hong Kong protesters. "We have to stand with Hong Kong, but I'm also standing with President Xi," Trump said in an interview on the Fox News program Fox and Friends. "He's a friend of mine." The U.S. House and Senate this week passed the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act with overwhelming, veto-proof support. The bill calls for stripping Hong Kong of its preferential trade status if China fails to maintain the freedoms guaranteed to the former British colony when Beijing took over more than two decades ago. Now it heads to Trump's desk as the U.S. and China attempt to broker a mini trade deal that would boost China's purchases of American farm goods. The talks have stumbled over how much tariff relief the Trump administration is willing to grant China. If no deal is reached by mid-December, the administration is preparing to impose new tariffs on another $160 billion worth of Chinese imports, including popular consumer items such as cellphones and laptops. "The bottom line is we have a very good chance to make a deal," Trump said Friday, calling the Hong Kong protests a "complicating factor." China could withdraw from the talks if Trump signs the Hong Kong bill. "I stand with Hong Kong. I stand with freedom," Trump said. "But we are also in the process of making the largest trade deal in history. And if we could do that, that would be great." In fact, the mini deal under negotiation would provide limited trade gains while postponing action on the major structural issues that prompted Trump to launch the trade war with China more than a year ago. Trump said in the interview that his relationship with China's president has prevented Xi Jinping from taking a harder line against the Hong Kong protests. "He's got a million soldiers standing outside of Hong Kong that aren't going in only because I asked him, 'Please don't do that. You'll be making a big mistake.' " Trump said. "It's going to have a tremendous negative impact on the trade deal, and he wants to make a trade deal." |
Boeing To Build New Spacecraft In Old Shuttle Hangar | There's a new private spacecraft in development to fly astronauts to the International Space Station and its maker, Boeing, has decided to build it in Florida. Boeing is leasing an old shuttle hangar from the Kennedy Space Center to construct the Crew Space Transportation-100 vehicle, or the CST. The facility has to be refurbished and staff hired, and Boeing says if it continues to win government contracts for the vehicle, the CST-100 will make its first test flights by the end of 2015. The idea is to supply private transportation into orbit, taking astronauts to the International Space Station. Boeing's craft is designed to ferry seven people aloft, or fewer people who trundle along more cargo. Currently, the only way American astronauts can reach the Station is by paying Russia for an expensive lift aboard a Soyuz rocket. As ABC reports it's "at a cost of $60 million a pop." Boeing says besides the Station, its CST-100 craft could reach other destinations in Low Earth Orbit, including the proposed Bigelow Space Complex. Never heard of it? Financier Robert Bigelow says he's ready to start building immediately. He's based in Nevada, and has already two prototype modules in orbit that he launched aboard Russian rockets in the past few years. He'd like to get his commercial venture up into space but wants less expensive transportation to and from his station. Today's news is attractive to Floridians who live on the 'Space Coast': Boeing's CST vehicle project will create 550 new jobs, good news to a region that is seeing thousands of jobs lost as the shuttle program winds down. The last shuttle to fly into space - the Atlantis - returned on July 21 this year. A day later, according to ABC, 1,500 shuttle program workers were given layoff notices, with thousands more to follow. It's not surprising today to see Central Florida News reporting the employment prospects news in bold type. Boeing says it decided to build the CST so it could attract some of the skilled (and jobless) shuttle workers and be close to its customer, NASA. |
Week In Politics Reviewed | President Obama this week gave his first State of the Union speech, and on Friday he addressed House Republicans in Baltimore. E.J. Dionne of <em>The Washington Post</em> and David Brooks of <em>The New York Times</em> offer their insight on the week in politics. |
Feelings Of 'Accept Pain, Don't Complain' In Japan | No country is more familiar with nuclear peril than Japan. The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, at the end of World War II, killed or irradiated hundreds of thousands of people, an event that dwarfs any nuclear incident since then. One might think, then, that people in Japan would be traumatized by the calamity at the nuclear power complex in Fukushima. But the reality is more nuanced than that. From one generation to the next, even the most horrible events fade from cultural memory. Isao Hashimoto, an artist in the city of Hakone, wants people to remember 1945. "I have heard from my father [and] grandfather about the war — seriousness of war — and atomic bombs, so I think we should keep talking about this problem, especially toward the younger generation," Hashimoto says. So Hashimoto created a very simple video — just a map of the world. Starting in 1945 with the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs, it registers in chronological order every nuclear test explosion. One after another, each bomb shows up as a little red puff on the screen. 'Accept The Pain, Don't Complain' Fear of radiation burrowed into Japanese culture. Godzilla, the movie monster that destroyed Tokyo, was the spawn of radioactive fallout, as were other cinema monsters to follow. On the positive side, animators created the helpful cartoon robot, Atom Boy, who uses science for peace. That was fantasy, but now in Japan the radioactive emissions are real again — they've even reached Tokyo. At a restaurant in Tokyo, Sukeyasu Yamamoto orders lunch. No one is ordering spinach these days — the government says crops to the north are contaminated. Yamamoto is a nuclear physicist, trained at Yale, now teaching in Tokyo. He knows both cultures and says the reaction to the nuclear accident can be described in a word: "Gaman — it is to endure, accept the pain, don't complain," he says. Yamamoto says another phrase: shikata ganai. It means "it can't be helped." In a sense, that's the situation here: Japan needs electricity, and there's little coal and no oil domestically. The government cast the country's lot with nuclear power, building 55 reactors that generate 35 percent of the country's electricity. Little Connection Between Bombings And Fukushima Disaster Yamamoto says many people here don't really associate the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the crisis at the Fukushima nuclear reactor. "The tsunami was more the atomic bomb effect of flattening the whole place," he says. "And the radiation is another disaster, which may be more hazardous in some ways, and long-lasting. But most people are not scientists, so they don't make that connection very easily." In fact, Yamamoto says many of his students don't seem to know much about World War II and the bombings. He says people of his generation do remember. Two years ago, Yamamoto rediscovered the diaries he kept as a teenager during the war. "These are the diaries starting from April 27, 1945," he says. "May 1: Today we heard about my father's death in action." Sitting in an armchair at his tidy home in Tokyo, Yamamoto looks for an entry he made about the atomic bombs that America dropped on Aug. 6 and Aug. 9. "This is Aug. 13," he reads. " 'Today a small aircraft came over, so that was more scary, because one plane can do it.' Because if I remember, there were only two planes over Hiroshima." Focusing On Immediate Concerns For sure, people near the damaged nuclear complex in Fukushima are worried about their health and their food supply. But farther away, many Japanese people are more devastated by the tsunami. Some find the fact that Americans are worried about a cloud of radiation rather odd. "My youngest daughter lives in San Francisco," says Yoshiko Suzuki, a bereavement counselor in Tokyo. "She is scared to death and worries about me, like, 'Mommy, why don't you get out of Japan and come here?' " There are others who don't share Suzuki's complacency about the goings on in Fukushima, like Seiji Arihara, a filmmaker whose animated movie, Nagasaki 1945, describes the bombing and a hospital in that city treating survivors. "In my movie I wanted to give out a message that people, humans can't live with radiation — it's just not possible," Arihara says. So far, there hasn't been a groundswell of anti-nuclear demonstrations. Japan has more immediate concerns. That becomes clear while sitting in a Tokyo office interviewing Arihara, when translator Koki Ishibashi's cell phone rings an alert. "I think this is an earthquake — an earthquake in Fukushima," Ishibashi says. The quake's epicenter is, again, right near the nuclear power complex. STEVE INSKEEP, host: All right, no country is more familiar with nuclear peril than Japan. The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 at the end of World War II killed or irradiated hundreds of thousands of Japanese. So you might think that people in that country would be traumatized by the crippled nuclear power complex. But as NPR |
Breast Cancer Update | Guests: Barbara Weber <UL> <LEM>Professor of Medicine and Genetics</LEM> <LEM>Director, Breast Cancer Program</LEM> <LEM>Associate Director, Division of Cancer Control and Population Science</LEM> <LEM>University of Pennsylvania Cancer Center</LEM> <LEM>University of Pennsylvania</LEM> <LEM>Philadelphia, Pennsylvania</LEM> </UL> Larry Wickerham <UL> <LEM>Associate Chairman, National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project</LEM> <LEM>Protocol Officer, Breast Cancer Prevention Trials</LEM> <LEM>Associate Professor, Human Oncology</LEM> <LEM>Medical College of Pennsylvania-Hahnemann University</LEM> <LEM>Philadelphia, Pennsylvania</LEM> </UL> Clifford Hudis <UL> <LEM>Chief, Breast Cancer Medicine Service</LEM> <LEM>Memorial Sloane Kettering Cancer Center</LEM> <LEM>New York, New York</LEM> <LEM></LEM> </UL> Who should be tested for the breast cancer gene? Are the new digital mammography machines better at detecting cancer? How far off is a breast cancer vaccine? Join us in this hour for a look at the latest news in breast cancer treatment and prevention. |
Baltimore Police Look To Media To Find Missing Teen | Police in Baltimore are pleading for help to find a 17-year-old who vanished from her family's apartment Dec. 28. Foul play is suspected but there are no leads, and detectives and family members hope media coverage of Phylicia Simone Barnes' case will help them find her. Barnes' cousin, Harry Watson, recently stood on a corner in the chilly sun, passing out fliers to the people hurrying in and out of the tall office buildings in downtown Baltimore. A man stopped to ask: "You haven't found her yet?" "Not, not yet," Watson replied. Despite freezing winds, many people stopped to chat with Watson and to shake their heads over the red, black and white fliers he held. On the flier, there's a picture of a fresh-faced, mahogany-skinned Phylicia Simone Barnes smiling in the middle of the page. "We don't pass up anybody; we try to get a flier into just about everybody's hands we possibly can," he said. Those same fliers are posted on the glass doors of nearly every building in the northwest Baltimore apartment complex where Barnes was staying before she went missing. She had traveled to Baltimore from North Carolina, and was staying with her 28-year-old half-sister. Police Suspect Foul Play "We've suspected foul play from almost the beginning," says Anthony Guglielmi, spokesman for the Baltimore Police Department. He says this case has been incredibly frustrating. Officers have searched much of the city, including homeless shelters, hospitals and state parks. They've checked security camera footage both from the apartment complex and from the large shopping mall behind it. And they've put her picture up on billboards along the Interstate 95 corridor. "What we've tried to do since the very beginning of this case was make sure that Phylicia's picture and our toll-free hotline was put on every media outlet from Baltimore to Las Vegas," Guglielmi says. With help from the FBI, Baltimore police have even used technology that finds