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There are more than 80, 000 educational apps in Apple’s app store. It seems like a great way to encourage brain development and make your little one the smartest baby genius. But just sticking a tablet in your kid’s hands might not be as helpful. Sure, use the app. But it’s not a babysitter — you’ve got to help them use it, too. Several recent studies have looked at how young children learn from touchscreens. One study, published in Child Development, compared how and learned to build a puzzle. Some children learned how to assemble the puzzle from a ”ghost demonstration” — meaning that, initially, the pieces moved by themselves on the tablet to show how it works. A lot of apps that are intended for young children often have some element of this ghost demonstration: Pieces move on their own or objects will move them. Other children had a person sitting next to them to move the puzzle pieces on the tablet. After they watched the demonstration, both groups of children were asked to complete the task on either a touchscreen tablet or a real puzzle that looked identical to the one they saw. The and who saw the ghost demonstration had a hard time replicating the task — but did well after they saw the human hand. Researchers concluded that having a human guide — often referred to as having social scaffolding — helped these young children learn. ”Simply having someone show them how to put that puzzle together, rather than the app showing it to them, allowed them to put that puzzle together themselves” explains Rachel Barr, a professor at Georgetown and one of the authors of the study. ”But taking away that person — taking away that scaffold — made their performance just look like they had never even seen it before.” Previous research from Barr found that the presence of a parent — more social scaffolding — increased a child’s ability to transfer knowledge from the tablet to a real object. I spoke with Barr and Laura Zimmermann, the study’s lead author who is now at the University of Delaware, about the takeaways for parents, teachers and app developers. Should we be surprised that and learn better from a real person than from a screen? Rachel Barr: Learning from apps and connecting it to the real world is challenging for a really young child. When we watch children play with touchscreens, it seems so intuitive to them. It’s very easy for us to forget that they are just like any other tool. And just like any other tool, children are going to need to learn how to learn from them. The ease with which we use technology makes us forget that this is really a fairly complex tool. If we think about how many hours each of us as adults spend with technology each day, and if you just add that up over at least 10 years, this is thousands of hours that we spent learning how to use this technology. These babies are only 2 years old, so their amount of experience using the tools is relatively limited. The fact that they don’t just learn everything like magic from these tools means that they require someone to help them with this experience. Is this a plea to have adults interact with the apps their kids are using? Laura Zimmermann: In an ideal world, we would love for there to be joint media engagement. So: Having a scenario in which a parent or a teacher or a sibling or peer is with the child, interacting, teaching and showing new things to each other. This is an optimal way to promote learning and that should not be downplayed at all. Typically, having another person present during these interactions with touch screens or while viewing television is really beneficial. The parent or teacher can take into consideration what their child knows and build on that — something that’s too complex for an app to be able to do. So rather than children interacting with a touch screen on their own, parents can provide support, to then boost their learning or help them transfer what they learned to the real world. They could also connect that information to something else that they have in their home. Barr: With [it’s] giving the child a little bit of support. That can really help them to process. It’s no different than other learning situations. Technology seems to be able to do everything. But for a very young child, it’s just a tool just like any other. And they need to learn how to do it and the best person to help them may be a parent or older siblings. Can you give me a concrete example? What would this look like? Barr: Let’s say there’s a show or an app game about a cat and you have a cat living in your house. When that image of the cat is on the screen, the parent can simply say, ”Oh that’s a cat just like ours.” So it’s not sort of and guiding every single piece of the experience, but it’s providing that information at the key point. ”Here’s the cat. It’s like the cat in our real world.” Or, if they’re playing a game putting together pieces of a puzzle on an app, then afterward, the parent can say, ”Oh let’s get out a real puzzle and switch that out.” Or if they’re building a block tower on an app program, building it with them. And now, ”Let’s build some real blocks.” So it’s just really helping them make those connections that seem obvious to us, but really are more difficult for young children. It doesn’t have to be a whole lot, but the trick is to think about apps and the television more like you think about picture books. That’s the ideal world. But that doesn’t always happen. Barr: Right. We want to be realistic. Zimmermann: There is going to be interaction without humans. That’s just the nature of our world. Kids are spending time using touchscreens. And if we want to promote the best possible learning, then we have to think about ways that we can provide this social scaffolding in some other form. That’s the way I approach it. I definitely agree that having a parent show a child something would be the gold standard. Very early in life, infants are capable of imitating different facial expressions or sounds, just by observing their parents. This isn’t a new idea, right? Zimmermann: We know, from decades of work looking at social learning, that kids learn best from a human. Compared to a touch screen, compared to video. There’s real importance in terms of the social scaffolding. Barr: Exactly. It’s the same with books. There’s been a number of studies where we find the same thing. Parental support around is highly beneficial for later literacy. Around television: Some support around the content, helping them bridge that gap between the 2D world and the 3D world is really helpful. And now these latest findings suggesting the same thing is happening with apps. So, if there’s not a human around, are there things that app developers can incorporate into tablet games to help replace or mimic the social scaffolding? Zimmermann: App developers could provide information in the app that teaches children or gives them feedback if they’re right or wrong to help improve their learning. Maybe a special sound or other haptic feedback — which is a form of touch information, such as vibration. This addition is something that would allow kids to learn, ”Oh I’m doing something right, or I’m doing something wrong,” to help them achieve some type of goal. In our study we did not provide this feedback in the app. We also know from previous work that different factors like repetition can help facilitate learning and encoding of information. So building in things like repetition can be useful for young children. Barr: The really nice thing about technology is that it will repeat. So we know that if babies are able to see the same show again, or the same task, this does help them learn. Zimmermann: There could also be adaptive play — things like leveling and scaling. It may be the case that with the in our study, this puzzle was pretty complex for them. So maybe we should have started with a puzzle. And depending on either the age of the kids or their previous performance, the app could present information accordingly. So as the kid succeeds on a puzzle, the app could move on to a puzzle. The task could get increasingly more complex based on the kid’s individual performance. I also want to be clear that this leveling is not something we manipulated in this particular study, but it’s something that I think future work should look at. When making educational apps, we need to be careful, to go back to the basics. It should be the starting point for developers to ask: ”What do we know about learning and early childhood?” and then use that information to design new technologies. All this is not to say that there aren’t exceptional educational apps out there, but there’s a lot for parents and teachers to sift through. How could this apply to the classroom? Laura Zimmermann: Early educators often require children to transfer knowledge from a task that they learned in one context to another. One example of transfer learning is a teacher showing their students something online or in a video, and then asking them to do an activity in real life or with some test. Another example, in a preschool or an early elementary school classroom, is children learning basic addition and subtraction with blocks from their teacher. Then later, being asked to transfer their learning to a math activity on a touchscreen for a assessment. Touchscreen assessments can be very useful tools, but it may be important to consider how their children learn a new skill — on a touchscreen or with concrete toys — as it may influence how they demonstrate what they have learned.

To what lengths would you go to stifle the thunderous snorts and growls of a spouse or roommate, just so you can get a good night’s sleep? Dozens of devices crowd the market, ranging from slightly absurd to moderately torturous. ”Some of them are more medieval than others,” says Dr. Kim Hutchison, associate professor of sleep medicine in the department of neurology at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, Ore. And some of the devices, she says, even have some basis in fact. ”When you sleep, the back of your throat relaxes. That narrows your airway and, as you’re breathing in, it causes it to vibrate,” explains Hutchison. So, many products are aimed at opening up that airway, or the tunnels that lead to it. For example, you can buy hollow nose plugs that, instead of closing the nostrils, prop them open. ”If you have a deviated septum or something like that, those could help open up your nose and decrease snoring,” says Hutchison, but they won’t help everyone because ”most snoring appears in the back of your throat.” Other devices are designed to force sleepers to turn on their sides. ”Sleeping on your back makes your tongue block your airway a little, sort of like the skinny part of a balloon, when you let air out of it,” Hutchison says. So some devices combine straps and pillows that make sleeping on your back uncomfortable — or poke you if you roll over. There are also chin straps aimed at repositioning your jaw in a way that opens the airway. They might work for some, says Dr. Richard Schwab, director the Pennsylvania Sleep Center. But one chinstrap on the market covers the wearer’s entire mouth. ”A terrible idea!” says Schwab. ”You should never cover your mouth — you could choke.” Devices that gently poke and prod might help some snorers, says Hutchison. Eventually, some people do stop sleeping on their backs, to avoid being jabbed to consciousness. If that’s not annoying enough, there are more insistent devices: wristbands that send a little electric shock every time you snore. That seems drastic. But maybe not, if love is on the line. ”Snoring can create a lot of stress in a relationship,” Schwab points out. ”It’s an intermittent noise, so you can’t just get over it. People lose so much sleep, they can’t sleep in the same beds.” And snoring that routinely disturbs your partner could be a sign you should see a doctor, says Schwab. You might have sleep apnea, a disorder characterized by loud snoring and interrupted breathing. People with untreated apnea are at greater risk for high blood pressure, heart disease and stroke. A lot of apnea cases go undiagnosed, Schwab says. Consider prodding your snoring partner to see a doctor — even before trying some of the remedies. ”If you treat the snoring and not the sleep apnea, you might never get evaluated,” says Schwab. And that’s important, because sleep apnea is treatable. Sleepers can wear masks linked to CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) machines, which are very effective at keeping airways open and stopping the problem, he says. Sleep apnea can prevent the snorer from getting deep sleep many people say they feel more awake after using the machines. The whir of the machine can take getting used to at first, Schwab says, but it’s much quieter than snoring, so roommates usually love them. The bonus for the snorer: It doesn’t shock you awake. And it actually works.

Even though most of the protesters fighting the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota have left, hundreds still remain here atop what is essentially a sheet of ice. One group of campers say there’s a change taking hold at camp, which was once overrun by thousands who felt a sense of excitement about the gathering. Byron Shorty, who lives on the Navajo reservation in Arizona, says now that the Army Corps of Engineers is temporarily halting pipeline construction, the protest camp is calm. ”I want to be here to reflect, and I want to be here to help clean up our abandoned campsites that I still see,” he says. ”And we’re in the process of cleaning those up and repurposing the things that people left behind.” Others, like Jacob Chamberlain, who came here from Scotland, are doing daily chores like chopping firewood. ”It’s not about taking selfies and saying that you were out here anymore. At this point, it’s about being hearty, surviving in the cold,” Chamberlain says. Earlier this month, the Army Corps said it would conduct a lengthy environmental review of this project, even as a fossil administration is coming to Washington. Standing Rock council member Chad Harrison attended a recent meeting between tribes and the Trump transition team and was pleased that could even happen. ”My hope is that that’s an indicator of how serious he’ll be when it comes to Native American issues,” he says. But Doug Burgum, North Dakota’s new governor, is urging Donald Trump to approve the project. He’s doing that even as he recently met with Standing Rock leaders in an effort to rebuild frayed relationships. A community divided, Demonstrations have caused gridlock, disrupted businesses and severely stretched police resources. ”It really kind of makes me sad when I see the picture that is being painted across the nation, this narrative that it’s this bad cop thing happening. And that’s not here in North Dakota. Not at all.” says Shelle Aberle of Bismarck, N. D. who runs a Facebook page supporting law enforcement. ”Our law enforcement are there to protect both sides.” Other residents back the pipeline opponents. The Unitarian Universalist congregation has supplied food to camp and shelter. In this protest, both sides often seemed to speak right past each other. Minister Karen Van Fossan says that should be changing. ”We aren’t often talking about the things that are on our minds, and now we really are,” Van Fossan says. Kay LaCoe hopes that’s true. The Bismarck resident recently called on residents to support businesses targeted by protesters. But soon after, hateful messages flooded her Facebook. She even received death threats and just wants a final decision on the pipeline to end all this tension. ”Whatever the government and the tribe and the energy companies decide to do with that pipeline, I’m good with it. Just give me my hometown back,” she says. But the legal battle over the pipeline will likely continue to play out in 2017 as North Dakotans grapple both with the protesters and the fallout from their continued presence. Amy Sisk reports for Prairie Public Broadcasting and for Inside Energy, a public media collaboration focused on America’s energy issues.

Donald Trump has selected former Indiana Sen. Dan Coats to be director of national intelligence, according to a statement from Donald Trump’s transition team. In choosing Coats, he is getting a veteran Washington establishment figure — a senator, former lobbyist and ambassador to Germany — with a rare distinction: being banned from Russia. Coats’ views on Russia after its annexation of Crimea, and his calls for stronger sanctions as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, landed him and other senators on Russia’s banned list. It’s a major difference with the who has praised Putin and cast doubt on U. S. intelligence conclusions that the Russian government, sought to help Donald Trump’s election chances. Coats even mocked Russia with a David top 10 list on Twitter in 2014: Coats served as senator from 1989 to 1999 and again from 2011 to this year. (He did not seek in November.) In between Senate stints, Coats served as U. S. ambassador to Germany during the George W. Bush administration and worked as a lobbyist. He was also asked by Bush to help his unsuccessful attempt to win Senate confirmation of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. Coats has been an outspoken critic of the Russian leader. As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Coats wrote President Obama after Russia annexed Crimea in 2013, urging Obama to impose sanctions against a Russian weapons exporter. The senators argued the sanctions ”would send a powerful message to Putin,” whose foreign policy, they went on, has become ”increasingly belligerent.” Coats also sponsored an amendment to a Ukrainian aid bill in the Senate that would prohibit the U. S. government from doing any business with the exporter, a company called Rosoboronexport. Such actions, Coats said, ”would require our foreign partners to make a choice between America and Putin.” In 2014, Coats also called on organizers of soccer’s World Cup to move the tournament, scheduled for Russia in 2018, somewhere else. All of which won Coats the honor of being banned from Russia, along with five other lawmakers, including Armed Services Chairman and 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain, and three Obama administration staff members.

Updated at 2:15 p. m. ET, Intelligence agency leaders repeated their determination Thursday that only ”the senior most officials” in Russia could have authorized recent hacks into Democratic National Committee and Clinton officials’ emails during the presidential election. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper affirmed an Oct. 7 joint statement from 17 intelligence agencies that the Russian government directed the election interference — and went further. ”We stand more resolutely on that statement,” Clapper said during a Senate Armed Services hearing with the intelligence chiefs into the politically charged issue. Clapper noted that the intelligence officials would not dive into many more details at this hearing, deferring to a broader, unclassified report on the election interference to be released next week. Committee Chairman John McCain, . said there is no national security interest ”more vital to the U. S. than the ability to hold free and fair elections without foreign interference,” and that ”every American should be alarmed by Russia’s attacks on our nation.” ”We will ascribe” a motive for the Russian cyberattack in the upcoming report, Clapper said. He wouldn’t say Thursday what it is, but it has been widely reported that the intelligence agencies agree that Russia was trying to get Donald Trump elected. Clapper also said he will ”push the envelope” to make much of that report unclassified without jeopardizing sources or details. ”The public should know as much about this as possible,” Clapper said. In addition to Clapper, testifying before the committee were Defense Undersecretary Marcel Lettre and Adm. Michael Rogers, commander of the U. S. Cyber Command of the National Security Agency. All three will be leaving their positions at the end of the Obama administration. One of the first questions from McCain was about the involvement of Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks published emails — from the account of Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager John Podesta — that the intelligence community says were hacked by the Russians. Assange has denied the Russian government gave WikiLeaks the emails. McCain asked Clapper if Assange had any credibility. ”Not in my view,” Clapper said, adding that Assange ”has put people at risk” with revelations about U. S. intelligence gathering. ”I don’t think those of us in the intelligence community have a whole lot of respect for him,” Clapper said. Trump, however, has openly questioned whether Russia was involved in the hacking, pointed to errors the intelligence community made over the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and has appeared to back Assange in tweets. Clapper also said there is a difference ”between skepticism and disparagement” of the intelligence community. Trump has taken to Twitter, referring to ”Intelligence” and its officials in quotations. Clapper also testified that there is no evidence the Russian hacking changed vote tallies ”or anything of that sort.” He did say, however, there is no way of gauging the impact of Russia’s actions ”on choices the electorate made.” McCain asked Clapper if the Russian constituted ”an act of war.” Clapper responded that constitutes ”a very heavy policy call,” which, he said, ”I don’t think the intelligence communities should make.” But he did say what was done carried ”great gravity.” Clapper added that Russia deployed more than just cyberattacks in its effort to disrupt the election, calling it a multifaceted campaign. ”The hacking was only one part of it,” he said. ”It also entailed classical propaganda, disinformation, fake news,” which he said was still going on. There was a fair amount of talk about rocks and glass houses, with Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina calling the Obama administration’s response to the hacking, a set of limited economic sanctions, just ”a pebble.” ”When it comes to interfering with our election,” Graham said, ”we better be ready to throw rocks.” Sen. Thom Tillis, . C. noted the U. S. has also attempted to interfere in other nations’ elections. ”We live in a big glass house,” Tillis said, ”and there are a lot of rocks to throw.”

The Republican Party has embraced Donald Trump’s positions on immigration, trade, the deficit and conflicts of interest, but when it comes to Russia, Trump and his party are not even close to being on the same page. Trump has repeatedly and consistently expressed admiration for Vladimir Putin and has refused to accept intelligence community findings that Russia hacked Democratic Party emails during the campaign. That puts him at odds with almost every other Republican in Washington, D. C. On Wednesday, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told CNN he is mystified by Trump’s feelings toward Russia. ”What bothers me is that Trump seems to get the Chinese for what they are the Iranian agreement is bad, he understands that he understands the threat we face from ISIL and he understands we can’t let the North Koreans build a ICBM [intercontinental ballistic missile] to attack our homeland,” Graham said. ”When it comes to Russia, he seems to have a blind spot. And I’m completely perplexed, because the Russians are undermining democracy throughout the entire world they’re taking land owned by others by force they did hack into our political system they’re doing it to other political systems, and they need to pay a price.” Vice Mike Pence seemed to reinforce Trump’s effort to undermine confidence in the intelligence community. During a press briefing with House Speaker Paul Ryan on Wednesday, Pence referenced Trump’s upcoming briefing with the intelligence community. ”We’ll be looking at the facts and the information,” Pence said. ”But I think, given some of the intelligence failures of recent years, the has made it clear to the American people that he’s skeptical about conclusions from the bureaucracy, and I think the American people hear him loud and clear.” But Trump has gone beyond skepticism. He has sided openly with WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange, a fugitive from justice and someone most Republicans consider an enemy of the state. Ryan, the highest ranking Republican on Capitol Hill, told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that he didn’t share Trump’s approval of Assange. ”I think the guy is a sycophant for Russia,” Ryan said. ”He leaks he steals data and compromises national security.” According to Molly McKew — an expert on information warfare and a consultant who has advised the governments of Georgia and Moldova — the community can’t quite figure out Trump’s unwavering devotion to the Russian line. But theories abound. ”I think the discussion in the region and intelligence services that deal with Russia,” McKew said, ”is that his behavior looks like someone who may be compromised or may be concerned about something and nobody knows what that is — if it’s financial ties or financial leverage, if it’s something more than that. I don’t know. I think there’s a lot of different things. I think there probably are relationships with Russians and Russian oligarchs that we don’t understand, that we don’t see.” Former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton, a Trump supporter and a harsh critic of Putin, argues, though, that people should give Donald Trump a chance. ”I don’t think the rubber has met the road on this yet,” said Bolton, who is reportedly under consideration for a job in Trump’s State Department. ”It’s one thing to exchange niceties and compliments before a president actually takes office. It’s another when you confront concrete Russian behavior. That’s the real test.” Bolton said the will draw his conclusions once he receives his full briefing by the intelligence community Friday. What those conclusions will be will send an important signal to Republicans on Capitol Hill, and to the Russians, who, McKew said, are also unsure about the new disruptive . ”I think they’re as nervous about Trump as the rest of us,” she said. ”And I think that’s potentially a very big opportunity for Trump if he chooses to use it. I don’t know what happened in the election. I don’t know what his relationship with Russian financial interests or others are. None of us know any of that. What we do know is he will be the American president very soon. And if he wants to operate as a man defending our country’s interests, he needs to have a smart, aggressive Russia policy that limits what Russia is doing to us and exposes what that is.” That’s why the Friday private briefing for Trump is so important. His reaction to what he hears will be the first clue about whether the new president wants to stand up to Putin when he works against the interests of the United States.

For a revolutionary, Deepali Vishwakarma is more quiet and reflective than you might expect. She’s in her 30s, small, with a round face that holds intense brown eyes and a shy grin. Vishwakarma is a lay counselor in the state of Madhya Pradesh, India — a community member who goes out daily to fight what novelist William Styron once called a ”howling tempest in the brain.” She’s part of an effort by the Indian nonprofit group Sangath to provide mental health treatment to poor people in India and to show that people with much less training than a psychiatrist or psychologist can deliver effective care. Vishwakarma had 40 hours of training for her role as a counselor. So her counseling is definitely revolutionary. And some mental health observers wonder if it might work in the U. S. But it’s a controversial approach. Critics say the use of lay counselors means that patients receive substandard care. Tell that to Vishwakarma. In a typical week, she may meet with 25 people, and in her several years as a counselor, patients who’ve stuck with her, as most have, have done well. The patients have been diagnosed with serious depression (or stress or tension, as it’s more often called in India) or alcoholism, and every so often, someone with schizophrenia. She’s been trained to listen and to assign specific tasks to her patients. She might tell someone who’s feeling really low to go for a daily walk, or go out and play soccer, or work in the garden or listen to the radio. For depression, it means thinking about anything other than that paralyzing howling tempest. For schizophrenia, it means helping people, many of whom are on medication, adjust to living in society. Vishwakarma’s biggest challenge is educating her patients. Worldwide, most people with depression don’t seek help, and Deepali’s patients are no different. ”The people don’t know they have depression because they don’t understand what depression is,” she says. ”They come in seeking help for not sleeping, not eating. We tell them no, when we cure your mental issues the symptoms go away. Then they accept treatment.” To run this program, Sangath — that’s a Konkani word that means support or partnership — gets funding from the Wellcome Trust and other donors, And it’s not the only health care group trying this experiment. Several other countries, including Ethiopia, Nepal, South Africa and Uganda, are working on the lay counselor approach as well. Thirty or 40 years ago, the U. S. was, too. Lay counselors were going to be the next big thing for depression treatment. There were lots of pilot programs, and medical journals carried the results of research trials. Most of the old research showed that lay counselors were just as effective for depression as counselors with lots more education — sometimes even more effective. A 1979 review paper in Psychological Bulletin analyzed 42 papers and concluded paraprofessionals got results ”equal to or significantly better than those obtained by professionals.” In a 1985 rebuttal in the same journal, the best the opponents could come up with was that professionals did just as well, but not better. In India, the establishment of lay counselors was pioneered by psychiatrist Vikram Patel and colleagues at Sangath. The idea sprang from something Patel saw in Zimbabwe, where he worked as a psychiatrist in the . Community members were being trained to give care to people with AIDS. Patel figured that maybe the same approach could be used for people with mental illness. Years into the project, someone at Sangath came across the U. S. research and told Patel about it. ”It completely blew my mind,” says Patel. ”There was an entire research enterprise.” At first, Patel and his colleagues thought they were starting from scratch. They ran focus groups to gauge community acceptance and conducted small trials and then larger trials comparing lay counselors to ”enhanced traditional care” — basically, diagnosis by a doctor or health worker at a primary health center, medication if necessary, and sympathy from the staff, but not ongoing counseling. ”I was very happy to get the first set of results,” Patel says. And the results got better and better. The medical journal Lancet has just published two large studies that confirm earlier research showing that lay counseling works and is . Lay counselors get paid on par with staff workers at charitable institutions — a little lower than they might get in private industry. Psychiatrists or psychologists periodically review the charts the counselors are taught to fill out, and check in on the patients. Patel recalls being criticized at international meetings for advocating for substandard care. His standard reply: ”We need to wake up.” Lay counselors are effective, he says, and they address the lack of mental health workers that is so common in poor parts of the world. But Derek Summerfield, a psychiatrist with the National Health Service who has published papers on violence and mental health, says that the symptoms displayed by the patients — like anxiety and unhappiness — are the result of poverty and cultural differences, not depression. In a debate with Patel at McGill University, he said ”these are people who are struggling to find lunch for their children.” Patel’s response is that poor people can get depression just as rich people do, and they’re just as deserving of attention. Lay counseling could not work, says Patel, without people like Vishwakarma. The lay counselors come from the same community as their patients. They speak the same dialect, and they identify with their patients. The counselors start with at least a 10th grade education. Vishwakarma had been an ASHA, an accredited social worker. But she says she didn’t know anything about depression or schizophrenia before going to intensive training. Today, Patel says, the challenges are figuring out how to scale up the program, which is currently funded by the Wellcome Trust and other donors, and how to make sure that a program will produce adequately trained counselors. ”We’re no longer asking can we use community workers, we’re asking how do we deploy them,” says Patel. Right now community counselors are available in two states in India, and more are likely to come online soon. The Indian Parliament is considering a plan that promises mental health care for all, using primary health clinics — and lay counselors. That’s not the case in the U. S. What happened after that flurry of papers, says Patel, was that ”suddenly the trail goes dry, and from the 1970s onward the literature dries up.” Patel’s suspicion is that the professional community was threatened by the use of paraprofessionals with comparatively light training. He’s been careful in his work in India to avoid competing with psychiatrists and psychologists. Instead they do the initial diagnosis and help with the training program. The medical officer at Vishwakarma’s clinic says he very much appreciates the support of the lay counselors. ”Before, we couldn’t treat these patients,” says Dr. Wilfred Mirand. ”After the patients were successfully treated I became confident.” The approach has American proponents such as Alan Kazdin, former head of the American Psychological Association. ”Seventy percent of the people in this country who need psychiatric services receive nothing,” he says. That number comes from several studies, including two published in the Annual Review of Public Health and JAMA Internal Medicine. ”The truth is that today, we are not treating everyone in need, and we cannot do so if we insist on therapy, at a clinic, with a mental health professional.” Kazdin is an expert on parenting but has been interested in lay counselors as a way of expanding access to care for years. So why no change? ”There’s no incentive,” says Kazdin. ”The individuals who suffer from mental illness are not the best lobbyists, and there’s no industry behind this.” Terry Wilson, a psychology professor at Rutgers University, says it’s always challenging to introduce a culture shift. ”The problem is professionals here are concerned or worried that lay counselors are not going to be able to provide the expert level of care that they’d want.” But he thinks lay counselors could catch on here. ”Change takes time,” he cautions. Meanwhile, Vishwakarma soldiers on. Recently she took me to visit one of her patients, a woman who wasn’t sleeping or eating well. The woman had suddenly felt a sense of loss that she thought would somehow kill her. Vishwakarma gave her homework. Every day pick a number from one to 10 that indicates her mood and write that number down. Read her ”smile cards” — yellow cards with positive sayings. Take time to sing and listen to music. Sometimes her patient picks devotional songs sometimes she opts for Bollywood tunes. Without Vishwakarma, the woman says, ”I would have only worsened.” The patient is still worried about finding money for school fees for her three young children. But she has found ways to cope with her worries. To show me, she takes out her cellphone and plays a devotional song. With her daughter at her side, she looks at Vishwakarma, hums along softly with the tune and smiles. Reporting for this story was supported by The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

Donald Trump sat for a deposition on Thursday in a civil lawsuit related to his hotel in the Old Post Office building in Washington, D. C. Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks confirmed to NPR via email. Even as Trump prepares to assume the presidency, he continues to have entanglements related to his business dealings. A source close to the case confirms the videotaped deposition took place at Trump Tower in New York and lasted 90 minutes. The $10 million civil lawsuit, for breach of contract, was filed by Trump’s lawyers in August 2015 against celebrity chef José Andrés’ restaurant group, Think Food Group. Andrés pulled out of a plan to open an upscale restaurant at the hotel after Trump disparaged Mexican immigrants. Think Food Group also countersued for $8 million. In countersuing, the restaurant group argued that Trump’s comments were hurting business: ”The perception that Mr. Trump’s statements were made it very difficult to recruit appropriate staff for a Hispanic restaurant, to attract the requisite number of Hispanic food patrons for a profitable enterprise, and to raise capital for what was now an extraordinarily risky Spanish restaurant.” Trump’s lawyers had tried to avoid the deposition, arguing the was ”extremely busy handling matters of very significant public importance.” But last week the judge in the case ordered Trump to sit for the deposition before the end of this week. While the civil case has dragged on for months, as recently as Thursday morning Andrés tweeted an offer to Trump for a way to settle the dispute. A number of lawsuits involving Trump and his businesses remain outstanding and are unlikely to be resolved before he takes the oath of office on Jan. 20. That could mean having a president in office who is subject to ongoing litigation, a potential major distraction for the leader of the free world. There is a pretrial hearing scheduled for May 17 in a case against another celebrity chef, Geoffrey Zakarian, who pulled out of a restaurant project in the Old Post Office as well. Andrés endorsed Democrat Hillary Clinton during the campaign and called on Trump to apologize to Mexicans and every ”person he has insulted.” Zakarian told the Village Voice in November that he nixed the project ”because my buddy Donald, he f***** up. He opened his f****** mouth.” NPR’s Peter Overby wrote in more detail about both cases late last year. Despite Trump’s boasts that he does not settle lawsuits, he has settled several, including a fraud case against Trump University for $25 million. There’s also a question as to whether Trump can hold the lease on the Old Post Office building once he becomes president. He doesn’t own the building but is leasing it from the federal government. The agreement contains a clause that could prove problematic for Trump: ”No member or delegate to Congress, or elected official of the Government of the United States or the Government of the District of Columbia, shall be admitted to any share or part of this Lease or to any benefit that may arise therefrom.”

Donald Trump has suggested he may give his daughter and some roles in his new administration, but a 1967 law makes doing so a lot more complicated. The law bars presidents from hiring relatives to Cabinet or agency jobs, although a federal judge has ruled that it doesn’t apply to White House staff jobs. Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, have played key roles in Trump’s campaign and his transition team and reportedly are preparing to move to a house in the Kalorama section of Washington, D. C. Either or both of them are also said to be considering some sort of White House job, perhaps in an informal or unpaid role. The law was passed by Congress in response to President John F. Kennedy’s decision to appoint his brother Robert as attorney general, says Darrell West, vice president and director of governance studies at the Brookings Institution. ”It was very controversial at the time. Lyndon Johnson in particular did not like that, and when he became president he helped shepherd this law through the U. S. Congress,” West says. Not many presidents have sought to hire relatives since then, so the law hasn’t often been tested. But when President Bill Clinton appointed his wife, first lady Hillary Clinton, to head his health care task force, the move was challenged in court. A federal judge ruled that the law didn’t apply to White House staff jobs, making the appointment legal. The Trump transition team did not respond to a request for comment from NPR, but spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway cited that ruling when she was asked whether Trump would hire his children during an appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe last month. ”The law apparently has an exception if you want to work in the West Wing, because the president is able to appoint his own staff,” Conway said. ”The president does have discretion to choose a staff of his liking.” But just because it might be legal for Trump to hire his own children doesn’t mean it’s good politics, West says. West warned that it could spark a public backlash, much as Kennedy’s appointment of his brother did. ”People might accept the fact that it was legal, but they would not necessarily view it as ethical or wise,” West says. Julian Zelizer, professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University, notes that the statute was one of a series of laws passed in the 1960s and ’70s, at a time of growing mistrust of the presidency. ”We shouldn’t forget why we have these [laws]. It was to try to purify the presidency to a certain respect, or to create more accountability in the people that they appoint,” he says. Americans need to know that presidents are not listening to people just because they’re related to them but because they’re the best people they can find, Zelizer says. Moreover, it can be hard for other staff members to say no to a president’s relatives, Zelizer says. ”And so you create an environment where people might be less willing to take on and challenge someone because they’re related to the president,” he says. Hiring the Trump children would also be complicated because they have played big roles in the Trump family businesses, he adds. ”If you load up the White House with family members, all of whom are working for this business, that problem will certainly not look good to many Americans. And the politics are as important as the law in this issue. How things look, how things appear matter very much,” Zelizer says. For Ivanka Trump and her husband, taking jobs in the White House would also come at some financial cost. Unlike Trump himself, they would almost certainly be subject to federal laws, which would bar them from participating in decisions that would affect their financial interests. That could force them to divest themselves of some of their assets.

Just before dawn Thursday, at Tokyo’s historic Tsukiji market, a familiar face walked away with the biggest fish in town. Kiyoshi Kimura won the first auction of the year at the market, just as he has for six years running. And to the winner go the spoils: a Pacific bluefin tuna, which ultimately cost Kimura 74. 2 million yen — or about $632, 000. That comes out to more than $1, 300 a pound for Kimura, whose Kimura Corp. owns a restaurant chain called Sushi Zanmai. Still, it’s not the record for the seafood market’s annual first bluefin auction. That distinction also belongs to Kimura, who in 2013 bid a staggering 155. 4 million yen — which at that time came out to $1. 76 million. Every year, worldwide media hype attends the year’s opening auction at Tsukiji, which ”handled more than $4 billion in fish and produce in 2014” alone, according to The Wall Street Journal. NBC reports that it is the world’s biggest fish market. But conservation groups protest that attention should be paid to a different, and much darker, reality confronting Pacific bluefin tuna: the species’ dwindling population. ”People should be thinking about that when they see news about the auction,” Jamie Gibbon, officer for global tuna conservation at the Pew Charitable Trusts, tells the Guardian. In July, Pew called for a moratorium on commercial fishing of Pacific bluefin tuna, citing a more than 97 percent drop in population from historic levels. The month before, about a dozen environmental groups petitioned the U. S. National Marine Fisheries Service to list the species as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. Conservationists argue part of the problem is that when fisheries catch Pacific bluefin tuna, they’re mostly catching juveniles who have not yet reached the age of reproduction. That practice has always been around, says the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, but ”more fisheries specifically targeting juveniles started in the 1990s, increasing pressure on the juvenile population.” And even if the species gets an endangered listing in the U. S. as conservationists would wish, it’s not likely to make much of an impact on the species’ population worldwide. That’s because American fishermen don’t comprise a large portion of Pacific bluefin fishing worldwide, as Alistair Bland reported for NPR: ”Of the 37 million pounds of Pacific bluefin caught by fishermen in 2014, American fishermen caught just 2 percent, according to data provided by Michael Milstein, a public affairs officer with NOAA Fisheries. (Japan took about half and Mexico almost 30 percent. )” The Guardian estimates that Japan consumes 80 percent of the global bluefin catch. For now, the only major change looming for the Tokyo market’s annual New Year auction is its location: The city had planned to move the historic market to a new location to make way for a highway planned for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics — but the market was granted a reprieve when concerns were raised about soil contamination at the new site, which used to be home to a gas plant. The Tokyo government expects to have a clearer idea on the safety of the new site this year.

Last year, NPR’s Ari Shapiro visited Toledo, Ohio, to talk to refugees settling there from Syria’s civil war. Recently, he returned to Toledo to check in on the community. Mohammed Al Refaai is a butcher who fled Syria. He lives in Toledo, Ohio, with three other guys, who are also in their 20s, who decided they wouldn’t mind having a refugee for a roommate. In the year and a half since he moved in, he has learned English from the Americans including the lyrics to some Top 40 hits. In return, he taught them some of his favorite Arabic pop tunes. They generally avoid talking about more difficult things. But his roommates — Doug Walton, Andrew Trumbull and Johnny Zellers — made an exception during our recent visit to Toledo. While Refaai was at work, they talked about politics and whether he will ever be reunited with his family. ”Moh,” as they call him, won’t really talk about these things, Walton says. ”This is by far the most depth we’ve ever gone into it, and if Moh was here, we probably wouldn’t, because he doesn’t like the topic,” Walton says. Refaai’s story is atypical. He was the only one of his family allowed into the United States as a refugee. His siblings and parents are still in Jordan, waiting for approvals. They’ve been there since the family fled Syria in 2011. Refaai is now trying to get a Green Card so if they can’t come to the U. S. he can at least go visit them. The recent presidential election hit especially — and literally — close to home, Zellers says. ”We actually got a flier from Trump, and it had . .. three big issues,” he says. ”The third one was ’Stop the influx of dangerous refugees from Syria’ — as . .. the biggest bullet point. I was like, ’No, we want more of ’em. . .. We have one, I have one in my house right now. . .. I can go say hi to him!’ ” The guys in this house lean conservative. They all take their Christian faith seriously. None of them voted for Trump it was a mix of Clinton and votes. They didn’t even know who voted for whom until we all started talking about it. ”It is weird to have a vote in a situation that felt like we were voting for people who were helpless. Usually we vote on jobs or whatever, and so for me, I’m like, that’s not a big deal. I find a job. I’ll make things work, whoever gets elected — they’re not going to change things that drastically,” Trumbull says. The guys don’t own a TV, so on election night, they all went into Walton’s room and huddled around their phones with Refaai to watch the results come in. ”So we were all kind of together just like kind of hugging him and just kind of watching it all go down,” Walton says. ”He definitely kind of got sad a little bit just thinking of like, OK, maybe his family may not be able to like ever come here,” Zellers says. ”That’s like the biggest hope that he’s had like this past year. . .. Now Trump elected it’s like, oh, those chances go down like a lot.” An ”unusual” situation, Refaii is a butcher at a new Middle Eastern supermarket and restaurant in Toledo. When we met him a little over a year ago, he barely spoke any English. He had learned the terms that a butcher uses every day — chicken legs, chicken breast, steak, lamb — and that was about it. Today he looks confident. He doesn’t use an interpreter when he talks to us. He video chats with his family in Jordan about once a week. He shows them the snow on the ground in Ohio, and they tell him how proud they are that he’s learning English and working. ”I like it they come here, but I don’t know how. I need they be safe and close to me, my family, but I can’t do anything,” he says. ”I feel bad for they not with me, but I can’t do anything for help him.” We asked the State Department about Refaai’s situation. Just like a year ago, they told us they don’t comment on specific cases. But veterans of refugee work say his situation is not normal. ”This situation you’ve described is very unusual,” says Eric Schwartz, who ran the State Department’s refugee resettlement program earlier in the Obama administration. He’s now a dean at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs. He says once you’re over 21 like Refaai, your case is considered on its own. But even then, grown children are rarely separated from their parents and siblings. ”And it would be very unusual for them not to be departing and coming to the United States together,” he says. It might have just been an oversight. Schwartz says an immigration lawyer might be able to sort out what happened — but Refaai and his family don’t have one. [Editor’s note on Jan. 9: After this story was broadcast and published, Schwartz contacted NPR to note that hiring a lawyer is not required and that refugee advocacy organizations often make case inquiries with the Department of State at no cost to the refugees themselves.] ”This is a program that involves so many tens of thousands of individuals that sometimes mistakes or problems do arise, and the way they get fixed is somebody asks about them and somebody presses them,” he says. Refaai fears that his window is closing as the days tick down to Trump’s inauguration. The office that issues Green Cards has told him to stop calling, and that has changed the way the other guys in this house think about their future. ”Before it’s just like ’Oh, Moh is here, his family will come and then I’m like, well, I’ll move on with our lives — we’ll all move away or get different jobs or, I don’t know, and then Moh will have his family. But now it’s like his family may never come,” Zellers says. Walton says Refaai won’t talk about that. ”He doesn’t even want to acknowledge that could happen because thinking about this family being broken up, that like leaves him lost in a sea in a way,” Walton says. ”But we don’t know what’s going to happen. So I don’t know what’s going to be asked of me as his brother, but I guess I’m just more aware that he may have more need for support than even he does now.”