heat signatures given off by human bodies. But they found nothing. "We don't have any physical evidence to help us out otherwise. There's no forensics, there's no blood spatter, there's nothing to indicate that she was harmed in the apartment," Guglielmi says. "We've used canine, we've used every resource at our disposal. Phylicia's trail goes cold at the front door." About Phylicia Police say the 5-foot-8, 120-pound Barnes lived with her mother in the small city of Monroe, N.C. Within the past two years, she had become reacquainted with her biological father and her half-siblings in Baltimore. She was last seen by the half-sister's ex-boyfriend at 1:30 p.m. Her cell phone goes to voice mail. She hasn't used her debit card or gotten onto any social networks. "That was not in her character," says her father, Russell Barnes. He says the high school honor student didn't know Baltimore very well. Police and Phylicia's parents say they hope she has been abducted — as awful as that could be — because the alternative would be worse. "We're just keeping hope going that Phylicia is missing. Someone has her and they're not letting her go," Russell Barnes says. Phylicia's mom, Janice Sallis, says she is frustrated and furious that her daughter is missing. "She has a loving personality. She doesn't like confrontation. She's just a peaceful person," Sallis says. Police confirm the parents' statements that Phylicia wasn't a troubled child who would run away or hang with the wrong crowd. Her mother says she was a typical teenager who enjoyed acting and having fun with her friends. Keeping Missing Persons In The Media This case hasn't gotten the same kind of wall-to-wall play in national media as the cases of other young, pretty, missing women, such as Natalee Holloway, the blond Alabama teen who disappeared in 2005 on a trip with schoolmates in Aruba. Baltimore Police Department spokesman Guglielmi says he remembers the Holloway case. "It's almost like we had a minute-by-minute update," Guglielmi says. "CNN had a little ticker on the bottom of their screen. Everybody knew Natalee Holloway. They knew her picture. Why can't we know Phylicia Barnes?" But Phylicia's mother isn't concerned about complaints that her daughter's race has affected the media coverage. She just wants the media and the police to work together so her daughter can be found. And Sallis has a message for anyone who may be holding her daughter against her will: "For whoever is holding her, I just feel sorry for them from God, because they have no clue of what punishment they are going to get." Police say they are continuing to question people of interest in the case. Phylicia Simone Barnes' 17th birthday was last month. : NPR's Allison Keyes reports. ALLISON KEYES: Phylicia Barnes' cousin stands on a corner in the chilly sun, passing out flyers to the people hurrying in and out of the tall office buildings in downtown Baltimore. M: Hi you all. We're still looking for her, okay? U: You ain't found her yet? M: Not yet, but... KEYES: De |
Gamers Welcome 'Halo 4' | Gamers like to say that Microsoft's "Halo" is this generation's <em>Star Wars</em>. "Halo" has defined the XBox brand. Now after five years, the game's hero, the Master Chief, returns. |
What Will Stephen Colbert's New Show Be Like? | Stephen Colbert met with TV critics in Los Angeles this week, about one month before he’s due to succeed David Letterman as host of the CBS “Late Show.” And the comic, known for playing a parody of a right wing talk show host on Comedy Central's “Colbert Report,” had an interesting tidbit to share about what he'll be like on the Late Show's on Sept. 8. NPR TV critic Eric Deggans joins Here & Now’s Robin Young to discuss Colbert’s new gig. Guest Eric Deggans, NPR TV critics. He tweets @Deggans. |
Bonds Looks for 700th Homer | In Milwaukee this afternoon Barry Bonds and the San Francisco Giants tries try to reach a baseball milestone. Bonds, of the San Francisco Giants, stands at 699 homeruns in his career. Only Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron ever hit more.. Guest: Alan Schwarz, author of The Numbers Game: Baseball's Lifelong Fascination with Statistics |
A Daunting 'Mythbusters' Challenge: Choosing A Suitable End For Broken Jamie | This is Broken Jamie. Now, I won't lie to you: I receive a lot of, for lack of a better word, "doohickeys" in the mail that can be reviewed or discussed or can otherwise make appearances on the blog. Recently, I received a set of talking Mythbusters bobbleheads. The only problem was that Broken Jamie's hand is broken off. (This appeared to be a shipping issue, because the outside of the box was mushed, so I think it was the post office's fault.) Now, in a sense, this is hysterically funny, because his little hand has a detonator in it -- well, a switch, anyway. So the clear implication was that Broken Jamie blew his hand off in an explosives mishap. This? This is an awesome idea. Of course, that would imply that Broken Jamie failed to exercise proper explosives safety precautions, and that doesn't seem like something Broken Jamie would do. Broken Jamie tends to be the careful one. Raising the possibility that it was Non-Broken Adam's fault. Non-Broken Adam insists he is innocent. At first, I decided to keep Broken Jamie and Non-Broken Adam together, and simply leave the implication open that Broken Jamie had a horrible accident. Never let it be said I don't like a diorama with a dark sense of humor. But after I wrote about this on Twitter, it made it back to the manufacturer of Broken Jamie, who vowed to replace him with a new Non-Broken Jamie, so that he and Non-Broken Adam can live out a happy life of adventure. The only problem is that this leaves me with an Adam and two Jamies. I cannot have an Adam and two Jamies, any more than I could have Four Stooges or a Mulder and two Scullys or live in fear of the Five Horsemen Of The Apocalypse. But then someone pointed out to me on Twitter that this is a perfect opportunity for me to destroy Broken Jamie in some spectacular manner, which I might even be able to document for you. I am not sure, however, whether this is the right end for Broken Jamie. Wouldn't I feel guilty? How could I, for instance, smash Broken Jamie with a hammer? Maybe if it were Broken Ryan Seacrest. (Just kidding, Ryan Seacrest!) But Broken Jamie? Thus, I am throwing the question open to you. What to do with Broken Jamie? |
Marissa Mulder On Piano Jazz | Vocalist Marissa Mulder has made a distinct mark on the New York cabaret scene with a voice that recalls that of the legendary Blossom Dearie. Mulder earned a spot on the Times Square Chronicles' Top 10 list in 2011, and her current show, Illusions, has been similarly well-received. On this episode of Piano Jazz, Mulder and host Jon Weber talk about bringing new life to old standards and perform a set of the songs she holds dear. |
Traders Defend High-Speed Systems Against Charges Of Rigging | The FBI and the Securities and Exchange Commission revealed this week that they're both investigating the world of high-frequency stock trading. They did so at a time when a new book on the subject, Flash Boys by Michael Lewis, is causing an uproar on Wall Street. To read Lewis' book is to be reminded of how drastically the stock market has changed in a decade — and how opaque it remains. Lewis says this opacity serves to cover up some disturbing developments. "The stock market is rigged. It's rigged for the benefit of a handful of insiders," Lewis said on NPR's Fresh Air. "It's rigged to sort of maximize the take of Wall Street, of banks, the exchanges, and the high-frequency traders at the expense of ordinary investors." Flash Boys is the story of Brad Katsuyama, a trader at the Royal Bank of Canada, who discovers something strange. Every time he enters a stock trade on his computer the price instantly changes and the earlier price is no longer available. He assembles a team of technicians who gradually figure out that high-frequency trading firms are exploiting the system. Using ultra-fast computer networks, these firms have figured out a way to probe the stock exchanges for information about who's trading what. "It's a way of dangling a carrot and drawing somebody to it," says Andy Brooks, vice president at T. Rowe Price. "Then profiting from it without ever having traded, without ever having stood up and actually bought that 100 shares." By probing the market for information about who's buying or selling, these firms can get a small jump on trades and make a little money on each one. Lewis spoke on CNBC Tuesday. "They're exploiting you in a very subtle and insidious way. It's pennies per transaction, but it adds up to billions a year," Lewis said. "It's totally unnecessary." All this is happening very quickly because networks have gotten light-speed fast and firms can make money by trading just a few milliseconds before anyone else. But Katsuyama's team figured out a way to neutralize their advantage and they just opened an exchange that they say will make the markets fairer. High-frequency traders have reacted to the book with outrage. On CNBC, Bill O'Brien, the head of one electronic exchange known as BATS, took issue with the notion that the market is rigged and he demanded to know whether Katsuyama shared that view. Katsuyama said he does. High-frequency traders say they're being attacked unfairly. Peter Nabicht of the Modern Markets Initiative says there may be predators in the markets who use high-speed trading, but there are also legitimate uses for it and Flash Boys doesn't distinguish between the two. "Whether it's good actors or bad actors, it's all lumped together and we need to stay focused on knowing that there's nuance," Nabicht says. "That high-frequency trading as a tool is used by many, many market participants, the vast majority of which are ethical and following the rules and doing the right thing." He says high-frequency trading has benefited the markets because it's added liquidity, which has meant better prices for investors. Andrew Brooks of T. Rowe Price doesn't dispute that but he says the huge growth of high-frequency trading has come at a price. Over the past few years there have been several notorious examples of suddent lurches in the market, when stocks plummeted for mysterious reasons. High-speed trading has often been implicated. "Our sense is that this relentless pursuit for speed, to get there faster, has a destabilizing effect on the marketplace and the market's infrastructure," Brooks says. "We do worry about that." One sign that a lot of investors share those concerns is how many are now routing some of their stock trades through Katsuyama's new exchange. They include T. Rowe Price but they also include famously smart investors like David Einhorn and William Ackman and even Goldman Sachs. |
The Karl Marx MasterCard Is Here. It Needs A Tagline. | The German bank Sparkasse Chemnitz recently launched a Karl Marx credit card. The bank let people vote online for 10 different images, and Marx was the "very clear winner," beating out a palace, a castle and a racetrack, among others. Reuters has more on the story. The card, obviously, needs a tagline. Post your suggestions in the comments, or tweet them with the tagline #marxcard. We'll post our favorites here. Read More: See our favorite taglines |