Unexplained, short radio bursts from outer space have puzzled scientists since they were first detected nearly a decade ago. The elusive flashes — known as fast radio bursts, or FRBs — are extremely powerful and last only a few milliseconds. The way their frequencies are dispersed suggests they traveled from far outside our galaxy. About 18 have been detected to date. They’ve been called the ”most perplexing mystery in astronomy.” Scientists are still grappling with why these bursts happen. But researchers have now pinpointed the source of one series of the FRBs — to a dwarf galaxy billions of away from Earth. And locating the source of the mystery bursts could hold clues to what is causing them, according to Shami Chatterjee, an astrophysicist at Cornell University. He’s the lead author in a paper recently published in Nature. Let’s talk quickly about one burning question: Could the source be aliens? Probably not, Chatterjee tells The . ”Never say never, but we don’t think so. We can view this with physics that we know and understand.” explanations involve a neutron star or an active galactic nucleus, though there are a slew of possibilities, he says. The story of this particular burst, called FRB 121102, took a wild turn when scientists found that its signal repeated. This immediately eliminated a number of theories about why it was happening — for example, it couldn’t be two neutron stars colliding. ”Because we know right away that it can’t be explosive. Whatever it is, has to survive this radio flash,” Chatterjee adds. The equipment used to detect FRBs is able to see only a tiny patch of the sky at any moment. The discovery that FRB 121102 repeated suggested that it was a good direction to point the detection equipment. ”If you go fishing in this spot in the sky, you might be more likely to get lucky than in other random spots in the sky,” Chatterjee says. In 2015, the team began using an interferometer — in this case, a network of 27 radio dishes called the Very Large Array that’s in New Mexico — which is capable of much higher resolution detection than other readings. ”It was a pretty intensive observational and computational challenge,” Chatterjee says. The interferometer captured data at 200 frames per second from this patch of sky, he says, resulting in a terabyte of data every hour that put a major strain on archival and computational resources. During the first 10 hours of recording this sliver of sky, they found nothing. They recorded 40 more hours — again, no bursts. Frustrated, the team also enlisted the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. This time, they got lucky. They captured nine radio images of bursts, allowing them to ”pin it down to an absolutely tiny patch of the sky” for the first time. In that patch of the constellation Auriga lies a dwarf galaxy a fraction of the size of our own, Chatterjee says, some 2. 5 to 3 billion away. It’s worth noting that the sheer distance of the flashes’ origin makes ”catching it in the act” very relative, since the event that caused it happened billions of years ago. So what was that event? Chatterjee says there are many theories. It could be originating from an active galactic nucleus, which emits FRBs as blobs of plasma drift into its jets and are vaporized. Or it could be originating from a newborn magnetar — a neutron star with an extremely strong magnetic field — that is ”emitting these giant pulses as it spins.” It also could be the interaction between a magnetar and a black hole, or many other possibilities, he adds. A crucial question now, Chatterjee says, is whether all FRBs repeat like this one, or whether there are types that don’t repeat. ”They’re probably the same thing and we haven’t been lucky enough to observe the other ones repeating,” he says. ”But if not, hey, great, nature’s given us two fantastic mysteries instead of one fantastic mystery.”

There’s a new narrative solidifying in Washington: Donald Trump distrusts the U. S. intelligence community because it’s been sounding the alarm on Russia’s interference in the November election. In turn, this feeds a growing sense of dread among U. S. intelligence professionals that the and his inner circle will ignore or undermine the intelligence community at every opportunity. The intelligence community certainly has reason to be concerned. Trump’s goal to slash and restructure the CIA and Office of the Director of National Intelligence was reported by the Wall Street Journal Wednesday, the same day the raised doubts about U. S. intelligence in a tweet citing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. A day earlier, Trump elicited alarm after he tweeted disparagingly about a classified briefing he is due to receive this week. But it’s doubtful there will be a major conflagration between the president and the national security bureaucracy during the Trump administration. The intelligence community is likely to back down from a major conflict with its boss, the president, and its overseers, Congress — because the disincentives to upset one’s superiors are so numerous and ingrained. This is not the first time the intelligence community in general, or the CIA in particular, has faced scorn — or worse — from a president or . Richard Nixon famously disliked the CIA and was skeptical of its analysis. Nixon once told his Director of Central Intelligence James Schlesinger, ”Get rid of the clowns. What use are they? They’ve got 40, 000 people over there reading newspapers.” Within three months, Schlesinger pushed out 10 percent of the workforce. Following the Church Committee investigation of the CIA for spying on War activists, President Jimmy Carter’s fellow U. S. Naval Academy classmate, Adm. Stansfield Turner, dismissed hundreds of agency employees in a mass firing dubbed the ”Halloween Massacre” of 1979. (Turner later reflected in his memoir, ”In retrospect, I probably should not have effected the reductions of 820 positions at all, and certainly not the last 17. ”) Yet the agency survived to fight another day. The intelligence community has traditionally served as a convenient scapegoat when policymakers’ decisions go south. There’s an old saw in Washington: In this town, there are only two possibilities: policy success and intelligence failure. We think of the Iraq WMD debacle primarily as an intelligence failure. And Trump’s communications staff certainly thinks so, as it resurrected the issue to dismiss a Dec. 9 Washington Post report that the CIA had assessed that Russia was trying to help Trump win the White House. ”These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,” the Trump statement said. But remember, it was a policymaker’s decision to actually go to war in Iraq. So the intelligence community has played this role of whipping boy before and will very likely continue to play it in the Trump administration. And there probably won’t be a showdown. People will grumble, but will go back to work. Most intelligence collection and analysis is a job as potentially interesting or humdrum as anyone else’s. Despite the classified nature of the ”industry,” people still collect data, type on computers, fill out forms and try to make sense of the world around them. One can often forget that the intelligence community is made up of professionals who lead regular lives. Sure, they hold clearances, but they have mortgages and car payments, lawns to mow, children to take care of, vacations to plan. They are civil servants with a secure, American lifestyle that would be jeopardized if they quit their jobs. That said, there may be some who could try to undermine Trump by leaking embarrassing documents and committing criminal acts in the process. Certainly in an industry where millions of people hold security clearances, there will be some who could try unilaterally to take action (how’s January in Russia, Edward Snowden?) to effect change or cause disruption. A few people might also just quit in protest. But those willing to do this to stick it to the president are few and far between. Most people will not throw away their life’s work. Still, there’s a large exception that may arise if the president asks the intelligence community to do something that is illegal and immoral — say, commit obvious war crimes. On the campaign trail, Trump claimed that ”torture works” and said he favored tactics like killing the families of terrorists. He later appeared to on torture after discussing it with his defense secretary nominee, Gen. James Mattis. But if he changed his mind again, it would, of course, be members of the military or the intelligence community who would carry out these deeds. And in such a case, all bets are off. Treat the intelligence community badly — well, that’s par for the course. But if the events of the last 15 years have taught this generation of intelligence professionals anything, it’s that one’s sacred honor might be sacrificed for reasons beyond one’s control. Assuming there is no conflagration between the new president and the intelligence community, a slow degrading of our intelligence capacity during a time of unprecedented global challenges may be a more likely — and worse — outcome. The director of national intelligence, James Clapper, recently noted that right now, America is ”facing the most complex and diverse array of global threats that I’ve seen in my 53 years or so in the intel business.” Perhaps otherwise motivated intelligence officers with specialized skills will redirect their energies into other careers if they disagree with the direction of a Trump administration. The CIA publicly acknowledged in 2015 that it continues to struggle, despite numerous years of trying, to recruit and retain minority officers. If there’s, say, real or sentiment sweeping through the intelligence community because of the words and deeds of senior leadership, talented people will vote with their feet, ultimately damaging our national security. So does this all end with a bang or a whimper? Or not at all? Clapper is confident, because of the intelligence community’s mission and professionalism, that it will be a ”pillar of stability” during the presidential transition. We’ll find out when the first national security crisis occurs under Trump’s watch. And if the past is any indication, a crisis (or two or three) will explode soon after he takes the oath of office. Aki Peritz is a former CIA analyst and of Find, Fix, Finish: Inside the Counterterrorism Campaigns that Killed bin Laden and Devastated Al Qaeda. Follow him on Twitter @AkiPeritz

Donald Trump continues to dispute the consensus of U. S. intelligence agencies that Russia used computer hacking to interfere in the 2016 elections. He does so even though other Republican leaders and analysts perceive a serious cyberattack that demands retaliation. If he persists in this posture, Trump may wish to rely on the precedent of previous presidents who entered the White House at odds with their own parties over a major issue in foreign relations. But can he find one? That’s a tough question. In recent decades, presidents have come to the Oval Office in something very much like lockstep with their parties regarding relations with Russia and other familiar adversaries. Presidents whose parties had their backs, Ronald Reagan, the predecessor Trump likes to cite as a model, came to office largely on a vow to get tough with Russia — then still the Soviet Union and making aggressive moves on several fronts (1981). In this stance, Reagan had the overwhelming support of his own party and from many Democrats as well. In fact, Reagan’s predecessor, Democrat Jimmy Carter, had canceled U. S. participation in the 1980 Olympics in Moscow to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Reagan’s successor, George H. W. Bush, in 1989 continued the pressure on the Soviets and was in office to see that regime replaced by a semblance of democracy in Russia. His term included the fall of the Berlin Wall and other symbols of what was long called ”the Red Menace.” The first President Bush did go to war, however, after Iraq invaded its neighbor Kuwait in 1990. But he had the backing of Congress, including nearly all of his own party and many Democrats as well. Foreign policy was not a big priority for President Bill Clinton, either as a candidate in 1992 or as a president, but he had the backing of his Democratic troops when issues did arise, including the brief Kosovo War in the Balkans in 1999. George W. Bush took the oath in 2001 at a time when foreign policy was on a back burner in Washington. The terror attacks of that September changed all that, and Bush had the backing of both his own Republicans and most Democrats in sending troops to attack in Afghanistan. Republicans were also strongly behind Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq, as were some (but by no means all) Democrats. After those wars had become quagmires, Barack Obama arrived in 2009 with a promise to recalibrate the ”War on Terror,” especially by winding down the U. S. presence in Iraq. His party was very much on board for this, although some differences on the details emerged over time. His desire for a ”reset” with Russia reflected the desire of Democrats generally to lessen global tensions and concentrate on domestic issues. A common enemy, Finding a precedent for Trump’s party schism does not get any easier looking at the decades right after World War II. Although the Soviets were a major U. S. ally in that conflict, tensions began immediately over the postwar map of Europe and the Soviets’ intensive covert campaign to steal secrets for a nuclear weapon. The tensions came to be known as the Cold War, and extended soon to the Communist regime that took over China in the late 1940s. In the presidential politics of the Cold War era, candidates in both major parties vied to be the most outspoken in their . Republican Dwight Eisenhower was elected in 1952 vowing to ”go to Korea” to meet and defeat communist aggression there his former running mate Richard Nixon won in 1968 while uniting his party around his ”secret plan” to end the war in Vietnam. Both had solid backing from Republicans across the board. Democrat John F. Kennedy rallied his partisans in 1960 to close ”the missile gap” he said we had with the Soviets, and his former vice president, Lyndon Johnson, campaigned on his determination to stop communism in Southeast Asia in 1964 (after Congress, dominated by Democrats, gave him carte blanche to do so). Returning to the era between the first and second world wars, it is difficult to find much daylight between a newly elected president and his party on a foreign policy issue. Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover had few real disagreements with their Republican backers. Like them, Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected with a unified party preoccupied with the economy and social issues. In fact, if you plow your way through the rest of American history, you will be to find presidents preparing their first inaugural addresses while engaging in a highly public dispute with their own party over the behavior of a foreign adversary. As a rule, international affairs have mattered to a new president when a foreign threat — real or perceived — has united that president’s party in support. No one expects a to agree with his own party’s leaders on every issue. It would be especially surprising if that were the case with Trump, who entered the contest for the Republican nomination as an outsider and conducted his campaign largely on personal terms. Nonetheless, Trump and the GOP adapted to each other with notable success in the endgame of the 2016. Former rivals such as Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, and leaders who had refused to stump with Trump (including Ryan) expressed their intention to vote for him. In the end, even most of the GOP voters who had reservations about Trump came home on Election Day and voted a party ticket. They did it knowing there would be disagreements down the road. But they might not have expected them to come before the new president had even been sworn in.

The halls of the Kiambu County Hospital just outside Nairobi are empty. This is normally a bustling place but on Thursday entire wings are closed. Only in the emergency room are there a scattering of patients. Moms with babies sit languidly on metal chairs. Men with broken bones and some with serious injuries are just hoping to be treated. But they probably won’t be seen by doctors. A doctor’s strike that began last month in Kenya has now entered its second month. Physicians at public hospitals want more money and better medical equipment, but the government says it can’t afford to meet their demands. The strike has left millions of Kenyans without proper health care and has also overwhelmed some of the country’s private hospitals. The nurses at the public hospitals are not on strike, so they’re doing whatever they can. They’re the ones running the ER. But a patient who needs complicated care and can’t afford a private hospital is out of luck. The only doctor I found at the Kiambu hospital is David Kariuki, who is on strike but showed up to perform his administrative duties. ”The current strike is about better working conditions for doctors, especially those within the public health sector,” he said. A doctor right out of school in Kenya makes about $10, 000 a year in the public health system. To earn more money, many of them are lured abroad or into the private hospitals that many Kenyans can’t afford. That means, Kariuki said, that ”the public health care system continues to be strained, because you have fewer doctors to see a growing population, so everyone would get overworked” and more stressed out. And it’s not like there were a lot of doctors on duty before the strike: 5, 000 physicians in the public sector serve a population of nearly 50 million. In the emergency room, I find Masa Mawili, who came to the hospital because of his foot. It was so swollen that it hardly fit in his sandal, and the swelling extended all the way to his calf. He doesn’t know what caused the swelling. He said he had already seen the nurses but they couldn’t tell him what was wrong with his foot. So he sat and waited hours in the hope that a doctor would show up — some of them have been working despite the strike. On Wednesday, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta met with the Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union for hours. Late at night, his government put out an offer: Some doctors would get a more than 100 percent raise, others significantly less. The doctors are supposed to respond by Friday, but they seem determined to hold out for the 300 percent raise that the government agreed to in a 2013 collective bargaining agreement but has since walked away from. But it’s not just about the money. ”The CBA [collective bargaining agreement] once signed will make sure more doctors are trained to improve on service delivery,” the union tweeted. At the hospital I visited, some patients sided with the doctors but others took the government’s side. Paul Kagiri, whose son was given the OK to go to college after a physical at the hospital, said that what the doctors are asking for is ”very, very, very high.” The government can’t afford to pay them. And there are reports of people who sought help at public hospitals and ended up dying. Right now, he said, it’s time to think about the wanjiku — the ordinary people. ”Only the wanjiku right now is suffering a lot,” Kagiri said. ”And instead of wanjiku suffering why [don’t the doctors give back to the public?”

The vaquita is a small porpoise found only in the northern Gulf of California, in Mexico. Today, the species is critically endangered, with less than 60 animals left in the wild, thanks to fishing nets to catch fish and shrimp for sale in Mexico and America. The animal is an accidental victim of the fishing industry, as are many other marine mammals. But a new rule that takes effect this week seeks to protect marine mammals from becoming bycatch. The rule requires foreign fisheries exporting seafood to the U. S. to ensure that they don’t hurt or kill marine mammals. If U. S. authorities determine that a certain foreign fishery is harming these mammals, the fishery will be required to take stock of the marine mammal populations in places where they fish, and find ways to reduce their bycatch. That could involve not fishing in areas with high numbers of marine mammals. Fisheries will also have to report cases when they do end up hurting mammals. This is what American fisheries are already required to do under the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA). Up to 90 percent of seafood eaten in the U. S. is imported, most of it shrimp, freshwater fish, tuna, and salmon. The goal of the new rule is to ensure that seafood coming into the country didn’t harm or kill marine mammals. But can this new rule protect the vaquita? Zak Smith, a senior attorney with the Marine Mammal Protection Project at the Natural Resources Defense Council, thinks so. The vaquita is kind of a poster child for what happens when you don’t have this law in place,” he says. To understand the potential impact of the rule, Smith says, we should consider the laws that saved dolphins from tuna fisheries. For decades, dolphins — which swim with schools of tuna — were accidentally (and sometimes deliberately) killed by tuna fisheries. According to NOAA, over six million dolphins have been killed since the beginning of tuna fishery. Enacted in 1972, the MMPA required tuna fisheries to take measures to stop harming dolphins. Then, in the 1980s, the act was amended to ban the import of tuna from foreign fisheries that harmed dolphins. In 1990, the U. S. passed another legislation — the Dolphin Protection Consumer Information Act — that spelled out requirements for ” ” labeling on all tuna sold in America. Smith says these laws have helped reduce dolphin deaths. But the new rule goes even further, he says, because it applies to all kinds of seafood and all marine mammals, not just tuna and dolphins. As an American consumer, ”I’ll know that anything I purchase in the U. S. met U. S. standards,” he says. A 2014 analysis from the NRDC estimated that hundreds of thousands of marine mammals are injured or killed every year by fisheries around the world. The U. S. government’s independent Marine Mammal Commission says unintentional encounters with fishing gear represent ”the greatest direct cause of marine mammal injury and death in the United States and around the world.” So the new rule could help protect many marine mammals worldwide, says John Henderschedt, the director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Fisheries Office of International Affairs. He says in some fisheries around the world, fishermen use nets that whales and dolphins easily get caught in. And some fishermen won’t take the time to make sure entangled marine mammals are released safely, he says. He adds that for some fisheries, the new rule will make them take stock of their marine mammal populations, and think about how to protect those animals for the very first time. The new rule is good for American fisheries too, says Ryan Steen, a lawyer representing the Hawaii Longline Association. ”If U. S. fisheries are going to be subject to the standards that are set by the [Marine Mammal Protection Act] then I think it’s only fair that their foreign competitors would also be subject to the same standards if they’re delivering fish into U. S. markets,” he says. ”It’s the fair thing to do and it’s the right thing to do.” But implementing the new rule could be tricky, cautions Linda Fernandez, an environmental economist at Virginia Commonwealth University. For example, the World Trade Organization could object to any bans on imports from a seafood exporter, she says. Fernandez says the push for tuna holds a good lesson in this. In 1990, the U. S. banned tuna imports from Mexico because Mexican tuna fisheries didn’t meet American standards for protecting dolphins. The decision upset Mexico and it complained to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) the predecessor of the World Trade organization. A GATT panel concluded that the U. S. was wrong to embargo Mexico imports simply because it didn’t like the way the tuna was harvested. ”In that case, the U. S. was unfairly treating trade partners based on how . ..they harvested the product,” Fernandez says. What the U. S. could do without violating international trade agreements, was label tuna as either ” ” or not. It gave seafood exporters an incentive to get a ” ” label, she says. Judging from this history, she says, the WTO will be fine with a labeling system (which the new rule doesn’t require) but it probably won’t be fine with an embargo, which could happen under the new rule. Cost is also a big concern in implementing the rule, according to Lekelia Jenkins, a marine conservation expert at Arizona State University and a former NOAA employee. Jenkins says her number one concern is how much money NOAA will have to enforce it. ”We can write laws as much as we want,” she says. ”It does not mean that there will be appropriations to fund those laws. Rob Williams, a marine conservation fellow at the Pew Charitable Trusts, says the amount of resources that the U. S. invests will determine the effectiveness of the new rule. Some resources, he says, should be used to help other countries implement U. S. conservation measures. He says it took the U. S. 40 years to refine these measures. ”We should be exporting those lessons learned so that other countries don’t have to take 40 years to learn,” he says. Otherwise, he says, ”countries presumably will just find other markets for their seafood.”

Citing local regulations, Apple has removed The New York Times news app from its app store in China. The incident is the latest in the long history of media restrictions in the country, but also in the ongoing pattern of tech companies getting involved in the efforts. The New York Times reports that Apple removed both its and apps from the app store in China on Dec. 23, though other prominent publications such as The Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times as well as the Times’ crossword puzzle and apps remain available. Along with other websites, the Times has faced restrictions for years. The site has been subject of blocks since 2012, when the newspaper reported on the wealth amassed by the family of the minister. Apple did not explain Thursday what distinguished the Times from other outlets. Spokesman Fred Sainz shared a statement: ”For some time now the New York Times app has not been permitted to display content to most users in China and we have been informed that the app is in violation of local regulations. As a result, the app must be taken down off the China App Store. When this situation changes, the App Store will once again offer the New York Times app for download in China.” Sainz did not elaborate on what legal standard was applied to warrant the removal of the news app, but the Times suggested it was under 2016 regulations issued for mobile apps: ”The regulations say apps cannot ’engage in activities prohibited by laws and regulations such as endangering national security, disrupting social order and violating the legitimate rights and interests of others.’ The cyberspace administration says on its website that apps also cannot publish ’prohibited information.” Over the years, numerous publications have faced blackouts in China, including Bloomberg, Time and The Economist. Users in China sometimes use software to circumvent the government’s firewall to surf the Web and access blocked sites. For tech companies, China is a massive, lucrative market and a major manufacturing hub, but operations there are tricky. Sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Google have been restricted. Apple’s own iBooks and iTunes Movies were blocked, as well, not long after they were introduced. For Apple, China is a key production location and sales market. But iPhone sales have slumped there in recent years. In May, Apple invested $1 billion in Chinese app Didi Chuxing. The company has, in the past, removed other media apps from its App Store, but none as prominent as The Times, according to the newspaper. And it’s far from the first time that a tech company cooperated with the Chinese government to suppress content, as the industry generally complies with local regulations around the world. In 2016, The New York Times reported that Facebook quietly developed software that could prevent posts from appearing in people’s news feeds in specific parts of China, going further than the typical practice by U. S. Internet companies to block certain content after it’s posted. The newspaper also reported, just last month, on ”a hidden bounty of perks, tax breaks and subsidies in China that supports the world’s biggest iPhone factory” — billions of dollars’ worth of incentives at the heart of Apple’s phone production. In 2014, the radio program Marketplace reported on LinkedIn censoring posts from its members that were deemed sensitive by China’s government. In 2010, Google altered how users in China could access the site as it faced possible loss of license to operate in the country. Perhaps the most notorious case dates back to early 2000s, when Chinese authorities arrested and imprisoned dissidents, including a Chinese journalist, based on evidence provided by Yahoo. Yahoo settled a lawsuit by the dissidents’ families in 2007. In 2005, Yahoo bought what later became its most valuable asset: a stake in a Chinese site Alibaba.

A comparison of kid brains and grownup brains may explain why our ability to recognize faces keeps getting better until about age 30. Brain scans of 25 adults and 22 children showed that an area devoted to facial recognition keeps growing long after adolescence, researchers report in the journal Science. The area didn’t acquire more neurons, says Jesse Gomez, a graduate student in neurosciences at Stanford University and the study’s lead author. Instead the brain region became more densely populated with the structures that connect and support neurons. ”You can imagine a by garden, and it has some number of flowers in there,” Gomez says. ”The number of flowers isn’t changing, but their stems and branches and leaves are getting more complex.” To see whether that sort of change occurred elsewhere in the brain, the researchers also looked at a nearby area that responds to places, instead of faces. In this area, there was no difference between children and adults. The results suggest that brain development is more varied than researchers once thought. For years, scientists have focused on a process known as synaptic pruning, which shapes the brain by eliminating unused connections among neurons. Most synaptic pruning takes place in the first few years of life. ”After age 3, the textbooks are pretty silent about what’s going on in the brain,” Gomez says. The continuing growth in facial recognition areas may be a response to the need to recognize more and more faces as children grow older, says Kalanit a professor in the psychology department at Stanford. ”When you’re a young child, you need to recognize your family and a handful of friends,” she says. ”But by the time you’ve reached high school or college your social group has expanded to hundreds or even thousands of people.” And recognizing all those people requires a lot of brain power, says, because ”all faces have the same features and the same configuration.” Ongoing changes in the brain may also help children focus on different sorts of faces at different stages of development, says Suzy Scherf, an assistant professor of psychology at Penn State University. ”Children’s face recognition early on is very much tuned to adult faces,” Scherf says. ”In adolescence it changes to be highly tuned toward adolescent faces.” Understanding how facial recognition develops throughout childhood could make it easier to figure out why some people have difficulty recognizing faces, researchers say. Gomez hopes to scan the brains of people with ”face blindness,” a disorder that can leave a person unable to recognize even familiar faces. And Scherf wants to know whether people with autism, who often struggle to recognize faces, have abnormal development in the facial recognition area of their brains.

Director Damien Chazelle’s La La Land is an unapologetic musical that hearkens back to Hollywood’s glory days of song and dance. The passion and grandeur of the musical numbers might make you believe that Chazelle had always imagined himself working in the genre, but he tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that’s not the case. ”It wasn’t until I actually started making experimental films and, ironically, documentaries in college that I think my eyes got or awakened, to . .. old classic Hollywood musicals,” Chazelle says. ”There was something about them that felt like, ’Oh my God, here is an experimental movie in mainstream packaging.’ ” La La Land is a love story set in the present day, but the influence of old Hollywood and musicals of the past is all around. The film features Emma Stone as an aspiring actress and Ryan Gosling as a jazz pianist, both of whom are struggling to reconcile their showbiz dreams with reality. Chazelle says that the film’s song and dance numbers provide the audience with an insight into the characters that is often missing in film. ”In a weird way, movies are kind of limited by what you see in front of the camera,” he says. ”Musicals find this wonderful way around that, because the songs are . .. an expression of inner feelings that can’t be articulated any other way.” On what musicals do that can’t, There’s something so brash and defiant and almost about the idea of just breaking the normal rules of normal reality. Movies have kind of been engineered over the century to somewhat reflect reality usually, even if it’s a fantasy or something. There’s some kind of an assumption that things are going to follow a certain order, and musicals just break that. They break it in the name of emotion. That, I think, was a really powerful, beautiful idea to me, that if you feel enough you break into song. On the film’s opening number, which is set in a freeway traffic jam We’re on this kind of elevated freeway ramp that’s in utter gridlock and . .. one by one characters start to kind of join in this collective number. The idea was to go from [an] individual car radio . .. and all these individual sounds build in and sort of layer into this one collective song that eventually explodes into joyful unison singing and dancing before all the drivers return to their cars. The idea was to sort of introduce the world and, I think even more importantly, begin the musical with as a scene as we could possibly imagine — really try to announce our intentions right off the bat with a bang. One thing that I think that has kind of been lost a little bit is the idea of choreographing dance for the camera. That to me was the beautiful thing about old Hollywood musicals from Fred [Astaire] and Ginger [Rogers] through the Gene Donen pictures, to something like Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. . .. There’s a wonderful barn dance set piece in the middle of that movie, which was a big reference for this. . .. It’s all about how the dance looks in relation to a single camera, not ”let’s do the dance like a live event and just film it with 15 cameras and then we’ll find it in the editing room.” So that long take aesthetic was there right from the beginning. And my choreographer, Mandy Moore, had to choreograph with that in mind, and the DP [director of photography] Linus Sandgren, had to kind of be involved in that choreography. So it was really the three of us and this troupe of dancers that Mandy and I brought together rehearsing, rehearsing, rehearsing for months. And often very theoretically, because the other problem with shooting on a freeway ramp is that you can’t really rehearse onsite very easily. And so we were able to find this elevated ramp that the city would let us shut down for a Saturday and a Sunday to shoot. On wanting to appeal to musical skeptics, You hear a lot, especially when you’re making a musical today, how much distaste for musicals exists in the world and how many skeptics there are, so . .. it was important to me to reach out to the skeptics, to have this movie not just play for a little coterie of musical of which I would include myself. . .. There is that kind of needle scratch sometimes — you can even feel it in a theater when a song begins and it hasn’t been quite properly set up. So I always thought of the analogy of the frog in boiling water and the idea that if you drop the frog right away in boiling water it feels it and jumps out, but if you put a frog in room temperature water and then slowly boil it over the course of however long, it won’t realize that it’s boiling and it’ll just sit there and die. So I kind of wanted to put the audience through — this will sound morbid — but through the same sort of process where they kind of don’t even necessarily realize as it’s happening that they’re being sucked into a musical. On making Whiplash (a film about a musician who attends a music conservatory) based on his own experience as a jazz drummer At the point that I wrote Whiplash I had been paying the bills in L. A. mainly by writing genre pictures and sort of doing rewrites on horror movies and sequels and stuff that was very not personal to me. I was just trying to make a living. . .. Whiplash in some ways was the most autobiographical thing that I had written up to that point. . .. There was a phase in my life, it was mainly high school into college, where music and specifically jazz drumming, as you see in Whiplash, was everything for me. It had a lot to do with a very intensive jazz program at my high school that I was a part of, and a very demanding teacher, and certain emotions I felt as a young player where the kind of enjoyment and appreciation of the art of music was inextricably wrapped up in fear and dread and anxiety about getting something wrong. . .. I sort of thought . .. maybe I could kind of write those experiences as though it were a genre film, as though it were a thriller or a kind of war movie or a sports film, something where you expect to see a lot of physical violence and try to sublimate that violence into emotional violence, into the music and into the style. On what Whiplash and La La Land have in common, When I think about when I was writing Whiplash, a lot of what I was grappling with as well is how do you become whatever you’re supposed to become? I guess that’s there in La La Land, too. . .. You don’t know for sure whether you actually ”have what it takes,” and also you don’t know if that whole idea of having what it takes — is that actually its own kind of nonsense? Is talent even really a thing? Is it actually just the best musicians are the musicians that work the hardest? Or the musicians who listened the most? Or the musicians who are lucky enough to be at a certain place at a certain time and what we think of as a meritocracy is actually not? . .. I think all those questions were swirling around my head and are still, I think, to a certain extent.

After multiple recent studies showing that feeding foods to infants can reduce the risk of peanut allergies, there are new federal guidelines for parents about when to start feeding their infants such foods. The National Institutes of Health announced Thursday that a panel of allergy experts recommends that parents introduce foods into the diets of babies as young as 4 to 6 months. As the NIH summary for parents and caregivers states, introducing babies with severe eczema or egg allergy — conditions that increase the risk of peanut allergy — to foods containing peanuts at that age can reduce the risk of developing peanut allergy. However, the guidelines spell out that these infants should be evaluated by an allergy specialist before their parents or caregivers introduce them to peanuts. For infants without the risk factors of eczema or known food allergies, parents can stick to whatever diet they prefer. As NPR’s Allison Aubrey reports, ”parents of infants used to be told to hold off on introducing foods, sometimes until the toddler years, especially if there was a family history of allergies.” Experts thought this could reduce the chances of developing an allergy. But over the past few years, Allison says, several large studies such as this one and this one ”have found that babies at high risk for becoming allergic to peanuts are less likely to develop the allergy if they are regularly fed foods in the first year of life.” As NPR’s Patti Neighmond has reported: ”The guidelines are largely based on dramatic findings from a large study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2015. Researchers found that babies at high risk of developing a peanut allergy who were fed the equivalent of about 4 heaping teaspoons of peanut butter each week, starting at the age of 4 to 11 months, were about 80 percent less likely to develop an allergy to the legume by age 5 than similar kids who avoided peanuts. The benefit held up even after the children stopped getting the puree, a study found. ”Allergic reactions to peanuts can range from hives or rashes to, in the most extreme cases, trouble breathing and even death.” The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has published the full text of the guidelines for the prevention of peanut allergies, as well as summaries for doctors and parents, on its website. Infants and small children should never be given whole peanuts due to the risk of choking, the NIH cautions. A video aimed at parents warns that even undiluted peanut butter can be dangerous for infants because it is thick and sticky. The American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology video, which features Northwestern University pediatrician Ruchi S. Gupta, recommends adding hot water to 2 teaspoons of peanut butter to make a warm puree. Feed a little bit of the puree to the child, and then monitor for about 10 minutes to make sure there is no reaction such as hives, rash or trouble breathing before continuing to feed the child foods.

As President Obama’s tenure in the White House draws to a close, he’s looking back on eight years of work — and ahead toward what he sees as a brighter future for the U. S. In a letter to the American public, Obama says he’s proud that the country is ”stronger and more prosperous” than it was eight years ago — and hopeful that the country will build on the progress he sees. The letter is paired with a set of ”Cabinet Exit Memos” — Cabinet members wrote about the work their teams have done, and the work they see that remains for the next administration. The secretary of the interior says new parks and public lands tell a more inclusive story of America the secretary of agriculture highlights a drop in rural unemployment the secretary of Veterans Affairs points out, as an aside, that the VA is still providing benefits to the child of a Union soldier — from the Civil War. Obama, for his part, begins with a summary of the woes the U. S. faced at the beginning of 2009, in the midst of a financial crisis and two wars. He describes economic growth, an increase in health insurance coverage, a boost in renewable energy production and troop drawdowns in Iraq and Afghanistan, among other things. He describes the state of the country today as ”a situation I’m proud to leave to my successor,” whom he never names. ”And it’s thanks to you,” Obama writes to the American people, ”to the hard work you’ve put in the sacrifices you’ve made for your families and communities the way you’ve looked out for one another.” He says that ”change is never easy, and never quick,” and that he wishes he’d been able to enact gun safety measures and immigration reform. ”We still have more work to do for every American still in need of a good job or a raise, paid leave or a dignified retirement,” he said. ”What won’t help is taking health care away from 30 million Americans, most of them white and working class denying overtime pay to workers, most of whom have more than earned it or privatizing Medicare and Social Security and letting Wall Street regulate itself again — none of which Americans voted for.” Obama concluded: ”We will have to move forward as we always have — together. As a people who believe that out of many, we are one that we are bound not by any one race or religion, but rather an adherence to a common creed that all of us are created equal in the eyes of God. And I’m confident we will. Because the change we’ve brought about these past eight years was never about me. It was about you. It is you, the American people, who have made the progress of the last eight years possible. It is you who will make our future progress possible. That, after all, is the story of America — a story of progress. However halting, however incomplete, however harshly challenged at each point on our journey — the story of America is a story of progress. . .. ”It has been the privilege of my life to serve as your President. And as I prepare to pass the baton and do my part as a private citizen, I’m proud to say that we have laid a new foundation for America. A new future is ours to write. And I’m as confident as ever that it will be led by the United States of America — and that our best days are still ahead.” Obama is expected to deliver a farewell address on Tuesday in Chicago.

On a cold night in January nine years ago, Barack Obama won the Iowa caucuses. That first big step on the young senator’s unlikely path to the White House was fueled by an army of campaign volunteers, which Obama later called one of his proudest legacies. ”That’s what America needs right now,” Obama told campaign workers a year later, after he was sworn in as president. ”Active citizens like you, who are willing to turn towards each other, talk to people you’ve never met, and say, ’C’mon, let’s go do this. Let’s go change the world.’ ” There was nothing glamorous about the work those volunteers did for Obama: A lot of knocking on doors and making phone calls. But for many veterans of that first Obama campaign, it’s a time they’ll never forget. ”I’ll be friends with some of those people forever,” says Nathan Blake, who quit his job at a Des Moines law firm to work for the upstart campaign. ”We’ve got that shared experience that was and historic and important, and good for our country.” It wasn’t obvious at the time that the man they were knocking on doors for eventually would make his way to the White House, but even in those early days, Blake was a ”true believer.” He had plenty of company. Brian Kirschling, who works at a Veterans Affairs hospital in Iowa City, was older than a lot of Obama campaign volunteers, and he’d never been politically active. But by 2007, Kirschling had decided it was time to roll up his sleeves — a decision he explains by quoting Dr. Seuss. ”His quote from The Lorax is, ’Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, noting is going to get better. It’s not,’” Kirschling says. Kirschling became a ”precinct captain” for Obama. Children’s books and a Disney video were key parts of his caucus night toolkit for attracting parents with young children. ”In the Iowa caucus,” he says, ”it’s about how many people are standing in your corner. I can tell you everybody in that room that had kids was in our corner.” Aletheia Henry was just out of graduate school in 2007 when she heard a story on the radio about a training camp Obama was running for campaign volunteers. She packed her car and drove from Ohio to Chicago, listening to a tape of Obama’s book, The Audacity of Hope, along the way. ”By the time I got there I was really hooked,” Henry says. She wound up working as a field organizer for Obama in eight different states. ”I would show up in a city and not know anyone,” Henry recalls. But she’d be given the name of someone who’d volunteered to let her sleep on their couch. ”And they’d have me over and have dinner and talk a little and they’d let me stay there for weeks or months at a time and we’d work together on this democracy.” After Obama was elected, campaign workers went their separate ways. Nathan Blake spent time in Washington, working for the Agriculture Department. He’s now back in Iowa, doing consumer protection work for the attorney general. Brian Kirschling, who’d never done much before in politics, decided to run for his local school board. And in a crowded field of nine candidates he made a point of knocking on doors all over the city. ”Which is exactly what I remembered learning with the Obama campaign,” Kirschling says. ”It was uncomfortable at times to go into parts of the district that don’t necessarily agree with my opinion. But it allowed me the opportunity to stand on doorsteps or sometimes come into their house and have those conversations.” Aletheia Henry went on to run Obama’s successful reelection campaign in Pennsylvania. In 2016, she was an adviser to Hillary Clinton’s campaign there, which was not so successful. ”I think these next few years are going to take a lot of conversation,” Henry says, recalling the motto of Obama’s 2008 campaign: ”Respect, Empower, Include.” ”I come from rural Ohio,” she says. ”I understand some of the frustrations that Trump supporters are feeling. We should talk with everybody about how we can work together to make our country a little bit better.” Many of those who worked to elect Obama years ago are disappointed with the man who will follow him to the White House. But they’re not giving up on the political process. Brian Kirschling says while it’s easy to be apathetic, the lesson he learned from the Obama campaign is that if you want to effect change, you have to be a part of it. ”I think it’s pretty cool that a guy who was a community organizer ended up energizing and empowering people across the country to get involved and do things that they might not have done before,” he says. Kirschling suspects he’s one of many people who were moved by Obama to try something different. Nathan Blake agrees. His social media feed is full of colleagues from the 2008 campaign who are still carrying on their mission — in politics, business, or just as Obama predicted. ”It’s not surprising that that was inspiring to a lot of us and that we responded in a way that said, ’Yeah, this is something I want to do with my life.’ Figure out different ways, wherever I am, however I can do it, to continue being involved and live out this Obama legacy.” More than a library or foundation, Blake says, that’s this president’s lasting impact: an army of campaign veterans who continue to serve.

Updated at 4:15 p. m. ET, Four people have been charged with hate crimes for allegedly carrying out an assault, online, in which a man was tied up, hit and cut with a knife by several assailants. Authorities say the victim, who had been reported missing before the attack, has ”mental health challenges.” He was encountered by police on Tuesday evening and is recovering in the hospital. ”There was never a question whether or not this incident qualified to be investigated as a hate crime,” Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said at a news conference Thursday afternoon, citing the victim’s mental capacity, race and other factors. ”The actions in that video are reprehensible.” The Facebook Live stream showing the attack has been deleted. But multiple outlets have posted videos they identify as archives of the stream, recorded by a woman who frequently turns the camera on herself. The clips show multiple people taunting, threatening and hitting a man who is tied up in a corner. At least once, a man uses a knife to cut the victim’s hair, cutting into his scalp. On the video, the assailants, who are black, say ”F*** Donald Trump” and ”F*** white people.” They force the victim, who is white, to say ”F*** Donald Trump,” as well. The four people accused of the crime have each been charged with a hate crime, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated unlawful restraint, and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, according to the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office. Other charges include burglary, robbery and possession of a stolen motor vehicle. As for the remarks about Donald Trump, police Cmdr. Kevin Duffin said at a news conference late Wednesday that investigators are working to determine whether the statements are ”sincere or just stupid ranting and raving.” Chicago police found the victim in distress on the street before they were aware of the existence of the Facebook live stream, authorities said at the news conference. The four suspects were arrested after police were called to a residence near where they’d found the man and then connected the incident and the location. The victim, a resident of a Chicago suburb, apparently spent at least 24 hours in the company of his alleged assailants — one of whom he knew from school, police say. He had been reported missing on Monday. Police say he traveled into the city with his acquaintance in a stolen van. A GoFundMe account for the victim has been set up a public relations representative for GoFundMe says the website will be working with the campaign organizer to ensure all money raised reaches the victim. At Wednesday’s news conference, Johnson highlighted the ”brazenness” of the assailants, for not just carrying out the attack but broadcasting it ”for all to see.” ”It’s sickening,” he said. ”It makes you wonder what would make individuals treat somebody like that. I’ve been a cop for 28 years — I’ve seen things that you shouldn’t see in a lifetime — but it still amazes me how you still see things that you just shouldn’t [see].”