2018 Was A Milestone Year For Climate Science (If Not Politics) | 2018 was a hot year — in fact, the fourth warmest on record. The only years that were, on average, warmer were the past three, according to the World Meteorological Organization. It has been warming for decades now. But 2018 brought several major new and markedly more precise reports from scientists about what climate change is doing to the weather and how dire they expect the consequences to be. That didn't stop President Trump and others from continuing to question the evidence. "Is there climate change?" Trump said to reporters from Axios on HBO in November. "Yeah. Will it go back like this?" he added, motioning up and down with his hand. "I mean will it change back? Probably. That's what I think." Another politician who weighed in on the clear evidence of a warmer planet was Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, when he was campaigning this past fall. "Well, listen," he assured a moderator at a televised debate. "Of course the climate is changing. The climate has been changing from the dawn of time. The climate will change as long as we have a planet Earth." Both statements are at odds with the consensus within the climate science community. "The climate has never changed this rapidly" Many in that community met in Washington, D.C., in December at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union. "We're not seeing cycles" in which warming is likely to go back down, says climate scientist Martin Hoerling. "We're not seeing things that are going to revert back," as long as greenhouse gases in the atmosphere continue to increase. What about that idea that the climate has changed from the dawn of time? Climate scientist Stephanie Herring says sure, that's technically true, but it misses an important difference happening now. "The current change that we are experiencing now is particularly alarming," she says, "and that's because in the history of human civilization the climate has never changed this rapidly." For example, 20 of the warmest years on record around the planet occurred in the past 22 years, according to the WMO. The yawning gap between the views of some politicians and the vast majority of scientists on climate change isn't new. But 2018 was a watershed year in the amount of new evidence for continued warming and its effects. Hoerling and Herring work for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which, along with numerous other federal agencies, issued a national climate assessment this year. It says climate change is real, humans are causing it and it's worse than ever. Moreover, it is happening faster than anticipated and is already affecting weather. In October, the highly regarded Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change came to a similar conclusion. If the Earth warms up another half a degree Fahrenheit — which is very likely — the world's weather will change drastically. The report noted that the world's governments probably have about a dozen years to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the worst impacts. But the weather is already changing. There was yet another study this year, issued by the American Meteorological Society, that examined extreme weather events in 2017. It found huge rainstorms around the world that the authors said were made more likely by a warmer climate. Hoerling says it's all about warmer oceans. "To have more water vapor in the air is simply delivering heavier rains," Hoerling says. "The physics of what's driving heavier rains, even when it's not a hurricane, is virtually the same in many locations" around the world. The physics isn't complicated; heat water in a pot on your stove and watch as it evaporates and rises. Rising hot air causes storms, and the water comes back down. Just ask people who lived through hurricanes in Houston, Florida or Puerto Rico. The past two years have seen abnormally strong hurricane seasons in the Atlantic. Growing worries about climate liability The extreme weather report is all about "attribution" science — determining whether a big storm or fire or heat wave is statistically "normal" or is an outlier that has been pumped up by a warmer climate. Hoerling says the science has improved and is revealing more than just bigger, wetter storms. "With seven years of these reports," he says, "we're seeing more and more evidence building that heat waves are not only happening more often, their magnitude is off the charts." Scientists have also attributed bigger fires in recent years to climate change. Plain physics again: Hotter, drier air sucks moisture out of soil and vegetation and turns places like California into tinder. The United Nations in December gathered leaders from nearly 200 nations to a meeting in Poland to find ways to limit greenhouse gases. The upshot of the meeting was that the world's energy economy needs to change fast — faster than people realized until now. The stronger link between climate and weather is making it harder to question climate science. It also has some people worried that |
Opinion: How Could The President Get The Coronavirus | A lot of Americans may wonder this morning: How could the president, of all people, come down with the coronavirus? The President of the United States is often called the most powerful person in the world. They can cause armies to march and rockets to soar. They also can hear directly from some of the finest scientific and medical minds in the world. Presidents are surrounded by rings of highly-trained security guards, who protect them at all times. The Queen of England, the pope, and maybe Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un and Xi Jinping may be the only other people on earth who can be so exquisitely and completely protected. How does the President of the United States wind up in a hospital, being treated for coronavirus? This most powerful person may have been well informed by experts, but he publicly disdained much of what they told him. Not just nine months ago, as much of the world was beginning to learn about a new and unprecedented virus, but this very week during the presidential debates where he derided his opponent for wearing what he called, "the biggest mask I've seen," even as scientists consistently say masks and social distancing can help stop the virus spread. According to reports, the president's family and many of his supporters waved away doctors from the Cleveland Clinic who tried to remind those in the president's party in their debate hall to wear masks. Most of the president's entourage did not. And today, the president they came to support is fighting the coronavirus, as are several of those people who came to cheer him. There is so much suffering in America now. More than 200,000 people have died in this pandemic, tens of millions of people are out of work, and lines of people waiting for food stretch across this famously abundant country. Millions struggle just to keep going, as the list of aides and admirers who have been close to the President recently and tested positive grows almost hourly. Maybe President Trump's diagnosis, and that of so many around him, can remind Americans, in a way his denial has not, that the coronavirus is real. It won't just disappear. We have reported on the lives of so many people who have died in this pandemic, and each time you grieve for a good life lost, and the hole they leave in so many hearts. The president will get the best care possible. The American people deserve the same. |
Reports: Pakistan Supports Taliban In Afghanistan | Media reports say Afghans are braced for a return of the Taliban once NATO forces leave the country. A classified NATO report was leaked to the BBC and <em>The Times </em>of London which further documents what has been said for a long time: Pakistan is actively supporting the Taliban insurgency. |
'Folly of Empire' Offers Critique of U.S. Imperialism | When U.S. forces toppled Saddam Hussein's regime, some American policymakers were unprepared for the intensity of the resistance that ensued. John Judis' latest book, The Folly of Empire: What George W. Bush Could Learn from Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, finds the postwar developments in Iraq entirely unsurprising. Judis, senior editor for The New Republic offers a survey of U.S. foreign policy since the late 19th century -- and finds that the Bush administration has failed to learn from past attempts at American imperialism. Book Excerpt: The Folly of Empire At noon, October 18, 2003, President George W. Bush landed in Manila as part of a six-nation Asian tour. Because officials were concerned about a terrorist attack on the embattled islands, the presidential airplane, Air Force One, was shepherded into Philippine air space by F-15s. Bush's speech to the Philippine Congress was delayed by what one reporter described as "undulating throngs of demonstrators who lined his motorcade route past rows of shacks." Outside the Philippine House of Representatives, several thousand more demonstrators greeted Bush, and several Philippine legislators staged a walkout during his twenty-minute speech. In his speech, Bush took credit for America transforming the Philippines into "the first democratic nation in Asia." Said Bush, "America is proud of its part in the great story of the Filipino people. Together our soldiers liberated the Philippines from colonial rule. Together we rescued the islands from invasion and occupation." And he drew an analogy between America's attempt to create democracy in the Philippines and its attempt to create a democratic Middle East through invading and occupying Iraq in the spring of 2003: "Democracy always has skeptics. Some say the culture of the Middle East will not sustain the institutions of democracy. The same doubts were once expressed about the culture of Asia. These doubts were proven wrong nearly six decades ago, when the Republic of the Philippines became the first democratic nation in Asia." After a state dinner, Bush and his party were bundled back onto Air Force One and shunted off to the president's next stop, Thailand. The Secret Service had warned Bush that it was not safe for him to remain overnight in the "first Democratic nation in Asia." As many Philippine commentators remarked afterward, Bush's rendition of Philippine-American history bore very little relation to fact. True, the United States Navy under Admiral George Dewey had ousted Spain from the Philippines in the Spanish-American War of 1898. But instead of creating a Philippine democracy, President William McKinley annexed the country and installed a colonial administrator. The United States then fought a brutal war against the same Philippine independence movement it had encouraged to fight Spain. The war dragged on for fourteen years. Before it was over, about 120,000 American troops were deployed and more than 4,000 died; more than 200,000 Filipino civilians and soldiers were killed. And the resentment against American policy was still evident a century later during George W. Bush's visit. The Filipinos were not the only ones to rue the American occupation. Before he was assassinated in September 1901, McKinley himself had come to have doubts about it. He told a friend, "If old Dewey had just sailed away when he smashed that Spanish fleet, what a lot of trouble he would have saved us." By 1907, Theodore Roosevelt, who had earlier championed the war and occupation, recognized the United States had made a mistake in annexing the Philippines. After Woodrow Wilson became president, he and the Democrats backed Philippine independence, but were thwarted by Republicans who still nurtured dreams of American empire. Only in 1946, after reconquering the Philippines from Japan, did the United States finally grant independence -- and even then it retained military bases and special privileges for American corporations. As for the Philippines' democracy, the United States can take little credit for what exists, and some blame for what doesn't. The Philippines were not the first Asian country to hold elections. And the electoral machinery the U.S. designed in 1946 provided a veneer of democratic process beneath which a handful of families, allied to American investors and addicted to payoffs and kickbacks, controlled Philippine land, economy, and society. The tenuous system broke down in 1973 when Ferdinand Marcos had himself declared president for life. Marcos was finally overthrown in 1986, but even today Philippine democracy is more dream than reality. Three months before Bush's visit, beleaguered Philippine president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo had survived a military coup; and with Islamic radicals and communists roaming the countryside, the Philippines are perhaps the least stable of Asian nations. If the analogy between America's "liberation" of the Philippines and of Iraq were to hold true, the United States |