Fans are so geeked about Showtime’s coming revival of Twin Peaks that they turned a promotional video into a viral hit. David Lynch appears in a black suit and tie (seemingly reprising his role as FBI Regional Bureau Chief Gordon Cole) wordlessly consuming a glazed doughnut while the show’s distinctive, mournful theme plays in the background. The video has drawn more than 500, 000 views. That blend of mystery and weirdness helped make Twin Peaks a hit back in 1990, and it’s made Showtime’s revival one of the most anticipated new TV shows of 2017 — mostly because fans have no idea what the guy who made Eraserhead and Blue Velvet might do with the resources and creative freedom offered by a premium cable channel. Lynch was already an director known for surreal, sometimes violent films when he and Mark Frost developed Twin Peaks. (Frost was a writer on NBC’s pioneering cop drama Hill Street Blues, and had worked with Lynch on a movie about Marilyn Monroe that was never made.) Together, they cooked up a story about the murder of homecoming queen Laura Palmer in the fictional town of Twin Peaks, Wash. The FBI agent sent to investigate the case was Kyle MacLachlan’s Dale Cooper, a clean cut guy with an odd enthusiasm for trees, cherry pie and good coffee. Cooper constantly recorded detailed notes on just about everything for an unseen assistant named Diane. What followed was a series that redefined the boundaries of television. It mashed up genres, moving from a murder mystery to a surreal, dreamlike supernatural story. It revealed the seedy, sometimes absurd underbelly of a placid, rural town long before Fargo would take that story to another level. And it sparked legions of fans obsessed with the show’s weird details, like the Log Lady, a woman who seemed to communicate with supernatural forces through a log she carried around. And now Lynch and Frost want to try it again. Showtime’s revival features MacLachlan and much of the series’ original cast, including Sherilyn Fenn, Ray Wise and David Duchovny. And yes, the Log Lady, aka Catherine E. Coulson, also appears on the cast list, though the actress died late last year. They’re joined by new names like Michael Cera, Amanda Seyfried, Trent Reznor and Naomi Watts. Lara Flynn Boyle, who played Laura Palmer’s best friend in the original series, isn’t on Showtime’s new cast list and neither is Heather Graham, who played Cooper’s love interest. In a press release, Showtime says Lynch will direct every episode of the new Twin Peaks, which picks up 25 years after Palmer was killed. One clue about the revival’s plot may come from Mark Frost’s new novel, The Secret History of Twin Peaks. The book depicts documents contained in a dossier with loads of information connected to Cooper’s investigation. Readers leafing through the pages see FBI memos, old photographs, newspaper clippings, fictional lost letters from legendary explorers Lewis and Clark, and much more, annotated with observations by a new agent attempting to determine who compiled all this stuff. Like Twin Peaks itself, the book creates an oddball world fans are encouraged to immerse themselves in. The mystery is mostly an excuse the savor the strange environment and its exquisitely crafted details. A look back at the old series (Amazon offers the program via streaming to Prime members and Showtime gave subscribers access on Dec. 26) reveals a lot that doesn’t hold up well. Twin Peaks is very clearly the bridge between the more workmanlike television shows of the 1970s and ’80s and the more filmic small screen work done today. Its nods to soap opera sometimes led to clunky scenes with awkward acting, and the show’s look wasn’t always as grand as its ambitions. Still, Twin Peaks is filled with iconic moments that continue to resonate with fans today, and it influenced shows as different as AMC’s The Killing and AE’s Bates Motel. The question now is: How will Lynch and Frost surprise fans with a new story at a time when so much of today’s high quality television already feels like a distant homage to Twin Peaks?

Dorlyn Catron’s cane is making its radio debut today — its name is Pete. (”He’s important to my life. He ought to have a name,” she says.) Catron is participating in one of the America InSight tours at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D. C. The museum offers tours, led by specially trained docents, to blind and visually impaired visitors. Docent Betsy Hennigan stops the group of nine visitors in front of Girl Skating, a small bronze sculpture from 1907 by Abastenia St. Leger Eberle. The girl is full of joy. The visitors — of varied ages, races and backgrounds — stand close together, hands on top of their long canes, facing Hennigan as she describes the artwork: The little girl careens forward, arms outstretched, her hair and her dress flow behind her. Carol Wilson trains the 12 volunteer docents. ”Sight isn’t the only pathway to understand art,” she says. Wilson suggests the docents invite visitors to imitate the pose of a sculpture and use other senses in their verbal descriptions. ”There’s a red in one of the paintings and I’ve said it’s like biting into a strawberry,” says docent Phoebe Kline. William Johnson’s painting Café depicts a man and a woman sitting having a drink in a jazz cafe. ”There’s no way you can see music in this piece,” says Hennigan, ”but I ask them to imagine hearing jazz. . .. Can you smell cigarettes? Can you smell the alcohol?” Docent Edmund Bonder uses real music to help bring to life a painting of a young woman at a piano. He describes her fingers on the upper right part of the keyboard, and then plays some classical piano music on his smartphone right in the middle of the gallery. No one shushes him. ”I check with security personnel beforehand and let them know this is what’s going to happen,” Bonder says with a laugh. Sometimes and blind visitors can actually touch the art — in gloves. Kline learned something herself, when a felt Hugo Robus’ sculpture Water Carrier. ”She ran her hands down the body of this female figure, and her first remark was: Oh, she’s pregnant,” Kline recalls. ”And I had never thought about that. But in fact, the figure does look like a pregnant woman. Here was a kid really showing me something that I had been looking at for 35 years, probably, and had never noticed.” The visitors move slowly through the museum, some ”seeing” in their imaginations, others, with low vision, getting really close to the artwork to see it better with magnifying devices. The docents take questions about the art and the artists. Visitor Kilof Legge listens intently. He’s taken lots of these tours. He has had macular degeneration since childhood and has deeply missed art. ”For the longest time I really felt angry when I came into a museum,” he says. ”And hurt and insulted, almost. Because these are public places and I felt I was denied access.” He says he is ”grateful and excited” to have the art world opened back up to him through tours like these. This was visitor Cheryl Young’s second American InSight tour. She was born sighted, so she has color memory. ”This experience . .. brought back another piece of my life that I haven’t been able to explore since my vision loss,” she says. Twice a month, the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum helps blind and visitors to see art in their minds’ eyes — and demonstrate that there are many ways to experience a work of art.

It’s Monday, 8 a. m. and these teens have already mucked stalls in the barn and fed the goats, alpacas and miniature cows. They’ve rounded up eggs in the henhouse, harvested cabbages and a few tomatoes, and arranged them in tidy tiers to sell in the Agriculture Store. Now they’re ready to put in a full day of classes. These are the Aggies. They’re the first kids to arrive at John Bowne High School in Flushing, Queens, in the morning, and the last to leave on the New York City buses and subways that shuttle them home in the evening. Some 600 of the city’s public school students are enrolled in Bowne’s specialized, agriculture program. Like most of their schoolmates, the Aggies follow an ordinary curriculum of English, math and social studies. But they also learn the building blocks of diverse careers in the booming industry of agriculture, which sees almost 60, 000 new jobs open up in the U. S. every year, according to the USDA. The Aggies grow crops, care for livestock and learn the rudiments of floriculture, viticulture, aquaculture, biotechnology and entrepreneurship. While high schools in rural farming areas have long prepared students for these sorts of jobs, they can’t come close to meeting the demand. So some urban public high schools are stepping in to fill the void. Since 2007, students at the Food and Finance High School in midtown Manhattan have grown tilapia and lettuces in interconnected, labs built by a Cornell University agriculturist. The city’s Harbor School on Governors Island has so far graduated three classes of aquaculture students, who have hatched trout and worked on oyster farms that supply restaurants. Bowne’s program is much older — it harks back to World War I, when city boys were recruited to fill in for upstate farmers serving overseas. Today, it attracts a diverse array of students, including many girls. Many are low income some have parents who hail from Central America and the Caribbean, where more than a few once grew their own subsistence crops. ”We’re trying to give these kids as many career opportunities as possible,” says Steve Perry, who has headed Bowne’s program for 20 years, and also graduated from it. ”But for a lot of them, we’re also home base.” Forty percent of Aggies go on to programs at colleges like SUNY Cobleskill and Cornell, studying everything from animal sciences to food safety and farm management. ”It’s so annoying that everyone thinks we’re just farmers,” says Aggie senior Erika Jerez with a roll of her eyes. She’s sporting a sweatshirt from Rutgers University, where she hopes to study food processing next fall. ”But there’s so much more to ag than farming.” Fellow Aggie senior Jailene Cajilina says her parents farmed a piece of land back in Ecuador. Despite that, she admits that before starting at Bowne, she had a poor idea of how food was grown. ”Being in a city, you lose touch that someone out there is breaking their back growing these plants, having to slug it out with animals and the weather,” she says. Cajilina spent four years doing everything from weeding broccoli beds to interning at an upstate organic dairy, gaining firsthand knowledge of the physical and financial struggles of farmers. That’s not a life she’s eager to replicate. Instead, she plans to become a veterinarian. ”A lot of these kids are focused on supporting their families,” explains Rebecca Cossa, a Bowne plant science teacher. And with so many farms starting up within city limits, she sees potential for future generations of Aggies to find careers close to home. There’s also demand for ag teachers. The New York State Education Department got requests to help set up 65 programs statewide last year, some of which require certified ag teachers. It’s a number administrators expect to keep growing over the next decade. Natalie Arroyo already knows that education is the direction she’ll be heading when she graduates from Bowne this June. After an internship last summer in which she taught children about animals at a Fresh Air Fund camp, she says, ”To see someone who wants to learn what you know, and choose their career based on something you taught them, that’s really inspiring.” Says Mayorga, ”The kids in the STEM program at Bowne know about science and technology.” But the Aggies, she says, can grow their own food. ”That’s right,” says fellow Aggie Dayana Panora. ”The Aggies are ready for the zombie apocalypse!” Lela Nargi is a journalist and cookbook author. Her writing has appeared in publications including Gastronomica, Civil Eats and Roads Kingdoms.

The Shins are back with the group’s first new album since 2012’s Port Of Morrow. Heartworms is set to drop on March 10 on Aural Records. In making the announcement today, the band shared the joyfully infectious pop cut ”Name For You” and a lyric video. Frontman James Mercer produced Heartworms on his own, a first since The Shins’ 2001 debut album, Oh, Inverted World. He says the new music was inspired, in part, by growing older and parenthood. ”Name For You” is a hopeful ode of empowerment to Mercer’s daughters. ”Given all the drops in the ocean, better take it one sip at a time,” Mercer sings. ”Somebody with an antique notion comes along to tighten the line, they’re just afraid of you speaking your mind.” This is the second song the band has shared from Heartworms. In October, The Shins released a video for the song ”Dead Alive.” Full track listing for Heartworms:

Note: NPR’s First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. However, you can still listen with the Spotify or Apple Music playlist at the bottom of the page. Natalie Hemby’s debut album starts out very country, risking corniness from the . Southern gospel harmonies float over a beat as Hemby, one of Nashville’s premier songwriters, sings of traditions — picket fences, alma maters, ”the roots of my inheritance.” She’s waxing poetic about Puxico, Missouri, population 881, where the Nashville native spent summers fishing with her grandpa and attending its annual Homecoming festival. In 2011, Hemby began work on a documentary about Puxico that lovingly captures the town’s deep communal roots within an American moment when the rural is both overlooked and stigmatized. Celebrating small towns is a country staple. But Puxico the album, like the documentary in which its songs first appeared, doesn’t settle into clichés. Instead, Hemby and her producer (and husband) Mike Wrucke explore both the missions of memory and its tendency to slip into fiction: its comforting haziness coming into focus when we need it as a balm for longing or a way of coping with the new. The songs on Puxico both enact and examine memory. Some place the listener in the middle of a flashback: ”Lovers On Display” captures the thrill of young love declaring itself ”Worn” considers the material things that represent love ”Ferris Wheel” savors an annual ritual that becomes a metaphor for embracing change. In the subtly dynamic ”I’ll Remember How You Loved Me,” Hemby muses upon the specifics that slip from her mental grasp and the affinities that remain deep in her neural net. ”The feeling hangs around in the wall of your mind, like a secret that I keep in a box under the bed,” she observes. Our recollections are shadow forces that we treasure and sometimes hide. As important as Hemby’s insightful, evocative lyrics — the songs were with several of her Nashville friends, notably Trent Dabbs — is the sound of Puxico, which defies country classification in ways similar to the artists for whom Hemby often writes hits, like Miranda Lambert and Little Big Town. Wrucke, who’s produced albums for Nashville auteurs including Lambert and David Nail, places Hemby’s delicate voice — the calm intonation of a trusted friend — within airy arrangements whose sonic reference points are both subtle and varied. Greg Leisz, a national treasure on pedal steel, threads his instrument through these tracks like the voice of Hemby’s subconscious. Alison Krauss is an obvious touchstone for Hemby and Wrucke, but they also stretch toward sources like Sheryl Crow or the U2 of No Line On The Horizon. Plenty of musical country keepsakes are displayed here, too, from the fingerpicking in ”Cairo, IL” to the nod in ”Grand Restoration” to ”Will The Circle Be Unbroken.” Hemby wants to celebrate those circles that make up most of our lives, away from our family legacies and back toward them. Puxico is a labor of love that’s also a deeply insightful compendium of the stories we tell ourselves in order to preserve it.

Ford Motor Co. ’s decision this week to cancel construction of an auto plant in Mexico has shocked that country, causing the peso to slump and stirring up outrage toward Donald Trump. Anger is high toward the incoming U. S. president in the state where the Ford plant was under construction — and was slated to employ nearly 3, 000 local workers. Usually the dusty construction site of the Mexican Ford auto plant is full of activity. Now only one large tractor can be seen grading roads at the site, located outside the small town of Villa de Reyes in the central Mexican state of San Luis Potosi. Guards at the site’s entrance say the mood is very tense and that the situation is deeply discouraging. ”We all thought this was a project,” says Juan Gonzalez, who had hoped to stay on when the Ford plant opened in three years. Gustavo Puente Orozco, San Luis Potosi’s secretary of economic development, says the news, while not totally unexpected, came as a shock. Donald Trump began putting a lot of pressure on Ford to pull out of Mexico during the campaign, but Puente says Ford officials in Mexico kept assuring him the project was moving forward, and he says construction kept going. Ford says market forces prompted it to cancel the Mexico plant — small cars, like the Ford Focus that was to be built there, just haven’t been selling well, especially with low gas prices. The scrapped project adds to a rough start to 2017 for Mexicans. Gas prices in the country spiked by as much as 20 percent in some parts of the country on Jan. 1, when the government lifted subsidies. The peso dropped nearly a full percentage point on the Ford news, and there are fears that inflation is going to rise above 4 percent this year. Protests have broken out every day since the gas prices spiked, with demonstrators blocking major highways and thoroughfares in states throughout the country. Near the scuttled Ford plant in the nearby town of Villa De Reyes, residents are directing most of their anger about Mexico’s woes at the American . As music blares from a food stall in the town’s small outdoor market, housewife Maria de Jesus Ramirez Martinez gets visibly angry when asked about the Ford plant closure. ”Trump is blaming us Mexicans for everything . .. and it’s not right . .. it’s just not right,” she says. Ramirez says the town was counting on those jobs and that without them, more Mexicans will head north to the United States to find work. San Luis Potosi has been a bright spot in Mexico’s otherwise sluggish economy with so many international companies here, unemployment is officially below 3 percent, and the region has been growing at twice the pace of the country as a whole. On Villa de Reyes’ small town plaza, Salvador Guerra, now retired, says he doesn’t want to see the state’s gains be undermined by Trump, who’s not even president yet. ”Imagine what he’s going to do to us once he takes power,” says Guerra. And Guerra says he’s just as mad at Mexico’s leaders, who he says haven’t done enough to stand up to Trump. On Wednesday, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto announced a shakeup in his Cabinet, appointing a former finance adviser as the new foreign minister, who Pena Nieto says will push for a more constructive relationship. ”It should be a relationship that allows us to strengthen bilateral ties,” says Pena Nieto. And, he adds, one that doesn’t undermine the sovereignty or the dignity of Mexicans.

When Donald Trump takes to Twitter, some companies shudder. This week, Ford Motor Co. said it would scrap a $1. 6 billion plant in Mexico in favor of expanding an existing one in Michigan. That happened on the same day the tweeted criticism of General Motors for manufacturing its Chevy Cruze vehicles in Mexico. GM says only a small number of the cars produced in Mexico are sold in the U. S. but that’s a detail that may not register with the public. Economist Barry Bosworth of the Brookings Institution says of companies that produce consumer goods: ”They can’t afford bad publicity.” Bosworth notes that so far Trump’s targets are companies that are expanding or planning to build operations in Mexico. He has not singled out U. S. companies that built plants there long ago. ”He focuses in on these individual cases,” says Bosworth, ”but there doesn’t seem to be a rule.” In November, under pressure from Trump, heating and cooling firm Carrier Corp. a subsidiary of United Technologies, said it would keep hundreds of jobs in Indiana instead of moving them to a plant in Mexico. Who might be next? Bosworth says the Trump Twitter spotlight is shining the most on big companies with household brands. Automakers are especially at risk because of the sector’s high volume of trade, and because it is so vulnerable to consumer opinion. Bosworth says going after a maker of obscure chemicals or a small firm that makes car components doesn’t produce great headlines, nor does it move public sentiment. Trump’s focus is on finished products. ”If they’re not assembled, they can’t be identified in the terms of a specific model of a General Motors car,” Bosworth says. ”It doesn’t have the same public appeal.” Trump has talked tough on China trade as well, but Bosworth notes he has not gone after individual companies — Apple, for example, and its huge iPhone assembly operations there. China’s economy is almost as big as the U. S.’s, and it has the power to inflict lots of pain on U. S. companies, like Boeing — so interfering there could backfire for American workers. Bosworth says picking on Mexico is like fighting the weak kid on the playground: It’s less likely to elicit a retaliatory response. U. S. companies are the biggest foreign investors in Mexico, and U. S. trade is worth about half a trillion dollars annually. ”It’s a much weaker economy,” Bosworth notes, ”much fewer options available to them.” Economist Derek Scissors at the American Enterprise Institute says retailers, banks and other service providers aren’t likely to be targeted. And, he says, he hopes the singling out of individual companies will stop once Trump takes office. ”When you’re president, you shouldn’t be bothering one company. You should be changing policies such as corporate taxes, to change the whole landscape,” Scissors argues. ”Getting down into the details can’t be done by Twitter.” He acknowledges that tweeting about trade does accomplish a few things. First, it appeals to Trump’s base. ”Probably the reason that he won the election is the effort to manufacturing,” he says, ”not to accept it as inevitable that manufacturing will head overseas.” The tweets also telegraph a message, he says, not just to the specific companies Trump has targeted, but also to firms in other industries which might be thinking about expanding elsewhere besides Mexico. ”It’s not going to stop at very manufacturers that consumers know about,” Scissors says. ”It will continue. He’s just sending the signal now to everyone, ’This is your chance to make an adjustment.’ ”

Wyoming has become a flash point in the debate over whether hundreds of millions of acres of federal public lands should be turned over to state hands. From Buzz Hettick’s place on the edge of the windswept college town of Laramie, it’s a short drive into the heart of these remote lands, vast tracts run by the federal Bureau of Land Management. On a recent, blustery morning, Hettick was scouting out an elk hunt in the Laramie range, a patchwork of private and public BLM land north of his home. ”A lot of wildlife uses public lands,” he says. So do big game hunters like Hettick. Hunting is big business in the rural West and Wyoming is no exception. A recent study estimated it brings in roughly $25 million into Albany County’s economy alone. Hettick is eager to show off this land — and talk about protecting access to it — to anyone who will make the trip. ”I just don’t see how people can look at this out here . .. and all they see is a dollar sign attached to it there’s a lot more than that,” Hettick says. When it comes to politics, those dollar signs and federal lands are inextricably linked in the West. There’s always pressure to lease more land to private producers of oil, gas, coal and, lately, wind. But avid sportsmen like Hettick, who lobbies for the national group Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, now see a new threat. ”Anytime there’s even a whisper of anybody that wants to transfer federal lands to the states, you’re going to raise the ire and the hackles of the outdoor community . .. in particular hunters and fisherman,” Hettick says. This time it’s more than just a whisper. At their party’s 2016 convention in Cleveland last summer, Republicans included a provision in the RNC platform calling for the transfer of ownership of federal land to states. One of the biggest questions surrounding this is whether a rural state like Wyoming with a small budget can really afford to manage all this land. Groups like BHA worry the states would be forced to sell it, which could endanger access to hunters or anyone else who likes to enjoy U. S. public lands. It’s not yet clear whether Donald Trump endorses the idea. But his son, Donald Trump Jr. is an avid hunter and member of Hettick’s group. The younger Trump is said to have been influential in his father’s pick of Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke, who opposes the transfer, to be interior secretary. Nevertheless, Hettick isn’t hedging any bets. He says sportsmen are on offense. ”It’s the biggest battle that sportsmen are going to have to face in my lifetime,” he says. In Wyoming, that battle is starting in the legislature. Lawmakers are considering a proposed constitutional amendment that would lay the groundwork for Wyoming to own and manage federal public land by 2019, should the Congress move ahead with the transfer. Hettick mobilized sportsmen from around the state to brave snowy roads and travel to the capital, Cheyenne, for a recent hearing. Clad in camouflage, they wore ”keep public lands public” stickers and lined up to testify against the proposed amendment. Cheers and woops erupted when one hunter at the hearing advised the committee that they didn’t support any of the bill’s language, ”because we don’t support the amendment.” Neither does Wyoming’s Republican Governor Matt Mead. In an interview with the Casper recently, Mead questioned the legality of transferring federal lands in the first place. He also wondered how his state would pay for things like battling wildfires, a bill that’s usually picked up by the federal government. State Sen. Larry Hicks, who’s pushing the amendment, says he’s done the math. He says an state like Wyoming can afford to take over the land because of the increased tax revenues the state will be able to reap from it. ”We run about a $3 billion budget and we’re sending a billion dollars of federal minerals back to Washington, D. C.,” Hicks says. ”That’s a 25 percent increase in our state revenues right off the bat.” His math may not take into account the booms and busts of natural resource prices. But for Hicks, this is about a lot more than economics. It’s a cultural battle. He says rural communities that depend on mining, logging and drilling on federal lands are suffering. ”A lot of people just feel like they have no more voice,” he says. People are moving out and schools are shutting down. Hicks says the federal government is too restrictive. ”It’s detrimental,” he says. ”There are multiple generations of families and they feel like that their heritage and their lifestyle has been stolen from them.” Republican or Democrat, bashing the federal government is popular political sport in Wyoming. And like any relationship, Wyoming’s relationship with Washington, D. C. is complicated. In quite a few small towns here, the federal government is the largest employer. And the state depends heavily on federal dollars for everything from highways to health care to education. A report commissioned by the legislature’s own committee considering the constitutional amendment noted that if the transfer goes forward, the state would automatically lose close to $30 million in federal dollars earmarked for infrastructure in counties that have large amounts of federal public land. ”I see very little evidence that there’s a groundswell of support for it in the state of Wyoming,” says Greg Cawley, a political science professor at the University of Wyoming. Cawley has studied government movements in the West, dating back to the Sagebrush Rebellion in the 1970s. ”Every time the federal government does something that irritates Western ranchers, miners, what have you, this issue of transfer of the lands to the states is brought up again, dusted off and put forward,” he says. But there’s one big thing that makes this time around a little different, according to Cawley: the unpredictable political mood in the country right now. For a lot of Westerners, that hit home a few days before the election when a jury acquitted militia leader Ammon Bundy and his followers who led an armed occupation of a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon. The Bundys said they were protesting federal ownership of public land. ”What we used to call, maybe five or six years ago, the fringe right . .. they’re starting to become more mainstream now,” says Buzz Hettick of BHA. ”That’s why we have to really ramp up the pressure we put on our politicians.” Hettick pledges that sportsmen will pressure Washington in even bigger numbers if the federal lands transfer proposal moves forward in Congress. But today, out in the Laramie range, he’s focused on a smaller quest. He’s hopped out of his pickup and set up his scoping lens on a tripod. ”If you look over at the top of this hill right over here . .. looks to be at least eight or 10 elk right there,” he says, his jaw a little clenched from the cold wind. The trip out here can be notched as a success. There are elk in these hills, maybe he’ll bag one just yet this season.

”Free” is a word with a powerful appeal. And in the past year or so it has been tossed around a lot, followed by another word: ”college.” Both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton spent a lot of time talking about free tuition. And this week, the promise has been taken up by one of the largest public university systems in the country: New York state’s. Gov. Andrew Cuomo unveiled a proposal that would offer free tuition at colleges for students from families earning less than $125, 000 a year. Called the Excelsior Scholarship, his plan — which needs approval by the Legislature — would grant full rides to qualifying students as long as they attend one of the state’s public or colleges. Cuomo’s proposal, in the lexicon of ” ” policymaking, is what’s called a ”last dollar” program. As NPR Ed explained this summer, that means students who are already eligible for federal Pell Grants must use them to pay for school. After that money is gone, the state pledges to fill in the gap. This method is the cheapest for the state, since students can draw on federal money first before taking state aid. With this type of plan, a larger share of funds from the new program is likely to go mainly to families who are relatively well off. As Robert Kelchen, a higher education scholar at Seton Hall University, explains on his blog: The benefits of the program would go to two groups of students. The first group is fairly obvious: and families. In New York, $125, 000 falls at roughly the 80th percentile of family income — an income level where families may not be able to pay tuition without borrowing, but college enrollment rates are quite high. The other group that may benefit, says Kelchen, are students who are enticed by the clarity of the promise of ”free.” But New York’s proposal, like others, is likely to be controversial. In reality there’s no free college, just as there’s no free lunch. The real policy discussion is about how to best distribute the burden of paying for it — between individual families and the public at large — and, secondly, how to hold down the cost of providing it. All while leveraging the power of ”free” responsibly. Fueling a bubble, For many conservatives, the answer is simple. An education makes individuals richer, and individuals should bear the cost. ”The state should not subsidize intellectual curiosity,” said Ronald Reagan, back when he was running for governor of California. In recent times, the conservative position is perhaps best expressed by economist Richard Vedder, director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity. In his books, articles and public appearances, Vedder argues that federal student aid is creating a bubble that allows colleges to raise prices indefinitely, and the only way to stop the cycle is to cut off public funding. Kevin Carey, now the director of the higher education policy program at the nonpartisan New America Foundation, made pretty much the same argument in the New Republic in 2012. He compared public universities to apple vendors: You, the apple vendor, look at the situation and say, ”Hey, the market price of an apple is still $1. Wouldn’t it be great if I could charge $1 for apples, but still get 40 cents from the government for every apple I sell?” . .. So you start raising prices by 3, 4, or 5 percent above inflation annually. In a world with no public subsidy at all for education, the only option left for free tuition would be something like the Starbucks plan — large corporations or wealthy donors footing the bill. And that kind of ”free” comes, generally, with a significant catch — like requiring students to work for a certain employer. The public piggy bank, At the other end of the political spectrum are those who see a large public obligation to pay for the education of citizens, to promote democracy, meritocracy and equal rights, among other things. They just can’t agree on how. Once upon a time, public university in this country actually was free, for the most part. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, from New York to California, states opted to charge no tuition or nominal fees. Here’s the catch. Until World War II, college was also pretty sparsely attended. In 1940, only about 5 percent of the population, most of them white men, had a bachelor’s degree. And the U. S. was the most educated nation in the world! The small numbers made tuition relatively cheap to subsidize. But starting with the GI Bill, the United States moved to a new model of ”mass” higher education. The expansion continued through the 1960s, with the Higher Education Act of 1965 establishing federal programs. Suddenly, most high school graduates — men, women, black, white, new immigrants — aspired to a college degree. In defiance of the laws of economics, as the supply of college graduates went up, so did the demand for them, year after year. A college degree pretty much always meant you made more money. Graduates also paid more taxes, so the government got its money back in the long term — $6 for every dollar spent on the GI Bill, by some estimates. No such thing Starting in the 1970s, there was a backlash to all this free money. In the economic slump, federal and state subsidies to higher education tightened. Enrollments declined. Loans, which were cheaper for the government, began to replace grants. Public universities responded to the decreased state subsidies by raising tuition. They responded to the increased availability of loan financing by raising tuition. They responded to the continued robust demand for higher education by raising tuition. They responded to the pressure to expand, adding new programs and majors and building bigger campuses, by raising tuition. Since 1978, public university tuition has climbed every single year, two or three times faster than inflation. Average student loan debt for a bachelor’s degree: $29, 400. Sara of Temple University sums up the results of all this in a paper she wrote for the Lumina Foundation: Talented students are forgoing college because of the costs, students who start college are unable to complete because they cannot afford to continue, and even students who finish degrees may not realize all of the expected returns because of sizable debt burdens. The United States is no longer the most educated nation in the world — it’s the 12th. Most of the countries ahead of it have public university options than the U. S. Perhaps most damning, the high cost of college in this country helps ensure that in too many cases, wealth trumps merit. The success rate in college for the but students is slightly better than the success rate for the students. Found money, college costs are hurting the most vulnerable. There are many different efforts to pacify the giant octopus. The new proposals bank on the fact that the federal government already spends lots of money on student aid: $47 billion in grants a year, $101 billion in loans (which are repaid) and another $20 billion in tax credits. The total of state, federal and private money going to defray the cost of tuition — that’s distinct from state appropriations directly to institutions — is $247 billion per year. Seems like with that kind of dough, there ought to be ways of buying better access and more equity. There’s substantial evidence that students are less likely to even aspire to college because they think it’s too expensive. It affects things like their choice of math classes as early as sixth grade. That’s why so many of these programs have the word ”promise” or ”hope” in the name. The bureaucracy is complicated to navigate. ”Free college” is a promise everyone can understand. Redeeming America’s Promise calls for offering a full scholarship to a public or college to every academically qualified student from families making no more than $160, 000 a year. Part of the money, they say, could come from Pell Grants and tax credits, which would no longer be needed. (This math has been challenged). a scholar who studies access to higher education, argued in her paper last year for the Lumina Foundation that the federal budget would and should go to pay for two years of universal free public college for all comers, including books, supplies, even a living stipend for those who need it. The fine print, Unfortunately, most attempts to defray the cost of college come with unintended consequences. For a good example, look no further than Georgia’s HOPE Scholarship. This statewide program, dating from 1993, offers high school graduates who meet certain requirements scholarships at a state university. At one time, about a dozen states had created similar models. According to this early look at the impact of the HOPE program, by Susan Dynarski for the National Bureau of Economic Research, ”Georgia’s program has likely increased the college attendance rate of all to by 7. 0 to 7. 9 percentage points.” Not too shabby. However, ”the evidence suggests that Georgia’s program has widened the gap in college attendance between blacks and whites and between those from and families.” Wait a minute. So a free tuition plan, instead of helping and minority students, actually left them further behind? Yes, and that result has been seen in other states. It happens because these state programs require certain high school GPAs and test scores, and require that students maintain a certain GPA in college. And proportionately more white kids meet those bars. Nothing left to lose, Most of the conversations about free college, as we’ve seen, are really about moving around piles of government money and other funds. Some folks are starting to talk about whether we can meaningfully lower the cost of delivering a college education, instead of or in addition to paying for it differently. Most of those conversations have something to do with technology. Some thought Massive Open Online Courses would be the Holy Grail: free, college for everyone! But in that case, ”free” led to lower commitment. Completion rates for MOOCs hover around 5 to 7 percent. Blended programs, which are and combine online learning with assistance from real people by phone or in person, seem to be able to hold down costs and get good results at the same time. Like Western Governors University, a nonprofit whose program was the National Council of Teacher Quality’s program in the country in 2014. It manages to charge less than the average public university without taking any public subsidy. The unique thing about education, and what makes it so hard to control the price, is that it’s not just a service or a good. It’s a process, and the learner takes an active role in creating its value. A college education may never be free, but for many people it will remain priceless. A version of this story was published on NPR Ed in June 2014.

Updated 5:30 p. m. ET, The intelligence report on Russia’s interference in the U. S. elections concludes that Russian President Vladimir Putin personally ordered an ”influence campaign” that aimed to help Donald Trump. ”Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency,” the public version of the report from the FBI, the CIA and the National Security Agency states. ”We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for Trump.” This is the first time the U. S. government has leveled these accusations directly at Putin, as NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly reports. ”It’s obviously a big deal to level that kind of charge at the head of state of a foreign country,” she says. The report does not weigh in on whether this ”influence campaign” changed the outcome of the U. S. election. Here are some of the report’s key findings: You can read the public version of the report here: On Oct. 7, the U. S. first formally accused Russia of hacking the computers of the Democratic National Committee and other U. S. political organizations. ”We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia’s officials could have authorized these activities,” the joint statement from the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said. Since then, intelligence officials have doubled down and expanded upon the accusations. ”We stand more resolutely on that statement,” Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said Thursday during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, as NPR’s Brian Naylor reported. In December, the FBI threw its weight behind the CIA’s assessment, as NPR’s Carrie Johnson reported: ”The entire intelligence community, in fact, is now in alignment that the hacks were partly motivated to try and install Trump as president.” Donald Trump has repeatedly dismissed the assessment. Earlier Friday afternoon, he received a briefing on the intelligence report from Clapper, CIA Director John Brennan and FBI Director James Comey at Trump Tower in New York. In a statement, Trump called the meeting ”constructive” and added that he has ”tremendous respect” for the work of the intelligence community. He did not specifically blame Russia, saying it was one of a number of countries including China that are ”consistently trying to break through the cyber infrastructure of our government institutions, businesses and organizations.” Trump also stated that the hacks had ”absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election.” Remember, the report specifically states that it did not ”make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election.” It did say that the Department of Homeland Security ”assesses that the types of systems Russian actors targeted or compromised were not involved in vote tallying.” Prior to today’s briefing, Trump told The New York Times he believes the continued attention on the cyberattacks is politically motivated. ”They got beaten very badly in the election. I won more counties in the election than Ronald Reagan,” Trump told the Times. ”They are very embarrassed about it. To some extent, it’s a witch hunt. They just focus on this.” The White House announced sanctions against Russia last month in response to the cyberattacks.

Updated at 3:31 p. m. ET after briefing, After casting doubt on the legitimacy of U. S. intelligence (even referring to it as ”intelligence”) Donald Trump was briefed Friday by the nation’s top intelligence officials on their investigation into Russia’s hacking attempts and interference in the U. S. presidential election. Director of National Security James Clapper, CIA Director John Brennan and FBI Director James Comey briefed the on their findings at Trump Tower early Friday afternoon. In a statement after the meeting, Trump called it a ”constructive” meeting, but none of it seemed to convince him that Russia was behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s and Clinton campaign officials’ emails and broader attempts to try to influence the election. Instead, he noted ”Russia, China” and ”other countries” are ”consistently” trying to hack into U. S. installations. And he made sure to get in this point: ”There was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election.” Trump and his team continue to express doubts over accepting even the basic premise that Russia is responsible for the hacks and seem focused on the politics of opponents’ motivations. Earlier Friday, Trump dismissed the focus on Russian hacking as a ”political witch hunt.” ”China, relatively recently, hacked 20 million government names,” Trump said in an interview with the New York Times. ”How come nobody even talks about that? This is a political witch hunt.” Trump was talking about a breach of Office of Personnel Management computers two to three yeas ago. Other federal agencies and government outlets have been compromised as well — and those were reported on. But none of those events saw emails leaked publicly by a foreign adversary with the intent to influence an election. Trump and his team continue to defensively rail against the ”mainstream media,” seemingly believing that the real goal is to delegitimize Trump’s win. Trump is going to be the next president. He won. But national security is bigger than politics. Trump has expressed his anger on Twitter that a part of the report was leaked to The Washington Post and NBC News on Thursday night, including that U. S. intelligence ”picked up senior Russian officials” celebrating Trump’s win on election night, and that the U. S. has identified the Russians who provided the stolen Democratic emails to WikiLeaks, which published them. Trump tweeted that he is asking House and Senate committees to investigate the leak. Seventeen American agencies agree that Russia is responsible for hacking DNC and Clinton campaign official emails and leaking them to WikiLeaks. NPR has also confirmed that intelligence officials agree that Russia was doing so in an effort to undermine American democracy and with the hope that their efforts would elect Trump — though they didn’t expect it would actually happen. The intelligence report, which was presented to President Obama on Thursday, is expected to show the extent of Russia’s attempts to influence the election’s outcome. At a Senate hearing Thursday, Clapper said that hacking the committee’s computers and campaign chief John Podesta’s emails was just part of the Russian campaign, saying, ”It also entailed classical propaganda, disinformation, fake news.” Trump, who has been skeptical of reports of Russian involvement in the election, questioned how NBC got ”an exclusive look into the top secret report he [Obama] was presented.” Appearing on CBS This Morning, Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway called it ”disappointing” that there were leaks of the report to the media before ”we actually have a report on the alleged hacking.” Conway also asserted that ”people want a lot of America to see, to believe that Russian hacking influenced the election.” On CNN, Conway continued to express doubt about the evidence, even contending that ”the idea that somehow conclusive evidence has been out there in the public domain, provided to the is — is simply not true.” That ignores the fact that Trump has been declining daily intelligence briefings and is one of two people, President Obama being the other, who could ask to see all of the evidence. The 17 agencies stated unequivocally Oct. 7, two months ago, that Russia was behind the hacks — and that the move was ordered by the highest levels of the Russian government. Conway also insistently contended, despite the findings of the intelligence community and without having seen the evidence, that Russia didn’t want Trump elected. ”The Russians didn’t want him elected,” she boasted in that same CNN interview. ”You know why? Because he has said very clearly during the campaign and now as that he is going to modernize our nuclear capability, that he’s going to call for an increase in defense budget, that he’s going to have oil and gas exploration, all of which goes against Russia’s economic and military interests.” So what’s really going on here? It appears what’s getting under the skin of Trump and his officials is their view that the real implication with all this is to imply, if not say outright, that Russia handed Trump the election, thereby delegitimizing his presidency. ”They got beaten very badly in the election,” Trump told the Times. ”I won more counties in the election than Ronald Reagan. They are very embarrassed about it. To some extent, it’s a witch hunt. They just focus on this.” Conway contended Friday morning in that CNN interview that ”people are conflating alleged Russian hacking with the actual outcome of the election. It’s just nonsense.” Incoming White House press secretary Sean Spicer echoed that frustration on Fox this past weekend, when he said there was ”zero evidence” that Russia influenced the outcome of the election. ”The way the mainstream media is playing it up is that [Russia] had an influence on the election,” Spicer said. ”There is zero evidence that they actually influenced the election.” Whether the leaked emails actually mathematically helped Trump is likely immeasurable, but that is beside the point. Trump has refused to acknowledge Russia’s role. Instead, he has consistently, over several months, in fact, cast doubt that it was Russia at all, blaming it on a man possibly in New Jersey, or maybe it was China or maybe no one understands ”the computers” at all. ”I think we oughta get on with our lives,” Trump said. But what Trump, as the future president, seems to have trouble accepting is that this is a national security issue, not a political one. Instead, the Trump team continues to focus, be driven by and be defensive about the politics. Trump’s team seems incapable of compartmentalizing and messaging on this basic point: that accepting the premise that Russia is responsible is not the same as saying it handed Trump the presidency. Maybe Trump began some acceptance of this Friday. He also told the Times, ”With all that being said, I don’t want countries to be hacking our country.” Trump said he had ”tremendous respect” for the intelligence community, but right now, the country is in a very strange position of having an incoming American president who, it seems, would rather believe adversaries over American intelligence when it contradicts his predisposed world view — or is in line with his domestic political opponents.