Doping Agency Says 11 Teammates Testified Against Lance Armstrong | The United States Anti-Doping Agency has made public all the evidence it has against cyclist Lance Armstrong. This is the culmination of a battle that has raged for years: The USADA has said its evidence proves beyond doubt that the now-dethroned seven-time Tour de France winner doped, and Armstrong has always maintained his innocence. The USADA has released about 200 pages worth of material, including the testimony of 11 of Armstrong's former teammates. We're working through the report and we'll keep this post updated. Meanwhile, here's a recap of the latest: -- USADA says the evidence shows the US Postal Service team ran "the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen." In the report it says that Armstrong not only doped himself, but he required his teammates to adhere to the same kind of doping program. -- 11 former teammates of Lance Armstrong admitted to doping. -- George Hincapie, whom Armstrong has referred to as a "brother," issued a statement admitting to doping and signaling that he testified against Armstrong. The report details his allegations. -- Armstrong's attorney Tim Herman called the USADA's case a "one-sided hatchet job." Our Original Post And Earlier Updates Continue: According to a press release previewing the more than 200 pages of documents, USADA CEO Travis T. Tygart says 11 of Armstrong's former teammates testified that Armstrong had doped. "The evidence shows beyond any doubt that the US Postal Service Pro Cycling Team ran the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen," Tygart says. Tygart goes on to say: "The evidence also includes direct documentary evidence including financial payments, emails, scientific data and laboratory test results that further prove the use, possession and distribution of performance enhancing drugs by Lance Armstrong and confirm the disappointing truth about the deceptive activities of the USPS Team, a team that received tens of millions of American taxpayer dollars in funding. "Together these different categories of eyewitness, documentary, first-hand, scientific, direct and circumstantial evidence reveal conclusive and undeniable proof that brings to the light of day for the first time this systemic, sustained and highly professionalized team-run doping conspiracy. All of the material will be made available later this afternoon on the USADA website at www.usada.org." Armstrong has always maintained his innocence but in August decided he would not fight the charges brought against him by the USADA. Because of that, the USADA stripped him of his seven Tour de France titles. The organization is now sending all its evidence to the Union Cycliste Internationale, which can chose to appeal the USADA's decision. "The evidence demonstrates that the 'Code of Silence' of performance enhancing drug use in the sport of cycling has been shattered, but there is more to do," Tygart said. "From day one, we always hoped this investigation would bring to a close this troubling chapter in cycling's history and we hope the sport will use this tragedy to prevent it from ever happening again." There's no word yet when all the documents will go online. We'll update this post with more as it becomes available. Update at 3:18 p.m. ET. Hincapie's Testimony: The report from the USADA is structured chronologically, so there is no easy way to read just one teammate's affidavit. That said, the chronological set-up makes for interesting reading. We've skimmed a good deal of the report now, and what's clear is that the USADA provides a good deal of first-hand testimony of teammates who saw Armstrong take banned substances and were introduced to Dr. Michele Ferrari, the Italian physician portrayed as a doping genius, by Armstrong. There is no testimony more important that that of George Hincapie, who is widely considered to be Armstrong's lieutenant on all seven of his Tour de France wins. In his book Every Second Counts, Armstrong calls Hincape "true-blue, like a brother to me." In Hincapie's case, he said he got on Ferrari's plan in 2000. According to the report, Hincapie asked Armstrong to introduce him to the physician. That Ferrari would put him on a doping schedule was implied and expected. Here's a key paragraph from the report: "According to Hincapie, at the training camp there was a discussion about blood doping and 'Dr. Ferrari said that it improved performance.' Hincapie continued the discussion about blood doping with Johan Bruyneel and Pepe Marti. Hiring Dr. Ferrari was part of the blood doping program. Hincapie agreed to hire Ferrari and was told that it would cost him $15,000 for the season. Hincapie testified that, 'Dr. Ferrari told me that the team doctors would assist me with the blood doping program and they did.' Hincapie would continue working with Dr. Ferrari until 2006, and would participate in the U.S. Postal Service blood doping program from 2001 through 2005. |
The Deal With Drug Czars | The role of drug czar took the spotlight this week when Trump administration nominee Rep. Tom Marino, R-Pa., withdrew his name from consideration for the position. Marino was the subject of a recent investigation by “60 Minutes” and The Washington Post that revealed the Congressman’s role as a major player in weakening the Drug Enforcement Administration’s ability to regulate opioid distributors. Drug czars are charged with taking the lead on drug policy in the U.S. and the position has a history that dates back to 1930. But their agendas are largely set by the administrations they serve. With President Trump set to declare the opioid epidemic a national crisis next week, how is the Office of National Drug Control Policy poised to address the problem? GUESTS General Barry McCaffrey (U.S. Army-Ret.), Retired U.S. army four-star general; former director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Sarah Karlin-Smith, Health care reporter, Politico Carl Hart, Chair, Columbia University Department of Psychology Robert Weiner, President, Robert Weiner Associates; former director of public affairs, White House Office of National Drug Policy For more, visit https://the1a.org. © 2017 WAMU 88.5 – American University Radio. |
The 2008 Golden Globes: Press Conference-tastic! | Even if you can't help but have disdain for awards shows — and I can't help but have disdain for awards shows — last night's Golden Globes were a downer. With the threat of being picketed during the ongoing writers' strike, the evening was de-glamorized from a gala night of a thousand stars to a press conference of four infotainment news readers. In the first five minutes of the show, co-hosts Billy Bush and Nancy O'Dell tossed to Shaun Robinson and Entertainment Weekly's Dave Karger, who made a point of telling you how exciting it was going to be. Well, that didn't much encourage my finger to stray too far from the fast-forward button on my DVR remote. The amazing thing is that the producers were actually able to stretch what amounted to reading names from a list into an hour-long show. To avoid dead air, the program was filled with video clips and fattened with Bush and O'Dell deconstructing the wins. But when you're talking about how, say, Marion Cotillard pulls out a victory over Nikki Blonsky, the conversation quickly devolves into super-insider clack that even the hosts seemed to have a hard time following. At one point, O'Dell theorized how artist-turned-director Julian Schnabel managed to eke out a win over the likes of the Coen Brothers. It was a rambling explanation that explained nothing. Bush just stared at O'Dell blankly for a moment, offered a curt "good point" and moved on, as if finally acknowledging the ship was sinking and it was time to start swimming fast. Hey, you've got to give them credit for doing the best with what little they had: a night of mostly indie, arthouse movies and cable fare, and not a single star whose appearance wasn't courtesy of a film clip. And though the affair was funny in a midnight Rocky Horror Picture Show kind of way, there's nothing funny about the loss of the Golden Globes gala. It was estimated the absence of the gala — and all the parties and related spending — will put an $80 million hit on the city's economy. Eighty million lost in just one weekend. And with the governor announcing the state is facing a double-digit billion dollar revenue shortfall, the tax revenue on that money is something the city and state can ill-afford to part with. With this year's Globes laying face down in the dirt, Hollywood now turns its attention to the Feb. 24 Oscar kudo-cast. With the countdown begun, the question is not if there will be a show, but if Hollywood can afford not to have one. |
Navigating The Skills To Successfully Land A Jet | What skills does it take to land a commercial jet? To find out what training is required, Renee Montagne talks to Dr. David Esser, an airline transport pilot and professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida. |
Rumsfeld: Period After Iraq Election Critical | Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld discusses Thursday's parliamentary elections in Iraq, the war and the eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops. He says much hard work lies ahead for Iraqis to build their own government and security forces. |
Ever-Growing Past Confounds History Teachers | In college, study of American history is often broken down into two chunks. Professors pick a date to divide time in two: 1865, after the Civil War, say, or 1900, because it looks good. So for those who teach courses on the first half, their purview is fairly well defined. But those who teach the second half, such as Jonathan Rees, face a persistent problem: The past keeps growing. Rees teaches U.S. history and, like many teachers, every few years responds to major events by adding them to his lectures. But that means other important events get left behind. He wrote about this conundrum in a piece for The Historical Society blog, "When Is It Time To Stop Teaching Something?" Rees tells NPR's Neal Conan that when he first started teaching, in the late '90s, he taught history up to the fall of the Berlin Wall. But "September 11th just changed things, so I had to change my course," says Rees. "And I'm still struggling with those decisions." Of course, his lessons didn't change on the day of the attacks, but once students started showing up who had completely forgotten about it — "18-year-olds who were about seven when 9/11 happened" — he knew he had to teach it. But there are only so many hours of instruction in the semester. That meant he had to start making cuts in his lesson plans. Take Watergate. Once, he used to spend an entire lecture on the political scandal, but now, he covers it in 10 to 15 minutes. "The New Deal is another really good example," he says. "When I first started teaching, I think I had three lectures on it." Now he's down to two, and that's changed the way he teaches, too. "I try to do it differently so that I won't overwhelm people with lots and lots of facts. And then they'll be able to understand more history, hopefully, through only having to know a little less." Still, he doesn't have it as bad as world history professors. "You have 500 years of world history," he says. "Can you get through everything? No, of course not. So everybody's got to cut something. The question is just what to cut." Teachers, tell us: As time marches forward, how do you make room for the new people and events that make up the recent past? NEAL CONAN, HOST: Many college students take survey courses that cover American history often in two chunks, and professors pick a date to divide the two: 1865, maybe right after the Civil War, or 1877, to leave Reconstruction in the first half, or 1900, just because it looks good. The problem, notes history professor Jonathan Rees, is that modern history keeps getting made, and if you want to cover 9/11, well, that means you have to drop something else: world wars, Watergate, Woodstock? History teachers, what do you skip to leave room for the near past? Give us a call: 800-989-8255. Email us: talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation at our website. That's at npr.org, click on TALK OF THE NATION. Jonathan Rees is a professor of history at Colorado State University-Pueblo. He wrote a blog post for the Historical Society titled "When Is It Time to Stop Teaching Something?" and joins us now from member station KRCC in Colorado Springs. And nice to have you on TALK OF THE NATION today. JONATHAN REES: Nice to be here, Neal. CONAN: And you wrote in your blog post that when you started teaching in the late '90s, the course ended well, pretty neatly, the fall of the Berlin Wall. REES: It made perfect sense at the time. But 2001, September 11th just changed things, so I had to change my course, and I'm still struggling with those decisions. CONAN: You said initially, after 9/11, you brought it up to, I guess, 9/10, the day before 9/11, thinking that everybody would know what happened on 9/11. But then you had to change that. REES: My 18-year-olds were about 7 when 9/11 happened, and some of them have very faint memories of it. But a lot of them have completely forgotten it already, and that's very hard for someone my age to understand since it was such an important event for everyone around. But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. So, yeah, I have to teach it if I really want to feel like history is useful to the students I have in front of me. CONAN: You only have a certain amount of time and space, however. REES: Yeah, 14 weeks in my case, three hours a week, and I don't want to spend the entire class lecturing either. So there are other considerations I have to make when trying to decide what parts of history I'm going to keep in and what parts of history I'm going to keep out. And it's one of those things where everybody is going to come to a different set of decisions, but 9/11 was just a no-brainer. CONAN: And so you've got to go into the past and then presumably this is stuff that you... REES: Start cutting things. CONAN: But stuff you thought was pretty important to put in, in the first place. REES: Yeah. No, I don't necessarily have to, say, cut a war or cut all of Watergate. In the case of Watergate, I used to go for a whole lecture, and now I do |
Chicago Teachers Union Still Stuck On A Contract | The Chicago teachers strike entered its second week on Monday. The union says it's looking over a proposed deal. City officials also tried to get a court order to stop the strike. |
A Morel Quandary? Where To Find Them | There's some old saying about spring showers bringing flowers, and flowers are fine. But what I'm looking for, pushing up through the dark loam and leaf litter in our woods, is pale and fleshy, redolent of leaf mold. It's the honeycombed head of a morel mushroom. It's been a terrific spring for morel hunting in our woods. Wet and cool, with long periods of rain followed by a few days of warm sun. You couldn't have a better recipe for burgeoning fungus. Behind our house is the remains of a defunct orchard. The rotting hulks of apple trees lean this way and that, and decaying apple roots are a favorite host for morel mushrooms. Morel hunting is addictive. It's imbued with mystery and chance and a good dash of Zen. You don't find morels so much as you notice them. When you see one, you must stop and gaze carefully all around it, because where there is one, there are bound to be others. You must also be ready to find nothing, and that's the hardest part. Shroomers, as mushroom hunters like to call themselves, develop their own theories as to what makes good morel habitat — apple or ash, elm or poplar. If they don't find the mushrooms, they say it's been too dry; or perhaps it's been too wet. Maybe it's been too warm, maybe too cold. Nobody really knows what particular combination of factors makes for good hunting, but everyone seems to have a theory. Those of us who know something of morels freely dispense our theories, but we keep our hunting grounds a dark secret. Like hidden treasure, morels bring out our covetous side. The morel organism is a huge underground system called a mycelium, which is made up of connected fungal strands and clods that can cover acres. It can live for decades, but it doesn't put forth fruit every year. What we see aboveground — those hollow, rubbery, wrinkled manifestations — are just the fruiting bodies of the ancient, secret creature living deep beneath the ground. We pick ours into a mesh onion bag, and we swing it like a censer as we walk, hoping that we're spreading precious spores as we go. Back home, we rinse them briefly, then sprinkle the holy wash water back where we found them, completing a ritual of thanks to the fungus that feeds us. Picking morels feels like stealing treasure from the rich soil; cutting their firm, shapely forms into little wheels is a sensual pleasure. A rich, peaty smell rises up from them. When butter begins to bubble in the pan, you drop the mushrooms in, and the liquid pours out of them. They're tender in moments, and you must remove them while you reduce the sauce. A dash of white wine, a tiny dollop of mustard, green onions and a whomp of sour cream; salt to taste, and you return the little wheels to their sauce, drizzling them over rice, pasta or meat. Morels fairly explode with complex flavor, with woodsy, earthy, mysterious notes. They taste like nothing else on Earth; they're in a class with truffles and caviar. And best of all, they're free, waiting out on the leafstrewn slopes where the wood thrush sings, there for the noticing. Julie Zickefoose hunts morels on her 80-acre nature preserve near Whipple Ohio. It offers sanctuary to deer, birds, and box turtles--but it's open season on delicious morels. She's currently writing a memoir on birds, a followup to her first book Letters from Eden. 3 TBs butter 2 TBs finely chopped green onions 1 Tsp brown or Dijon mustard ¼ cup white wine 3/4 cup sour cream 2 cups morels, washed, drained and chopped Rinse morels briefly in tepid water, saving the spore-laden water to sprinkle back in the woods. Do not soak, as this dilutes the flavor. Chop into little wheels. Saute onions in butter until clear; add morels, mustard and wine and cook briefly over medium heat until mushrooms are tender (2-3 minutes). Add sour cream, stir and remove from heat. Serve immediately over pasta, rice, or meat such as chicken breast. |
The Nation: Behind The Syrian Bombing | The suicide bombing (or not) that wiped out a chunk of Syria's top security team, including the defense minister and deputy defense minister, who was also President Assad's brother-in-law, may or may not tip the balance in Damascus toward a crumbling of the regime. Other officials have been named to fill the jobs of those killed, and the early consensus is that Assad's government will hold together, at least for now. But fighting has started in and around Damascus itself, and there is a steady stream of (mostly Sunni) defections from the Syrian army and security forces. Leon Panetta, the secretary of defense, said with undisguised glee that Syria is "spinning out of control." But Russia's foreign minister makes the right point, as the Wall Street Journal reports: "Instead of calming the opposition down, some of our partners are inciting it to go on," Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was quoted as saying by the RIA Novosti news agency on Wednesday. There's been far too little reporting about U.S. involvement in the events in Syria. When the story is finally told, I'm willing to bet that the United States has been far more deeply involved in arming and supporting the so-called Free Syrian Army — which took credit for the blast that killed the officials — and in encouraging the mostly Sunni, anti-Iran coalition in the region, led by Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar and Turkey. Meanwhile, as the Russian RIA Novosti reports: The adoption of a tough, new Western-backed U.N. resolution on Syria would amount to "direct support" for opponents of embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Russia's foreign minister said ahead of a Security Council vote later on Wednesday. "To adopt the resolution would be...direct support for the revolutionary movement," Sergei Lavrov told journalists. "To pressure just one side means drawing [Syria] into a civil war and interference in the internal affairs of the state." William Hague, the U.K. foreign secretary, cried crocodile tears over the bombing in Damascus. It had all the hallmarks of an Al Qaida operation. Usually the United States and the U.K. go bananas when an Al Qaida–style operation occurs anywhere in the world. Not in Syria, I guess. Sometimes suicide bombings are really bad things, and sometimes not so bad, in the view of Washington, London and Paris. |
Writer Marilynne Robinson on 'Gilead' | <EM>Housekeeping</EM>, the first novel from Marilynne Robinson, won a PEN/Hemingway Award. Now 23 years later, she's written a second novel, <EM>Gilead</EM>. She's written non-fiction in the interim, including <EM>Mother Country</EM> and <EM>The Death of Adam</EM>. <EM>Gilead</EM> is written as a letter from a 76-year-old Congregationalist Preacher to his seven-year-old son. Robinson is a Congregationalist, and has served as a deacon in the church. |
Bush Sees New 'Opportunity' for Mideast Peace | President Bush revives talk of a detailed "road map" for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Mr. Bush says the newly created post of Palestinian prime minister creates a "moment of opportunity" for Middle East peace. He makes no mention of Iraq. Hear NPR's Bob Edwards, NPR's Don Gonyea and NPR's Jennifer Ludden. |
Stocks Enter Bear Market. What Does It Mean? | Nothing lasts forever — not even a stock market that keeps going up, up and up. This week, just days after its 11-year anniversary, investors unceremoniously said goodbye to the longest-running bull market in history. Then the bears took over. The Dow Jones Industrial Average entered bear market territory when it tumbled more than 20% from the record it had just set on Feb. 12. And, as of Thursday, the blue chip index was down nearly 8,400 points — a stunning 28% — from that high point. A bear market is defined as a period in which the major stock indexes drop by 20% or more from a recent high point and remain that low for at least a few months. The two worst bear markets in history — during the Great Depression and the Great Recession — produced cumulative losses of 83% and 51%, respectively. Analysts like to say that the stock market is not the economy. But a bear market reflects concerns and anxieties about the economy, and at times a bear market is accompanied by a recession. A recession is when the economy experiences two or more consecutive quarters of decline. As to the origin of bulls and bears when referring to the market, Invesopedia says: "Historically, the middlemen in the sale of bearskins would sell skins they had yet to receive. As such, they would speculate on the future purchase price of these skins from the trappers, hoping they would drop. The trappers would profit from a spread — the difference between the cost price and the selling price. These middlemen became known as 'bears', short for bearskin jobbers, and the term stuck for describing a downturn in the market. Conversely, because bears and bulls were widely considered to be opposites due to the once-popular blood sport of bull-and-bear fights, the term bull stands as the opposite of bears." |
Showdown Over Bush Cuts Revives Estate Tax Fight | Part of a series on tax policy. The estate tax typically hits a tiny fraction of the wealthiest Americans, but it often generates debate among a much larger segment of the population. And this year could be no exception, though it's the first and probably only year there are no federal estate taxes on the books. That means a potentially huge windfall for the heirs to the George Steinbrenner estate, reportedly worth more than $1 billion. If Congress does not try to collect a retroactive estate tax this year, it means his heirs won't have to pay the 45 percent tax on everything over $3.5 million that would have applied last year. This quirk in the tax code is the result of the Bush tax cuts, which started phasing out estate taxes a decade ago. Next year, if Congress does nothing, the taxes will go back up to their pre-2001 levels. And that has reignited debate over whether -- or how big -- estate taxes should be. Estate taxes affect a small segment of the wealthiest Americans. Last year, only a quarter of a percent of those who died paid any. Abigail Disney benefited greatly from a big inheritance but believes the estate tax should come back, at least to their levels last year. "I take this position because I love my country," says Disney, the granddaughter of Roy Disney, who helped build the Walt Disney Co. empire. "And the fact is, my grandfather could never have built his business anywhere else." Disney, a filmmaker and philanthropist, spent a lot of time shooting a film in Liberia. She says there, unlike the United States, there are no safe roads or schools and therefore no safe investments. And she says those who make money in a secure society like the U.S. also owe the society a debt. She joined a group of wealthy individuals called United for a Fair Economy in part, she says, because she felt wealth is fundamentally unfair. "It's absolutely an accident of my birth. And that's sort of the point -- that there shouldn't be dynasties built around the simple good luck of being born related to somebody very wealthy," she says. Warren Buffett and Robert Rubin are also members of the group and share the same philosophy. But not even Disney's family agrees with her. And she and her sympathizers face a mountain of money lobbying on the other side, including from the Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Businesses. In