Updated at 8:00 p. m. ET Saturday, The U. S. Attorney has charged Esteban Santiago, the man in custody for carrying out the deadly shooting at Fort International Airport in Florida on Friday afternoon. At least five people were killed and six others were injured in the shooting, according to the Broward County Sheriff’s Office. The suspect, Esteban Santiago, had been taken into custody ”without incident” by a sheriff’s deputy immediately after the shooting, Sheriff Scott Israel said at a news conference. Israel had said earlier in the day that ”at this point it looks like he acted alone.” The charges issued include: ”Performing an act of violence against a person at an airport,” ”using and carrying a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence” and ”causing the death of a person through the use of a firearm in the course of a violation.” The maximum penalty carried with these charges is a possible death sentence. Santiago will have his initial appearance Monday at 11:00 a. m. before United States Magistrate Judge Alicia O. Valle in Fort Lauderdale. Authorities said Santiago took flights from Alaska to Minnesota, finally landing in Fort Lauderdale, where he took a firearm out of his checked baggage and ”began indiscriminately shooting,” as Israel put it. Santiago was interviewed extensively by FBI and Broward County sheriff’s office officials, Sheriff Israel said. George Piro, special agent in charge of the Miami field office, said at the news conference that it was too soon to say what the motive behind the attack was. ”We’re not ruling out anything, including the terrorism angle,” he said, adding that it was ”too early to truly know why he came to Florida.” Piro confirmed reports that Santiago, 26, had voluntarily gone to the FBI office in Anchorage in November and spoken with agents. News reports have said the suspect complained that an outside force was controlling his mind. Piro noted that the suspect stated that he didn’t intend to harm anyone. ”We looked at his contacts,” said Piro, ”did interagency checks and closed our assessment.” He says the agents turned Santiago over to local police, who took him for a mental health evaluation. NPR has not confirmed any details of the suspect’s mental health issues. Piro didn’t confirm news reports that Santiago was involved in a fight before the shootings. ”I’m not aware of an incident on the flight or at baggage claim,” he said. Sheriff Scott Israel described the weapon used in the attack as a handgun and said it was too early in the investigation to say how many rounds were fired. The sheriff said the attacker didn’t make any statements while shooting. In addition to the victims who were killed or wounded by bullets, Israel said, some 30 to 40 people were taken to hospitals with other injuries. The airport aviation director, Mark Gale, estimated that authorities will have helped about 10, 000 people with transportation, food and lodging because of the incident. Police Chief Jesse Davis of Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport says Santiago departed the Alaska facility on a Delta flight, having left a firearm in his checked baggage, as required. Davis tells NPR’s Richard Gonzales that Santiago did not draw attention to himself at the airport, was not previously known to the airport police and apparently was traveling alone. According to NPR’s Tom Bowman, Santiago is a former soldier. Tom tells our Newscast unit: ”Military records show Santiago received a general discharge — rather than the top honorable discharge — from the Alaska National Guard in August because of poor performance . .. ”Santiago received an honorable discharge from the Puerto Rico National Guard in 2013 and served with those soldiers in Iraq in 2010 and 2011. He was a combat engineer, a job that includes clearing roads and detecting mines.” Tom reports that a U. S. official familiar with the investigation says, while serving with the Alaska National Guard, Santiago ”was AWOL on a number of occasions, would miss drills and was interviewed by Army criminal investigators at times for what they called ’strange behavior.’ ” Florida Gov. Rick Scott, who traveled to Fort Lauderdale on Friday afternoon, told reporters he had not asked the federal government for resources and had not attempted to contact President Obama. The governor said he had reached out to Donald Trump and Vice Mike Pence, who take office later this month. Later, Scott’s press office announced that he spoke with Obama following the news conference. National Security Council spokesperson Ned Price said the president ”extended his sincere condolences to the families and other loved ones of those killed,” said his ”thoughts and prayers are with the wounded,” and gave assurances that federal authorities would continue to help in the investigation. Israel said authorities were not releasing any information about the identities of those killed and injured. The sheriff’s office tweeted that those who were injured had been taken to a local hospital. Israel and Gale both said there was no evidence any shots had been fired elsewhere in the airport or by anyone except the suspect in custody. Previous reports had indicated there might have been additional shots fired on the airport property. Broward County Fire Rescue told the local CBS affiliate in Miami that a shooting was reported around 1 p. m. ET. The sheriff’s office tweeted that it received a call about a shooting at the airport around 12:55 p. m. The airport said on Twitter that: ”There is an ongoing incident in Terminal 2, Baggage Claim.” The airport has four terminals, of which Terminal 2 is the smallest. It serves Air Canada and Delta Airlines. People who said they were inside the airport described seeing people running. Among those inside was former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, who tweeted that ”everyone is running” after shots were fired, and that police said there was one shooter and multiple victims. Shortly after 1 p. m. Fleischer tweeted that police were not letting anyone out of the part of the airport he was in. Television images showed hundreds of travelers standing around the part of the airport where the planes park. The airport said it had temporarily suspended all services and asked travelers to contact air carriers directly about flight information. The Federal Aviation Administration said a ground stop was in effect at the airport due to the incident. In a statement about two hours after the shooting was reported, the FAA said flights were ”not arriving or departing” from the airport. The airport reopened Saturday at 5 a. m. according to The Associated Press, with many flights delayed or canceled. This is a breaking news story. As often happens in situations like these, some information reported early may turn out to be inaccurate. We’ll move quickly to correct the record and we’ll only point to the best information we have at the time.

North Korea got 2017 off to a menacing start. In his New Year’s address, supreme leader Kim Jong Un warned that the nation was in the ”final stage” of preparations to test an intercontinental ballistic missile. A day later, Donald Trump said the North would never develop a nuclear weapon capable of striking the U. S. ”It won’t happen!” Trump tweeted. Bombast aside, independent arms control experts agree that North Korea is moving rapidly to develop an ICBM. And many suspect it will test a missile capable of reaching the continental U. S. later this year. ”They are very far along in their ICBM testing project,” says Melissa Hanham, an East Asia researcher at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. ”Probably we will see that they will do a flight test in 2017.” If the test were successful — a big if — North Korea would join a small club of nations with ICBMs, including superpowers like the U. S. Russia and China. North Korea is a notoriously closed society, but the government periodically releases images and videos of its missiles. Analysts pore over that scant material and use it to cobble together a mosaic of the North’s weapons program. Those reports, combined with public statements by officials in South Korea and the U. S. provide some sense of the North’s progress. And there was a lot of progress in 2016, Hanham says: ”There were so many tests, I need crib notes.” North Korea tested a new rocket engine, based on a Soviet design, that is more powerful than anything it has used before. It also tested a heat shield of the type needed to protect a nuclear warhead as it Earth’s atmosphere. In June, it successfully fired a new Musudan missile. The Musudan’s range of up to 2, 500 miles is short of what’s needed to reach the U. S. but it appears to use some of the technology that would probably go into a larger ICBM. That ICBM has yet to be tested. Known to analysts as the or (”one of the challenges with North Korean missiles is that they don’t tell us what they’re called,” says Hanham) it first appeared in a military parade in 2012. Back then, the missile was so kludged together, it looked to some experts like it could be a decoy. But in the years since, photos of the ICBM showed features that suggest it is becoming a real weapon. The missile began as a clunky, design, says David Wright, a rocketry expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists. It has since been redesigned as a simpler affair. With the new engines tested this year, it would have a range of about 7, 500 miles, Wright says. ”That would start to bring things like Washington, D. C. into range.” Can Trump stop the test? Neither Hanham nor Wright thinks there are easy solutions available to the . Attacking the missile before it’s launched would be an act of war. If the ICBM is tested to the south, as happened with North Korea’s space launches, then it will be out of range of the main U. S. system based in Alaska. Smaller interceptors are also unlikely to be able to shoot it down, Wright says. That leaves diplomacy, says Hanham. But Kim Jong Un has shown little willingness to negotiate. ”There are no good options, really,” Hanham says. ”That’s why previous administrations have struggled with it for so long.” A flight test will not mean that North Korea can conduct a nuclear strike on U. S. soil. For one thing, the North’s track record in testing new missiles is pretty bad, says Wright. He estimates the odds that this new ICBM will work are ”probably less than 50 percent.” And while the individual components may all be there, they still need to be combined into a single weapon, he adds. Many analysts believe the North has miniaturized its nuclear bomb. But Wright says it’s less clear whether a North Korean nuke could survive the of a missile launch. Similarly, its system for bringing the weapon back to earth could be highly inaccurate in its current design. Perfecting an ICBM as a weapon may take several more years. Still, Hanham believes that 2017 may be a watershed year for the North. Even an unsuccessful ICBM test would send a clear message. ”That’s going to be really scary,” she says, ”not just for the region, but the American public.”

Donald Trump is still two weeks from his presidential inauguration, but new Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer sounds ready to do battle with a Senate, House and White House. ”We’re going to hold Donald Trump’s feet to the fire,” the New York Democrat told NPR’s Audie Cornish on All Things Considered while sitting in front of the fireplace near his desk. ”Our job is going to be to hold Donald Trump and the Republican majority accountable.” Schumer hasn’t quite moved into his suite of Capitol offices. Boxes are heaped in corridors and naked hooks poke from the walls of Schumer’s ornate chambers on the second floor. Just outside the windows is the inaugural podium being built and beyond it, the National Mall. Inside, amid the clutter, the new Senate minority leader is wasting no time defending Democratic policies and programs from the incoming administration and its congressional allies, even if he has less leverage than he had hoped to have. Schumer hinted at the Democrats’ relatively weak position, as Republicans move quickly to repeal Obamacare. He repeatedly said Democrats would not cooperate with any Affordable Care Act replacement if the GOP pushes ahead with repeal, but then allowed that ”there might be a thing or two” in competing Republican plans he finds appealing. He also brought negotiations into the open by putting public pressure on GOP senators from Maine and Alaska to vote against repeal. ”Now they want to eliminate the funding of Planned Parenthood,” he said, referring to a plan by House Speaker Paul Ryan to include such provisions in legislation undoing Obamacare, ”so people like Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski are having some qualms about this.” Schumer hinted at some of the legislative maneuvers Democrats may employ to stymie Obamacare repeal. ”We’ll have an amendment on the floor of the Senate, as we debate ACA,” he explained, ”that quotes Donald Trump and says we’re opposed to cutting health care — Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security for that matter.” Before his intelligence briefing today, the told the New York Times that the attention devoted to Russian attempts to influence the election is ”a political witch hunt.” Schumer called that ”flip and glib.” ”Before you even get the briefing, you come to a conclusion — that’s not the way to govern,” he said. ”And I have said . .. that we can’t have a Twitter presidency. This is serious stuff, this governing, and to just be flip and glib and tweet . .. you’ve got to do a lot more. And certainly any president — Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative — should keep an open mind until they get the briefing.” Schumer also responded to Trump’s calling him a ”clown.” ”I didn’t tweet back a name — that’s derogating the debate,” Schumer said. ”I said I understand your anguish, Mr. because you don’t know what to replace the ACA with. But instead of calling names, roll up your sleeves and come up with a replacement. So I’m not going to descend to .”

Bernie Sanders thinks he has a pretty good idea why Hillary Clinton and Democrats lost in the 2016 election. ”Look, you can’t simply go around to wealthy people’s homes raising money and expect to win elections,” the Vermont senator, who gave Clinton a surprisingly strong run for the Democratic nomination, told NPR’s David Greene in an interview airing on Morning Edition. ”You’ve got to go out and mix it up and be with ordinary people.” That picks up on a criticism of Clinton devoting too much time to fundraising — and not enough to campaigning in traditionally Democratic states, like Michigan and Wisconsin. In the general election, Clinton never visited Wisconsin after she became the nominee and visited Michigan late in the game. The two Upper Midwestern states swung narrowly to Trump: Wisconsin by slightly more than 20, 000 votes and Michigan by slightly more than 10, 000. During the primary, Sanders boasted of his donations. ”The Democratic Party swallowed the bait,” he argued. ”They became hooked on big money.” The Vermont senator added that he believes Democrats have lost touch with the needs of everyday Americans. ”I happen to believe that the Democratic Party has been not doing a good job in terms of communicating with people in cities, in towns and in rural America, all over this country,” he said. Some have blamed Sanders, in part, however for Clinton’s loss. Young voters were drawn to his campaign, but many chose a candidate in the general election. Although Sanders campaigned for Clinton, at times he had a hard time voicing support for her. The kind of harsh criticism he leveled of Clinton on her Wall Street speeches and decrying her as part of the status quo, rather than building up her beliefs and policies (that certainly stand in stark contrast to Donald Trump) has irked party loyalists. That’s especially true, considering that although Sanders ran in the Democratic primary and caucuses with Democrats, he has declined to put the ”D” next to his name. He is back in the Senate as an independent. Sanders believes Trump’s message resonated with workers, like the ones in Wisconsin and Michigan, who were hit hard by the economic recession and haven’t yet recovered. It was a connection Democrats were largely unable to maintain. ”One of the reasons that Mr. Trump won is that we have millions of people who have given up on the political process, who don’t believe that Congress is listening to their pain,” Sanders said. ”What the Democratic Party has got to do is start listening.” In that way, Trump and Sanders are alike. Both tapped into the current that permeated the 2016 election. When asked if he thought he would have been able to win the general election against Trump, Sanders brushed it off. ”I don’t think it helps to relive history,” said Sanders, whose campaign team touted polling during the primary that showed him faring better against Trump in matchups. ”The answer is I don’t know. Nobody knows. It’s not worth speculating about. We are where we are.” Sanders sees Trump’s tendencies as a potential opportunity, at least when it comes to the fight to preserve Medicare and Medicaid. Trump promised repeatedly throughout the campaign that he would not cut Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security if elected. Sanders wants to hold Trump accountable for that promise, regardless of what Republicans in Congress want to do. Sanders says Trump has a choice: ”Either he can have the courage and get up in front of the American people, or do it through a tweet, and say, ’You know what? Hey, I was just kidding. I was really lying. ’” Or Trump can tell his fellow Republicans that they’re wasting their time on legislation that cuts those programs. ”That would be the right thing to do,” Sanders said. ”And I look forward to Trump telling the American people that that is what he intends to do.” To press the issue, Sanders, along with congressional leaders, is calling on his colleagues to organize Jan. 15 rallies protesting threats to the Affordable Care Act, Medicare and Medicaid.

Right now, a big chunk of Antarctic ice is hanging on by a frozen thread. British researchers monitoring the crack in the Larsen C ice shelf say that only about 12 miles now connect the chunk of ice to the rest of the continent. ”After a few months of steady, incremental advance since the last event, the rift grew suddenly by a further 18 km [11 miles] during the second half of December 2016,” wrote Adrian Luckman in a statement Thursday by the MIDAS Project, which is monitoring changes in the area. The crack in question has been growing for years and is now a total of roughly 70 miles long. When the fissure reaches the far side of the shelf, an iceberg the size of Delaware will float off, leaving the Larsen C 10 percent smaller. ”This event will fundamentally change the landscape of the Antarctic Peninsula,” Luckman wrote. Ice shelves are important because they provide a buffer between the sea and the ice that sits on land, in this case on the Antarctic Peninsula. Without a healthy ice shelf, water from melting glaciers can flow straight to the sea, raising the sea level. It’s normal for the front of an ice shelf to crack and break off, known as calving. But it’s unusual for that to happen faster than the ice shelf can refreeze. Some scientists worry that the missing piece will destabilize the whole ice shelf. A smaller ice shelf, Larsen B, completely splintered in a little over a month in 2002, a process that started with a similar crack. Another ice shelf, Larsen A, had disintegrated a few years before. ”Larsen C may eventually follow the example of its neighbour Larsen B,” wrote Luckman. ”If it doesn’t go in the next few months, I’ll be amazed,” he told BBC News. Larsen C is Antarctica’s ice shelf.

Michelle Obama used her last official White House speech to deliver a passionate pep talk to the nation’s young people, especially immigrants, Muslims and others who might feel slighted by the incoming Trump administration. ”Do not ever let anyone make you feel like you don’t matter,” the first lady said, ”or like you don’t have a place in our American story, because you do.” Obama spoke at a celebration of school counselors from around the country. The annual event is one of a number of steps along with ”college signing day” that Obama and her husband have taken to encourage students to pursue higher education. ”Because let’s be honest,” the first lady said. ”If we’re always shining the spotlight on professional athletes or recording artists or Hollywood celebrities, if those are the only achievements we celebrate, then why would we ever think kids would see college as a priority?” A graduate of Harvard Law School like her husband, Michelle Obama stressed that to preserve and protect their freedoms, young people should get a good education, so they can be active and productive citizens. She added young people should not lose hope, even when they encounter the inevitable obstacles. ”It is our fundamental belief in the power of hope that has allowed us to rise above the voices of doubt and division, of anger and fear that we have faced in our own lives and the life of this country,” Obama said. ”Our hope that if we work hard enough and believe in ourselves, we can be whatever we dream, regardless of the limitations that others may place on us.” At times, others have tried to place limits on Michelle Obama herself. In a TV interview with Oprah Winfrey last month, Obama described her surprise at being tagged during her husband’s first White House campaign as an ”angry black woman.” ”Wow, where did that come from?” Obama told Winfrey. ”I thought, ’Let me live my life out loud so that people can then see and then judge for themselves.’ ” After eight years in the White House, the first lady has won a favorable judgment from most Americans. She enjoys higher favorability ratings than her husband does. On Friday, she encouraged young people to be focused and determined, not afraid. ”When people see us for who we truly are, maybe, just maybe they, too, will be inspired to rise to their best possible selves,” Obama said. With her voice breaking, Obama recalled how her own father worked hard at a city water plant, hoping that one day his children would go to college and have opportunities he never dreamed of. ”That’s the kind of hope that every single one of us — politicians, parents, preachers, all of us — need to be providing for our young people,” Obama said. ”Because that is what moves this country forward every single day. Our hope for the future and the hard work that hope inspires.” ”That’s my final message to young people as first lady,” she said as the audience in the White House East Room stood and applauded. ”Lead by example with hope, never fear. And know that I will be with you, rooting for you and working to support you for the rest of my life.”

Counselors play a big role in helping students succeed: They help with scheduling, college applications and with issues like mental health. Since 2015, first lady Michelle Obama has honored a school counselor of the year in a ceremony at the White House. Friday, the honor goes to Terri Tchorzynski of the Calhoun Area Career Center in Battle Creek, Mich. where she works with and drawn from 20 public high schools in Calhoun County. Tchorzynski started her career as a high school English teacher, before getting her master’s degree in counseling — a role she says she ”always knew she wanted.” NPR Ed caught up with Tchorzynski about her work in Michigan and the important role she sees counselors playing in schools. Is it true that school counselors don’t like the term ”guidance counselor” anymore? Can you explain that? We use the term ”school counselor” now. We cringe when we hear the term ”guidance counselor.” It’s kind of that model from years ago, the, ”I’m gonna guide you towards your college or career.” It’s from when people didn’t really understand what was going on with the whole realm of school counseling. But now with a school counselor, we’re much more than just the guidance counselor. So what is the role of a school counselor? There are three ways to break it down. First is college and career readiness, preparing our students for what life looks like after high school. If it’s college, then getting them focused on FAFSA completion, college scholarships and being academically ready. If it’s for a career, figuring out what pathways are appropriate for them and what careers are available to them that fit their interests and their skills. Second, we work in the domain. This is more dealing with behavior, or with personal problems that students may have that impact their education. So we help them through those things so they can be successful in school. Third, we’ll call the academic domain. This is working with attendance or grades, or making sure students have enough credits to graduate high school. So we are people that work in mental health, that work in the academic domains, that work in college and career readiness. We use data! How do you use data? Can you give me an example? We use a lot of data in our building, so that our stakeholders have a clear picture of what we’re doing in the counseling department. Here’s an example about modifying behavior. At the beginning of every single school year we do presentations for every single one of our students about bullying and harassment, because we know that it’s an issue in our schools and it’s an issue with our students and we want to make sure that it’s addressed early. And then we start monitoring behavior referrals. Before we started all this, the behavior referrals were not set up a certain way. But as a counseling department, we wanted to know specifically, if there’s a behavior issue that’s connected to bullying or harassment, we want it marked. So we can start identifying if there are issues in certain programs — we don’t have classrooms, instead we call them programs. We created this tag in our student data system, so any time a referral went through about bullying and harassment, we were flagged. We could see when and where there were incidents and tailored our interventions based on that data. We’ve pulled out certain groups and done some positive support groups for specific students too. What’s one thing you’ve learned as a school counselor? A lot of times it’s very easy to get centered in on the students who come to your office all the time or the students that are very outgoing. They’re the A students that just want additional support. But there’s a large population of students that just don’t know to ask for help. Maybe they are and so they don’t even know what they need to know in order to go to school. So I think it’s so important for counselors to think about the students that maybe don’t have a voice. We need to be the voice for students that don’t have the voice. It’s my job as a counselor to make sure that all these students, regardless of race, ethnicity, income or what kind of backgrounds they come from, it’s my job to give them the same support. So sometimes I may be more intentional about reaching out to those students because I know they won’t be the ones that are coming to me first. So I guess the advice is — be proactive. We’ve reported about the mental health crisis in our nation’s schools — and it’s important to note how important counselors are in helping students with those types of problems. Oh, definitely. Having our students and our families understand that that’s part of our role, is important. Some people just don’t understand that it is a part of what we do. It’s not just writing letters of recommendation and telling students where they should go to college. There’s also a big part of our jobs as counselors that focuses on the side . .. there is a huge need for that now. We have those community contacts, so if I have families that are uncertain about local community agencies and how they can help, part of my role is to connect them with those agencies. What has been the biggest challenge in your career so far? As a school counselor I think the part is really hard. It’s hard because students go through a lot of difficult things in their lives. And so when you’re dealing with student tragedies — student death or violence — or just the things some teenagers have to face, that’s really difficult. In my setting as a school counselor, there’s only so much that I can do. The more we can connect with outside agencies, that helps too, so then I can refer them out to a community agency that can help them even further. But that’s a difficult part of the job. It’s something I don’t think I’ll ever get used to, because it’s challenging and sad. There’s a lot of things that our students have to deal with that are really difficult. Can you give me some examples of the things that have come up in the last seven years? Last year was a really difficult year for us. We had quite a few student tragedies. We actually lost one of our students to a car accident, and that obviously impacted all of us in our building. We have students that do and suicide, unfortunately. A lot of what I see nowadays with teenagers is just homelessness and poverty. I have a lot of students that are or and for whatever reason, they just they can’t live in their home, and so they need to find somewhere else to live. Sometimes, they’re living with different friends, living day to day. That’s always a struggle, because as a counselor, I want them to be successful, but at the same time, they’re dealing with poverty and homelessness and trying to figure out where they are supposed to stay that night. So what keeps your spirits up? I just know that as a counselor, that’s why I’m there. That’s my role. The more students can trust me, and know that that is part of what I do and that I can help support them, the better. I always tell them, ”I don’t have this magic pill that makes everything go away.” But I’m a resource for them to help them in whatever it is that they need. Unfortunately, school counselors can be rare. In Michigan, where you’re from, the student to school counselor ratio is 732 to 1. The American School Counselor Association recommends a ratio of 250 to 1. Clearly, that’s far from the norm. What are your thoughts on that? When you think about the personnel you have in your schools, school counselors are the ones that play the role in regards to impacting academic behavior and attendance. So if you don’t have a school counselor in your building, then there is a certain person that plays all of those roles and puts all those pieces together. It’s so important for people to understand that counselors are needed at every single level, kindergarten through 12th grade. Elementary students have just as many needs, so it’s just as important to establish early what a school counselor can do for students, In Michigan, elementary school counselors are very rare. In our county I think we have one school district that has one. In my own kids’ school, they have one that will float between three or four buildings. Counselors just can’t offer the services that are needed for those students when they just have such large caseloads.

Prolific Indian actor Om Puri, who for decades appeared in films all over the world, has died at age 66 in Mumbai. Reports say Puri suffered a heart attack at his home early on Friday. Puri had roles in more than 300 movies in his career, NPR’s Rose Friedman reports for our Newscast unit. Rose says he began acting in Indian art house cinema in the 1970s and soon branched into British and American films, including Gandhi in 1982 and Charlie Wilson’s War in 2007. He appeared in the 2013 film The Reluctant Fundamentalist, in which he played a father struggling to pass on a sense of empathy to his Wall son. Most recently, he starred alongside Helen Mirren in The Journey, a 2015 film about a displaced Indian family that settles in a French village and opens a restaurant. Puri was a crossover star, as evidenced by the breadth of people mourning his death. The BBC reported that even media in Pakistan, with whom India’s relationship is often tense, are celebrating his life and career. The BBC wrote, ”[Puri] had recently spoken out against the ban imposed by India on Pakistani actors working in Bollywood films, following tensions over Kashmir,” telling an Indian TV channel, ”Pakistani artists are not terrorists.” In 2004, Puri received an honorary Order of the British Empire, an award established by King George V and given to individuals who have made distinguished contributions in their field. In 1990, he was awarded the Padma Shri, one of India’s highest civilian honors, the Guardian wrote. Puri’s professional life was wildly successful, but his personal life had been turbulent in recent years. He separated from his wife, Nandita, after she wrote his biography in 2009, called Unlikely Hero: Om Puri. The book revealed explicit details about his sexual forays as a young man. Puri is survived by Nandita, whom he married in 1993, and their son. Less than a month before his death, Puri took to Twitter to reflect on his life and career:

It’s a fantasy that goes back centuries: a message in a bottle, carried ashore from lands. Authors, artists and children alike have dreamed of such a gift from the sea. This time, though, it’s not a bottle that washes ashore. It’s eggs — thousands of little toy eggs. That’s what happened on the German island of Langeoog this week. Perched just off the North Sea coast, it found itself buffeted by an invasion of multicolored plastic eggs — much to the delight of local children, because the eggs contained toys. Police for the Lower Saxony region of Germany tweeted the evidence. Der Spiegel reports that police suspect the eggs came from a freighter that lost part of its cargo during an intense storm, which the BBC calls the worst to hit Germany’s northeastern coast since 2006. At any rate, what was lost now has been found, by many of the community’s littlest residents. The local mayor, Uwe Garrels, soon allowed the town’s local kindergartners to go pick up the toys, according to Deutsche Welle. ”The surprise eggs have found their way to freedom,” Garrels said, according to the news service, which cited broadcaster NDR. Of course, the joy of the moment wore off soon. ”At first I thought this was a wonder, because everything was so colorful and so on, but then we realized that this is a huge mess in the end,” Garrels said, according to The Associated Press. He also noted the plastic bags and other materials that have washed ashore on the island. (All of which, it must be said, can cause some very real problems for wildlife.) Still, all these little eggs contained an extra treat with their toys. Like the immortal bottle, they bore notes from afar. There was just one problem for the German children who received them: They were written in Russian.

A Canadian doctor who is opposed to a widely used drug for morning sickness has fired another volley. Writing in the journal PLOS ONE, Dr. Navindra Persaud in the department of family and community medicine at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, notes that an unpublished study that supported use of the drug, conducted in the 1970s, is seriously flawed. On the one hand, this paper is a triumph for scientific openness. Pharmaceutical companies and regulatory agencies often guard this information, making it difficult for scientists to draw independent conclusions about research. And there are stories about drugs that have managed to get onto the market based on overly rosy interpretations of study results (think Vioxx, the drug that was later pulled after it was linked to higher risk for heart disease). Academic researchers have been pushing for greater openness when it comes to raw data. But because the study was never published, it wasn’t even subject to the scrutiny of peer review back in the day. The study plays a peripheral role in determining the safety and efficacy of the drug, which was approved by the U. S. Food and Drug Administration in 2013. That new drug application made its case based on other studies, not the flawed data from decades ago. But the FDA did review the previous history of this drug, including the study that Persaud has called into question, and considered it supporting evidence. The FDA had no qualms about the safety of this drug, marketed in the United States as Diclegis. It’s a combination of two common medications: an antihistamine and vitamin B6. There’s actually a long backstory about this pairing. In the 1950s, a somewhat different formulation that had three principal ingredients was marketed as Bendectin. In the the drugmaker dropped one of the ingredients. But that came off the U. S. market in 1983. Lawyers saw the drug as a potentially rich target for product liability cases, and the drug company ultimately pulled the drug off the market to avoid lawsuits, rather than out of actual safety concerns. The Canadian company, Duchesnay, continued to market a generic version of the drug, rebranded as Diclectin in Canada. (It also makes Diclegis.) For every two pregnancies in Canada, doctors write one prescription for Diclectin, according to Persaud. The drug was heavily promoted by a prominent Canadian researcher, Dr. Gideon Koren, at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. He received funding from Duchesnay. According to an story in Maclean’s magazine, Persaud felt Koren had gone too far in pushing this drug. ”We are trying to provide patients and doctors with access to complete and accurate information so that they can make informed decisions,” Persaud told Shots in an email. ”This information may lead regulators like the FDA and Health Canada to revisit previous decisions,” he added. ”Patients and their clinicians may also make different decisions based on this information.” The FDA told Shots that it is reviewing the PLOS ONE paper. The drug has not been as heavily used in the United States (though the company did hire Kim Kardashian to promote it on social media, which drew a rebuke from the FDA). The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says pregnant women with morning sickness shouldn’t reach hastily for the pill bottle. It recommends first that women take a multivitamin eat dry toast or crackers drink fluids avoid bad smells, and take other basic steps to reduce morning sickness. Only if those measures fail does the group recommend a doctor’s visit to ask about the prescription. And women taking that step should be aware that, while the FDA approved the drug (to be prescribed only after simpler measures have been tried and found wanting) reviewers there weren’t impressed by its effectiveness, noting ”the treatment effect is small.” Using a measure of nausea and vomiting called the PUQE score (who says scientists are humorless!) women taking Diclectin reported a 4. 7 point improvement, versus a 3. 9 point improvement for women taking placebo. So the drug was only marginally better than a placebo, but that was good enough for FDA approval. You can email Richard Harris at rharris@npr. org.

Russia’s recent cyber adventures have the hallmarks of an old Soviet specialty: disinformation. While many Americans have just awoken to the world of disinformation — sometimes known as ”fake news” — in the recent presidential election, Moscow’s efforts date back decades and have become increasingly prominent over the past decade as techniques have been updated for the digital age. The spread of disinformation through active measures was a central tactic of Soviet information operations as a way to influence foreign governments and their populations, undermine relations between nations, and weaken those who opposed communism. Dezinformatsiya, as Russians call it, is meant to instill fear and confuse audiences, blurring the lines between truth, falsehood and reality. Disinformation can spread conspiracy theories and reinforce ”filter bubbles” that isolate readers and viewers from alternative viewpoints and can create a cloud of confusion and paranoia. Spreading disinformation, I recently led an independent study on how Russia uses disinformation to influence ethnic Russians who live in former Soviet Union states. In our report, we highlight how disinformation is effective because it is quick, cheap and yields high rewards. We assessed that Russia has a number of tools in its disinformation toolbox — including its Russian and television network Russian Television, platforms such as the Sputnik news service that enable audiences outside Russia to subscribe to their services free of charge, and the deployment of trolls in the blogosphere and on social media. In some instances, Russia’s troll armies manage multiple fake accounts, and each account posts articles on social media 50 to 100 times a day. Even before the explosion of social media, the effects of Russia’s modern disinformation efforts could be seen during the 2008 war, when Russia used picture defacement to spread fake images and news stories. Russia hacked into Georgian infrastructure and the official website of President Mikhail Saakashvili. More recently, in Ukraine, Russia spread many conspiracy theories and fake stories in 2014, during the Crimea crisis and the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. In the latter case, Western sources have pointed to a Russian missile being involved and believe it was fired by either the Russians themselves or Ukrainian separatists allied with Moscow. Possible consequences, If unaddressed, Russia’s disinformation tactics will have at least three significant consequences for global stability. First, Russia’s disinformation machinery could inspire other countries, terrorists, transnational criminal organizations and individuals to emulate this behavior. An immediate effect could be attempts to disrupt the coming elections in Germany, France, Serbia, and the Netherlands. Different groups act for different reasons. Some purveyors of disinformation, like the Islamic State, have ideological motives. Others look at it as an easy way to make an extra dollar. In Macedonia, for example, young people found it lucrative to set up websites to share fake news that interfered with the U. S. election. Their motives were more economic than political. Second, disinformation can bleed into conspiracy theories that can instantly spread on social media and may have major national security implications. In December, Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Muhammad tweeted incorrectly that Israel was threatening Pakistan with nuclear weapons after this disinformation appeared on AWD News, a website. While the Israeli Defense Ministry questioned this claim, the defense minister’s tweet was reposted hundreds of times, spreading fake content within a matter of seconds. Earlier in December, stolen emails containing a brief exchange between John Podesta and the owner of a pizzeria, Comet Ping Pong, in Washington, D. C. led to a fake news story that a child sex ring was being run out of the restaurant. A North Carolina man then drove to Washington and fired a gun, saying he wanted to rescue sex slaves he was convinced were harbored at the restaurant. Identifying disinformation, Third, Russia’s disinformation campaigns help highlight one of the biggest and most dangerous challenges in Western society: an inability to think critically about information. In a news cycle and universe, media consumers have developed an unprecedented need to access, process and spread information, be it true or not. But the youth in particular have a limited ability to identify fake news content. If information seems newsworthy and provides high entertainment value, few people will think hard before tweeting it out or posting it on Facebook. The challenge is further amplified when notable figures spread disinformation via social media, reinforcing the virtual conspiracy bubble. And when disinformation comes from those believed to be credible — such as friends, family and colleagues — it is even more likely to be treated uncritically, as factual information. Countering Russia’s disinformation will require a set of actions including debunking fake news, messaging and creating counternarratives for targeted populations both in the U. S. and globally who are sympathetic to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s policies and strengthening individual and media literacy programs around the world. The muddling mix of rumors, lies and news has dominated our conversation to the point that we are no longer certain what is true. Citizens, news and social media outlets, both organizations and users, cannot fall victim to disinformation. We have a responsibility to think critically about the information and stories that are disseminated. Without doing so, we will continue to empower Russia and others to spread disinformation and propaganda, risk our security and create distrust in our society. Vera Zakem is a research scientist who leads initiatives on European stability, media and information influence at CNA, a nonprofit research and analysis organization in Arlington, Va. The views expressed here are those of the author alone and do not represent the views of CNA or any of its sponsors.

After a woman was and died of her injuries in New Delhi in December 2012, the Indian government tried to set up swift and judicious ways to report and address such crimes. Fast track courts were set up, social workers and police were given sensitization training. Women were told things would be better when they stepped out. four years and the country is buzzing angrily at how much has not changed. Women bringing in the new year in downtown Bangalore, the country’s cosmopolitan IT hub, were surrounded and groped by mobs of pushing, shoving, handsy men. Photos and videos captured that night show young women trying to push through crowds of up to 300 men pressing in on them. Some of the women were crying, some yelling, others were being defended by their friends. Many of the women said they used their shoes to beat off gropers. A short distance away, an emcee walked out of his event and stumbled upon 25 men threatening a group of women. According to some women on the scene, not only was the harassment frightening, the apathy of cops who looked away and didn’t intervene was worse. In the days that have followed, the official stance on the mass harassment has done somersaults. First the police vowed to punish the offenders and called on the victims to file police complaints. Three days later, the police said they found no street camera footage to support the claims of sexual harassment, although the police commissioner has since said there is ”credible evidence” of the attacks. And then came the remarks of home minister G. Parameshwara, one of the highest ranking officials in the state of Karnataka, of which Bangalore is the capital. He went on record to say: ”Youngsters . .. try to copy the Westerners not only in the mindset but even the dressing. So some disturbance, some girls are harassed, these kind of things do happen.” On January 3, Abu Azmi of Mumbai, the state leader of a political party, said on national TV: ”If my sister or daughter is roaming around on December 31 with random men who aren’t their husband or brother, I don’t think that’s right.” He added, ”If there’s petrol near fire, it will burn. If there is sugar, ants will come.” His words were highlighted in angry tweets. Trisha Shetty, a lawyer, is the of SheSays, a nonprofit group that educates young women about their rights, especially in the areas of sexual violence. She said the responses from officials were reprehensible. ”We reject this sense of entitlement men have over women’s bodies, sexuality and spaces,” she said. And, she added, the display of such parochial mindsets from people in charge of ensuring safety in public spaces is a huge setback for women. Meanwhile, on social media the #NotAllMen hashtag started to trend the next day defending men who didn’t do it, arguing that women were generalizing their anger. Japleen Pasricha, who runs the Feminism in India platform, was a critic of #NotAllMen tweets: ”The #NotAllMen tag detracted from the conversation, hijacked the narrative, and moved it away from how to deal with what’s happening. We’re not saying all men do this, but we do know all women are harassed.” To counter it, Feminism In India and Pasricha dusted off the globally used #YesAllWomen hashtag. Their tweet inviting Indian women to share their stories of public harassment, assault and abuse has been retweeted more than 900 times, with at least 1, 000 responses, says Pasricha. Sharing stories publicly may not change too many minds (although one Twitter troll changed his handle to ”I’m sorry” after being taken to task for sexism) m says Pasricha, ”But, mainly we wanted to take the narrative back.” A petition has been floated demanding unconditional apologies from the politicians, and on January 21 solidarity marches will be held in seven cities: Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune and Kolkata, organized and supported by 18 organizations, including Take Back the Night and Why Loiter, under the umbrella hashtag #IWillGoOut2017, Will a march make a difference? In late 2012 and early 2013, protests and vigils took place across the country, but soon other issues overtook demands for women’s safety. ”In the wake of the Nirbhaya case [the 2012 rape] the nation was in fervor — taking to the streets, debating on various media outlets,” the organizers of the #IWillGoOut march told me in a collectively authored email. ”Some blamed her and her partner. Some fathers vowed to never send their daughters out again because the world was cruel to them. Is this how we deal with assault? By limiting the freedoms and mobility of half the population?” What’s more, cases of sexual attack are on the rise. Data shows that police reports of assault on women rose 92 percent from 42, 968 in 2011 to 82, 422 in 2015. But conviction rates declined by 5 percent. In Karnataka, the rate of conviction is 1. 2 percent. Sukriti Gupta, at the Academy For Earth Sustainability, an environment education organization, said she’s still hopeful of making a difference. ”I strongly believe reclaiming public space, making our voices heard, is important to remind and encourage others, especially women, that there is a support system out there — that we have a right and a place in our country, at night, regardless of what we wear.” Plus, she said, ”the visual nature of marches can cross socioeconomic barriers and provide food for thought for those who are normally not engaged in press such as women and young girls living in more conservative families and slum areas.” The organizers of the march told me that the Bangalore harassment was not an isolated incident: ”It is a visible part of systemic inequality that prevents, hinders and shames half the population from moving around their cities, their homes. It is time to stake a claim in our landscape and our rights to own the streets and go out!” India’s tourism minister expressed the opposite perspective in August 2016. After high profile rape cases across the country, some involving foreign tourists, in August 2016 Mahesh Sharma advised foreign visitors to avoid wearing skirts and venturing out at night: ”For their own safety, women foreign tourists should not wear short dresses and skirts,” he said, because ”Indian culture is different from the Western.” This attitude toward safety seems to have been a contentious issue even a century ago. The Twitter account for the Why Loiter group has shared a quote from 1905 that mocks how keeping women safe means locking them up rather than changing or punishing the attitudes that endanger them.