a nutshell, opponents argue that bringing back the estate tax -- or, as they prefer to call it, the "death tax" -- will be hurtful mostly to small businesses like Alarm Detection Systems. Bob Bonifas started his company 42 years ago. He says he has spent three decades and paid lots of accountants to plan so that his children can continue to run his $33-million-a-year security business after he passes away. "I think I've planned enough that it would probably survive, but it would still have to [take] a major loan," he says. "Maybe $10 million or something. Those are big numbers if you've already got $10 million worth of debt." Opponents of the estate tax say it threatens lots of small businesses because heirs have to sell parts of the business in order to pay the tax. In reality, nonpartisan experts say, there are few examples where that is the result. More often, estate tax planning sucks up lots of time and money for small businesses. In Bonifas' case, that means he's been moving money into trust funds and gifts to his children and grandchildren. But he says doing so is an unfair burden to him. He thinks there should be no estate tax, since he pays income taxes and the business pays various other taxes. "I've already paid taxes on this money," he says. "I mean, why would you penalize somebody for dying?" Roberton Williams is a fellow at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. He says last year the estate tax hit the fewest number of people in the history of the tax. But the tax also creates a huge incentive for the wealthy to give to charities. Without any estate tax, Williams says, charitable giving could fall by up to a third. SCOTT SIMON, host: Part of an NPR series on taxes, today we consider estate taxes, or, as some people like to call them, death taxes. They affect a small segment of the wealthiest American tax bracket, yet the estate tax usually leads to political bickering. This election season it's been an issue in some political campaigns and it will certainly come up again if Congress starts debating whether to extend the Bush-era tax cuts this month. As NPR's Yuki Noguchi explains, this year's tussle over estate taxes comes with some unusual circumstances. YUKI NOGUCHI: The most unusual thing about estate taxes this year is that they don't exist - at least on a federal level. There's a quirk in the law to thank for that, something Congress - at least so far - has done nothing to remedy. The Bush administration started phasing out federal estate taxes 10 years ago, and this happens to be the only year there are none. If Congress does nothing on January 1, it aut |
Supreme Court Ends Term with Tough Decisions | The Supreme Court is in recess for the summer, but the justices ended this week with some major and very close decisions. NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg talks with Scott Simon about the end of the court term. |
Siemens High School Science Awards | Half a million dollars in scholarships for high school science geniuses were announced today in New York City at the Siemens Competition, one of the nation's top science fairs. Seventeen top students competed with research on such topics as blinking stars, sick worms and amorous monkeys. But the winning project, on topology and abstract algebra, may be incomprehensible to anyone without a PhD in math. |
Mezzo-Soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson | Classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz reviews three new releases of live recordings by the late mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson: <em>John Harbison's North and South</em>; <em>Peter Liberson's Neruda Songs</em>; and <em>Rilke Songs</em>. |
Property Rights Case | NPR's Nina Totenberg reports on the case of a Rhode Island man who wants to build seaside homes on his land there. Most of the property is tidelands, and the state says he can't build there. Now the case is going before Supreme Court, and some say the decision could be an important one in the battle between property rights advocates and conservationists. |
Letters: Bachata Music, Barbecue's Origins | Jacki Lyden reads from listeners' letters. Topics include a correction on the origin of bachata music -- it's from the Dominican Republic -- and one listener's suggestion for the derivation of the term barbecue. And another reader was outraged by LAPD's crackdown on counterfeit goods. |
Baseball's Plan For An Unusual Season | The baseball season is usually a marathon but this year it will be a 60-game sprint played in empty ballparks under unusual rules. MLB announced its coronavirus plan this week. Host Robin Young speaks with Here & Now sports analyst Mike Pesca. He hosts the daily podcast The Gist. This article was originally published on WBUR.org. |
Cotton, Timber Growers Struggle in Wake of Storm | Hurricane Ivan took a heavy toll on South Alabama's cotton growers and timber industry. Farmers were expecting a bumper cotton crop before the storm came through. Now they're trying to salvage what they can from damaged fields. Melanie Peeples reports. |
Sadr Moves into Najaf, Promises Violence | Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr moves into Najaf in southern Iraq Tuesday, surrounded by supporters. In a statement, Sadr promised more violence unless U.S. troops pull out of populated areas and release all Iraqi prisoners. American officials have branded Sadr an outlaw. NPR's Philip Reeves reports. |
'The Apprentice' Creators Look Back | Before he was president, Donald Trump was on the reality TV show <em>The Apprentice</em>. Kelly McEvers from NPR's podcast <em>Embedded</em> talks to people instrumental in creation of that show about working with him. |
Ill. Rep Tries Not To Lose Touch With Constituents | In an era of Facebook, tweets and texts, Illinois Congressman Tim Johnson takes a more old school approach to reaching out to constituents: He calls. Johnson personally calls around 100 of his central Illinois constituents every day. Host David Greene speaks to him about his dedication and how he finds the time. |
Morning Dispatch - LIVE from PDF2008 in New York | I'm here at the Personal Democracy Forum in New York. Micah Sifry, one of the organizers will be sending live feeds from time to time on the Personal Democracy website. Check it out! I'm sitting in front of the Yahoo exhibit, to my right is a group from the National Journal and behind me are folks from Politico.com. This morning, OpenCongress.org, unveiled a searchable database called, "Lawmaker Profiler." The database includes all online video archives on US House and Senate proceedings going back to January 2006. David Moore, Executive Director of OpenCongress talked about "one-click transparency for members of Congress" and how this open source and non-partisan site can be used as a resource to track legislation and lawmaker's votes. Stay tuned! |
Jimmy Carter - Palestine Peace, Not Aartheid | On the heels of President Carter's latest book by the same title, he and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright provide provocative insight on the on the disputed territories of the Levant region.
Since 1996, the Carter Center has observed three Palestinian elections and consulted on the Geneva Accord. President Carter brokered the historic Camp David Accords, and his latest book reveals new information on the prospects for lasting peace in the territories.
Visit us at www.wgbh.org/forum to explore our entire collection lectures. |
ESPN'S Buster Olney Plays Not My Job | What Ebert and Roeper are to movies, or Larry King is to ex-wives, Buster Olney is to baseball. He's a senior writer for ESPN: The Magazine, a regular on ESPN's Baseball Tonight, and author of the bestselling book The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty. We've invited Olney to answer three questions about some of the lesser-known aspects about the life of Mark Twain — who died 100 years ago this week. Segment originally broadcast on April 24, 2010. CARL KASELL, Host: In the world of sports, there are two kinds of people: those who play and those who wish they could play, but can't, so instead, end up writing about sports instead. PETER SAGAL, Host: Buster Olney is a frustrated former little leaguer who has become one of the best writers in the baseball beat. He joined us in April of 2010, along with Tom Bodett, P.J. O'Rourke, and Paula Poundstone. And I asked him if he had always been obsessed with baseball. BUSTER OLNEY: Yeah, I was always interested in baseball, despite the fact that I came from a family where everyone else hated baseball. In fact, when I was 10 years old and played Little League for the first time, I already was a burgeoning nerd, and would come back from my games and stand in the kitchen and recite for my mother all of the plays and every pitch in every inning. And that - after about two games, my mother said to me, "Buster, you have tremendous potential to be very boring." (SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER) SAGAL: Congratulations, sir, for living up to that. So then, this is a question for me, because I'm a big baseball fan, but you actually get to know these guys. You're around professional baseball all the time. Does being that close to it ruin it for you as a fan? Can you know too much? OLNEY: Well, not really. You know, I love the games on a daily basis, but you do have, you know, certain moments where it's not quite what you expected. You know, a few years ago, Red Sox and Yankees, you remember they had that big fight during the playoffs, and Pedro Martinez threw Don Zimmer to the ground. SAGAL: Oh, yeah. I just want to clarify for the audience: Pedro Martinez, at the time, was a 30-ish pitcher for the Red Sox. Don Zimmer was a 70-year-old man, a coach, kind of large and fat and bald, if I can be so bold. But go on. OLNEY: So, I ran down to the Yankees clubhouse to position myself to be the first reporter into the clubhouse, because I wanted to be in the best possible position to talk to Don Zimmer after that game. Sure enough, I was the first guy through the door, raced over to Don Zimmer's locker, stood right there in front of the locker, and a wall of reporters came running in behind me. And even if I had wanted to move, I couldn't have. And so I was in the perfect position. And then I look over, and here comes Don Zimmer out of the shower, and he's got a towel on. And he gets in front of his locker and he drops the towel with his backside toward me and bends over. (SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER) OLNEY: Now, I've known Don Zimmer a long time, and I don't think he was trying to moon me. But he got the job done that day. SAGAL: Yeah. OLNEY: That was probably the most memorable day of my time as a reporter. SAGAL: I think I would I could never watch a baseball game again after that. (SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER) PAULA POUNDSTONE: Can I ask you a question? What is there a point in which you've said everything that can be said about baseball? (SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER) (SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE) OLNEY: Absolutely not. There's a new game, a new story every day. POUNDSTONE: Yeah. SAGAL: Well... (SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER) OLNEY: You sound like my mother, Paula. (SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER) POUNDSTONE: No, I don't find you boring at all, by the way. It's baseball I'm concerned about. (SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER) SAGAL: Whenever we hear people talking about baseball, though, they're always saying the same things. The guy's hitting, they say, well, he's seeing the ball well. You know, well, if the pitcher's pitching, he's really executing his pitches. Or he's not executing his pitches. And we all nod and listen. OLNEY: That's why I talk about Don Zimmer mooning people. SAGAL: Exactly. It's more interesting. ROURKE: But isn't there always a possibility of the miraculous thing, like the Yankees turned a triple play this week. They haven't done it like, in 40, 50 years. OLNEY: That's exactly right. And every day, you could see something you haven't seen before. Opening day, you know, the Braves rookie outfielder Jason Heyward, 20 years old, hits the ball 461 feet in is first at bat, playing in his hometown. That's a pretty cool moment. SAGAL: That's why... OLNEY: That's why we watch, Paula. POUNDSTONE: Oh. (SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER) ROURKE: It all comes clearer. It all comes clearer for Paula. SAGAL: One last question - and I say this as someone who loves baseball, talking to someone who really loves baseball - do you ever, with all the work that you do, ever get up in the morning in the middle of the summer and say, you know, the last th |