Maintaining a relationship can be difficult, but Romy Madley Croft, Oliver Sim and Jamie Smith have managed to do it — and they’ve become megastars in the process. They make up the band The xx, and they’ve been making music together since they were kids. The band’s two singers, Croft and Sim, met in preschool in a London suburb when they were only 3 years old. ”They had music classes, and I remember sharing a xylophone in that music class,” Sim says. ”I’ve also got pictures of it, so I’m sure I’m building memories off a picture.” Croft says another old photo of the two of them sticks out to her. ”There’s one of us standing on a bench as if we’re sort of on a stage. Oliver’s on the side that he stands on [when we perform] and I’m on the side that I stand on, which is quite a beautiful coincidence, I think,” Croft says. Their friendship with the third member of The xx, producer Jamie Smith, began a bit later, when the trio was 11 years old. The three formed a and insular crew. ”I was starting out a new school, and Romy and Oliver had come to a new school as well,” Smith says. ”There were only a few people there that I liked, so I was quite happy just to stay us. I think just keeping your closest friends around is the best.” The trio released its debut album, xx, in 2009, and has sold millions of records since then. All three bandmates have grown in different ways: Smith released a solo album under the name Jamie xx Sim gave up drinking Croft got engaged. Now, the group has a new album called I See You coming out Jan. 13. Croft says one song on the new record, called ”Test Me,” touches on the challenges of close friendships. She says the lyrics describe ”a sort of hard time in our friendship, between Oliver and I — and a time when all three of us were quite distant from each other emotionally and geographically.” But Croft says those challenges led to some important changes. ”It sort of represents a new time of us actually talking about things rather than just pushing them down, and I think that was a good thing,” Croft says. ”Sometimes we would say things to each other in the music before we could say it to each other.” Croft, Sim and Smith shared these and other stories with NPR’s Ari Shapiro. Hear their full conversation at the audio link.

On a bright Sunday afternoon last November, Anastasia Popova was picketing outside the Russian Embassy in Washington with a dozen other activists. ”Russia will be free! Russia will be free!” they chanted at the hulking white building on the other side of the street. The forlorn group of protesters held up signs calling for the release of a jailed Russian activist, Ildar Dadin, and displayed photographs of other people they called political prisoners in their home country. Under somewhat different circumstances, Popova, 29, might have been sitting inside the embassy looking out. She aspired to become a diplomat, but after getting involved in opposition politics in Russia, she had to make a choice. ”They told me: ’You can’t work for the government in the daytime and prepare protests against that government in the evening,’” Popova said. She chose politics — and joined the staff of Ilya Ponomaryov, one of the lone opposition voices in the Russian parliament. A time of uncertainty Five years ago, Russia was in upheaval. Vladimir Putin’s decision to run for an unprecedented third term as Russia’s president was fueling street protests in Moscow and other cities. Politicians like Ponomaryov saw a potential opening to begin liberalizing Russia’s tightly controlled political system. Hopes for a thaw were soon dashed. Putin, who had been president from 2000 to 2008, and prime minister from 2008 to 2012, won the presidential election in March 2012. Many protest leaders found themselves facing lawsuits and jail time. In 2014, Ponomaryov was the only member of parliament to vote against annexing Crimea, which Russia had just seized from Ukraine. Russian authorities then started building a criminal case against him. Ponomaryov moved to the United States, and before long, Popova says she got a warning that she, too, should leave the country — immediately. ”That was the end of October 2014. And that was my personal Halloween, you know, when I found myself in the U. S. with just a suitcase, and I had no idea where to go next,” she said. A long tradition, Popova follows in a long history of Russian political exiles dating back to the 1800s. In the past century, there have been spurts of immigration from Russia to the U. S.: Jews escaping persecution, Russian aristocrats fleeing revolutionaries, and dissidents getting the boot from the communist regime. Russian applications for political asylum in the U. S. have increased for the fourth straight year, according to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by Radio Free Europe. In the last fiscal year, 1, 912 Russians applied for asylum, the highest level in more than two decades. Exiles granted asylum may be safe from persecution abroad. But they’re also cut off from their homeland. ”Once they’re out, it’s actually quite difficult for them to have an influence back again,” said Fiona Hill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. ”They run the risk of harming contacts, even family members, if they engage in overt political activity that in some way is involving organization of protest movements still in Russia itself.” Hill said that the Internet affords little help to effect change at home. ”I think social media does add a different ingredient, but what it creates is a sort of a parallel alternative community,” she said. ”It doesn’t necessarily translate to action on the ground.” Remaining in Russia, Someone who’s still trying to take action inside Russia is Ilya Yashin, an opposition leader refusing to leave. In late October he visited the U. S. to build bridges to members of Russia’s diaspora. ”Sure, I agree, the risks are high. And from a certain point of view it probably is crazy to oppose Putin inside Russia. But somebody has to do it,” Yashin said in an interview in an Alexandria, Va. coffee shop. ”The Putin regime is happy to get rid of its opponents and does everything it can so that we leave,” Yashin said. ”That’s the reason I see my mission to do everything so that Putin’s critics stay in Russia. That’s why I haven’t left.” Yashin said many political activists left Russia after his friend, opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, was assassinated outside the Kremlin in February 2015. As for Popova, she said exile was her only option. ”I believe that being in the U. S. and telling the U. S. government the truth about the political situation in Russia is more useful than just being tortured in jail,” she said. When it comes to dealing with Russia in the future, Popova had a message for Donald Trump: Negotiate hard, don’t make any concessions as a sign of good will, and keep expectations low.

The official Electoral College vote tally just concluded, but some Democratic House members decided to put on a bit of a show. More than half a dozen members rose at different points to object to the results of the election, citing Russian hacking, the legitimacy of the election and electors, voting machines, voter suppression and more. Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts was the first to rise. Amid grumbling from other members, Vice President Biden, who presided in his role as president of the Senate, gaveled the body to order. He noted that any objection must be in writing, signed by a member of the House and a member of the Senate. He asked McGovern if he had fulfilled all three. McGovern admitted the objection was not signed by a member of the Senate, and Biden threw it out. ”In that case the objection cannot be entertained,” Biden said, and Republicans stood and cheered. Jamie Raskin of Maryland interrupted later. Biden cut him off, read the requirements again and asked if his objection was signed by a member of the Senate. Raskin, too, admitted it was not. This went on with others. Biden grew increasingly curt. At times, Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan could be seen laughing behind him. ”It is over,” Biden chided. Three protesters were escorted out of the House chamber. NPR’s Susan Davis reports that at least one was arrested. NPR’s Ron Elving notes that it all was a similar scene to one that played out in January 2001 after George W. Bush’s election, the Florida recount and the Supreme Court decision that stopped it. The vice president, who had to play Biden’s role then, was none other than Al Gore himself. The objectors were all from the House, many from Florida. After overruling several objectors the same way Biden did, Gore jokingly noted that it was becoming somewhat painful. ”This is going to sound familiar to you,” he noted, ” — to all of us. ...”

A golden statue commemorating the plight of ”comfort women” — a euphemism for the Korean women and girls forced by the Japanese to work as sex slaves in brothels during World War II — has caused a diplomatic row between Japan and South Korea. At the end of December, activists placed the golden statue of a young woman sitting in a chair in front of the Japanese Consulate in the southern city of Busan, South Korea. Local authorities initially removed the statue, citing a lack of permits, The Korea Herald reported. But after public outcry, authorities allowed the statue to be replaced and the district mayor held a press conference to apologize. Now, Japan is taking countermeasures. Speaking at a news conference Friday, Japan’s chief Cabinet secretary, Yoshihide Suga, announced that the country is withdrawing both its ambassador to South Korea and the consul general at Busan. Suga also said Japan is pulling out of some economic talks, according to state broadcaster NHK. Calling the situation ”extremely regrettable,” Suga said the statue is a break with the landmark deal in 2015 between the two countries over comfort women. That deal was billed ”final and irreversible,” ostensibly smoothing over the persistent source of strain between the two countries, as we reported. It ”included an apology from Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and a billion yen (roughly $8. 3 million) fund to support the 46 surviving Korean women.” But some activists spoke out against the deal, as the BBC reported: ”Critics say it was reached without consultation with victims, did not contain Japan’s acknowledgement of legal responsibility, and did not provide direct compensation to the victims.” Suga also accused South Korea of violating ”the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which requires host countries to protect diplomatic missions from the impairment of their dignity,” NHK reported. Korea’s finance ministry said it ”regrets” that Japan suspended economic talks, including those focused on a potential currency swap deal, the Korea Herald reported. ”It is desirable that the two countries continue bilateral economic and financial cooperation regardless of political and diplomatic relations,” the ministry added. The Associated Press reported that another statue by the same artist has stood in front of Japan’s embassy in Seoul since 2011, prior to the agreement. And the BBC says that ”another 37 are thought to exist in South Korea, while in Australia a similar statue has sparked a row between Korean and Japanese community groups.”

Donald Trump has promised to step back from his business interests when he takes office. He says he’ll let his two adult sons take the helm and that he won’t make any new deals while he’s president. While he’s unwinding some of his roughly 500 business deals involving about 20 countries as Inauguration Day approaches, many others are moving forward, causing concern about conflicts of interest. Most of the projects are licensing deals, says Joshua Kurlantzick, a Southeast Asia specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations. ”They pay Trump a fee and someone builds the resorts and they slap his name on it,” he says. ”So it’s not like he’s got his own skin in the game or he’s possibly going to be involved in shaping the resorts.” Still, Kurlantzick and others say any involvement by Trump in a project, even if it’s just his name, can create a conflict of interest — complicating any national security, foreign policy or economic concerns the U. S. has with a particular country. For example, in a $150 million project in Manila, Trump had received up to $5 million for the use of his name. This is in a country where human rights concerns have been raised as a result of President Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal campaign. More than 6, 000 people have been killed since Duterte took office in June. Robert Manning, a former National Intelligence Council official now with the Atlantic Council, says Trump has been reluctant to criticize Duterte’s human rights policies. ”Whether his business interests are a factor in that, I don’t know how you ascertain that. I think it would certainly give [Trump] a motivation,” he says. To further complicate things, Duterte recently named Trump’s main business partner in the $150 million Manila Trump Tower deal, Jose E. B. Antonio, as the Philippines special envoy to the U. S. on trade and economic policy. Manning says it won’t be illegal for Trump to interact with Antonio in his capacity as trade representative. ”It’s the sticky question of deciding where national interests stop and business begins, and vice versa,” Manning says. Trump has promised to keep his hands off his business empire while president. But Kurlantzick says Trump’s sons will have to build up strong relations with powerful people to help keep overseas projects moving. And this could be problematic. Kurlantzick cites an example in Indonesia, where the Trump Organization is involved in two resort projects. One of Trump’s Indonesian contacts was Setya Novanto, the speaker of the House of Representatives. He had to step down in December 2015 after being accused of corruption. ”He briefly gave up his post, which was like the equivalent of [House Speaker] Paul Ryan, last year, because he was caught on an audio trying to get a $4 billion payment from an American mining company,” Kurlantzick explains. In September 2015, during the presidential campaign, Novanto went to New York to meet with Trump — and accompanied him at a news conference, where Trump praised him as ”an amazing man” and a ”great man.” Stephen Gillers, an ethics professor at New York University Law School, says Trump needs to be careful not to erode public confidence. ”What we want to make sure of is that the deal our president cuts is solely for the benefit of the United States, that there’s no other interest that could be affecting his judgement, and that includes his own financial interests,” he says. The only way for Trump to do that, Gillers says, is to divest himself from all his business interests when he becomes president.

Donald Trump is nominating Jay Clayton, a Wall Street lawyer, to be the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Some who know him say Clayton is a good man for the job, but critics say his ties to big financial firms create too many conflicts of interest. The big question is whether Trump has chosen a fox to guard the henhouse. Clayton works as a lawyer for a firm that has represented Goldman Sachs for decades. He also represented Ally Financial and other financial firms when they struck settlements related to wrongdoing in the subprime mortgage scandal. And Clayton’s wife currently works for Goldman Sachs. ”I do think that having a chairman of the SEC whose spouse works at Goldman Sachs or another large investment bank is a serious problem,” says Richard Painter, a law professor at the University of Minnesota and the former chief White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush. Painter says Goldman and other big banks had their business models severely restricted by the Wall Street Reform Act, and there is already pressure building to scale back that law during the Trump administration. ”The decision about whether to repeal or how to enforce and rulemaking under — all those decisions will have an enormous impact on Goldman Sachs,” Painter says. ”And to have Goldman Sachs have a controlling influence over the career of the SEC chairman’s spouse, I think could be an untenable situation.” Still, Painter says he is withholding judgement until he watches the nomination hearing process. Maybe there’s a way to resolve that and other conflicts. And he says just because Clayton is a Wall Street insider, that doesn’t mean he’d be a bad SEC chairman. ”There are plenty of good Wall Street people who could actually aggressively regulate Wall Street. They know where the bodies are buried they know where the reforms are necessary,” Painter says. So, is Clayton that kind of Wall Street insider — or the kind that would be soft on enforcement? ”What I understand about him is that he’s a very, very capable lawyer, very knowledgeable, practical and very ” says Bill McLucas, who was head of enforcement for the SEC under the administrations of George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton. And, McLucas says, if Clayton makes it through the congressional hearing and vetting process, if past SEC chairs are any guide, ”once they are confirmed it is rare that the public interest is not their guiding principle.” Still, there are plenty of skeptics. Former Rep. Barney Frank says he sees more of the same here — a series of nominations by Trump of people who are too beholden to Wall Street. ”It is one more example of the biggest I believe, in American history — namely Trump winning by claiming he was going to stand up to Wall Street and be tough and then becoming the best friend Wall Street and the opponents of regulation have ever had,” Frank says. Frank says the law that bears his name gave the SEC strong powers to protect the financial system as well as everyday Americans who are buying stocks or buying their first home. But, he says, ”You cannot make laws that are .” Frank says he’s worried that even if Republicans don’t have the votes ultimately to repeal laws such as the appointments Trump is trying to make could still severely weaken regulation. And, Frank says, that could make the financial system and everyday Americans less protected from wrongdoing.

Tilikum, possibly the most famous orca in the world, has died, according to SeaWorld Orlando. He was the subject of the influential documentary Blackfish, and outcry over his story prompted SeaWorld to stop breeding orcas in captivity. Tilikum was estimated to be 36 years old, SeaWorld said in a statement, which is old for a captive killer whale. He faced ”very serious health issues,” the park says, and had been declining for months. The orca died Friday morning surrounded by trainers and veterinary staff. A necropsy is required to determine the official cause of death, but he had suffered a ”persistent and complicated bacterial lung infection,” the park says, which had been treated by a range of medicines and therapies. Tilikum was 22 feet long and weighed more than 11, 000 pounds, according to The Associated Press. He was born off the waters of Iceland, captured and performed in captivity for decades — first at the Sealand of the Pacific and then at SeaWorld Orlando. A prolific breeder, he sired more than 20 calves. But he became notorious for aggressive behavior. In the ’90s, he was implicated in two deaths: a trainer who drowned and a man who was found dead in his tank. Then, in 2010, he killed SeaWorld trainer Dawn Brancheau, holding her underwater until she died of drowning and blunt force trauma. In the immediate aftermath of that incident, the question was whether Tilikum would be put down, and whether he would return to performing, as he did in 2011. But then a 2013 documentary called Blackfish changed the narrative around aggressive behavior by orcas, and by Tilikum in particular. In the film, former trainers at SeaWorld criticized the park’s practices as harmful for orcas and dangerous for trainers. They argued that animals such as Tilikum behaved aggressively because of the stress and trauma of captivity. As NPR’s Greg Allen reports, animal welfare groups have long protested against marine parks holding killer whales in captivity at all. When Blackfish came out — and aired on CNN, where it reached millions of viewers — the public joined in the outcry. The park has denied allegations that it mistreated orcas, but it did shift its position on captive breeding. Greg reports: ”Orcas are an intelligent, social species that spend much of their life in family groups and in the wild range over thousands of miles. Advocates say holding these huge mammals in a tank is cruel. . .. ”Activists stepped up their campaign against SeaWorld following the release of Blackfish. Attendance dropped at the park, a decline the company attributed in part to public reaction to the film. In response, SeaWorld’s new CEO Joel Manby announced the company was ending its orca breeding program — making this the last generation of killer whales at its parks. . .. Following SeaWorld’s decision to end its orca breeding program, [Jeffrey] Ventre and three other former SeaWorld trainers issued a statement. ’We’d like to send love to Tilikum,’ they wrote. ’In the end, his message was heard.’ ” Members of the public and former SeaWorld trainers also called for Tilikum to be released back into the wild, but SeaWorld says its captive orcas could not survive in the open sea. Tim Zimmerman, who wrote about Brancheau’s death in Outside magazine and was a producer on Blackfish, told Greg there was a deep well of public sympathy for Tilikum. ”I think that’s the most amazing thing that comes out of Tilikum’s story,” he said. ”He killed three human beings. And yet when you learn about his life story, he does become the victim and you do sympathize with him.”

Officials in the West African nation of Ivory Coast say soldiers have overrun police stations and seized the country’s city, Bouake. It has been six years since the West African nation emerged from a civil war, during which Bouake was the headquarters of the rebellion. NPR’s Ofeibea said there were also reports of gunfire in two other cities, Daloa and Korhogo, and that it wasn’t clear whether the attacks were a mutiny by current or former troops. As Ofeibea reported for NPR’s Newscast unit: ”Troops reportedly seized weapons from police stations and took up positions at the entrance to Bouake. One soldier says former fighters integrated into Ivory Coast’s army were demanding bonuses of $8, 000 apiece — plus a house. . .. ”A statement from Ivorian Defense Minister Donwahi has called on soldiers to remain calm and return to their barracks, to allow, he says, for lasting solutions to the latest crisis in Ivory Coast, which has recently been burnishing its democratic credentials.” A member of the national assembly representing Bouake, Bema Fofana, told the BBC that ”the soldiers did not appear to have a leader or spokesman, making it difficult to negotiate with them,” the broadcaster reported, and that ”most of the soldiers were former rebels who were integrated into the army after the civil war.” The BBC also reported that a resident who asked not to be identified said soldiers armed with automatic rifles ”fired at the offices of the state broadcaster in the city.” ”They are heavily armed and parading through the city of Daloa,” a student named Karim Sanogo told The Associated Press. ”Security forces have abandoned their posts. Everyone has returned home to seek shelter.” Earlier this year, a terrorist attack in a tourist city on the country’s coast threatened the fragile peace sought after the civil war. In March, militants from in the Islamic Maghreb killed more than a dozen people at beach hotels, as we reported. ”This country, once an oasis of peace, security, stability and prosperity, is emerging from a devastating decade of political violence and a civil war,” Ofeibea reported at the time. ”The economy was on the rebound.”

An overwhelming majority of people disapprove of Republican lawmakers’ plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act without having a ready replacement for the health care law, according to a poll released Friday. And judging by the and lobbying in the first week of the new congressional session, many health care and business groups agree. A poll released Friday by the Kaiser Family Foundation finds that 75 percent of Americans say they either want lawmakers to leave Obamacare alone, or repeal it only when they can replace it with a new health care law. Twenty percent of those polled say they want to see the law killed immediately. But Drew Altman, CEO of the Kaiser Family Foundation, says the poll shows lawmakers don’t have a strong mandate to repeal Obamacare. ”Most of the American people said they’re either against repealing it or they’re against repealing it unless Republicans put a replacement plan on the table,” Altman says. ”They want to see what comes next before they seen the ACA repealed.” Americans are about equally divided over whether Congress should repeal Obamacare, the poll shows. But of the 48 percent who want the law rolled back, about 60 percent want lawmakers to wait until they have an alternative plan. And Obamacare isn’t even people’s top health care concern. The vast majority — 67 percent — say their top priority is finding a way to lower their health care costs. The poll findings come just days after Republicans in the Senate took the first step toward repealing President Obama’s signature health care law. They voted on Wednesday to move ahead with a budget resolution that will allow them to take funding away from Obamacare, which will effectively gut the law because the subsidies to buy insurance, and the penalties for not doing so, will disappear. Republicans say they intend to vote on repeal, but give the law time to sunset while they come up with a replacement that will give the millions of people covered under Obamacare access to insurance through some other vehicle. On Thursday, House Speaker Paul Ryan, . said the replacement legislation would pass by the end of the year. But doctors, hospital groups, insurers and analysts are skeptical of that strategy. In letters, press releases and advertising campaigns, many organizations have made it clear that they want to see a replacement for the Affordable Care Act in place, or at least outlined, before Congress repeals the current law. A report released Dec. 6 by the American Hospital Association and Federation of American Hospitals warned that a repeal could cost hospitals hundreds of billions and said ”any reconsideration of the ACA should be accompanied at the same time by provisions that guarantee similar coverage to those who would lose it.” A letter sent Tuesday from the American Medical Association urged lawmakers to release details of their Obamacare replacement before repealing the current law. ”Patients and other stakeholders should be able to clearly compare current policy to new proposals so they can make informed decisions about whether it represents a step forward in the ongoing process of health reform,” the letter said. Dr. Andrew Gurman, president of the American Medical Association, says people should be able to evaluate the proposed Obamacare replacement before the current law is thrown out. ”People in this country need to understand what it is they’re being asked to substitute for what’s there now so they can have an informed opinion about whether it’s better or not,” Gurman says. And repeal and delay? ”We have a concern that that creates uncertainty in insurance markets and uncertainty in people about whether they’re going to have continuity of coverage,” Gurman adds. He says he and his members talk with lawmakers regularly. A separate study released Thursday projects that a straight repeal of the law could kill 3 million jobs across the country by 2021. That study, by the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University, finds that about a third of those lost jobs would come from health care, and the rest would be in other industries such as retail, construction, finance and insurance. Total business output could be cut by as much as $2. 6 billion over four years, the report says. California, Florida and Texas would be most affected. Leighton Ku, the report’s lead author, says the debate over ACA repeal has focused almost completely on insurance coverage and has ignored the broader economic impact. ”The payments you make to health care then become income for workers and income for other businesses. And this spreads out,” Ku says. ”Health care is almost a fifth of the US economy, so as you begin to change health care, there are repercussions that go across all sectors.” Ku says he can’t estimate what economic impact Obamcare replacement would have because Republicans have yet to lay out their plans. ”It’s a mystery,” he says. Editor’s note: The Kaiser Family Foundation supports Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent program that produces news reports heard on NPR and published on NPR. org.

The Justice Department is issuing new guidance to federal agents on how to secure eyewitness identifications, an initiative designed to reflect decades of scientific research and bolster public confidence in the criminal justice system, NPR has learned. The policy has two major components: It directs U. S. investigators to document or record an eyewitness’s confidence in an identification at the very moment the ID is made, and it encourages federal agents to conduct ”blind” or ”blinded” photo arrays of suspects in which the agent leading the session doesn’t know which photo represents the prime suspect. ”We view this as an important step in doing everything we can to ensure the greatest reliability possible for the evidence we’re using at trial,” Deputy U. S. Attorney General Sally Yates said. Yates said the department based its guidance on research that supports the idea ”of just how important it is to get as much detail as possible about just how sure that witness is that this is the guy” long before any trial or court proceeding begins. Authorities also are leery of the idea that a person leading a photo array could, intentionally or not, provide cues to an eyewitness about whom they should select out of a photo lineup. Such practices have been blamed for encouraging faulty eyewitness identifications and contributing to the problem of wrongful convictions. That’s why DOJ is urging law enforcement to conduct blind photo displays. ”If you don’t know, it’s virtually impossible verbally or nonverbally . .. to potentially be able to cue the witness,” Yates said. The guidance from Yates marks the first departmentwide policy for DOJ agencies, and it applies to such law enforcement components as the FBI, DEA, ATF and the U. S. Marshals Service. ”This DOJ memo reflects a series of best practices recommended by scientists based on research conducted over the past,” said Brandon Garrett, a law professor at the University of Virginia and author of a book about wrongful convictions. ”It adopts the recommendations of the 2014 National Academy of Sciences report. And it sends an important message that accuracy matters in criminal cases.” Garrett added that the procedures for lineups ”are well designed to be practical and to apply in many different types of criminal cases where eyewitnesses are important.” You can read the guidelines here.

In the kitchen at Oakland Avenue Urban Farm, just north of downtown Detroit, Linda Carter and Shawnetta Hudson are in the final stages of making their newest jam creation: preserves. Carter is meticulously wiping down tables while Hudson seals the lids on jars. Then comes the logo — a beautiful graphic of a black woman with afro hair made of strawberries. The kitchen is small and basic, but for the past year it has served as the hub of a product called Afro Jam. ”The name Afro Jam and the logo are empowering, independent and strong,” Carter says. ”That’s what we want our community to be.” Carter, the food safety manager at the farm, recruited Hudson from the local community to help her keep up with making and selling the product. Strawberry, peach and blueberry are Afro Jam’s best sellers. ”Strawberry jam, that’s my thing,” says Hudson. ”And when Linda and I work together, we’re on point at all times.” Staying ”on point” is a goal of Carter’s. The jam venture has to be profitable. So in the past year the small group of about a women, rotating volunteers and three paid employees has made an aggressive push to sell the spreads at summer festivals and farmers markets. is a product of One Mile, a neighborhood arts and culture organization, and Oakland Avenue Urban Farm, a nonprofit dedicated to cultivating healthy local food sources for the surrounding community. The farm is a project of Northend Christian Community Development Corporation — both are managed by Jerry Hebron. It has a vegetable garden and an apple orchard. Hebron also oversees a weekly farmers market in the summer. Roughly 83 percent of Detroit’s population is black, an aftereffect of white flight that began in the 1950s. As the people left Detroit, so did the supermarkets — especially in poorer, blacker neighborhoods. Fresh fruits and vegetables became much harder to come by for many city residents. As a result, gardens started popping up in Detroit, which currently has roughly 1, 500 urban farms. Some are large and operate at an industrial scale others are single lots that have been turned into vegetable gardens for a few families. The idea for Afro Jam was born out of a need to generate revenue year round while also keeping the community involved, says Hebron. ”The community is at the root of everything we do,” she says. So Hebron began spreading the word at the farmers market: They wanted to start a new line of jams using old family recipes. Recipes for making preserves poured in — including some that had been handed down for generations. Constance King, 67, heard the call and was excited to share her mother’s recipe with the folks from Afro Jam. ”My mother brought her jam recipe [from the South] with her — it belonged to her mother and to her mother’s mother,” King says. ”I felt proud about being able to share that recipe. It’s a beautiful way of keeping my mother alive.” A lifelong resident of Detroit, King loves the city’s rich history. Making biscuits and jam, she says, was part of the Southern black experience — they’ve been a staple at the Southern supper table since at least the century. ”This [growing fruits and vegetables] is a good idea, it’s something we can do with all of this empty land,” King says. ”Our neighborhood used to be full of families — there was not a vacant block. There were hardware stores, delis and grocery stores. It was a community.” King’s family is originally from Georgia but moved to Detroit in the 1940s during the Great Migration, when millions of left their homes in the rural South in search of better jobs and an escape from harsh segregationist laws. Hebron says that among black Detroiters, the tradition of making homemade jams has largely fallen by the wayside in the modern era. Oakland Avenue Urban Farms used heritage recipes from seven different families — unearthing them from hiding places in attics and recipe boxes. In the fall of 2015, the ladies of the farm set out to make their first batch of jam. Some of the recipes they received took days to make and weren’t practical for production. Carter and Hebron settled on strawberry jam as their first batch, which took several days and four people to make. ”We bonded over making jam, laughing and sharing old family stories,” Hebron says. ”Gathering is what it’s all about,” Carter says. ”There is nothing greater than bringing people together over food.” Proceeds from the jam venture go to Northend Christian CDC, a nonprofit that’s aimed at revitalizing Detroit’s North End historic district, where One Mile and Oakland Avenue Urban Farm are based. For Hebron, Carter and the rest of the women who make Afro Jam, this is a way to preserve the legacy of Detroit’s black families. ”It’s one of the most amazing projects I’ve ever worked on,” Hebron says. Martina Guzman is a journalist based in Detroit. She’s currently the race and justice journalism fellow at the Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights at Wayne State University.

Talladega College isn’t known for its football team — because it doesn’t have one. But it does have a band — the Marching Tornadoes. It is the pride of the campus in this small town about 50 miles east of Birmingham. The Presidential Inaugural Committee included Talladega’s band on its list of participants in the traditional inauguration day parade. But the invitation to Washington, D. C. stirred angst for some — because of Donald Trump’s divisive campaign rhetoric. Talladega was founded by former slaves 150 years ago and was the first college in Alabama to accept students. A debate erupted on campus and around the nation as to whether Talladega should go. Yesterday, college president Billy Hawkins announced the Marching Tornadoes will participate. Band member Darrious Hayes agreed with the decision. He’s been in the band since 2014, his freshman year, and sees the trip to the inauguration as an opportunity. He says this will be his first visit to the nation’s capital. ”The alumni don’t want us to go because of Trump,” says Hayes. ”But we’re saying it’s not because of Donald Trump. It’s because of the experience.” Participation in this inauguration is not popular for some Talladega alums like Shirley Ferrill, a 1974 graduate. She says what Trump said on the campaign trail is not consistent with the values of Talladega College. ”To have them take part in anything that smacks of support for Donald Trump makes me sick,” says Ferrill, Some members of other groups like the Rockettes and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir have had similar concerns about performing in the inauguration. For Ferrill, this issue is bound up with Talladega’s history. ”I do care what others think about the college’s participation,” she says. ”I care about the reputation Talladega has established over 150 years and I think that reputation would be damaged by the college participating.” Ferrill launched an online petition calling for Talladega to decline the invitation. More than 1, 600 people signed it. No college administrators would answer questions about the decision to go. A Talladega spokeswoman did say it’s a good opportunity for students. The Talladega Marching Tornadoes played at an NFL game in New Orleans last year. But this performance at the 58th Presidential Inauguration will be its biggest ever.

Starting next week, Norway will become the first country to switch off its nationwide FM radio network and convert completely to digital signals. The change was announced in 2015, and will take months to be fully implemented. The Norwegian government decided to make the transition in part because digital radio can provide many more channels for the same price — eight times as many, to be precise. Norway currently has room for just five national radio stations on its FM system — three public broadcasting channels, and two commercial channels. Other national radio stations, as well as some regional and local stations, are already using the digital system. Supporters of the switch also say digital radio will sound clearer than FM, or frequency modulation, and that the signal will be clearer in places where fjords and mountains interfere with FM signals. As we reported in 2015, the Norwegian government also says that digital radio is less likely to fail in extreme conditions, which lawmakers saw as an advantage for emergency preparedness. The CEO of Digitalradio Norway says the country’s FM network is antiquated and would need massive investments to maintain — so, to allow investment in digital radio, the FM network needs to be shut down. But NPR’s Frank Langfitt reports that the public in general isn’t happy about the decision to abandon FM entirely. ”A recent poll shows that of Norwegians are against ditching FM,” he reports. ”Among the concerns: people may miss warnings for emergencies that are broadcast on FM. ”In addition, two million cars in Norway — a country of just five million people — don’t have digital audio broadcasting receivers. ”A digital adapter for an FM car radio costs about $170.” Reuters reports that the shutdown of FM signals will begin in the northern city of Bodø on Jan. 11, and extend across the country by the end of the year. Some local stations, however, will continue to transmit over FM signals until 2022, The Local reports. Norway’s transition to an radio will be closely watched by other countries considering the same move. ”Among other nations, the U. K. plans to review the need for a switchover once digital listening reaches 50 per cent,” the CBC reports. ”That could be reached by the end of 2017 on current trends, Digital Radio U. K. spokeswoman Yvette Dore said.”

When Kayla Wilson was 15, her mom — Wendy Founds — was in prison serving a term for felony drug charges. When Founds was 15 she started using drugs, and at some point became addicted to methamphetamines. ”When I asked Mom how she got started she told me that after her died she was just mad at the world and mad at God, and that’s when she told one of her that she wanted to get high,” Kayla said during a 2006 visit to StoryCorps with her grandmother, Teri Lyn . When Founds got busted, she was at home, Kayla explained. ”And I think they were making dope and it had spilled on my younger sister. And it was just so heartbreaking to understand that this is what’s going on and this is how it’s going to be. When I saw her in prison it was horrible because you see her come out of the door in that white suit. And her hair was gone. And she loved her long hair and I just had to cry. And then having to say bye and holding onto her knowing you couldn’t take her with you was the most horrible experience I’ve ever had.” Back then, Kayla hoped that when her mom got out of prison, she would get to be a child for a change. ”Not have to worry about being the mature responsible adult,” she said. ”I think that it’ll really be nice.” Founds was released from prison in 2008. Ten years after Kayla’s StoryCorps visit, Founds joined her daughter at StoryCorps to talk about the past. Like what she remembers about the day she got out of prison. ”I remember how you smelled, it was vanilla,” Founds said. ”And I remember the relief of, our lives get to really start from this point forward.” Kayla, now 25 and a high school teacher, remembers her mom’s apology. ”I think that was a defining moment for us, because I got to tell you what I’d always wanted to tell you which was that, you know, you can never make up for that time,” she said. Founds cried for days after that conversation, but says what she heard helped her become a better mom. Kayla also admitted wishing her mom was different back in those days. ”I can remember, you know, writing in diaries about how much I hated you because you chose drugs over me,” she said. But in the end, she forgave her mom. ”When you finally decided to get clean, it was obvious you were sincere,” she said. ”And you’re my mom, and as my mom, I loved you. I wanted that relationship. ”Sure would have been great to have [it] growing up, but I’m happy you’re here and I’m happy we’re where we’re at today,” Kayla continued. ”And I think what we’ve got is awesome considering where we’ve been. So I’m excited to see what happens next.” Founds, who lives with Kayla, helps counsel other parents struggling with addiction. She was granted a pardon by Gov. Asa Hutchinson for her felony convictions on March 4, 2016. Audio produced for Morning Edition by John White and Madison Mullen. StoryCorps is a national nonprofit that gives people the chance to interview friends and loved ones about their lives. These conversations are archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, allowing participants to leave a legacy for future generations. Learn more, including how to interview someone in your life, at StoryCorps. org.

The final chapter of the Obama economy drew that much closer to its end on Friday, with the final jobs report of the 44th president’s time in office. That report showed the 75th straight month of job growth, with employers adding 156, 000 jobs. Solid, but nothing flashy. In that way, it was emblematic of how the job market has generally fared since the worst of the Great Recession’s aftermath: chugging along, slowly but surely recovering. With the final Obama administration jobs day in the books, it’s a good time to look at how American workers have fared. Donald Trump will inherit a job market that is vastly rehabilitated from devastating lows just a few years ago. However, it has also undergone profound changes that have scarred many American workers. Unemployment: How low can it go? As Obama prepares to leave office, the unemployment rate is at 4. 7 percent, less than half of the peak it reached in October 2009. That decline is the result of a prolonged period of job growth. The administration has grown fond of showing off its prolonged run of job growth every month. For some perspective, here’s how big that job growth was: Obama averaged 109, 000 jobs per month. That’s far better than either President Bush experienced, but it’s well below the 242, 000 that Bill Clinton presided over in the roaring 1990s. For Reagan, it was 166, 000. Of course, President Obama came into office as the economy was plunging into a recession (a plunge that also drags down George W. Bush’s number). But even if you average out Obama’s 75 straight months of job growth, you get 199, 000 jobs per month, still shy of Clinton’s economy. In other words, the Obama recovery has been moderate, but remarkably steady. The question is how long that steady climb can continue uninterrupted. The unemployment rate is already near a low, as Steven Russolillo at the Wall Street Journal pointed out this week, and there is some question among economists how low it can go. Wages finally climbing, Having a job is one thing. Having a job that pays well is another. And slowly through Obama’s tenure, those wages have inched upward. In fact, wages were one bright spot of Friday’s jobs report. Average hourly wages were up by 2. 9 percent in December. After several years of hovering around 2 percent, that’s welcome growth. Aside from meaning more money in workers’ pockets, wage growth serves as yet another sign of a tightening labor market, signaling that employers are willing to pay more to attract workers. Rising wages may inspire the Federal Reserve to take its foot further off the gas pedal in the coming months (that is, allow interest rates to rise) — a reminder that the economy isn’t exactly under the president’s control. (More on this later.) Labor force participation is low, but what does it mean? This one became a flashpoint in the presidential election, with Trump at times pointing out how much the labor force shrank under Obama. The main measure of this is the labor force participation rate — that is, the percentage of people who are either working or looking for work (that is, who are in the labor force). That figure was at 65. 7 percent in January 2009, at the start of Obama’s presidency, and today is at 62. 7 percent — a steep drop. And today, the figure is well below its 2000 high of 67. 3 percent. But it’s not clear how bad or how benign that change is. Many Americans are out of the labor force and entirely happy about it. Quitting work to retire, for example, is a totally nonalarming reason to leave the labor force. But then, there may be many people who, facing a tough job market, have given up looking for work. That’s not good, and it also happened for many Americans both during and after the recession. In the aftermath of the recession, economists have tried to figure out exactly how many people are voluntarily versus involuntarily out of the labor force. As of 2014, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that half the decline in the participation rate at that time had come from ” trends” like aging — as baby boomers age, that means a large chunk of the population will naturally retire. But that left half of the decline a result of economic weakness and a slow recovery, in the CBO’s estimation. Should the participation rate hold steady or creep upward during a Trump presidency, that could keep the unemployment rate from dropping, as only Americans who are looking for work are counted as ”unemployed.” That would be one of those cases where a slightly higher unemployment rate could be a good thing. Improvement for workers, job growth over the course of the Obama presidency has far outstripped job growth, as FiveThirtyEight’s Ben Casselman has pointed out. Of course, some of those people working part time want to be working part time, and some don’t. Another bright spot here is that the share of those workers who are involuntarily part time has fallen off. However, that figure is still a fair bit higher than it was prior to the recession (and that level was itself, in turn, higher than it was before the prior recession). That’s one place where there could still be some improvement — there are still about 1 million more of those involuntary workers than there were prior to the recession. An economy more about doing than making, Politicians of both parties love to talk about manufacturing. Obama pushed manufacturing initiatives throughout his presidency, and Trump built much of his economic message during the campaign around singing the praises of America’s manufacturers. But when it comes to employment, the share of the economy has continued to fall. Throughout the past few decades, the share of Americans who make things — people in manufacturing, mining, logging and construction — has fallen off, and that trend continued during the recent recession, finally flattening out toward the end. We present this chart over a longer time frame, which makes it a little bit of a cheat — this isn’t exactly a measure of Obama’s ”record on jobs.” Nor is it necessarily a measure of economic weakness in fact, manufacturing has, thanks to technological advances, maintained strong output while shedding workers. It’s a reminder that all the usual macroeconomic indicators (unemployment, wages, labor force participation, GDP) can quantify a lot of things in the economy, but you have to dig in to learn about the quality of that economy — what exactly is going on behind those numbers. This decline in jobs doesn’t signal that the economy is getting worse or better — it’s just changing, in this case to become more focused on providing services, instead of goods. All of this is to say that Trump inherits a job market that is humming along comfortably, given how poor of shape it was in only recently. But it’s also an economy that has sharply moved away from manufacturing and other industries — the very ones he pushed the most in the election. That change has hurt plenty of Americans, despite the job market’s improvement. Trump has tried to claim credit for several hundred jobs here and there (credit that he doesn’t always deserve, as the Washington Post’s Philip Bump has reported) but bringing manufacturing employment back in a sizable way seems like a tall order for any president. Furthermore, alternative work — like driving an Uber or Lyft — continues to grow quickly as a share of the economy. That change could eventually require policy attention, as more workers take jobs that don’t come with benefits. But there’s another big caveat here. Presidents get lots of credit and blame for the economy’s performance, despite the fact that they don’t really have firm control over that performance. (If they did, why would recessions ever happen?) Yes, a president can push an economic agenda and in some cases push particular policies that end up having a sizable impact on the economy (see: the 2009 stimulus package, which undeniably had a positive impact). But they also need Congress to enact those policies. Not only that, but the Federal Reserve has its own set of controls — a set to which the president does not have access, despite some conspiracies of politically motivated Fed . So, like Obama, whatever happens to the economy under Trump, he may not deserve whatever credit he may claim (and the same goes for whatever blame is thrown his way).