Bryan Coffee: Shrimp | Comedy from Bryan Coffee's stage show The Weekly Armenian. |
New Jersey Rodeo Has Roped in Fans for 50 Years | When you think of rodeo, you may think of Texas or Wyoming. But for decades, a New Jersey family has run a popular rodeo at a place called Cowtown. In fact, it's just a few miles from Exit 1 on the turnpike. Grant Harris and his family have been staging the Cowtown Rodeo every Saturday night during the summer since Dwight Eisenhower was in the White House. The rodeo sits off of a two-lane road that runs past sod farms, cornfields and livestock and feels more like a patch of Iowa than New Jersey. Harris said people are always surprised to learn about Cowtown. "So many people have a very skewed conception of New Jersey," Harris said. "They think of Jersey as 'Joisey.' If you ride around Salem and Cumberland County, it's mostly all open farmland, beef and dairy, vegetable farming, grain farming." The Harris family has lived in the area for at least 12 generations, and running the rodeo has been a family business since 1955. Tickets cost $12 for adults, $6 for kids. Events include steer wrestling and barrel riding. The prize money is modest. Betsy Harris — Grant's wife — writes the prize checks. While most of the fans are local, the best-known bull rider at Cowtown hails from New England. John Constantinople, 51, grew up in West Haven, a middle-class suburb, a few miles from the Yale campus and not far from the Long Island Sound. Although Connecticut is hardly rodeo country, Constantinople said he was intrigued by calf roping when he was a child. "On the day, I was a beach bum, and at night, I was a cowboy," he said. The Harrises are working to keep the tradition alive, even as suburbia slowly closes in. Cowtown is not far from Philadelphia and Wilmington, Del., and there are a few housing tracts — even a golf course — nearby. Harris does wonder about his future — not because fans aren't packing the stands but because Cowtown is so close to cities. Real estate agents say the value of the land has soared over the years. Harris says developers routinely make offers. He's sitting on 1,200 acres. "When you get up over $25 million, you start getting my attention, and it's been over that before," Harris said. Harris said he hopes to pass the rodeo on to his daughter, Katie. But he knows that, at some point, the money may be irresistible. "The place is not for sale," Harris said. "But if somebody offers me what I think is way, way, way, way too much money, I'd be foolish not to consider it." MELISSA BLOCK, host: This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Melissa Block. MICHELE NORRIS, host: And I'm Michele Norris. Back in 1955, when Dwight Eisenhower was in the White House and American suburban sprawl wasn't quite so sprawling, the Harris family started staging a rodeo in a place called Cowtown. It's not in Texas or Wyoming. It's in New Jersey, just off the Turnpike. And after all these years, it's still going. NPR's Frank Langfitt paid a visit. (Soundbite of moving vehicle) FRANK LANGFITT: To get to Cowtown from the south, take I-95 to the Delaware Memorial Bridge and cross into Southern New Jersey. Just before you hit the Turnpike, get off on a two-lane road that runs past the sod farms, cornfields and livestock of Salem County. (Soundbite of bull bellowing) LANGFITT: It's like a patch of Iowa, just off the northeast corridor. Grant Harris puts on a rodeo here every Saturday night in the summer. He says people are always surprised to hear what he does and where he does it. Mr. GRANT HARRIS (Cowboy, Cowtown Rodeo): So many people have a very skewed conception of New Jersey. They think of Jersey as Joisey, you know. If you ride around in Salem and Cumberland counties, it's mostly all open farmland, and beef and dairy and vegetable farming, grain farming. LANGFITT: Countryside like this gives New Jersey its nickname, The Garden State. Cowtown is commuting distance to several cities, but suburban sprawl hasn't arrived yet. Mr. HARRIS: As the crow flies, we are about 20 miles from Philadelphia. I'm not quite 10 miles from Wilmington, Delaware. Closter County, New Jersey is only about three miles. A crow flies north of us right now and they're improving developments up there - four, five, six thousand houses at a time nowadays. LANGFITT: Harrises have lived here for at least 12 generations. Running a rodeo is a family business. (Soundbite of bull bellowing) LANGFITT: Just after dawn, Grant and Katie, his 24-year-old daughter, bring the animals in from the fields. Grant looks at home. He wears a straw cowboy hat, jeans, boots and spurs. The summer sun has left his face lined and ruddy. (Soundbite of metal gate opening) LANGFITT: Opening and closing metal gates, they sort the horses for the evening's competition. Mr. HARRIS: Bareback. The saddle broke. (Soundbite of bull bellowing) Mr. HARRIS: The saddle broke again. LANGFITT: Katie's on horseback. Using a whip, she tries to coax a bull down on a wooden shoot. (Soundbite of bull bellowing) Mr. HARRIS: Easy, Kate. While that bull is looking th |
Citizenship-By-Birth Faces Challenges | If you're born in the U.S.A., you're an American citizen. Some lawmakers, however, plan to challenge that basic assumption. In what might be the next great flash point in the nation's ongoing debate about immigration policy, legislation has been introduced in Congress and a pair of states to deny birth certificates to babies born of illegal-immigrant parents. "Currently, if you have a child born to two alien parents, that person is believed to be a U.S. citizen," says Randy Terrill, a Republican state representative in Oklahoma who is working on an anti-birthright bill. "When taken to its logical extreme, that would produce the absurd result that children of invading armies would be considered citizens of the U.S." Bills to challenge the fact that citizenship is granted as a birthright in this country have been perennial nonstarters in Congress, although the current legislation has 91 co-sponsors. As with other issues surrounding immigration, however, some state legislatures still might act, if only in hopes of bringing this issue before the Supreme Court. "That was the primary purpose of the bill, for someone to sue us in federal court, and let's resolve this issue once and for all," says Texas state Rep. Leo Berman, a Republican who has introduced a bill to deny birth certificates to the newborn children of illegal immigrants. "I believe we are giving away 350,000 citizens a year to children born to illegal aliens." What The Constitution Says Berman faces an uphill battle. For more than a century, courts have held that citizenship is granted to anyone born within the territory of the United States. The 14th Amendment, which was ratified in the wake of the Civil War, overturned the Dred Scott decision, clarifying that the children of former slaves were citizens and entitled to constitutional protections: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." Since then, courts have made it clear that this applies to the children of American Indians and Chinese guest workers, among other groups. The principle of birthright citizenship has never been successfully challenged, according to immigration lawyers. But the federal courts have never specifically addressed the question of whether children born to those in the country illegally should be entitled to citizenship, says Michael M. Hethmon, general counsel of the Immigration Reform Law Institute, which favors tighter restrictions on immigration and has advised the state legislators on their efforts. Berman says the 14th Amendment was meant to clarify the status of freedmen and "does not apply to foreigners. The 14th Amendment, which is being used to provide citizenship, is the last thing that should be used." Subject To What Jurisdiction? The authors of the 14th Amendment, he argues, intended to make citizenship contingent on allegiance to the country. The congressional debate at the time makes it clear that this did not apply to foreigners, Berman says. "There cannot be a more total or forceful denial of consent to a person's citizenship than to make the source of that person's presence in the nation illegal," Lino A. Graglia, a professor at the University of Texas law school, wrote in a law review article last year. "This would clearly settle the question of birthright citizenship for children of illegal aliens." Opponents to granting birthright citizenship often grab hold of the phrase "subject to the jurisdiction thereof," saying that those in the country illegally are by their nature not subject to the jurisdiction in question, whether it's the U.S. or a particular state. Many other lawyers say that's a false reading. "Of course they're under our jurisdiction," says Michele Waslin, senior policy analyst with the American Immigration Council, which works to protect the legal rights of immigrants. "If they commit a crime, they're subject to the jurisdiction of the courts." 'Who Is An American?' Not every nation grants citizenship as a birthright. Sometimes it is an inheritance from one's parents, based more on blood than land. But challenging the traditional expectation that anyone born within the physical territory of the U.S. is automatically a citizen represents a "major change in a bedrock principle that has lasted for decades," says Karen Tumlin, managing attorney for the National Immigration Law Center, a public interest legal group based in Los Angeles. "It's a core American belief that those who are born here get integrated into our society, no matter where your parents are from," she says. "This would be an erosion of the core principles about who belongs in this country." That's precisely the argument opponents of birthright citizenship want to start. If a law denying birth certificates to the children of illegal immigrants passes -- and it's written in such a way that it gets argued in federal court, rather than being dismissed o |
Fractional Giving of Art Threatened by New Rules | Fractional giving allows people to donate a painting, or other work of art, a little bit at a time, providing a tax benefit over many years. But new rules are putting limits on the practice. Museums say it could have a chilling effect on art donations. |
Natural Gas Play: Exxon Mobil Buying XTO Energy For $31B & $10B In Debt | Oil giant Exxon Mobil just announced it is buying XTO Energy for $31 billion and will assume $10 billion of the Fort Worth-based company's debt. As the Associated Press writes, "Exxon has moved quickly to pick up valuable natural gas fields and now it is snapping up XTO, which claims about 45 trillion cubic feet of natural gas." Dow Jones Newswire reports that the deal will boost Exxon Mobil's "presence in the natural-gas industry at a time of low prices for the commodity." Also, the deal will "put to rest speculation about when Exxon, which hasn't had a major acquisition since the merger a decade ago with Mobil, would take advantage of lower commodity prices pressuring smaller and debt-loaded companies in the oil patch." Just after the start of trading, Exxon Mobil's shares are down about 0.25%, at just under $71. Share of XTO are up about 17%, at $48.75. Texas oil legend T. Boone Pickens has been touting the benefits of natural gas (and wind power) in recent years. |