Updated at 5:30 p. m. The Office of Government Ethics is raising alarm over the pace of confirmation hearings for Donald Trump’s nominees, saying Saturday that they have yet to receive required financial disclosures for some picks set to come before Congress next week. In a letter to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, . Y. and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, . released Saturday, OGE Director Walter Shaub wrote that ”the announced hearing schedule for several nominees who have not completed the ethics review process is of great concern to me” and that the current schedule ”has created undue pressure on OGE’s staff and agency ethics officials to rush through these important reviews. ”More significantly, it has left some of the nominees with potentially unknown or unresolved ethics issues shortly before their scheduled hearings,” Shaub continued. ”I am not aware of any occasion in the four decades since OGE was established when the Senate held a confirmation hearing before the nominee had completed the ethics review process.” Shaub explains in the letter that the Ethics in Government Act requires that presidential appointments confirmed by the Senate obtain OGE certification of their financial disclosures prior to any congressional hearings. Such a process is ”complex” and ”” he notes, and takes ”weeks, not days” to ensure that the Senate has a clear picture of any possible conflicts of interest. A Senate GOP source, however, noted that in the past the OGE paperwork hasn’t always preceded hearings. For example, in 2001, Rod Paige, George W. Bush’s nominee for Secretary of Education, had his hearing over a week before the committee received the OGE paperwork. Senate committees are set to begin confirmation for several Trump nominees for Cabinet positions and other posts next week so that they can be voted on and sworn in as soon as possible after Trump takes office on January 20. Democrats have already charged that Senate Republicans are trying to hurry through hearings for the ’s Cabinet, and the warning letter from the federal ethics watchdog gives that argument more weight. Schumer said in a statement that the OGE letter ”makes crystal clear that the transition team’s collusion with Senate Republicans to jam through these Cabinet nominees before they’ve been thoroughly vetted is unprecedented.” ”The Senate and the American people deserve to know that these Cabinet nominees have a plan to avoid any conflicts of interest, that they’re working on behalf of the American people and not their own bottom line, and that they plan to fully comply with the law,” Schumer continued. ”Senate Republicans should heed the advice of this independent office and stop trying to jam through unvetted nominees.” In a statement, the Trump transition team dismissed the OGE letter as overtly political and argued that ”the transition process is currently running smoothly.” ”In the midst of a historic election where Americans voted to drain the swamp, it is disappointing some have chosen to politicize the process in order to distract from important issues facing our country,” the Trump statement read. ”This is a disservice to the country and is exactly why voters chose Donald J. Trump as their next president.” Shaub said that his office would ”continue expediting our ethics reviews of the ’s nominees to meet reasonable timeframes without sacrificing quality.” ”It would, however, be cause for alarm if the Senate were to go forward with hearings on nominees whose reports OGE has not certified,” he continued. ”For as long as I remain Director, OGE’s staff and agency ethics officials will not succumb to pressure to cut corners and ignore conflicts of interest.” In November, Shaub raised eyebrows when the OGE Twitter account posted odd tweets urging Trump to fully divest from his business interests. NPR later reported that it was Shaub himself who had personally directed the tweets. Tamara Keith contributed.

Updated at 5:52 p. m. One day after five people were killed at an airport in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. more details are coming to light on the suspected gunman: Esteban Ruiz Santiago, a U. S. military veteran. The was arrested by police shortly after the shooting began at the airport’s baggage claim area. He is now at a Broward County jail, where authorities say he is being held on suspicion of murder. Authorities say there is no indication that Santiago worked with anyone else in planning or executing the attack. Santiago, who served as a combat engineer in the National Guard in Puerto Rico and Alaska, was discharged from service last year for unsatisfactory performance. Santiago was reported for several infractions like AWOLs, or absences without leave. During Santiago’s time with the Puerto Rico National Guard, he was deployed to Iraq from April 2010 to February 2011. The U. S. pulled troops from the country at the end of that year. His aunt, Maria Ruiz Rivera, tells The Record of New Jersey that after he returned, she noticed changes in his mental health. ”He lost his mind,” Ruiz Rivera told the newspaper in Spanish. ”He said he saw things.” Over the course of 2016, Santiago was repeatedly reported to Anchorage police for physical disturbances, according to the city’s police chief, Christopher Tolley — including two separate reports of domestic violence and strangulation in October last year. The next month, Santiago walked into an FBI office in Anchorage ”to report that his mind was being controlled by a U. S. intelligence agency,” said FBI special agent Marlin Ritzman, at a Saturday press conference. Tolley described them as ”terroristic thoughts,” in which ”he believed he was being influenced by ISIS.” Ritzman offered more detail: ”During the interview, Mr. Santiago appeared agitated, incoherent and made disjointed statements. Although he stated he did not wish to harm anyone, as a result of his erratic behavior our agents contacted local authorities, who took custody of Mr. Santiago and transported him to the local medical facility for evaluation.” Shortly after that, Ritzman said, ”The FBI closed its assessment on Mr. Santiago after conducting database reviews and interagency checks.” Agents found no ties to terrorism in during their investigation. In the course of the encounter at the FBI office, Tolley says Santiago had left a firearm in his car, along with his newborn child. When Santiago was checked into the mental health facility, his weapon was ”logged into evidence for safekeeping.” That weapon was returned to Santiago in December. Authorities said that as of Saturday they cannot confirm whether it was the same firearm Santiago used in Friday’s attack. Santiago arrived at the Fort International Airport on Friday afternoon, having traveled on a Delta flight from Anchorage, with a layover in Minneapolis. Jesse Davis, police chief at the Anchorage airport, says Santiago checked a handgun with TSA according to proper protocol, without drawing attention to himself. Upon landing, he retrieved that handgun from baggage claim, loaded the weapon in the bathroom and then opened fire in Terminal 2 of the Fort Lauderdale airport, according to authorities. ”He just kind of continued coming in, just randomly shooting at people, no rhyme or reason to it,” one witness told MSNBC, saying Santiago ”went up and down the carousels of the baggage claim, shooting through luggage to get at people that were hiding.” Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel says it was approximately 70 to 80 seconds before a sheriff’s deputy confronted him. ”Indications are that he came here to carry out this horrific attack,” Piro said Saturday. ”We have not identified any triggers that would have caused this attack.” Piro added: ”It’s way too early for us to rule out anything.”

If you’ve never laid eyes on a dogfish — or tasted one — you’re not alone. Yep, it’s in the shark family. (See those telltale fins?) And fisherman Jamie Eldredge is now making a living catching dogfish off the shores of Cape Cod, Mass. When populations of cod — the Cape’s namesake fish — became too scarce, Eldredge wanted to keep fishing. That’s when he turned to dogfish — and it’s turned out to be a good option. The day I went out with him, Eldredge caught close to 6, 000 lbs. (Check out the video above.) ”It’s one of the most plentiful fish we have on the East Coast right now,” Brian Marder, owner of Marder Trawling Inc. told us. Fishermen in Chatham, Mass. caught about 6 million pounds of dogfish last year. So, who’s eating all this dogfish? Not Americans. ”99 percent of it” is shipped out, Marder says. The British use dogfish to make fish and chips. The French use it in stews and soups. Italians import it, too. The Europeans are eating it up. But Americans haven’t developed a taste for it. At least, not yet. The story of the dogfish is typical of the seafood swap. ”The majority of the seafood we catch in our U. S. fisheries doesn’t stay here,” explains Jennifer Dianto Kemmerly, who leads the Seafood Watch program at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. And while we export most of what is caught off U. S. shores, what do Americans eat? Imported fish. About ”90 percent of the seafood we consume in the U. S. is actually caught or overseas,” Kemmerly says. To sustainable seafood advocates, this swap doesn’t make much sense. ”We’re kind of missing out on the bounty we actually have here,” Kemmerly says. And, it’s not just dogfish. The Environmental Defense Fund has launched a campaign called Eat These Fish to tell the story of a whole slew of plentiful fish caught off our shores. The group is trumpeting the conservation success of U. S. fisheries. Some species have been brought back from the brink of extinction through a system of quotas and collaboration between fishermen, conservationists and regulators. They point to fish such as Acadian Redfish and Pacific Ocean Perch. ”If people start to buy these fish more, we can really drive some more economic success to fishermen,” says Tim Fitzgerald of the Environmental Defense Fund. Sustainable seafood advocates want Americans to our habits. ”We import salmon, tuna and shrimp,” says Nancy Civetta of the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance. But ”we do not eat the [fish] we’re bringing to shore, right here!” Civetta says it’s good that fishermen have a market for their dogfish in Europe, but she argues we should be eating it here, too. She says a strong domestic market would strengthen the fisheries, making them less vulnerable to shifting preferences overseas. ”If we continue to import and buy from other countries, then our fishing industry could wither away,” Civetta says. And this would be a loss for coastal communities, she argues. So, is it possible to turn Americans onto dogfish? Chef Bob Bankert at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst thinks so. The university has contracted with Sea To Table, a company that connects domestic fishermen with chefs, universities and other buyers, to purchase dogfish. The campus serves 55, 000 meals a day and has made a big commitment to buying locally sourced foods. ”Being in western Massachusetts, we love to support the Massachusetts fisheries,” Bankert says. I watch as he grills dogfish fillets — ”it tastes great,” he vouches as he flips one over. We were curious to see if students agreed. We hung out for an afternoon as students sampled dogfish tacos, dogfish sushi and an Asian flash fry made with dogfish fillets and drizzled with wasabi mayo. ”Oh, it’s so good — amazing!” student Ruth Crawford told us as she finished off a taco. I asked her what the biggest appeal was. ”It’s new, it’s local, so healthy,” she told us. Some students were a bit turned off by the display of the whole dogfish — with its menacing shark appearance — that was showcased on the dining line. ”That’s scary looking,” one student told us as he walked by. Dining hall manager Selina Fournier says that’s where the storytelling comes in. When they saw the fish here today, she says, a lot of them didn’t know what to make of it. But once they learned more about where it comes from, who caught it and they got the chance to taste it, ”the whole association really . .. brings [the story] to life.” It’s not just universities that are promoting locally caught fish. Chefs, environmentalists and eaters across the country are embracing the concept of eating fish caught in a way that won’t lead to overfishing or environmental problems, while also supporting local fishing communities. The National Restaurant Association has named ”sustainable seafood” as one of its top 20 food trends for 2017. Sea to Table is about to launch a online fish market. It’s scheduled to launch by the end of January. And this means that soon, Americans will be able to get dogfish and many other types of species from U. S. fisheries delivered to our front doors. This story was reported as part of a collaboration with the PBS NewsHour.

House Speaker Paul Ryan announced Thursday that Republicans will — once again — vote to cut off federal tax dollars for Planned Parenthood. They are planning to include the measure as part of a bigger upcoming bill to repeal pillars of Obamacare. This isn’t the first time that they have tried to pass this type of legislation — President Obama vetoed a similar bill last January. But with a Republican president about to take office, the party now has the best chance in more than a decade to get it signed into law. They also have a powerful legislative tool on their side: special budget rules that will let them offer their proposal on a measure that needs only 51 votes — meaning a Democratic filibuster can’t stop it. But the path to victory might not be totally clear, as Trump’s position on abortion has wavered and allies of Planned Parenthood vow not to go down without a fight. Here are four key points to keep in mind as the parties gear up for a fight on Capitol Hill: 1. Planned Parenthood is not directly funded by the government, but it does receive payment from federal funds, This is a key distinction. While Planned Parenthood is not funded directly by the government, it does receive payment and grants from federal programs. Planned Parenthood’s clinics provide a number of health services, mostly for women. And so consequently, the organization often bills Medicaid for reimbursement. It also receives funding through Title X, a federal grant program for family planning services. However, neither Medicaid nor Title X fund the abortion services, which many people associate with Planned Parenthood. Medicaid does have some narrow exceptions for this in the case of rape, incest or life of mother. And this gets at the heart of one of the nation’s longest running and divisive political debates — not only to what extent the federal government should direct its fiscal policy on women’s health matters, but whether abortion should be legal at all. 2. Planned Parenthood has become increasingly polarized: targeted by the GOP, championed by Democrats, Planned Parenthood has been a political target for years. But recently, the partisan polarization has gone beyond abortion rights and into any federal funds going to the organization. Republicans have more vehemently opposed Planned Parenthood in recent years for facilitating the transfer of fetal tissue for medical research. Concern over this practice led Republican Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa to recently refer several Planned Parenthood affiliates to the FBI and the Department of Justice for further investigation. The issue of tissue transfer also became the subject of a select committee review, which released a heavily critical report this week. 3. Republicans aren’t quite sure Donald Trump is on their side Republican lawmakers are confident in their effort, because for the first time in a decade, the party will control both chambers of Congress and the White House. But Donald Trump has a mixed record on Planned Parenthood. During the campaign, he praised the organization for doing ”very good work” for ”millions of women.” But he’s also supported cutting off federal funding. That said, Trump’s political inner circle is very much in favor of defunding the organization. Vice Pence, for example, is a longtime leader in this effort with zero ambiguity in his record. He offered legislation to this effect when he was in the House. Speaker Ryan is also personally very much in favor of defunding Planned Parenthood. But Ivanka Trump may be the person to watch. She has been a moderating force for her father on many women’s issues. 4. Planned Parenthood is gearing up for a fight, Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards took to Twitter to respond to the GOP’s efforts saying, ”Not without one hell of a fight, they aren’t.” Richards may well be pointing to Senate Democrats’ past successes at defeating this type of legislation. They’ve succeeded in the past, in part, because of Republican allies — Maine Sen. Susan Collins and Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski — who they will likely need to lean on again. Beyond Capitol Hill, Planned Parenthood has experience organizing and a loyal constituency. It is also a sponsor of the women’s march planned to protest Trump’s inauguration this month in Washington, which some estimates project as many as 200, 000 women may attend. Plus, to an extent, it has public opinion on its side. Public polling has consistently shown that the majority of Americans oppose cutting off all funding for Planned Parenthood. So, there is certainly at least some potential political risk for Republicans.

Emil Girardi moved to San Francisco on New Year’s Eve in 1960. He loved everything about the city: the energy, the people and the hills. And, of course, the bars, where Girardi mixed drinks for most of his adult life. About 10 years ago, the New York native had a stroke and collapsed on the sidewalk near his Nob Hill home. Everything changed. ”I didn’t want to go out of the house,” Girardi recalled, adding he only felt comfortable ”going from the bedroom to the dining room.” He’d started to fear the city’s streets — and growing older. An friend worried about his isolation and called a San nonprofit called Little Brothers, Friends of the Elderly. The organization works to relieve isolation and loneliness among the city’s seniors by pairing them with volunteers. Little Brothers matched him with Shipra Narruhn, a computer software trainer who has volunteered with various organizations over the years, and became involved with Little Brothers after her mother’s death. The organization started in France after World War II and now operates in several U. S. cities, including Chicago, Philadelphia and San Francisco. Cathy Michalec, the executive director of the local nonprofit, said older adults often become less mobile as they age. Cities like San Francisco, because of hills, crowded streets or old housing stock, are difficult for many seniors. That can lead to isolation and loneliness, Michalec said. ”Those 50 stairs you used to be able to go up and down all the time, you can’t go up and down all the time,” she said. ”The streets are crowded and sometimes unsafe. . .. Sometimes, our elders say, it’s easier to stay in the house.” Across the nation, geriatricians and other health and social service providers are growing increasingly worried about loneliness among seniors like Girardi. Their concerns are fueled by studies showing the emotional isolation is linked to serious health problems. Research shows older adults who feel lonely are at greater risk of memory loss, strokes, heart disease and high blood pressure. The health threat is similar to that of smoking 15 cigarettes a day, according to AARP. Researchers say that loneliness and isolation are linked to physical inactivity and poor sleep, as well as high blood pressure and poor immune functioning. A 2012 study showed that people who felt lonely — whether or not they lived with others or suffered from depression — were at heightened risk of death. It also showed that 43 percent of people over 60 felt lonely. ”If someone reports feeling lonely, they are more likely to lose their independence and they are at greater risk of dying solely from being lonely,” said Dr. Carla Perissinotto, a geriatrician and researcher at the University of California, San Francisco who authored the study. There can be many causes of loneliness, Perissinotto said, including illness, hearing loss or life changes such as retirement or the loss of a spouse. ”The usual social connections we have in younger life end up changing as we get older,” she said. Narruhn recalled that she and Girardi would just visit at his apartment, in the beginning. She’d tell him about her travels and her adult daughter. He’d tell her about his adventures in San Francisco. He described what the city was like as a young gay man, and told her about the friends he had lost to AIDS. They talked about music, books and cooking. ”I could tell from talking to him that he had a lot of interests,” she said. ”At one time, he was very sociable.” Gradually, Narruhn started bringing him music from Italy, India and Mexico. Girardi liked the songs he could snap his fingers to. Finally, Shipra convinced him to go out to lunch — and to visit a hidden, staircase in San Francisco with her. ”Shipra came to see me, and came to see me and came to see me,” he said. ”Finally, she said, ’You have to get out of the house. ’” Soon, they were going to jazz shows, on walks and to the park. Narruhn said she invited Girardi to do eclectic things with her — chakra cleansings, Reiki healing sessions — and he was always game. Over time, his fear subsided. So did his loneliness. ”After she took me out of the house, then I didn’t want to stop,” Girardi said. There isn’t much research about the effectiveness of programs such as Little Brothers. But Perissinotto said they can help seniors build new social connections. Other efforts to address loneliness include roommate matching services in various states and, in the United Kingdom, a hotline. ”Maintaining connections, that thing, is actually really important,” Perissinotto said. ”It’s hard to measure, it’s hard to quantify, but there is something real. Even though we don’t have the exact research, we have tons of stories where we know it’s [had] an effect in people’s lives.” AARP Foundation also recently launched a nationwide online network to raise awareness about social isolation and loneliness among older adults. The network, Connect2Affect, allows people to do a test and reach out to others feeling disconnected. AARP, the Gerontological Society of America and other organizations are hoping to help create more understanding of isolation and loneliness and to help lonely seniors build more social connections. ”Loneliness is a huge issue we don’t talk enough about,” said Dr. Charlotte Yeh, chief medical officer of AARP Services. ”There is a huge stigma.” One afternoon in November, Narruhn came by to take Girardi out to one of their favorite restaurants on Polk Street. The waiter greeted them by name. Over Italian food, they planned several more visits together. Girardi said he doesn’t fear growing older anymore. He’s surrounded by his new family. And by good music, he said, and ”snapping fingers.” Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan health policy research and communication organization not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente. You can follow Anna Gorman on Twitter: @annagorman.

Why do you do what you do? What is the engine that keeps you up late at night or gets you going in the morning? Where is your happy place? What stands between you and your ultimate dream? Heavy questions. One researcher believes that writing down the answers can be decisive for students. He a paper that demonstrates a startling effect: nearly erasing the gender and ethnic minority achievement gap for 700 students over the course of two years with a short written exercise in setting goals. Jordan Peterson teaches in the department of psychology at the University of Toronto. For decades, he has been fascinated by the effects of writing on organizing thoughts and emotions. Experiments going back to the 1980s have shown that ”therapeutic” or ”expressive” writing can reduce depression, increase productivity and even cut down on visits to the doctor. ”The act of writing is more powerful than people think,” Peterson says. Most people grapple at some time or another with anxiety that saps energy and increases stress. Through written reflection, you may realize that a certain unpleasant feeling ties back to, say, a difficult interaction with your mother. That type of insight, research has shown, can help locate, ground and ultimately resolve the emotion and the associated stress. At the same time, ” theory” holds that writing down concrete, specific goals and strategies can help people overcome obstacles and achieve. ’It Turned My Life Around’ Recently, researchers have been getting more and more interested in the role that mental motivation plays in academic achievement — sometimes conceptualized as ”grit” or ”growth mindset” or ”executive functioning.” Peterson wondered whether writing could be shown to affect student motivation. He created an undergraduate course called Maps of Meaning. In it, students complete a set of writing exercises that combine expressive writing with . Students reflect on important moments in their past, identify key personal motivations and create plans for the future, including specific goals and strategies to overcome obstacles. Peterson calls the two parts ”past authoring” and ”future authoring.” ”It completely turned my life around,” says Christine Brophy, who, as an undergraduate several years ago, was battling drug abuse and health problems and was on the verge of dropping out. After taking Peterson’s course at the University of Toronto, she changed her major. Today she is a doctoral student and one of Peterson’s main research assistants. In an early study at McGill University in Montreal, the course showed a powerful positive effect with students, reducing the dropout rate and increasing academic achievement. Peterson is seeking a larger audience for what he has dubbed ” .” He started a company and is selling a version of the curriculum online. Brophy and Peterson have found a receptive audience in the Netherlands. At the Rotterdam School of Management, a shortened version of has been mandatory for all students since 2011. (These are undergraduates — they choose majors early in Europe). The latest paper, published in June, compares the performance of the first complete class of freshmen to use with that of the three previous classes. Overall, the ” ” students greatly improved the number of credits earned and their likelihood of staying in school. And after two years, ethnic and differences in performance among the students had all but disappeared. The ethnic minorities in question made up about of the students. They are and immigrants from backgrounds — Africa, Asia and the Middle East. While the history and legacy of racial oppression are different from that in the United States, the Netherlands still struggles with large differences in wealth and educational attainment among majority and minority groups. ’Zeroes Are Deadly’ At the Rotterdam school, minorities generally underperformed the majority by more than a third, earning on average eight fewer credits their first year and four fewer credits their second year. But for minority students who had done this set of writing exercises, that gap dropped to five credits the first year and to just of one credit in the second year. How could a bunch of essays possibly have this effect on academic performance? Is this replicable? Melinda Karp is the assistant director for staff and institutional development at the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University. She leads studies on interventions that can improve college completion. She calls Peterson’s paper ”intriguing.” But, she adds, ”I don’t believe there are silver bullets for any of this in higher ed.” Peterson believes that formal can especially help minority students overcome what’s often called ”stereotype threat,” or, in other words, to reject the damaging belief that generalizations about academic performance will apply to them personally. Karp agrees. ”When you enter a new social role, such as entering college as a student, the expectations aren’t always clear.” There’s a greater risk for students who may be academically underprepared or who lack role models. ”Students need help not just setting vague goals but figuring out a plan to reach them.” The key for this intervention came at crunch time, says Peterson. ”We increased the probability that students would actually take their exams and hand in their assignments.” The act of helped them overcome obstacles when the stakes were highest. ”You don’t have to be a genius to get through school you don’t even have to be that interested. But zeroes are deadly.” Karp has a theory for how this might be working. She says you often see students engage in behavior ”to save face.” ”If you aren’t sure you belong in college, and you don’t hand in that paper,” she explains, ”you can say to yourself, ’That’s because I didn’t do the work, not because I don’t belong here.’ ” Writing down their internal motivations and connecting daily efforts to goals may have helped these young people solidify their identities as students. Brophy is testing versions of the curriculum at two high schools in Rotterdam, and monitoring their psychological school attendance and tendency to procrastinate. Early results are promising, she says: ”It helps students understand what they really want to do.”

Classical composers have long had their patrons: Beethoven had Archduke Rudolph, John Cage had Betty Freeman. For contemporary opera composers, there’s Beth Morrison. She and her production company have commissioned new works from some of the most innovative emerging composers today. Morrison is not your typical moneyed patron, though. ”I didn’t come from money and I didn’t have money and I wanted to live in New York!” she says. She runs her empire from a apartment in Flatbush, Brooklyn. One bedroom in the apartment is for sleeping. The other is a workspace for her eight employees. ”I’ve always run the business from my home, maybe much to the chagrin of my board,” she says. ”For me, the decision is always really clear: I could spend $30 to $40, 000 on an office space every year, or I could put that into a commission.” Morrison has commissioned works from David T. Little, Mohammed Fairouz and Missy Mazzoli. Mazzoli, whose first opera, Song from the Uproar, was produced by Morrison, calls her a true individual. ”Beth has this famous boot collection that is just amazing — it blows my mind,” Mazzoli says. ”It’s sort of a symbol of this commitment of being an individual and to being an iconoclast and to doing things her own way.” Morrison says she follows her guts and her ears in her work. ”I won’t do anything unless I’m mad crazy about the music and the composer and really feeling like they’re contributing something to the field that is different,” she says. David T. Little says Morrison expressed this kind of excitement for his work Soldier Songs after she watched a video he sent her. ”[She] called me almost immediately and says, ’We have to do this piece. I don’t know where we’re gonna get the money, I don’t know how we’re gonna do it . .. but we have to do it! ’” he says. Little says this moment was a perfect illustration of how Morrison works: When she’s excited about something, she makes it happen. Their work together has continued: Last year, Morrison featured Little’s opera, Dog Days, at Prototype, the annual festival she (with Kristin Marting and Kim Whitener of the arts organization HERE) to showcase new work. The 2017 festival begins tonight in New York. Morrison doesn’t have her own theater. Instead, she partners with venues in New York and around the country to give works more than one hearing. ”[Composers] need their works to be seen by as many people as possible,” she says. ”I feel like I’ve succeeded — particularly with an opera project, ’cause they’re large and expensive — if we’ve been able to give two to five presentations of the piece in different cities.” One project that achieved success by this metric was Mazzoli’s latest opera, Breaking the Waves. Last fall, Morrison partnered with Opera Philadelphia to present the piece, and it’s now being done at this year’s Prototype festival. Kamala Sankaram, whose opera Thumbprint premiered at the first Prototype, will see it restaged at LA Opera this June, thanks to Morrison’s efforts. Morrison’s commitment to extending the life of her composers’ works has made them just as passionately devoted to her as she is to them. Sankaram says Morrison’s work is not easy. ”To make contemporary opera your business takes a lot of guts,” Sankaram says. ”I don’t want to go there too much, but there’s still a lot of sexism in our field, and so for her to do this on her own is really kind of astonishing.” Morrison’s current season includes five world premieres, nine tours and her annual festival — all funded and produced out of her nonprofit. Her schedule is certainly packed, but she says championing new composers has been intensely rewarding work. ”It’s been thrilling to be a part of the launch of these incredible composers,” she says. ”It really has been this symbiotic relationship that I feel very grateful for.”

Even before Barack Obama moved into the White House, he and his team made a choice that made actually selling his policies to the public more difficult. In December 2008, Obama’s economic team gathered in Chicago to map out what would become the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. ”A dispute, discussion, something breaks out at that meeting. We haven’t even come in yet,” said Austan Goolsbee, a professor at the University of Chicago, who was a top economic adviser in the early years of the Obama presidency. Goolsbee said there were two schools of thought about how to proceed. ”Doing something on the order of magnitude of the problem, which everyone understood is going to be a collection of a whole bunch of things and you’re going to have a hard time explaining it” was one option, Goolsbee said. Or, he said, others argued, ” ’Couldn’t we just pick one thing and just do that one thing?’ And that would be really easy to explain.” The economy was hemorrhaging jobs, and Obama’s economic team was afraid the country was on the brink of another Great Depression. The president chose to go big. Obama came into the White House eight years ago, hailed as the ”Great Communicator” because of his lofty speeches, but as he leaves office — and delivers a farewell address Tuesday night in Chicago — by his own admission, Obama hasn’t always been so adept at communicating his policies and achievements. He struggled to make the sell on the Recovery Act (known as the stimulus) the auto bailout and the Affordable Care Act. The man who will succeed him has chosen a decidedly different path. Donald Trump has on multiple occasions hyped up announcements by companies that they will add a few thousand or even fewer jobs, declaring victory and getting lots of attention for relatively small wins, as compared with the size of the U. S. economy. Obama has overseen 75 straight months of job growth. Employers added millions of jobs during the course of his presidency, but Obama hasn’t been able to capitalize on that politically as well as his allies would have hoped. Obama signed the Recovery Act in February 2009. And in the speech he made that day, the challenges of explaining the behemoth $780 billion package were clear. ”Today does mark the beginning of the end,” Obama said, ”the beginning of what we need to do to create jobs for Americans scrambling in the wake of layoffs.” He talked about the millions of jobs it would ”save or create,” a metric so squishy it proved hard for Obama to claim credit for it later and made it easy for opponents to criticize the stimulus as a failure. He spent most of the speech talking about ”investments.” ”Rebuilding our crumbling roads and bridges, repairing our faulty dams and levees, bringing critical broadband connections to businesses and homes in nearly every community in America,” Obama said in what was a long list of projects. ”Upgrading mass transit.” But Frank Luntz, who has advised Republicans on messaging, said in an interview with NPR that the word ”investment” can sound, for some, like code for spending. ”There was real hostility early on,” Luntz said, ”a feeling that it’s just an expansion of Washington and nobody was going to benefit and everyone was going to get stuck with the tab.” Obama’s team overestimated Americans’ appetite for stimulus spending, Luntz argued. Republicans in Congress, who never supported the Recovery Act, repeatedly derided it as a ”failed stimulus.” In reality, a big chunk of it went to tax cuts — and it helped pull the country out of the biggest recession since the Great Depression. In Obama’s speech, the mention of those tax cuts came near the end. ”About a third of this package comes in the forms of tax cuts — by the way, the most progressive in our history,” said Obama to applause, arguing it would not only spur job creatio, but put ”money in the pockets of 95 percent of families in America.” The way the tax cuts were distributed also limited any public relations benefit. The money just appeared in people’s paychecks as a smaller payroll tax deduction. ”Nobody realized, nobody understood and, so, nobody celebrated it,” Luntz said. ”There’s a simple rule in politics: If you don’t talk about it, no one knows you did it, and you get no credit for it. And that was the problem with the component of Obama’s stimulus package.” The tax cut was carefully designed by the Obama administration to target and Americans. But it ultimately had little traction with the public — or with Republicans whom it was intended to help sway. ”At one point in the first year,” Goolsbee said, remembering a moment of great frustration, ”there’s a poll that comes out in which something like 60 percent of the country said that they were sick of the tax increases that had come from the stimulus, when, in fact, 95 percent had gone down.” Goolsbee said that is when he began to realize that reality was relative — something that has truly taken hold in American politics now. ”And at that point, you know the president was basically asking the economic team, ’What is wrong with you people?’ and I just felt like punching myself,” said Goolsbee with a laugh. Economists widely view the stimulus as having helped the economy avoid disaster. But politically, Obama got none of the credit for the tax cuts and a whole lot of grief for the spending. This was a pattern that would repeat itself throughout his presidency. As Trump prepares to enter the White House, his communications strategy is one of mass saturation, including tweets on multiple topics. Will that work out better than Obama’s cool focus on facts and figures when trying to convince the public? Or as he works to repeal some of Obama’s policy achievements, will he have to adopt a different tactic to sell his proposals?

The end of 2016 marked a grim milestone in Chicago. More than 4, 000 people were shot over the course of the year, and 762 people were homicide victims, according to the Chicago Tribune. Those numbers are higher than the totals of New York and Los Angeles combined. To be clear, other cities, like New Orleans and Detroit, had higher rates of gun violence and murder on a per capita basis. But nowhere were the sheer, raw numbers as staggering as they were in Chicago. NPR’s Michel Martin spoke with a variety of voices in Chicago — those who have been personally affected by the violence people who have been involved in it themselves, and officials at the federal and local level who are trying to fix it. The story that emerged was one of frustration, and fear, with no clear silver bullet toward fixing the problem. But there’s also a sense of hope, even from those who have suffered the deepest. Illinois Congressman Danny Davis remembers exactly where he was when he got the phone call just a few weeks ago, in November. ”One of the police commanders was on the phone and he said, ’I have some bad news to tell you,’ Davis recalls. ”And I said, ’Bad news? Well, I’m pretty accustomed to bad news.” The longtime Chicago Democrat has performed eulogies for some two dozen young Chicagoans who have been killed. But this phone call was different. ”He says, ’I want you to just brace yourself. I understand that your grandson may have been shot. ’” Javon Wilson, 15, was killed in a dispute over shoes and clothes, according to police. Davis says it arose from a ”swapping group,” where kids borrowed each other’s clothes in a trading system. The congressman choked back tears, as he recounted hearing the news. ”I couldn’t, for the moment, think. And by then, my son called, and I said, ’Oh yeah, I heard that Javon. ..’ (And my son) says, ’Daddy, he’s gone. ..’” Davis says he has no choice but to find some sort of silver lining out of this. He’s doubling down on his efforts to strengthen gun laws, and prevent similar tragedies from occurring again. That’s despite a legislature, which has shown little appetite for stricter gun laws. ”There are millions and millions of people who think about guns the same way that I do,” Davis says. ”You know, one of my favorite songs, something by a guy named Sam Cooke used to sing oh, it is so profound. ’It may be a long time coming, but I know some change is going to come.’ That’s the way I feel about this issue.” No consensus as to why Chicago has been hit hard by violence, Although there’s no consensus as to why Chicago has been hit so hard by violence, there are a few factors that officials point to again and again: Guns and poverty. ”You put those two volatile things together and you end up with folks with guns and no purpose in life and killing people for no reasonable purpose at all,” says Davis’ Senate colleague, minority whip Dick Durbin (D — IL). Durbin, among others, points out that geography might also play an important role in Chicago’s misfortunes. The city is seen as a centrally located hub for gun and drug trafficking. ”Our city of Chicago is awash in guns. They come in from every direction, from the suburbs, from Northern Indiana gun shows, from Mississippi for goodness sakes. They make it into the city. They’re confiscated in these gun crimes at a rate of about one an hour every day, every week, every month.” ”My wife said, ’Somebody has to do something.’ And I realized, I am somebody. I’m the senator from the state of Illinois. You know, I’m doing my best to understand what I can do from the federal level. But yes, I care, and a lot of people care. And this killing has to stop.” Donald Trump is another voice suggesting federal intervention. Earlier this month he tweeted about Chicago’s violence, as he sees it. ”Chicago murder rate is record setting 4, 331 shooting victims with 762 murders in 2016. If Mayor can’t do it he must ask for Federal help!” Durbin, for one, says he’d be open to that sort of help. ”The mayor suggested an increase in the police department, and we need some federal funds to help us do that. We need resources and training and equipment. And [Trump] could help us do it. I hope he will.” Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office declined a formal interview request. But the city did make available Chicago’s recently hired police chief, Eddie Johnson, who spoke to Martin from member station WBEZ in Chicago: ”Chicago has a gun problem. That’s where our violence stems from. To be honest, Chicago isn’t out of control, but we have five police districts that are actually responsible for the majority of the increase in our gun violence this year. But I think one of the main factors that contribute to it is the fact that we do a terrible job of holding repeat gun offenders accountable for their crimes. ”The violence in Chicago is not just about what police are or are not doing. We have issues. The economic support that we have to give these impoverished areas, the mental health treatment, better education, better housing all of that stuff matters. ”But I tell you when it comes to morale, you look at what happened the other day when those beat officers found a young man wandering down the street. If they didn’t care and if morale wasn’t good, they didn’t have to stop and investigate that to the extent that they did to find out what happened.” Johnson was referring to yet another black eye for Chicago. Four teenagers have been charged with hate crimes, for allegedly kidnapping and torturing an acquaintance with special needs. Police say the victim was approached by police, after he escaped, looking disoriented and disheveled. Hate crimes not common, but social media use is, NPR’s Cheryl Corley, who is based in Chicago, says the story is grabbing headlines locally, as well as nationally, ”People are just really shocked by this. You know, what we know about the case is that it started off with the victim and a suspect he considered to be a friend hanging out.” The victim was white, and the black suspects allegedly used racial slurs against him. But Corley says the crime doesn’t really fit the pattern associated with much of the violence in the city, which has been fueled by gangs and guns. ”I think that the only thing that may be common with what’s happening with gun violence here is that the Facebook suspects used social media to broadcast what was happening,” she told Martin. ”And we often have cases where gang members here will post something on social media, often some sort of taunt, that sparks some of the gun violence that occurs here.” One way the incident may be similar to others, however, is that the victim knew his attackers. Some researchers, notably Yale professor Andrew Papachristos and Dr. Gary Slutkin of the University of Illinois at Chicago, say that nugget could hold the key to predicting, and eventually preventing violent crime in places like Chicago. ”So if I get shot, for instance, there’s a high likelihood that the people around me in my networks will also be victims and that, then, their friends will be victims. And their friends’ friends will be victims,” Papachristos tells Corley. ”It is contagious and that, when it’s managed as a health issue, you can rapidly drop it and sustain drops for long periods of time,” Slutkin adds. Slutkin heads a group called CureViolence. The group uses data to predict who might be involved in disputes, that might turn violent, and then sends ”interrupters” to try to stop things from escalating. But Corley reports the program has been mainly dropped in Chicago, due to funding shortages. The state’s ongoing budget woes have widely been blamed as another obstacle to stopping violence in the streets. In places like Austin on Chicago’s West Side, or Englewood and Chatham, on the South Side, there’s nothing abstract or academic about gang life. Gang life can be a death sentence, Edwin Day, Mario Hardiman and Andre Evans are all former gang members. All of them say their family structures were crumbling, and they were drawn to gangs for both structure, and safety. ”Most of the other people in the neighborhood were the pimps, drug dealers, dice shooters, ticket scalpers, some type of hustler, some type of, you know, shyster,” Hardiman told Martin. ”So I looked up to those characters and eventually became somewhat of a few of those characters myself gambling and selling drugs, using marijuana.” Evans tells a similar story. ”I felt isolated, you know the whole emotional thing. You’re just dealing with my emotions and not having my biological father in my life. ”That was the number one source of why I wanted to why I got involved in (Gangster Disciple Nation). And I think the second reason was really to protect my brothers as well. You know, there would be a lot of times when, you know, people would be having hits out on my brothers or things happening to my brothers and just in a lot of ways, it was a way for me to protect them. Day recalls to Martin an incident where he was shot nine times in a gang dispute. DAY: Well, I was involved in gang life. I felt that there was others that was trying to do to me and my people bodily harm, and so we felt at the time that we would protect ourselves at all costs. And so there were times that I would pick up a gun and try to shoot people. I didn’t I’ve never done it or I never shot anybody, but I have shot a gun and tried to shoot people. And the ironic thing about that, I guess, things come full circle. I was shot. And so. .. MARTIN: That’s part of the story, isn’t it? DAY: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. MARTIN: That people are as likely to be victims as they are to be perpetrators. Right? So why what happened with that? Why did you get shot? DAY: And so what happened was like I say we were involved in gangs and drugs, and so you’re talking about monies being exchanged. And so that’s what changes. That’s where the violence heightens when you talk about drugs and monies and things of a sort. And so at this particular time, we were in what was called a gang war. And so guys would come in and try to shoot us and kill us, and we would kind of go back and forth try to shoot them and kill them. And so one particular night, I was in a home where we were kind engaging in all of this negative activity. I was leaving out and actually prepared to go and put my gear on to go and cause somebody else harm. And so unknowing to myself as I walked down the stairs, there was a guy that was waiting for me on the side of the building in the bushes or what have you. And he could have killed me. I will say that he could have killed me because he could have waited ’til I got to the bottom step and just kind of walk right up on me and shot me in the back of the head, but he didn’t. And I thank God for that. He waited until I kind of got to the edge of the curb, and he rose up out of the gangway and he started to shoot me. And so as I ran, I’m running across the street trying to get to my house, and I kind of catch one in the back of my leg. And I felt that and from then I continued to catch numerous shots my back, my leg, my arms all over. It was a total of nine shots that I ended up receiving. I can remember it kind of like it was yesterday. I was telling myself if I can just make it to the other side of the street, I’ll be fine. And so he continued to shoot, unload on me. And I did make it. I did make it to the other side of the street. And by the time I made it to the other side of street, I had caught so many shots that I just kind of collapsed right there. He was gone. I was down. And that’s what happened. Unintended consequences another problem, Another problem, according to experts and former gang members, is one of unintended consequences. When authorities cracked down on gang leadership — rank and file members no longer had gang hierarchy to ensure order. Large groups devolved into factions. And that in turn led to chaos on the streets. ”When you have different factions, you don’t have leadership, and people can kind of run amok and do what they want to do,” Evans says. ”And they be like oh, come from this block, so we going to mess with him like that, you know, just do random ’ as they say, just because comes from that side of the street per se. You know, and I had one of my best friends in high school who, you know, tried to join a gang, and they beat his jaw in with the gun.” Day, Hardiman, and Evans now all talk to youth about avoiding the gang life. And despite their harrowing stories, they say they haven’t given up hope that things can get better, even if some young people in the city have. Hardiman says the government has to step up and help the black community. Evans advises young kids to find a legitimate ”hustle” to focus on, instead of turning to the streets. Day says the answer lies within every person in Chicago, who can either ignore the problem, hide from it, or try to stop it. ”I think that it starts by really having a love and a concern for someone other than yourself, to be able to go out and say, ’You know what? Let me go in and let me grab one. I’ll just grab it. It doesn’t have to be a whole group of young people, but let me grab one and talk to him.’ I think that it starts with love. It starts with compassion. It starts with caring for someone other than yourself. ’”

The morning of Oct. 18, 2016, the employees at La Divina, a taqueria and Mexican grocery in Buffalo, N. Y. were prepping for the lunch crowd — making salsa, grilling chicken and stocking the shelves with Mexican Cokes and Corona beer. Suddenly, agents from Homeland Security Investigations rushed in. ”I heard someone shouting, ’Don’t move! Don’t move!’ It was ICE,” says Jose Antonio Ramos, a Mexican cook working illegally, in Spanish. ICE stands for U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ”I was in shock. I was complying with their orders, but they were mistreating us,” he says. ”They pointed guns at our heads. They pushed us on the floor and handcuffed us. They brought in dogs.” Beefy federal agents hauled out computers and cash registers while local news crews filmed. The raid of La Divina and three other restaurants under the same owner became one of the nation’s biggest immigration worksite actions in recent years. In all, 14 workers have been charged with civil and criminal immigration violations. Twelve more workers were found to be in the country illegally, but they were released because they didn’t meet the government’s enforcement priorities. The owner and his two managers are charged with harboring unauthorized immigrants. The federal criminal complaint alleges the trio provided workers with housing and transportation, paid them in cash off the books and avoided income taxes. Sergio Mucino, a lawful permanent resident from Mexico City, owns the four restaurants ICE raided. During a recent lunch rush, Mucino is spotted making tacos behind the counter at La Divina with some newly hired workers. He declines to discuss the raid because his case is ongoing, but he is happy to talk about his menu. ”We try to offer authentic street tacos, make it more like a Mexican atmosphere,” he says as patrons line up to order ribeye and chorizo tacos. While Mucino is out on bail and reopening his restaurants one by one, most of his illegal workforce is out of a job and facing deportation. This was the aftermath of the raid despite an ICE statement that they were targeting the abusive employer, not his employees. Over at a lunch counter, Jeff Dugan, who works at a local marketing company, digs into a plate of chicken quesadillas. Dugan says he supports the ICE raid. ”I want the workers to be in good standing and . .. working under our laws and [well] taken care of,” he says, ”because when they’re not, they get put in subpar housing and they’re getting underpaid and overworked.” Thirteen hours a day, six days a week are what Ramos and his coworkers put in. They earned the equivalent of $6. 50 an hour — below the federal minimum wage. ”I guess my only complaint would be the long hours,” Ramos says. ”But you need to make money to eat and take care of your family. You have no choice.” The father of three children from San Luis Potosi, Mexico, wears an electronic ankle monitor and faces a civil violation for overstaying a work visa at a different restaurant that paid him even less. The city has rallied around the Buffalo restaurant workers who are facing removal. Churches are supporting them with food and rent assistance while they await their immigration hearings. Local sympathizers have demonstrated outside the ICE office in this Northern border city and circulated a petition asking federal authorities to let the workers go. An ICE spokesman defends the raid. He says they focused on Mucino, but during the course of the investigation they learned some of his workers had the country after being deported, which is a felony. But some locals are asking if these relatively minor violations are a reason for federal agents to storm restaurant kitchens with handguns drawn and police dogs. ”It’s really small potatoes and so it really did shock this community,” says Nicole Hallett, an immigration law professor at the University of Buffalo. She represents four of the workers. ”I think it did shock the national immigration rights community.” Most immigration offenses are civil, not criminal, but there are exceptions. ”Criminal ” is the charge when someone is previously deported or removed from the U. S. and comes back. Unauthorized immigrants who are deported often turn right around and make multiple attempts to U. S. territory. ”But most of the time when someone gets charged with criminal it’s because they have other criminal history,” says Hallett, puzzled. ”So [federal prosecutors] very rarely will indict someone with criminal if that is the only thing that they have.” That’s what happened in Buffalo. Big, worksite sweeps were common under President George W. Bush. President Obama has mostly taken a more approach, such as auditing employer records to make sure all the workers have valid Social Security numbers. ”You need it all. You need audits, but you need an enforcement action now and again,” says a top ICE official in Washington, who asked not to be named. ”We’re trying to send that chilling effect to employers [to say] you need to think twice” about exploiting illegal workers. Yet Hallett says these raids can easily backfire. ”If one of your goals is to protect workers from exploitation, obviously arresting those workers as part of an enforcement action makes workers very afraid to come forward and report if there is exploitation happening,” she says. Obama’s Homeland Security team will be gone soon and there will be a new sheriff in town. Trump and his advisers have talked about cracking down on unauthorized immigrants and the job magnets that attract them. It’s reasonable to ask if, under Trump, the Buffalo restaurant raid will become the norm rather than the exception.