Boston Globe's Investigation Into Widespread Sex Abuse In New England Private Schools | The Boston Globe has a report in today's paper about sexual abuse of students in at least 67 New England prep schools. Melissa Block speaks with Globe reporter Jenn Abelson about the investigation. MELISSA BLOCK, HOST: This morning, The Boston Globe Spotlight investigative team published a troubling report of sexual abuse in at least 67 private schools in New England. In their reporting, they found accusations for more than 200 victims and at least 90 legal claims. We're joined now by Jenn Abelson, one of the reporters who worked on this story. Good morning, Jenn. JENN ABELSON: Good morning. BLOCK: And your team is sharing student accounts that began as early as the 1950s. Where did this investigation start for you? ABELSON: My colleague Bella English broke a story in December about widespread abuse at St. George's. And in the wake of that report, the floodgates opened. And dozens of students at private schools all across New England began speaking out. They were emboldened by this cascade of recent revelations, and they are asking for accountability and transparency from private schools. BLOCK: We mentioned there have been 90 lawsuits and legal claims filed on behalf of the alleged victims. What was the upshot? Was anybody convicted or fired from their job? ABELSON: We found at least 37 employees were fired or forced to resign because of the allegations. And we found that nearly two dozen eventually pleaded guilty or were convicted on criminal charges of abusing children or related crimes. BLOCK: What did you find about these schools - made this kind of abuse possible in the first place and then allowed it to be kept quiet for so long? ABELSON: We found that these schools were - they had insular cultures, they were prized, their reputations. And to be honest, it's not just private schools, but all schools and all of society really dealt with abuse in very different ways back in the '70s and '80s, when many of these claims are from. They were quiet. It was held quietly. People were pushed out. No one knew. Teachers went from school to school. Abuse wasn't talked about. And so - and these schools gave access, especially boarding schools, gave access to teachers and staffers to have, you know - essentially, they slept in rooms near them. They had access. They were away from their parents from weeks and months. And so these became, unfortunately, in some places, real breeding grounds for sexual predators. BLOCK: I was struck by something that one of the alleged abusers told you in an interview. He said if there had been any misconduct, given the situation in the world today, I and everyone else involved would be in jail. ABELSON: Essentially. That was from a man named Bill who later went by Tony Lydgate. And he was accused of misconduct at St. George's when - by a student 40 years later. Essentially he was accused by another student in a school in Hawaii thousands of miles away. It was sexual abuse that sounded all too familiar to the St. George's victim. BLOCK: In your story, there's a form that people can fill out online if they have their own stories of sexual abuse to share. What kind of responses have you been getting since the story was published? ABELSON: We - within minutes of our posting, we had a number of responses. And they keep coming in. I think people feel that this is not a shameful chapter in their lives, that they feel it's important to talk about. And so we're getting lots of new accounts and expect to do more follow-ups on this. BLOCK: And briefly, are the schools changing how they deal with cases of sexual abuse? ABELSON: I think what we're seeing is there's a formula that's developing in some cases where when they receive allegations of sexual abuse, more schools are hiring outside investigators. We've seen this year eight schools have already either launched or disclosed that they have started probes into allegations of sexual misconduct. We see that they - some schools today are more willing to report the abuse to authorities. Sometimes it takes some time for them to realize that that's the right thing to do. Pomfret, for example, had an allegation that it received in 2015. It was only until the St. George's story broke and one of the administrators got embroiled in that scandal that he reported his abuse at - that they had found out about at Pomfret. BLOCK: OK. Reporter Jenn Abelson with The Boston Globe. Jenn, thank you. ABELSON: Thanks for having me. |
Little Rock Plane Crash | Host Bob Edwards talks with David Field of USA Today about the investigation into last week's wreck of an American Airlines MD-80 jet in Little Rock. For the most part, the MD-80 has had a great track record, yet its manufacturer, Boeing, is ending production of the plane. |
'Guardian' Database Highlights Underreporting Of People Killed By Police | NPR's Audie Cornish talks with reporter Jon Swaine about The Guardian database on U.S. fatal police killings in 2015. The news outlet recorded figures twice as high as those reported by the FBI. AUDIE CORNISH, HOST: The case of Freddie Gray is now part the national conversation over police use of deadly force. But there are many incidents we don't hear about. It now appears that the numbers of people killed by people police are vastly underreported. The Washington Post and The Guardian newspaper have started to keep their own tallies. By using social media, local news reports and public records, they've come up with figures twice as high as those reported by the FBI. Jon Swaine of The Guardian is one of the reporters compiling a database of police fatalities. The project is called The Counted. He joined us from our New York studios. Welcome to the program. JON SWAINE: Thanks for having. CORNISH: So, first of all, help us understand why your numbers and the numbers kept by the government are so different. SWAINE: The government numbers are put together by the FBI, and the problem with their system is that it's voluntary. There is no obligation on state and city and county authorities to report these numbers, and so many, many don't. CORNISH: So help us understand how you went about the counting. I know that you guys did some crowdsourcing. Where else did you look? SWAINE: We're looking at local media reports. We're looking at police and coroner press releases. Sometimes they're not noticed by the media. We're talking to people via this system that we've built now where the people can submit tips, can submit news if friends or if people they know or if they've even seen something happen. So we're really - I mean, we're making an attempt to cast an eye over the country, and obviously we're open to the possibility that we, too, are missing some and they're not being reported. But we thought better to make an effort and try to make a more comprehensive database. CORNISH: So what number have you come up with? And give us the criteria that goes into that. SWAINE: Our count currently sits at 473 for the year so far. So, obviously, that is more than twice the rate of the - what the FBI count has tended to be. We chose to include cases where, as best as can be determined, people were killed due to the actions of law enforcement officials. Now, the majority are shootings, so it's very obvious. There are others around the margins where tasers were used, where vehicles sometimes struck people, where physical force was used. But we thought we needed to make an attempt to include all of these, not just shootings. CORNISH: So much of this conversation has been about race. What did you find when you broke down the numbers there? SWAINE: Black Americans who were killed by police were twice as likely to be unarmed as white people killed by police. That is an interesting disparity. That is worthy of further inquiry, and I think it talks to a lot of the complaints that the activist groups on this issue have had. That is that African-American people, particularly African-American men, are treated differently. CORNISH: Your reporting finds that 14 percent of those killed by police were Hispanic, and a majority of them carried no firearm. And we don't hear very often about those deaths. Do you have a sense of why those victims haven't sparked the same kind of public outrage? SWAINE: I mean, the conclusion I draw is that the mainstream media perhaps hasn't caught up with the demographic changes in the U.S. We found five cases, in fact, of Latino men who were killed by police, and their names were never published by anyone until we found them. CORNISH: Did you reach out to police unions or departments? And what kind of response did they have? SWAINE: You know, we tried, and I think they were cautious and wanted to see what the project was like after being published rather than talk about before we went ahead. I think there's been understandable, perhaps, caution from police unions and police departments, but we really were determined with this project to present the wide range of experiences that these officers encounter to accurately represent the proportion of people that were armed and unarmed. The majority are armed. So we hope that police unions and police departments see a benefit in our project, that it's better to have this information out there comprehensively. CORNISH: Can you tell us the story behind one of these names, someone in the database that we haven't heard about that struck you? SWAINE: One case that struck me in particular was the case of young man called William Chapman. He was 18. He was black, and he was unarmed, which are the same characteristics of Michael Brown, who became a household name after Ferguson last year. But William Chapman didn't, and he was killed in the parking lot of a Walmart in southern Virginia when he was accused of shoplifting by a police officer. We still don't know whether he actuall |
What's Next? Sixth Season Of 'Veep' Probes Post-Presidential Life | Julia Louis-Dreyfus — who plays U.S. Vice President Selina Meyer on the HBO comedy Veep -- says that growing up in Washington, D.C., and later living in Los Angeles helped her prepare for the role: "I think I understand the insular nature of Washington ... " she says. "There's an inside-the-Beltway mentality, not dissimilar from Hollywood — it feels like the only thing that matters. I think you're selling a brand of yourself." Louis-Dreyfus also did plenty of research for the show, now in its sixth season. She talked with lobbyists, senators and even former vice presidents. "I really tried to ask questions that would get at: What is the human experience of this position?" she says. "Nothing about policy or anything like that, but just about: What it's like day to day? ... It was also interesting to watch them not answer or read between the lines." After a couple of seasons as the vice president, Selina Meyer actually does become president briefly, but doesn't get re-elected in a runoff election. In this new season she and her posse of staffers and former staffers are struggling to figure out what to do next. There have been no shortage of comparisons of the character to Hillary Clinton, but Louis-Dreyfus says the show was written before the 2016 election. "There is post-presidential life, you don't just fall from the face of the Earth." Louis-Dreyfus says. "Selina Mayer is very, very ambitious and she has a huge chip on her shoulder, so there's a lot of mileage there." Interview Highlights On how people on both sides of the aisle appreciate the show On the show we have never identified party — we have just reaped so much benefit from that. Because everybody is invited ... both sides of the aisle think we are making fun of the other party. ... They identify with it which is super fun. I love that. On the way characters on the show sometimes treat each other terribly We all sort of wince. Very often there are lines that a multitude of characters might say that are so foul and nasty and mean-spirited that we all sort of die a little bit. ... But you need to know that the group itself of actors and writers are incredibly kind and nice. They are the absolute opposite of the characters that they play. On the relationship between Selina and her personal aide, Gary, played by Tony Hale We do have a chemistry, we're very good friends and we rehearse a lot. ... It's all of those things. ... Tony Hale is notorious for breaking in a scene and so that's often why we also have to rehearse a lot is for him to sort of get that out of his system. On her character's vulnerability I think she's very vulnerable. She's incredibly brittle and just covers it up like crazy. ... It's like a toothpaste tube and you put holes in it and then you squeeze ... and toothpaste goes out in lots of different directions and you didn't expect it. I feel like that's what she's like with her emotional life. Radio producer Anjuli Sastry, radio editor Mallory Yu and web producer Beth Novey contributed to this story. |
Record producer and folkorist Chris Strachwitz | Record producer and folkorist Chris Strachwitz. In 1960, Strachwitz started Arhoolie records as a leading outlet for many types of music that were disappearing or outside the mainstream. Today, the label has hundreds of titles, featuring blues, cajun, country and bluegrass, Tex-Mex, and many other styles. Strachwitz has just received a NEA National Heritage Fellowship Award, the nation's highest honor in the folk and traditional arts. Strachwicz also has a new CD anthology of his Arhoolies recordings. (Original Broadcast: 2 |