Nat Hentoff, the author of dozens of books and decades of columns, has died at 91. His son Nick Hentoff confirmed his father’s death on Twitter Saturday night. Hentoff was a writer for the Village Voice for 50 years. He also wrote for many publications over his lengthy career, including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, United Media syndicate and Down Beat magazine. He frequently wrote about issues surrounding civil liberties — the Voice describes him as a ”civil libertarian.” His 1982 novel The Day They Came to Arrest the Book tells the story of a high school that seeks to remove the book Huckleberry Finn from the school curriculum and library over racism and other issues. A student from the school newspaper fights the effort — an allegory on censorship. He also was a lover and frequent writer on jazz music. From age 11, he was hooked on the genre after hearing the song ”Nightmare” by Artie Shaw coming through an open door at a record store. ”It just reached inside me,” Hentoff told NPR’s Guy Raz in 2010. ”I rushed into the store, ’What was that?’ ” Over the six decades he spent covering jazz, he attended plenty of performances and met many musicians. He ”got to be very good friends” with jazz great Dizzy Gillespie. At one point, he sat in on a recording session featuring Abbey Lincoln, Coleman Hawkins and Max Roach. ”The music just became part of you as you heard it,” Hentoff said of the experience. His most memorable show he attended was Duke Ellington ”with his full orchestra” at Symphony Hall in Boston, playing the jazz work ”Black, Brown and Beige.” ”It was the history of black people in the United States from slavery to the present,” Hentoff told NPR in 2010. ”And it was so extraordinary. At the end . .. people were so moved they could barely applaud until they gave a standing ovation.” Hentoff started writing for the Village Voice in 1958 until he was ”excessed” in 2008 by new managers. A few days after his firing, he told NPR that condolences he received from readers afterward were ”like reading one’s obituary while you’re still alive.” But he vowed to keep writing. In his final column for the Voice in 2009, he recalled advice he received from one of his mentors in journalism, the muckraker I. F. Stone: ”If you’re in this business because you want to change the world, get another day job. If you are able to make a difference, it will come incrementally, and you might not even know about it. You have to get the story and keep on it because it has to be told.”

Availability is the best ability for Keith ”Bang Bang” McCurdy. ”I’m waiting all the time for that call, because I know Justin Bieber may call me at three in the morning and I have to tattoo him at six. That has happened,” McCurdy says. Bang Bang is considered one of the most successful tattoo artists in the industry. The New artist is credited for creating some of the most iconic tattoos on celebrities. Like fashion model Cara Delevingne’s simple yet lion tattoo that sits on her index finger. And pop star Rihanna’s henna design that wraps across her wrist and drips down her fingertips. In fact, it was Bang Bang’s work of art for Rihanna in 2007, when he was just 19 years old, that helped to catapult his career. Now 29, Bang Bang reflects on his journey from Pottstown, P. A. — a city about 40 miles northwest of Philadelphia — to how he got his big break. Keith McCurdy was born to teenage parents. His mother was a high school dropout who worked at Domino’s Pizza, while his dad, who finished high school and went on to college, was scarcely around to father him, McCurdy recalls. This resulted in McCurdy being raised primarily by his mom. When he was 3 years old, McCurdy moved with his mom from Pennsylvania to a public housing unit in Delaware. There, his mom became an exotic dancer and he says this sometimes exposed him to a somewhat unsavory lifestyle. But the most challenging part, he says, was watching his mom struggle to put food on the table. That early hardship, however, forced McCurdy to grow up fast. In school, he struggled to keep up and was easily distracted by friends and the occasional recreational drug use. And while his dad was often absent from his life, whenever he did come around, he always stressed to McCurdy the importance of education. Thus, at age 13, tired of failing grades and getting into trouble, McCurdy heeded his dad’s advice to be a better student and convinced his parents to send him to boarding school in Connecticut. Leaving home for the first time, Two years later, McCurdy was thriving in boarding school. By now, he’d gotten his first exposure to tattoos and wanted one. His parents weren’t enthusiastic about the idea, but McCurdy struck a deal with them that if he made the honor roll, they’d let him get a tattoo. ”So I made the honor roll and I got a tattoo, and it was a great experience for me because it really fueled my interest more,” McCurdy says. He was 15 years old. By this time, McCurdy notes, he’d gained more and discipline. It appeared that his life was on track. But then he did what he describes as ”something stupid.” He was gearing up for college, filling out applications and getting his portfolio together McCurdy was interested in graphic design. And despite finally getting his act together and excelling in school, McCurdy cheated on a Spanish test. This got him kicked out of boarding school. He found himself back in Delaware living with his mother and working at Red Lobster, while trying to complete his high school diploma at a public school. Getting kicked out of boarding school was devastating for McCurdy. He’d liked it there, it inspired him and he felt like he was doing something positive with his life. It was also there — after he got his first tattoo — that he realized he wanted more. But with no money to pay for them, McCurdy thought of the next best thing — creating them from scratch. He felt that he could express himself through designing tattoos. McCurdy ordered a tattoo kit online and when it came in the mail, he walked into his mother’s kitchen, sat down and started to tattoo. ”And every day since, it’s with that enthusiasm and love, that I continued to tattoo,” he says. After three months of tattooing at home on himself and on everyone he knew, McCurdy landed a job at his dad’s friend’s tattoo shop outside a nearby trailer park. He quit his job at Red Lobster, dropped out of school and focused solely on tattooing. ”In hindsight it was a terrible decision, I mean it worked out, but man, I dropped out of high school to tattoo outside of a trailer park. And I tattooed guns on [my] neck and I had no choice other than to succeed at it,” McCurdy says. It was from tattooing the guns that McCurdy earned the nickname, ”Bang Bang.” He says the guns also symbolized that this was what he was going to do for the rest of his life. New York City has more skin, Still, McCurdy thought he could take his skills further than the trailer park tattoo shop. He wanted more. So he scoped the industry and studied his craft. He knew who the big players were, and he knew that if he wanted to grow he would have to leave his neighborhood. So McCurdy packed up and moved to New York City. ”New York City just has more people,” he says. ”So it was simply my thought that, well, there’s more skin, I’m going to go where the skin is — so if that’s my canvas I’m going to go there.” Upon moving to New York City, McCurdy had a hard time finding work. This tattoo artist from Delaware found himself in the Big Apple going from tattoo shop to tattoo shop passing around his portfolio. He says many tattoo shop owners had a hard time believing that it was his work in the book because of how impressive it was to the eye. He had to find another way to stand out. ”When I moved to NYC I lost that funny little nickname,” he says. ”I didn’t tell people my name was Bang Bang, I told people my name was Keith. And the problem is Keith McCurdy isn’t really easy to remember, but nobody forgets Bang Bang. So I started telling people my name was Bang Bang and it was really great for me.” From then on out there was no more Keith McCurdy there was only Bang Bang. This is what she came for, After several months, Bang Bang finally landed a job at a grungy, dark basement tattoo shop on the Lower East Side. It was here where he’d meet the girl that would launch his career and forever change his life. A couple of months after he landed his first gig in New York, Bang Bang was tattooing in the basement when he recalls a group of five or six, tall, beautiful women walking into the shop. They asked the man at the front who was the best tattoo artist, the man said Bang Bang. Bang Bang’s coworker then told him that a singer wanted to get a tattoo. That singer was Barbadian pop star, Rihanna. Rihanna, then 18, wanted a Sanskrit prayer etched along her thigh. The next day, Rihanna came into the shop with a reporter. They all sat down in the window of the tattoo shop storefront. Slowly, people began to gather around the window to watch. Bang Bang turned on his machine and started to ink Rihanna’s skin as the reporter interviewed her. ”For me, it was very difficult to make that tattoo. Because she’s talking and she moves a lot when she talks, and she’s speaking with her hands. And I’m like, ’There’s this girl who will not sit still, and everyone’s watching me, and I’m stressing out,’ ” Bang Bang says. In the end, the tattoo turned out great. Rihanna was happy, so all was good in the world. Word of mouth quickly spread Bang Bang’s success on the pop singer’s tattoo. This opened the door for more career opportunities, and Bang Bang made sure he was ready. He’s created a brand, a tattoo empire. ”Bang Bang” is no longer just his nickname, it’s the name of the store he opened where he now manages 16 artists. He’s Rihanna’s tattoo artist, and has also inked celebrities such as Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Lebron James and Miley Cyrus, just to name a few. Through it all, Bang Bang falls back on one principle: being available. So much so, that for his first 10 years in New York, he didn’t take a vacation — and he’s made sure to not repeat the mistakes of his younger years in abusing alcohol or using drugs. ”I may need to fly across the planet because Lebron calls at 9 p. m. and I have to fly on this first flight the next morning,” Bang Bang says. ”I have to sort out my whole world to get it done, but saying yes and making sure I am able to do it is what really laid the foundation for the opportunities that came.”

The world of global health and development loves its buzzwords — a word or short phrase that sums up a problem or a solution, like ”food insecurity” or ”gender equity.” The problem is that buzzwords aren’t always clear to the average global citizen. And some folks in the development world don’t like them either. Here’s The International Development Jargon Detector to prove it. Still, the latest jargon can reveal a lot about trends and goals. We asked our sources and our audience on Twitter to share buzzwords from 2016 that are likely to be part of the global conversation in the year ahead. And we checked to see what words are trending. Here’s a sampling. A haze of air pollution — think pea soup fog but toxic. The word’s been around but resurfaced in the past few months after particularly bad airpocalypses in India and China. In December, Beijing issued its first red alert of 2016 after five days of smog was forecast. Schools were shut down, people wore surgical masks to filter out the fumes and flights were canceled because of poor visibility. There was even a trending hashtag, #themostserioussmog, which prompted citizens across Chinese social media site Weibo to share photos of their experience. Use it in a sentence: During airpocalypse, the wealthiest schoolchildren in Beijing can expect to play soccer under an inflatable dome. They’re not doctors or nurses. But they’ve received some basic training in medical skills and play a vital role in places where there’s a lack of health workers — often in remote parts of countries but in the U. S. as well, where there are 48, 000 CHWs according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In December, CHWs had their moment in the sun when Dr. Raj Panjabi won a $1 million TED Prize for founding Last Mile Health, an organization that uses CHWs to provide health care in isolated parts of Liberia. Use it in a sentence: By day, she runs a beauty salon, but by night, she’s a CHW, educating women about contraception. The act of collecting data and using it to predict or shape behavior — like keeping track of your steps with a FitBit so you can decide if you need to amp up your exercise program. The word’s been around for years but got new life in the global community last year as technologists started thinking of ways to use data, like disease outbreaks, DNA and financial transactions, to improve people’s lives. Some companies in China, for example, are feeding weather data into a computer with artificial intelligence software to predict events — like an airpocalypse — in advance. Use it in a sentence: Activists are hoping that the datafication of air quality data can help bring more funding for programs. Around the world, there are 1 billion people who live without power. They can’t automate agricultural processes like milling grain to produce more food to sell. They use carbon cookstoves. They pay someone to let them charge their mobile phones. The term’s been floating around the global development space since 2011, when U. N. Ban made electricity access a global priority. It made headlines in February 2016 when U. S. lawmakers passed the historic Electrify Africa Act, promising to put 50 million Africans on the grid by 2020. Use it in a sentence: Some startups in Silicon Valley are fighting energy poverty by designing more affordable lamps for people in the developing world. A portmanteau of ”financial” and ”technology” used to describe emerging financial services like virtual currency, mobile banking and online payment systems. Last year, economists and developers started exploring how fintech might benefit the developing world. With just a mobile phone and an Internet connection, fintech makes it possible for people without bank accounts to save and send money — or get the loans they need to start a small business. Use it in a sentence: Thanks to fintech, a Nigerian worker in China can send money back to his family using his mobile phone. Proof that you are a citizen in a country. Some 1. 5 billion people, mostly in Africa and Asia, are undocumented — limiting their ability to vote, get a job or inherit property. The need for NID has always been an important issue in global development, but over the past couple of years, there’s been growing momentum in Africa to ensure that all citizens have these important documents from birth. This April, countries will meet in Namibia for the third Government Forum on Electronic Identity in Africa, in the hopes of finding better ways to register citizens. Use it in a sentence: Sorry, madame, we cannot admit your child to school unless she has NID. How ecosystems affect human health. In the face of climate change and rapid urbanization, it’s a topic that will continue to grow in the years ahead. Climate droughts, for example, can cause crop shortages that lead to malnutrition. And cutting down forests to make way for housing can expose humans to harmful viruses that are carried by animals. In December, The Lancet, a medical journal, created a new publication to help share research on the subject across the the global health community. Use it in a sentence: The dwindling bee population is a big planetary health issue — we need them to pollinate crops that help humans stay healthy. A fancy acronym for drones and similar airborne robots. UAVs have been around awhile, but in the field of global health, the term got quite a lift in 2016. Aid groups are testing out UAVs to deliver everything from contraceptives to vaccines to the remotest parts. They’re even being used to help communities map flood risk by capturing aerial images of slums in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. Use it in a sentence: Dust is a big problem for the UAVs that deliver health care goods over desert terrain in Ghana — it makes it hard for the remote pilots to see where the drone is flying. Any other buzzwords you think we may have missed? Tweet at @NPRGoatsandSoda and share your words with us!

A week after a gunman killed 39 people in an Istanbul nightclub, the suspected assailant remains at large and secular Turks are feeling under attack. ISIS claimed the shooting, calling it an assault on what it called ”a pagan holiday.” The government’s pledge to defend all lifestyles hasn’t kept an atmosphere of fear from descending on some of Istanbul’s secular neighborhoods. By way of contrast, some Turks point to what happened in November 2015, when gunmen stormed Paris cafes and entertainment venues, killing more than 100 people. Parisians quickly rallied, saying the only response was to keep right on going out at night, which many did. In Istanbul, there was a similar call right after the New Year’s nightclub attack, but the response so far has been different. A well known Turkish writer and actor, Gulse Birsel, wrote a newspaper column urging people not to get lost in despair. ”Go out every night,” she wrote, ”to a movie, a play, hang out at a music concert.” The column has drawn praise. But in Istanbul’s more secular neighborhoods the response feels more like fear than defiance. Empty Tables, Fearful Customers, ”Beer Time” is a bar that occupies a corner just off the city’s major commercial thoroughfare, Istiklal Street. Songs from the pop charts of yesteryear are playing as bartender Selami, who like many Turks these days is cautious around reporters and gives only his first name, sits down to chat. He only has a couple tables to watch. He says in the past several years business has gone from bad to worse. ”There were the Gezi Park protests in 2013,” he says, referring to demonstrations in nearby Taksim Square that were violently crushed by riot police. Then there was a bomb that hit tourists on Istiklal Street — after that, he says the place was almost empty. ”This New Year’s Eve we were actually packed,” he says. ”But then people started getting alerts on their phones about the nightclub attack, and in no time pretty much the whole street was deserted.” Selami jumps up as a quartet of students gets ready to leave. These days, he says, it’s mainly students who come here. His old regulars are nowhere to be seen, and the customers that do show up are jittery. ”I think it was yesterday, a woman came in and ordered a beer,” he says. ”She saw two foreign guys at another table and called me over. She pointed at one and said, ’Doesn’t he look like the nightclub attacker?’ People are starting to feel .” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been trying to pull a divided country together, and says he won’t allow terrorists to harm anyone’s lifestyle, religious or secular. He told an audience of local leaders that he rose to power arguing for tolerance for pious Muslims in officially secular Turkey, and that same tolerance should extend to those with secular values. ”Just as it is wrong for people who cannot tolerate the call to prayer to trample on a preacher, it is wrong to use force against those who do not pray,” he said to warm applause. ”In Turkey, nobody’s life style is under systematic threat.” Secular Turks aren’t so sure about that. They’ve been feeling increasing pressure for years under Erdogan’s government, led by a party with roots in political Islam. Turkey’s head of religious affairs was one of the first to condemn the nightclub attack. Critics say that may be in part because the day before New Year’s Eve, he issued a sermon to be read in all mosques. It criticized celebrations as not consistent with Muslim values. In the largely secular Cihangir neighborhood, home to Turks, foreign journalists and diplomats, a young man who gives his name as Aram take a break outside a called Mellow. It looks like a cheerful shoebox of a place, but these days Aram says the mood is somber. Many of his Turkish customers are staying away, and too many of the expats who round out the cosmopolitan atmosphere here are dropping in to say goodbye. ”I remember one Italian guy who used to come here a lot,” he says. ”He’s lived here for 10 years, but he said he has to go home because he doesn’t feel safe here.” Another trend he’s noticed is people moving out of the neighborhood altogether. Turks say secular values may be fiercely defended in Paris, but in today’s Turkey they’re merely tolerated, and then only sometimes. They’re hoping the president’s call for tolerance is more than just reassuring rhetoric.

Dear Sugar Radio is a weekly podcast from member station WBUR. Hosts Steve Almond and Cheryl Strayed offer ”radical empathy” and advice on everything from relationships and parenthood to dealing with drug problems or anxiety. Today the Sugars hear from a woman going through radical physical — and emotional — changes. She was ”extremely overweight,” but lost 100 pounds. Now she wants to have a ”grand adventure” and feels that her husband is holding her back. If you lose weight, do other parts of your life inevitably change as well? To help answer this and other questions, they’re joined again by Lindy West, a writer, editor and performer whose work focuses on pop culture, social justice and body image. She’s the author of Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman. Dear Sugars, My husband and I got married four years ago. I was 28 and he was 31. It was the happiest day of our lives. We were excited for the future, happy in our relationship and ready to give marriage a go. We were also both extremely overweight. After marrying my husband, let’s call him Dylan, I began feeling motivated to make positive changes in my life. I changed my eating habits, started moving more, found a love for yoga and decided to become a yoga teacher. I lost 100 pounds. Dylan was supportive and encouraging the whole way through. He would cook me healthy dinners, celebrate my weekly weight losses (whether 1 pound or 5) and was my cheerleader throughout my year of yoga teacher training. He never left my side. He is the epitome of unconditional love. What they don’t tell you about weight loss is that after you lose a large amount of weight, an entire new world opens up for you. For the first time in 10 years, I am able to ride roller coasters. I can zip line, rock climb, kayak and paddle board without having to check weight restrictions first. I discovered hiking and found that nature makes me feel alive. I feel like a teenager again, Sugars. The world is mine for the taking, and I want to see it all. Dylan is ready to settle down. He wants to start a family. He wants to buy a house. He wants a garden and a yard for our dog. We will work at jobs, come home to dinner every night and raise our children. Those things sound lovely to me, but while they are what I wanted before, they are not even close to what I want now. I want to travel. I want to try new things. He’s willing to compromise with vacations and weekends of travel here and there, but I want more. I want a grand adventure. The ”next chapter” for us couldn’t look more different. I’ve changed so much while he’s stayed the same. I’m not even sure I want children anymore. So what now? I love this man, but I worry that if I’d been this person four years ago, I wouldn’t have gotten married. I feel like he is holding me back. I feel like I have a ball and chain. I feel selfish. I feel inspired. I feel like a jerk. I feel strong and confident and capable. I feel like I am ruining my marriage, like a terrible wife, but I feel amazing. I can’t imagine my life without Dylan, but at the same time, I don’t want to live with regrets. Signed, Lost in Love, Steve Almond: I’m not sure how much this has to do with weight. She seems like somebody who has gone through a radical shift in what she wants out of life. I’m not saying weight isn’t a relevant issue, but it seems much more fundamental that she wants to follow a different map. Cheryl Strayed: It’s really a fascinating dichotomy she’s set up. She sounds like somebody who allowed her body weight to make her world smaller than it should have been, and now she’s like, ”I want to have this gigantic life.” She’s so clear about this feeling of being held back. Subscribe to Dear Sugar Radio:RSSiTunesStitcher, Steve: Lost in Love, if you want to consider the possibility of remaining married to Dylan, then you have to talk with him. It sounds like the issues and differences in your priorities, and even what you inwardly feel toward him, are conflicting enough that you should be in counseling or individual therapy. I don’t think you’ve said to him, ”Sometimes I feel like you’re my ball and chain, and I just want to get away and have a big life, but you’re an anchor.” You’re not going to be successful in the marriage, or even moving out of the marriage, until you settle up and are honest with him. Cheryl: The final paragraph of this letter is fascinating. She says, ”I love this man, but I worry that if I’d been this person four years ago, I wouldn’t have gotten married.” This is interesting — the idea that you lose weight and then you’re a different person. Many years ago, I was a waitress and I worked with a woman who, over the course of the year that we were employed together, lost about 100 pounds. And it seemed like she was a different person. She went from being this kind of shy, reserved woman to suddenly showing up in these incredibly tight dresses and dancing on the tables. I remember watching this — not just a physical transformation, but the way she presented herself to the world. I ran into her years later, and she hadn’t gained back all of the weight, but she’d gained back enough of it. She was back to being that first person I met. Lost in Love, maybe this is a strange era where you feel like you’re out of the box that was both of your own making and that our culture defines for fat women. I think that you should be very careful as you make decisions based on this moment in your life. Lindy West: The way that our culture’s narrative works is that weight loss is this magic ticket to a perfect life and all of your problems go away. If you read literature about people who’ve undergone really drastic weight loss, what you hear over and over is people saying, ”I discovered when I became thin that I had all the same emotional problems I had when I was fat. I had all the same problems, all the same confidence problems.” It’s not magic. You still have to do all this work on yourself, emotionally and psychologically. It seems like she’s in this really electric moment, and it might be a good idea to take it slow and assess where she is and if she has realistic expectations about what being smaller is going to do for her life and for her problems more broadly. You can get more advice from the Sugars each week on Dear Sugar Radio from WBUR. Listen to the full episode to hear about a man who wants to talk about his girlfriend’s weight. Have a question for the Sugars? Email dearsugarradio@gmail. com and it may be answered on a future episode. You can also listen to Dear Sugar Radio on iTunes, Stitcher or your favorite podcast app.

Dear Sugar Radio is a weekly podcast from member station WBUR. Hosts Steve Almond and Cheryl Strayed offer ”radical empathy” and advice on everything from relationships and parenthood to dealing with drug problems or anxiety. Today the Sugars have advice for people in different situations. In the first, a woman writes that she thinks her boyfriend loves her, but he hasn’t said it outright. She says she doesn’t want to say it first and make him feel forced. Is it possible to express your love for someone without explicitly saying it? Then they hear from a man wondering about the importance of physical attraction in a relationship, and thinking about how societal standards of beauty may be affecting his perception of his girlfriend. Dear Sugars, I’ve been dating a wonderful man for just over a year. We’ve been officially a couple for just about six months. We have so much fun when we’re together, and he shows me that he cares in so many ways — sneaking quietly into bed so he doesn’t wake me, inviting me to his family holidays, lots of kisses and snuggles when we’re together, and saying ”I miss you” lots when we’re apart. We spend all of our free time together, and we’ve decided to move in together in a few months. We talk about everything. He shares his ambitions, his insecurities, and whenever we have a disagreement, we talk it out. He is more open about his feelings than anyone I have ever dated. He’s told me that I’m the person he feels closest to. But there is one thing he hasn’t shared — his love. While I feel it from him, he hasn’t uttered those three little words to me — ”I love you.” Each time our relationship has moved to the next level, I have been the proactive one. But on this front, I have held back. I am waiting for him to tell me he loves me before I say it. I’d like to know he loves me before we take the next step of sharing a home together, but I don’t feel comfortable asking, ”Do you love me?” If he said yes, I would feel like I had forced it — like he said it because he knew it’s what I wanted to hear. So Sugars, what do I do? Can I get him to express his love in words without disbelieving it? How long is too long to wait to hear ”I love you”? Signed, I Love Him, Cheryl Strayed: I Love Him, welcome to a relationship. There’s the way that you want the other person to be or behave, and then there’s the way that they are. You need to negotiate these things. To me, it sounds like your boyfriend loves you, and you love him. He just assigns a very different value to those three words. Maybe, for whatever reason, ”I love you” is just not a thing that he has said to people in his life. Steve Almond: That’s such an important point. I come from a family that did not say ”I love you,” and I had to train myself to say it to people. When others say it, I feel uncomfortable. It’s as if there’s been a sudden intrusion of intense direct emotion that makes me feel frozen. Now, I can say it because I know that it’s shorthand, I Love Him, for all the things your boyfriend does for you. I imagine that if you explain to him that it’s personally meaningful, even if it makes him feel a little uncomfortable, you’ll find out what his relationship to that phrase is and whether it’s something you should be unsettled by. Cheryl: The two options I see are either, go ahead and say ”I love you,” and you’ll just have to let go of this archaic, sexist notion that he should be the person who says it first. Or, you say, ”I need to talk to you about something. I love you, and I am perplexed that you haven’t said you love me. I’ve been waiting for you to say it, and I don’t know why it’s important to me that you say it first, but it is.” Maybe your view on this is rooted in the feeling that you are the proactive one and the one who compels emotional growth in your relationship at each juncture. That’s something really important for you two to unpack, and I think this ”I love you” conversation could be a great portal into that deeper relationship. Dear Sugars, I’ve been with my girlfriend for about a year now, and I’ve never felt such a strong connection to someone. She and I have more in common than I’ve ever shared with a partner, and our relationship has progressed very quickly. Subscribe to Dear Sugar Radio:RSSiTunesStitcher, The only problem is, when we first met, I didn’t feel as much of a physical attraction to her as I thought I should, but I decided that my attraction to her on all other levels was deep enough to overcome that. I thought that our physical chemistry would grow in time, but unfortunately, it hasn’t. I feel terrible and shallow for even writing this down, and I can’t imagine how I could ever explain this to her without hurting her deeply. I’ve even felt some of my male friends imply (or say outright) that they thought I could ”do better.” My question for you is: Am I doing the right thing in pursuing a relationship with this wonderful person and ignoring what I perceive to be totally invented standards of beauty? Or is physical chemistry the first and most important part of a real relationship? Sincerely, Struggling with Standards, Cheryl: Struggling with Standards, I think that you are up against two things that you have conflated into one. There is your physical attraction to your girlfriend and the physical and sexual chemistry you have with her, and then there’s the invented standards of beauty. Those are two different things. The person that you are attracted to and have chemistry with is not necessarily someone who fits into standards and conventions of beauty. So the first thing to think about is, do you have a powerful physical bond with this woman, or are you hung up? Is the thing that’s inhibiting you from having this bond the idea of what women ”should” look like? And if that’s the case, the great news about that is that it can be revised. You can say, screw the standards. I love sleeping with her, I love this relationship. Now if, on the other hand, it is a chemistry issue rather than a beauty standards issue, I think that you’re right to ask this question. If you don’t have a basic, real attraction to your romantic partner, I think that you need to rethink the relationship and maybe break up or become friends. I will say, if you decide to end this relationship, I really don’t think that you should say to your girlfriend that it’s because she’s not physically attractive enough for you. That’s a subjective opinion, and it’s one that will hurt her for a long time and probably affect her for many relationships. Steve: The pattern in my life has been, when I get involved with somebody, as I find out more about who they are and all the hidden beautiful things within them, they become more attractive to me. What’s unsettling here is that, for whatever reason, after a year, she hasn’t become more attractive to you. Being steeped in this youth and culture mixes up our internal lives. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could separate out how much is chemistry and how much is an external standard? The problem is, we’ve internalized these things, and they become false sacred texts inside us. That is something you should question yourself about. At the bottom of it, you cannot fake chemistry. A year isn’t a short amount of time to figure out whether the underlying chemistry is there. But if it’s not, it’s not. Don’t waste her time or yours trying to fake it, because that’s its own kind of humiliation. You can get more advice from the Sugars each week on Dear Sugar Radio from WBUR. Listen to the full episode to hear more from people doubting love in relationships. Have a question for the Sugars? Email dearsugarradio@gmail. com and it may be answered on a future episode. You can also listen to Dear Sugar Radio on iTunes, Stitcher or your favorite podcast app.

When I told my coworker that I was participating in a study that involved fasting, she laughed until she nearly cried. My boyfriend, ever supportive, asked hesitantly, ”Are you sure you want to try this?” Note the use of ”try” instead of ”do.” When I told my father over the phone, the line went silent for a moment. Then he let out a long, ”Welllllll,” wished me luck, and chuckled. Turns out, luck might not be enough. I like to eat. Often and a lot. Now, however, my eating habits have become more than a source of amusement for friends and coworkers. Now they are data in a study focusing on people with multiple sclerosis, like me. The pilot study, led by Dr. Ellen Mowry at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, is looking at the impact of intermittent fasting on our microbiomes — the universe of trillions of microbes, mainly bacteria, that live in our guts. Intermittent fasting is pretty much what it sounds like. For six months, participants are allowed to eat during an period each day. The remaining 16 hours we are limited to water, tea and coffee. No added sugar, cream, honey or sweetener. Several studies have suggested that the predominant bacteria in the guts of people with MS tend to be different than those in the guts of those without the chronic autoimmune inflammatory disease, according to Samantha Roman, the study’s research coordinator. Depending on their makeup, bacteria have the ability to soothe or trigger inflammation, potentially affecting the symptoms of MS and other diseases. Exactly how gut bacteria and inflammation are related, though, is not well understood. What researchers do know, Roman says, is that intermittent fasting is one of many ways to change the makeup of the microbiome, and it can quell the inflammatory symptoms of MS — at least in mice. To help shed light on the relationships between fasting and the microbiome and inflammation and multiple sclerosis in humans, researchers at Hopkins will inspect gut bacteria in study participants, before, during and after the period of fasting. Two random mornings a week, Roman sends text messages, asking participants to photograph all of our food intake for the day. As a part of this study, I like to think that every bite I take may bring doctors one data point closer to easing the abdominal spasms that ebb and flow like a wave of knives, occasionally sending me to the emergency room. Every embarrassingly audible gurgle of hunger could be a signal that my microbial cohabitants are calming my immune system, muting the burning sensation that at times covers my skin from eyelids to . Each snack that I decline may help reduce the inflammation that has left my brain and spinal cord dotted with lesions that lead to those and other symptoms. It is a noble endeavor, I told myself as I prepared that first stool sample, and I have continued to remind myself of this lofty motivation every morning at 10 a. m. when inevitably, my stomach begins to growl. I’ll likely repeat the mantra at the end of the study, when I’ll need to prepare a second stool sample for comparison. Like so many such endeavors, this one isn’t easy. I took Roman up on her suggestion, and scheduled my periods of eating between noon and 8 p. m. I get home at about 7 p. m. several evenings a week after strength training, and there is no way I could go 16 hours without eating after the ordeal my trainer puts me through. I only started eating breakfast in the past few years. I figured I would slip back into that routine fairly easily. My first few days of fasting coincided with the presidential election and my car breaking down. These were events. As it turned out, a little helped out quite a bit. Thanks to the knot in my stomach, I had to force myself to eat. ”This is going to be a breeze,” I thought. Then came Saturday. After running several errands — the butcher, the coffee shop, the grocery store — I was famished. So I did the sensible thing and bought a grilled cheese sandwich that was stuffed with crab dip. When I got home at about 2:30 p. m. I devoured it, then promptly fell asleep. I woke up two hours later in a panic — I only had a few hours left to eat! I wasn’t hungry, but just to play it safe, I ate a taco and some ice cream. In the first month and a half of the study, my symptoms have not changed much. I’m still fatigued, my hands and feet often feel as though they are on fire, and I have occasional muscle spasms in my feet. Still, things had been going well. I lost about 8 pounds (my regular diet includes more vegetables, less grilled cheese) set a new PR at the gym, and slipped into a comfortable eating routine. Until my trip to Chicago. It was a wedding! What was I supposed to do? The answer, apparently, is drink. I did keep my food intake between noon and 8 p. m. But there was the snowy Christkindlmarket with its fragrant, sweet, hot mulled wine. And champagne toasts! And whiskey! Over three nights, I drank alcohol beyond my limit three times. And then, in the most unexceptional place, for the most basic of foodstuffs, I hit rock bottom. After two hours of sleep, in Terminal E of O’Hare Airport at 7 a. m. I ate a bagel. I needed that bagel. I regret nothing. During that weekend, for the first time, Roman sent text messages two days in a row. Hesitantly, shamefully, I confessed to everything. The point of the texts is, after all, to determine how well participants stick to the program, as well as to have data to help determine if what we eat has any effect over and above when we eat. I have become the very reason I tend to studies that rely on data! I want to do better, for the opportunity to improve my health and for the integrity of the study. I’ll have to continue to remind myself of the nobility of this scientific endeavor, particularly in January, when I spend a week at the beach in Mexico. Brandie Michelle Jefferson is a communications manager and freelance reporter who loves a good science story. She’s on Twitter, too: @b_m_jefferson.

By many standards, Mireille Kamariza is at the top of the world. She’s a graduate student at one of the world’s top universities, working on her Ph. D. with one of the world’s top chemists. And she’s tackling a tough problem — tuberculosis — that sickens nearly 10 million people a year. Earlier this year, Kamariza and her adviser unveiled a potential breakthrough in fighting TB: a way to detect the culprit bacteria faster and more accurately. But for Kamariza, the fight against TB is not just about scientific progress and prestige. It’s personal. Kamariza grew up in the small African country of Burundi, where many around her were stricken with TB. A close relative lived with the disease for years — and eventually died from it. It was common for people in her town to get sick with TB and ”wait to see if you’d die — and if you survived, you’d just kind of live with it.” A World Health Organization report released in October states that an estimated 10. 4 million people were infected with TB in 2015, up from previous years — and 1. 8 million died from the disease. TB is still a stigmatized disease in Burundi, so Kamariza doesn’t want to be specific about her relative’s identity. But, she says, he most likely didn’t get treated ”because he didn’t know you could be treated, and even if he did know, [treatment] was far from where he was — and expensive.” Kamariza’s journey hasn’t been easy. In Burundi, it’s rare for girls to attend college — not to mention work with scientists. ”Science was something that Europeans and Americans did,” she says. ”It was for other people — not for me.” When she was in high school, she didn’t have a clue about science careers. Neither did her parents. ”I never dreamed [Kamariza] would become a scientist because it is a career path that is unknown in Burundi,” says Denise Sinankwa, Kamariza’s mother. Sinankwa had her hands full when Kamariza was young. She and her husband were raising four kids during a bloody civil war. Nearly 300, 000 civilians were killed. The family moved a lot, and Sinankwa often worked multiple jobs to feed the family. But Sinankwa still pushed Kamariza to do well in school. She wanted her daughter to land a job and be able to support herself. Kamariza considers herself lucky. She attended a Catholic school, where ”things were more rigorous” than other public schools. The ”nuns’ school” instilled a mindset most of her peers lacked because generally girls ”were raised to be a wife,” she says. Kamariza wanted to pursue studies in the U. S. where her brother had already landed. So, when she was 17, Kamariza packed up her belongings and traveled with her third brother half way around the world. She went to San Diego in the fall of 2006 and moved into a tiny studio apartment with her brothers. The four worked various jobs at grocery stores, restaurants, retail shops — ”whatever we could get to pay the bills,” Kamariza says. Their earnings also paid for classes at a junior college. Then Kamariza’s hard work started to pay off. At San Diego Mesa College, she found a mentor. Her chemistry teacher, Saloua Saidane, was a fellow African. Born to illiterate parents in Tunisia, Saidane was one of 12 children and knew what it was like to be a poor immigrant kid pouring herself into school as the only way to a better future. ”Kamariza was serene yet determined,” Saidane says. ”She worked hard. She saw the opportunity to have a good life, a life different from what she left behind.” Saidane started Kamariza’s journey into science. ”She really pushed me and kept motivating me and telling me I should aim high. Whatever she told me, I did,” Kamariza says. After quitting her job at Safeway to focus on school, Kamariza got into the University of California, San Diego, and began undergraduate studies. Through a National Institutes of Health diversity scholarship, Kamariza spent summers doing biology research. In 2012, she joined Carolyn Bertozzi’s lab — then at the University of California, Berkeley, now at Stanford University — as a graduate student. Kamariza wanted to focus on infectious disease. So she started brainstorming with another graduate student to figure out a quicker, better way to diagnose TB. They eventually came up with a new test that recognizes a sugar, called trehalose, that is uniquely found in TB bacteria. In the presence of a special substance, TB bacteria cells glow green, making the microbes easy to spot on microscope slides of an infected person’s mucus or saliva. Current TB tests are laborious and not very sensitive — some infections are missed. TB cultures are more reliable but take six weeks to produce a result. Kamariza — and other researchers elsewhere — are creating methods that could make TB diagnoses simpler and more accurate. Kamariza’s method looked promising this year when she and her colleagues tested it on a small batch of samples from patients in South Africa. But the tools are still in the developmental phase. Larger, more rigorous studies are needed for the method to be considered for use in clinics. Though unfinished, the research drew heavy crowds when Kamariza presented her data on a poster at a TB conference in September in Paris. Considering her improbable journey — from a child witnessing the tragedy of this disease to a young researcher contributing toward its eradication — ”the whole experience is surreal,” Kamariza says. ”A lot of hard work, a bit of luck, perseverance and relentless support from friends and family are what got me here,” says Kamariza, She hopes her experience can ”encourage others like me to pursue their passions, no matter the obstacles.”

Donald Trump has named his to a top White House job. Jared Kushner will serve as a senior adviser to the president, and the transition team says he will work with incoming Chief of staff Reince Priebus and chief strategist Stephen Bannon ”to execute Trump’s agenda.” The announcement also says Kushner will not receive a salary while serving in the Trump administration, which could help alleviate legal problems stemming from federal law. Kushner, a real estate developer and publisher of the New York Observer, has been married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka since 2009. When it was reported last week that they would be moving to Washington, D. C. it fed into speculation that one or both would serve as advisers in the Trump administration. ”Jared has been a tremendous asset and trusted advisor throughout the campaign and transition and I am proud to have him in a key leadership role in my administration,” Trump said in a statement, nothing Kushner’s success in business and politics, with his role in the inner circle of the ’s 2016 campaign. In the statement, Kushner said, ”It is an honor to serve our country. I am energized by the shared passion of the and the American people and I am humbled by the opportunity to join this very talented team.” Bringing family members into the White House may prove difficult, though. That’s because of a 1967 law, inspired by another famous family, as NPR’s Jim Zarroli recently reported: ”The law was passed by Congress in response to President John F. Kennedy’s decision to appoint his brother Robert as attorney general, says Darrell West, vice president and director of governance studies at the Brookings Institution. ” ’It was very controversial at the time. Lyndon Johnson in particular did not like that, and when he became president he helped shepherd this law through the U. S. Congress,’ West says.” But it’s not entirely clear what that law means. Here is what the statute lays out, as NPR’s Ailsa Chang reported in November: ”A public official may not appoint, employ, promote, advance, or advocate for appointment, employment, promotion, or advancement, in or to a civilian position in the agency in which he is serving or over which he exercises jurisdiction or control any individual who is a relative of the public official.” The question now is what exactly ”agency” means, Chang reported. This question has come up before — in a 1993 case pertaining to President Bill Clinton, who appointed wife Hillary to head up a health care reform task force. In that case (which was not in fact about nepotism at all) the judge mentioned in his decision that the statute didn’t seem to apply to White House staff. But that still isn’t settled law, Chang also reported. ”There’s plenty of disagreement in the legal community about whether that bit from Judge Silberman’s opinion is legally binding because it wasn’t part of the reasoning for the central holding in the case.” But the fact that Kushner will not draw a salary could be key. Government ethics lawyer Ken Gross pointed out to NPR last November that the statute requires violators give up compensation, which he described as an ineffective way to enforce the law. ”So it sounds like you could have someone in an unpaid position, and then they’ve already suffered the penalty for violating the provision, and presumably, they would go on their merry way as an unpaid member,” said Gross at the time. Even leaving aside the appointment’s legality, it could also raise plenty of ethical questions. In a recent piece, the New York Times laid out the many possibilities for conflicts of interest to arise with Kushner in the White House. For example, the Times reports that Kushner ”played a pivotal role in persuading” Trump to appoint Goldman Sachs President Gary Cohn — whose bank lent money to the Kushner Cos. — as director of the National Economic Council. Kushner’s legal counsel, Jamie Gorelick — who served as deputy attorney general during Bill Clinton’s administration — told NPR’s Jackie Northam on Monday that Kushner plans to divest from his real estate holdings in anticipation of serving in public office. ”He is going to restructure his business, so that he will no longer have any active involvement in Kushner Co. entities, which are real estate entities mostly in New York. He will divest a substantial number of his assets, and for any of those that remain he will abide by all the appropriate recusal requirements of the ethical guidelines,” Gorelick said.

On behalf of the U. S. State Department, John Kerry has issued a formal apology for the department’s pattern of discrimination against LGBT employees during a period beginning in the 1940s and stretching for decades. Sen. Ben Cardin, . had asked the secretary of state for such an apology in late November, calling the historical discrimination ” and unacceptable.” The Washington Blade reported on Cardin’s request in early December, noting at the time that the State Department said it was preparing a response. The mass purge of gay staffers during the century was known as the ”Lavender Scare,” which coincided with the ”Red Scare.” Author Eric Berkowitz, speaking to Terry Gross on Fresh Air in 2015, said the systematic discrimination against gay people in that era has ”gotten short shrift in the popular imagination.” At the same time as the persecution of alleged communists, ”there was no less energetic a hunt to root out what were called ’perverts’ . .. from the federal government,” he said. And it started in the State Department, explains David Johnson, the author of The Lavender Scare. He says that in the ’40s, the State Department was already systematically firing gay employees. Then, in 1950, Joseph McCarthy claimed to have a list of communists in the State Department. In an attempt to defend itself against the charges, the department pointed out that it was working hard to expel ”subversives” — by firing gay people. That disclosure kicked off the wider ”Lavender Scare.” ”The purges begin in the State Department,” Johnson says. ”And then in the politicized atmosphere of McCarthyism, they doubled down.” In 1953, years after the State Department began firing gay employees, Dwight Eisenhower instituted a nationwide ban on gay men and lesbians working for the federal government. Purges lasted for decades. Careers were destroyed, and some employees committed suicide, Johnson says. Cardin, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, wrote to Kerry on Nov. 29 to ask that in his last months as secretary of state, he address that history. Cardin said that more than 1, 000 people were dismissed from the Department of State for their alleged sexual orientation, and ”many more” prevented from joining the department through discriminatory hiring practices. As recently as the 1990s, he said, the State Department drove out personnel thought to be gay, calling them ”security risks.” Cardin urged Kerry to acknowledge the discrimination, apologize for it — and perhaps install an exhibit about it at the State Department’s museum. ”Of course, the measures we take today cannot bring back years of anguish or erase decades of institutionalized homophobia, but we can ensure that such injustices levied against the LGBT community are never repeated again,” Cardin said in a statement in early December. Kerry responded with a statement released Monday. He began by highlighting the State Department’s recent support for LGBT and intersex employees. Then he wrote: ”In the past — as far back as the 1940s, but continuing for decades — the Department of State was among many public and private employers that discriminated against employees and job applicants on the basis of perceived sexual orientation, forcing some employees to resign or refusing to hire certain applicants in the first place. These actions were wrong then, just as they would be wrong today. ”On behalf of the Department, I apologize to those who were impacted by the practices of the past and reaffirm the Department’s steadfast commitment to diversity and inclusion for all our employees, including members of the LGBTI community.” Human Rights Campaign Government Affairs Director David Stacy said in a statement that ”although it is not possible to undo the damage that was done decades ago, Secretary Kerry’s apology sets the right tone for the State Department as it enters a new and uncertain time in our country under a new administration.” But David Johnson, a history professor at the University of South Florida and the author of The Lavender Scare, says that while the apology is welcome and overdue, Kerry’s statement misrepresents the State Department’s role in the purge. ”The apology made it sound like the State Department was just one of many institutions that was discriminating against gay men and lesbians . .. that it was just sort of 1950s discrimination,” he says. ”In fact, the State Department was unique in its level of homophobia,” he says.

Seven years ago, the Navajo tribal council in southeastern Utah started mapping the secret sites where medicine men and women forage for healing plants and Native people source wild foods. They wanted to make a case for protecting the landscape known as Bears Ears, a place sacred not only to their tribe but to many other tribes in the region, going back thousands of years. In one of his final acts in office, President Obama late last month created the 1. 35 Bears Ears National Monument, a move that proponents say will safeguard the area’s ecology and guarantee food sovereignty for the region’s Native Americans. ”Up to 20, 000 Natives of various tribes live within 45 minutes of Bears Ears, including 10, 000 Navajos that live just across the border in Arizona,” says Gavin Noyes, director of the Utah Diné Bikéyah, the Navajo nonprofit that developed the initial draft of the monument proposal in 2013. ”It’s one of the wildest, most intact landscapes in Utah.” About 16, 000 people live in San Juan County, where Bears Ears is located. Roughly half are Navajo, and many in the tribe lack running water and electricity, says Noyes. But the land still provides. Women hike into the hills to gather wild onions and sumac berries for soup. They bundle juniper branches to burn, so they can stir the ashes into their family’s blue corn mush. And they forage for piñon nuts, which saved tribes from starvation during times of drought. Native hunters seek deer and rabbits, while elders collect sage leaves to throw over the fire in the sweat lodge, purifying the air and the thoughts of those inside. And when doctors fail to cure ailments, healers look to the sky for bird medicine in the prayerful flight of a hawk or a golden eagle rising over mesas. Under the Bears Ears Monument designation, an intertribal coalition will partner with the U. S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management to manage the area — which is slightly bigger than the state of Delaware — ensuring that tribes have access to food supplies and firewood. Such a partnership has never been attempted before in the 48 contiguous states. For whites, conservation is a matter of not using the land, Noyes says. For Natives, it means actively tending it as they have for generations. ”Our goal is to change how Americans view landscapes so that they include cultures” as well as plants and animals, he says. But not everyone sees Bears Ears as a sacred source of food and healing — instead viewing the area for its and mineral potential, or for ranching. The Democratic president’s most prominent critics — many of them Republican lawmakers at the state and federal levels — are already calling on fellow Republican Donald Trump to reverse the order after he takes office. That’s something no president has done in the history of the Antiquities Act, the law that allows presidents to designate monuments. Especially in Utah, many of Obama’s opponents would like to see the area stay open to potential energy extraction. Bruce Adams is a cattle rancher and San Juan County commissioner. Last year, Adams said that while it’s important to look out for the rights of Natives, the white ”people who came to the area in the late 1800s” need to survive, too. And for them, that means raising livestock, but also extracting oil, gas, copper and uranium. ”Why should one group of people be given consideration over the rest of us?” he said. The state’s top politicians are just as disturbed at the news. Utah Rep. Rob Bishop says in a video, ”Utahns will use every tool at our disposal . .. whether it is judicial action, legislative action or even executive action” to repeal the Bears Ears decision. Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes says his office is readying a lawsuit against the federal government. And Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz, the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, sent subpoenas to Interior Secretary Sally Jewell and Christy Goldfuss, managing director of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, demanding all documents related to the Bears Ears designation dating to 2013. But even some tribal members worry that greater federal presence under the new monument designation will make it harder for them to access wild resources. They’ve been failed by the U. S. government before and aren’t inclined to trust it this time around. ”As Native American[s] we understand what broken treaties and broken promises mean. We’ve lived it for the last 200 years,” said Rebecca Benally, a Native American and the first woman elected to the San Juan County Commission, at a news conference. Benally has opposed the monument proposal from the start, saying the federal government should focus instead on paving the county’s 700 miles of dirt roads and lowering unemployment. The anger in Utah is part of the larger discord over public lands in the West, where almost half of all land is federally owned. But in the case of Bears Ears, the battle lines feel especially deep because of the fissures between Native peoples and the descendants of Mormon settlers. In 2015, members of the Utah Diné Bikéyah formed the Bears Ears intertribal coalition with five other tribes to draw up a plan to safeguard 1. 9 million acres from energy extraction. The coalition sent its plan to the San Juan County Commission, but nothing happened. The tribes claim discrimination, citing the fact that a majority of the commissioners are white. But county leaders say race had nothing to with it. ”San Juan County is the county in the country. To say we don’t want to even look for oil is stupid,” former San Juan County commissioner Phil Lyman said. Lyman served 10 days in jail last year and was put on probation from the commission after he led an ATV ride over a Native American archaeological site to protest the closure of Recapture Canyon by federal authorities who sought to protect the artifacts. Ultimately, the county commissioners rejected the tribal proposal. Instead they sent their own plan, which maintained land for energy extraction, to Bishop and Chaffetz, who at the time were drafting a master proposal for managing Utah’s controversial public lands. Both Bishop and Chaffetz are part of the chorus of voices in the West calling for the federal government to cede control of public land to the states. Bishop is chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee and his biggest campaign donors are from the oil and gas industry, according to The Salt Lake Tribune. Beginning in 2013, Bishop and Chaffetz conducted more than 1, 200 stakeholder meetings with energy companies, ranchers and environmentalists. The intertribal council says it was intentionally excluded. Last year, when the two politicians revealed their Public Lands Initiative, the tribes argued that large swaths of land in the Bears Ears had been left out, leaving it vulnerable to energy companies. Environmentalists raged that the bill favored fossil fuels. By the time the Public Lands Initiative was released, the intertribal coalition, convinced that it had no other choice, had reached out to Obama on its own. The bill failed to get to a floor vote before Congress adjourned for the year. The White House, though, kept talking with the tribes, and they got what they wanted. So too did the 71 percent of people in Utah who said they supported protecting Bears Ears, according to one poll. The Bears Ears Monument will cover 1. 35 million acres, less than the 1. 9 million acres that the tribal coalition had requested. And the final plan didn’t entirely ignore the Public Lands Initiative. For instance, the monument boundaries exclude the Daneros uranium mine, which mine operators say they hope to expand soon. Mining within the monument will be prohibited, but ranchers can still graze there, according to a statement by the Department of the Interior. Adams told reporters that San Juan County will join the state in suing the federal government over Bears Ears. Meanwhile, Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch says he is scheduling a meeting with Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke, Trump’s pick for secretary of the interior, to discuss what can be done about Bears Ears. And while no president has ever undone a predecessor’s monument designation, it’s possible Trump could try to be the first, even though some experts doubt he could win the legal case. Even if he doesn’t try, Congress could cancel the monument. It has done so in the past, but only 11 times — and only once in the last 50 years. This story comes to us from the Food Environment Reporting Network, an independent, nonprofit investigative news organization where Kristina Johnson is associate editor. A version of the story first appeared in FERN’s Ag Insider.

The week before Donald Trump takes the oath of office will set the stage for his entry into the Oval Office. Not only will at least nine of his Cabinet nominees begin their Senate confirmation hearings, but the himself will face reporters at a press conference, where he may address how he plans to separate his business interests from his presidency. On top of that, President Obama steps into the spotlight one last time, on Tuesday evening in Chicago, for a farewell address in which he’s likely to frame his legacy. In addition to the busy schedule, Trump has demonstrated in recent days his ability to upend what’s happening in Washington or move the financial markets with a tweet — whether he’s going off on intelligence agencies, deflecting claims against Russia, or taking aim at companies that could move the financial markets. Here’s a guide to what to watch for before Trump becomes the 45th president of the United States. All times are Eastern. Attorney General nominee Jeff Sessions is first up in the confirmation hearings for Trump’s Cabinet picks, beginning at 9:30 a. m. Typically, there’s a lot of deference shown toward sitting senators, and the Alabama senator is on Capitol Hill. But there will still be questions at his Judiciary Committee hearing about allegations that he once used racist language when he was a U. S. Attorney. Those allegations sank his hopes of a federal judgeship 30 years ago when he failed to win a Senate confirmation vote. Sessions has denied those allegations. He’ll also likely be asked about how he would handle civil rights cases, which have renewed scrutiny given the increased tensions between the police and many communities in recent years. And he could also be pressed on whether he would prosecute Trump’s former opponent, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, over her time at the State Department and her use of a private email server. ”Lock her up!” became a frequent chant on the campaign trail, but Trump has since abandoned that line and even admitted it was simply a campaign tactic. Retired Gen. John Kelly will also begin his confirmation hearing to lead the Department of Homeland Security at 3:30 p. m. Kelly is one of Trump’s less controversial nominees, but he’ll still face questions about Trump’s vaunted border wall proposal and other plans to curtail illegal immigration. On top of those confirmation hearings, the Senate Intelligence Committee has called a hearing for 1 p. m. on Tuesday where the heads of the CIA, FBI, NSA and the director of national intelligence will testify on Russian cyberattacks. That evening at 9, Obama will give his farewell address from McCormick Place in Chicago, where he held his 2012 victory party. With a Trump administration threatening to repeal or roll back some of the president’s signature accomplishments, such as Obamacare and climate change regulations, it’s a chance for him to defend his two terms. And while Obama has shown deference to Trump, whom he criticized as unequivocally unqualified and dangerous during the campaign, during the transition, he could still leave some words of rebuke or warning for his successor. Four more confirmation hearings are slated for midweek, but it’s secretary of state nominee Rex Tillerson who is the most controversial of the slate. Beginning at 9:15 a. m. the former Exxon Mobil CEO will testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where he’ll be peppered with questions about his relationship with Russia and President Vladimir Putin. Plenty of tough questions are likely to come from the GOP side. Former Trump antagonists such as Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, the 2016 primary candidate, along with fellow Republicans like Arizona Sen. John McCain and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, have raised plenty of questions about Tillerson’s qualifications. His business involvement in Russia has only been magnified in the wake of U. S. intelligence findings that Russia conspired to influence the election with hacks into emails of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman. Trump has been reluctant to accept those findings. Russia’s role into those cyberattacks will also come up at the confirmation hearing of Kansas Rep. Mike Pompeo, Trump’s choice to lead the CIA. He’ll also face questions about Trump’s pointed criticisms of the intelligence community and reports that the wants to scale back some agencies. Education secretary nominee Betsy DeVos won’t sail through a hearing either. Democrats don’t like her push for voucher programs and charter schools, and there’s plenty of questions about her financial disclosures and potential conflicts of interest, too. The least controversial nominee of the day — and perhaps of Trump’s entire proposed Cabinet — is likely to be Elaine Chao, Trump’s pick for transportation secretary. Not only has she been confirmed before, serving as labor secretary in the George W. Bush administration, but she’s also married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. The Sessions hearing before the Judiciary Committee will also continue on Wednesday with outside witnesses, including the head of the NAACP and a former attorney general, scheduled to testify. All of those consequential confirmation hearings could be overshadowed by Trump’s press conference at 11 a. m. in New York City. The eschewed traditional rules throughout his unlikely campaign, and that continued into the transition by not holding the typical press conferences. Trump had finally slated a press conference on Dec. 15 to detail how he would deal with his business interests, but canceled just days before. If the press conference on Wednesday stands, it will have been 167 days since his last press conference in late July — during which he encouraged Russia to try and find Clinton’s missing State Department emails. Trump had often mocked Clinton for going months without holding a press conference, and now he has done the same thing. Instead, Trump has taken to Twitter to try to influence the news agenda for the day and get his message directly out to the public, all while blasting the media. On Wednesday, he’s sure to face questions about his businesses and conflicts of interests, his recent comments about Russia, his criticism of U. S intelligence, his Cabinet picks and more. Trump’s pick for defense secretary, James ”Mad Dog” Mattis, will be the main event near the end of the week at his confirmation hearing at 9:30 a. m. before the Senate Armed Services Committee. The retired Marine Corps general still has to get a waiver to even let him lead the department — current law bars former officers from serving as secretary until they’ve been retired seven years, and Mattis only left the military in 2013. Many Democrats like the waiver, saying it protects the ideal of a military under civilian control. It’s only been approved once before, for Gen. George Marshall. Mattis, however, is by both parties, and his opposition to torture is seen as a mainstream influence on Trump. Ultimately, he’s likely to get the waiver and to be confirmed. Ben Carson, Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development, will also have his confirmation hearing at 10 a. m. before the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. While the famed retired neurosurgeon is likable, the big complaint over Carson is that he has essentially no experience in issues with the department he’s being tapped to lead. A top aide to Carson, who also ran for the GOP presidential nomination before withdrawing and endorsing Trump, had even said Carson wasn’t interested in a Cabinet position because he didn’t think he was qualified to lead a federal department. Billionaire investor and turnaround specialist Wilbur Ross will have his confirmation hearing before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation at 10 a. m. as well. Like Trump, he has taken positions against free trade and wants to renegotiate current deals.

Darlene Hawes lost her health insurance about a year after her husband died in 2012. Hawes, 55, is from Charlotte, N. C. She ended up going without insurance for a few years, but in 2015 she bought coverage on HealthCare. gov, the Affordable Care Act marketplace, with the help of a big subsidy. ”I was born with heart trouble and I also had, in 2003, surgery,” she says. ”I had surgery. I have a lot of medical conditions, so I needed insurance badly.” After the results of the 2016 election came in, she was scared she’d lose her insurance immediately. For years, Republicans have vowed to scrap the health care law. The new Congress is already working on a plan to undo the Affordable Care Act. But they have not settled on how to replace the health care structure that Obamacare set up. Hawes is one of about 550, 000 North Carolinians who relies on the Obamacare marketplace for health insurance. She was relieved after she talked with an enrollment specialist last month who told her she can renew her policy for 2017. ”And I’m like, ’Oh my Lord, did she just say that?’ ” Hawes asks with a laugh. ”It’s just like a whole load of burdens just fell off of my back because all the years I haven’t been covered since my husband passed away — I don’t want to be sad again. I was very sad.” Most health care researchers and policy analysts agree not much is likely to change in 2017. ”Even the Republican Congress in one of their most recent bills to repeal it, they put in a transition period, so that the premium subsidies and the other provisions of the law that are fundamental wouldn’t be repealed for a couple of years,” says Sabrina Corlette, a research professor at Georgetown University’s. Some Republican leaders say repeal should happen immediately with a transition period to come up with a replacement. Still, the CEO of HealthCare. gov, Kevin Counihan, says he can’t guarantee coverage will remain. ”It’s not my place to promise anything about a new administration,” he says. ”But what I can tell you is not only are we moving forward, but our enrollment is higher than expected.” At the end of 2016, enrollment for 2017 plans spiked and as of the end of December, North Carolina has the enrollment for 2017 plans among states using HealthCare. gov. Julieanne Taylor with Legal Services of Southern Piedmont is helping people sign up. She says about a third of them have asked about the election. ”But generally when we’re calling, people are really excited to have their appointment and come in and look at the plans for 2017,” she says. ”I think they’re mostly interested in how much they’re going to be paying.” In some ways, North Carolina is in tough shape. Premiums are going up and insurance companies have dropped out, leaving Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina as the only insurer in 95 percent of the state. Blue Cross actuary Brian Tajlili says it’s simply an expensive market that has older, sicker people who cost more to cover. ”There is continuing demand for services and continuing high utilization within this block of business,” he says. What he calls ”this block of business” means the customers who buy insurance on the exchange. It’s a small slice of the overall health insurance market, because most people are covered through work or Medicare. The overwhelming majority of consumers who buy coverage on the exchange get federal subsidies that greatly reduce what they pay. Still, it’s been a turbulent market for consumers and insurers. Over the past two years, Blue Cross has lost $400 million in North Carolina on that part of its business. Amid the uncertainty, Tajlili says Blue Cross is committed to offering plans in 2017. ”2017 will be another pivotal year for us as we look at the individual market,” he says. One of Blue Cross’ new customers will be Sara Kelly Jones, 46, who works at Letty’s restaurant in Charlotte, N. C. She recognizes Obamacare isn’t perfect. But before the law, health insurance was a financial vise that kept tightening on her. ”I could not afford it at all,” she says. ”Every year it was going up $100 to $120, $150 a month. It got to the point where it was going to be at least $200 more a month than my mortgage.” But under Obamacare, Jones qualifies for a subsidy. Her premium will go up with Blue Cross, but she says she can afford it with that help. Jones says the political debate over the law ignores people like her. ”I’m terrified,” she says. She’s worried about the Republican Congress’ pledge to scrap and replace Obamacare without presenting a detailed proposal. ”If there had been any plan outlined that wasn’t just some vague, ’We’re going to replace it with something awesome,’ ” she says she’d rest easier. ”They have no plan! What on Earth are you going to do with all these people, myself included, that are counting on this?” This story is part of a reporting partnership with NPR, WFAE and Kaiser Health News. You can follow Michael Tomsic on Twitter: @michaeltomsic.

Two law enforcement officers have been killed during a massive manhunt for a murder suspect in Orlando, Fla. Master Sgt. Debra Clayton radioed from a shortly after 7 a. m. Monday, saying she was ”attempting to contact a murder suspect,” according to a statement from the City of Orlando. Other officers radioed two minutes later, reporting that an officer had been shot. The veteran of the department died after she was transported to a hospital. Police are seeking Markeith Loyd in the murder of a pregnant woman named Sade Dixon last month. Loyd fled from the and pulled into a nearby apartment building, where police say he fired shots at a sheriff’s deputy but did not harm him. Loyd then allegedly stole a car and escaped. This put a manhunt into motion for the suspect, described as ”armed and extremely dangerous.” During the search, authorities say, a sheriff’s deputy riding a motorcycle was hit by a car and later died. The deputy has been identified as Deputy First Class Norman Lewis, an of the force. ”This is probably one of the toughest days for me in my career,” Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings told reporters. ”Because not only did we lose an Orlando police officer today, we lost an Orange County deputy sheriff as well who was traveling on his motorcycle as a result of these broad efforts that we have underway.” Law enforcement is ”highly motivated to bring this suspect to justice,” the sheriff said. There is a reward of up to $60, 000 for information about the Loyd. The Orlando Police Department says Clayton was married with a son. ”She was extremely committed to our youth and really, the community,” Orlando Police Chief John Mina told reporters. ”And she did so many different projects in the community. She organized several marches against violence by herself — that’s how committed she is.” The Orange County Sheriff’s Office tweeted that Lewis was a ”gentle giant” with a ”million dollar smile.” In a statement, Attorney General Loretta Lynch said, ”These tragic deaths make clear the great risks that our brave men and women in uniform face each and every day, and the deep and abiding gratitude that our nation owes them for their service.”

The details of the story are unambiguously disturbing. Last week, a white man from suburban Chicago was found walking in the cold, disoriented and bloodied. Four people, all black, had held him against his will for four hours, tied him up, and assaulted him while livestreaming part of it on Facebook. The young woman who recorded the video laughed and egged her friends on. One of the men took the knife that he waved in the victim’s face and cut off the man’s sleeves. One of his tormentors is seen on the video slapping him, and at one point, someone sliced at his hair and scalp with a knife, cutting him. His captors yelled ”F*** Donald Trump, nigga! F**** white people, boy!” According to the police, his attackers demanded a petty ransom ($300) from his mother. He finally escaped when several of his captors left to argue with a neighbor, and he was found by the police walking with one of the people in the video. Chicago’s superintendent of police described the victim as having ”mental health challenges.” His four tormentors, including one who was reportedly a school friend, now face kidnapping charges as well as condemnation from all corners. (President Obama told reporters that the incident in his adopted hometown was ”despicable. ”) But there was already a debate over how to characterize the kidnapping. Was it a hate crime? That’s not simply a legal question. In an earlier press conference, a police official demurred when asked whether this was a hate crime. He said the police had to determine whether the pronouncements in the video were ”sincere or just stupid ranting and raving.” That prompted angry backlash in some white circles, from those who felt that the case was being treated differently because the victim was white. ”If this had been done to an by four whites, every liberal in the country would be outraged, and there’d be no question that it’s a hate crime,” Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House, said on Fox News. The police did later file hate crime charges against the four suspects. ”There was never a question whether or not this incident qualified as being investigated as a hate crime,” police superintendent Eddie Johnson said. Under state law, both the victim’s race and his mental health — the police said he suffers from schizophrenia — were protected classes that made hate crime charges possible. ”It’s half a dozen of one, six of the other,” police Commander Kevin Duffin said. Whatever the reasons for the kidnapping, his captors cursed his whiteness. The legal specifics of the charges probably matter less than the message they send: Weren’t these kidnappers clearly racist? Didn’t they deserve the vilification that came with that description? In conversations about this case with friends and colleagues of color, I noticed that folks were straining mightily to avoid using the word racism, as if saying it might be an admission of something. I was squirming right along with them, and it took me awhile to figure out why. In some ways, this case being called a ”hate crime,” while a legal designation, might give people a rhetorical reprieve, as it allows us to talk about bias and violence without having to fight over the definition of racism. It reminded me of something Phillip Atiba Goff, who runs the Center for Policing Equity at John Jay College, told me a few weeks ago. ”One of the most important achievements of the Civil Rights Movement was to take the authority over moral character away from white men,” Goff told me. ”There’s no credential that [restores it] — having a black friend or relative is not sufficient.” Before then, white people were the only ones who could define what was righteous and correct — often at the expense of the rights and safety of black Americans. Goff said that the casting of racism as an evil worthy of condemnation made all the ways white people expressed their bigotry taboo. Those taboos are, in part, what people are referring to when they rail against political correctness. And while those new constraints certainly didn’t end racism, they suppressed behaviors that created space for people of color to live more fully in America. And that, to me, seems a big part of what we’re really discussing in stories like the one in Chicago, and what makes these conversations (and writing this) so discomfiting. In calling the kidnapping and assault racism, we’re staking claim to moral language — and uniquely powerful moral language — to which white people can’t easily lay claim, even in cases like the one in Chicago, which seems to qualify for the most vehement reproach available. And it’s why, I suspect, the folks of color I talked to seemed so visibly uncomfortable. Calling what happened in Chicago racism seems to cede at least some of that moral authority to the many people who we suspect are engaging in conversations about race and racism in bad faith people who want to push the conversation in the direction of a false, ahistorical equanimity. Is racism as expressed by centuries of white torture and discrimination the same as the racism of the four black people in Chicago? It’s a distasteful comparison. It’s as if you’re downplaying the misery of the young man in the video by reducing this conversation to semantics. But consider what’s already happening with folks from the Internet, where people are holding up the Chicago case as the handiwork of black activist groups like Black Lives Matter (despite the complete lack of evidence that anyone involved in the kidnapping has ties to the organization). It seems that the people who have embraced this ridiculous claim — the hashtag #BLMkidnapping was used hundreds of thousands of times on Twitter — want to prove some kind of symmetry in American racism. One way to argue that the evil of racism is not uniquely wedded to whiteness is to argue that it is a moral failing that lives equally in blackness. It’s a notion that seems to be gaining traction even outside the fever swamps. Last year, two professors wrote in the Washington Post about their research showing that white Americans think bias has been on the rise in recent decades, and that it now constitutes a bigger problem in the country than bias. ”This perception is fascinating, as it stands in stark contrast to data on almost any outcome that has been assessed,” professors Samuel Sommers and Michael Norton wrote. ”From life expectancy to school discipline to mortgage rejection to police use of force, outcomes for white Americans tend to be — in the aggregate — better than outcomes for black Americans, often substantially so. (While a disturbing uptick in the mortality rate among whites has received a great deal of recent media attention, it is worth noting that even after this increase, the rate remains considerably lower than that of blacks. )” It’s against the further legitimizing of this idea — that there are no distinctions to be made when we talk about racism — that I suspect folks are uncomfortably holding the rhetorical line, especially in this current political moment, rife with calls to validate white grievance. And it’s that sense of grievance that this video corroborates, regardless of whether it should regardless of how poorly it’s contextualized. Not that epistemology matters terribly much to the victim or his family. The video is chilling. It’s easy to go to an even darker place by imagining what might have happened to the victim had he not been able to escape. The captors wonder aloud about killing him. They are performing. They are talking back to their audience. One of the young women complains that there aren’t enough people watching. They livestream their torment of this man the way people might Snapchat themselves turning up at a club. It’s the kind of story that’s so random and unsettling that the desire for clear, moral parameters feels even more pressing. That’s why it’s worth wrestling over the language of racism, even if no words can make the event any more comprehensible, or, for the victim and his family, any less calamitous.

In Venezuela, food has become so scarce it’s now being sold on the black market. One person tells the Associated Press, ”it’s a better business than drugs.” And the food traffickers are the very people sworn to protect Venezuela: the nation’s military. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro gave the military complete control of the food supply last summer, after people began protesting in the streets over food rationing. Shortages had become so bad that people were even ransacking grocers — though many were largely empty. These days, hunger remains widespread. But if you venture into the black markets, you’ll find foods that aren’t available in the supermarkets, ”where people would prefer to shop because it’s a lot cheaper,” says Joshua Goodman, the AP’s news director for the Andes. He was part of the AP team that investigated the food trafficking situation. ”These goods are only getting into the country because the military is importing them,” Goodman tells NPR’s Audie Cornish. ”And when you see the food sold at these makeshift markets, there’s usually military people standing by with weapons, watching over it all, if not actually selling the food directly.” And the military isn’t just running these black markets — it’s getting rich off them, Goodman says. Goodman spoke with Cornish about the findings of the AP investigation. An edited transcript of their conversation follows. How does this affect the price of food? Right now there are some things that are incredibly cheap in Venezuela but in incredibly scarce supply. If you’re one of the lucky people to get the food at the price, you are doing quite well. But a lot of people can’t afford to spend an entire day in line at a state supermarket, only to find the shelves have already been emptied by the time they get through the door. So a lot of people do have to go to the black market to find food. It’s a very unfortunate situation. Something like 80 percent of the country right now says they have lost weight because of what they sort of joke is the President Maduro diet — the forced austerity upon the country. You found lots of examples of how, essentially, the military is getting rich off controlling the food supply — even when people are trying to bring food into the country. We documented a case of a South American businessman. He admitted to us that he had paid millions of dollars in bribes over the years to bring food into the country. And he really didn’t care who he was paying, because the prices [at which] he was able to sell to the government were so sky high — something like more than double the international price for a shipment of corn, for example. And that made it very easy for him to pay kickbacks to government officials. And of course, that worked its way all down the food chain. This businessman specifically pointed to the food minister right now, who’s a military general, or people close to him having received the money that he was paying. Now what’s happened to people trying to bring evidence of this corruption to the president? Venezuela right now is a very opaque place. We don’t have a lot of info about the internal deliberations of the government. There are some people in the military who clearly are upset with this situation. However, there are some serious entrenched interests within the military who are politically important to President Maduro. He is a man who is a hanging by a thread. . .. He does not have the popularity of his predecessor and mentor, Hugo Chavez. And the military for him has become an invaluable crutch in the face of mass street protests and sinking popularity and hyperinflation, almost. So this is a way to keep [the military] paid, frankly. Is that what’s going on? It’s a way to keep them fed, you could even argue. Because a lot of this food, I’m sure, is going to the families of the military, to feed their own families and friends. And yeah, it puts money in their pocket at a time when there really isn’t much money in the country. What has shocked you most about this situation? I think what has shocked me the most is the degree to which the military has really sullied its own reputation. They were seen by many as a disciplined force that could actually provide answers to the serious problems Venezuela is facing. Instead they seem to be much more much more corrupt than I had imagined when we started this project. You’ve talked to a lot of officials in your story. For average Venezuelans — what are people saying about this? They’re outraged. They know fully well that while they’re not eating, people are getting rich. This is an issue that touches the stomachs, literally, of every Venezuelan. A lot of Venezuelans who would be sympathetic to the government are very upset over this issue. And when they find out people are actually profiting from it — it’s a potentially explosive situation for the government.

A powerful winter storm in California has brought down an ancient tree, carved into a living tunnel more than a century ago. The ”Pioneer Cabin Tree,” a sequoia in Calaveras Big Trees State Park, saw horses and cars pass through it over the years. More recently, only hikers were allowed to walk through the massive tree. Over the weekend, a powerful winter storm slammed into California and Nevada, prompting flooding and mudslides in some regions. The Associated Press reports it might be the biggest storm to hit the region in more than a decade. On Sunday, a volunteer at the state park reported that Pioneer Cabin had not survived. ”The storm was just too much for it,” the Calaveras Big Tree Association wrote on Facebook. It’s unclear exactly how old the tree was, but The Los Angeles Times reports that the trees in the state park are estimated to be more than 1, 000 years old. Sequoias can live for more than 3, 000 years. The iconic tree was one of just a few sequoias in California. The most famous was the Wawona Tree, in Yosemite National Park it fell during a winter storm in 1969 at an estimated age of 2, 100 years. The other remaining sequoia tunnels are dead or consist of logs on their side, the Forest Service says. However, there are still three coastal redwoods (taller and more slender than sequoias) with tunnels cut through them. They’re all operated by private companies, the Forest Service says, and still allow cars to drive through — one appeared in a recent Geico ad. SFGate. com spoke to Jim Allday, the volunteer who reported Pioneer Cabin’s demise. He told the website that the tree ”shattered” when it hit the ground on Sunday afternoon, and that people had walked through it as recently as that morning. Local flooding might have been the reason the tree fell, SFGate reports: ” ’When I went out there [Sunday afternoon] the trail was literally a river, the trail is washed out,’ Allday said. ’I could see the tree on the ground, it looked like it was laying in a pond or lake with a river running through it.’ ” ”The tree had been among the most popular features of the state park since the late 1800s. The tunnel had graffiti dating to the 1800s, when visitors were encouraged to etch their names into the bark. ”Joan Allday, wife of Jim Allday and also a volunteer at the park, said the tree had been weakening and leaning severely to one side for several years. ” ’It was barely alive, there was one branch alive at the top,’ she said. ’But it was very brittle and starting to lift.’ ” Tunnel trees were created in the 19th century to promote parks and inspire tourism. But cutting a tunnel through a living sequoia, of course, damages the tree. ”Tunnel trees had their time and place in the early history of our national parks,” the National Park Service has written. ”But today sequoias which are standing healthy and whole are worth far more.”

From head to toe, a first lady’s look is heavily scrutinized, and Melania Trump will be no exception. But Trump is no stranger to the spotlight: In 2005, she was on the cover of Vogue in her Dior wedding dress, and she’s modeled for Harper’s Bazaar and posed nude for GQ. She also once sold her own line of costume jewelry and watches on QVC. With the whole world watching, the first lady can make a fashion statement like no one else. She can also make a difference during the campaign. In October 2008, just days before the election, Michelle Obama appeared on The Tonight Show wearing a mustard yellow sweater and printed silk shirt. When Jay Leno asked her what she was wearing, she told him her outfit was from J. Crew. The audience roared with excitement: ”We ladies, we know J. Crew,” Obama said knowingly. ”You can get some good stuff online.” Chicago boutique owner Ikram Goldman worked as Obama’s fashion consultant at the time. She says, ”The idea of her being inclusive was very important, and I think it was important to other people who were looking at her to feel like they can have access to that as well.” Obama also championed young American designers like Jason Wu, whose career took off after she wore his white chiffon gown to President Obama’s 2009 inaugural balls. Goldman helped select the gown but kept it a secret until that night. She says when Wu saw it on TV, he called her. ”He was crying. He was shocked. He was happy. He couldn’t believe it,” Goldman remembers. Obama was embraced by the fashion industry, but Melania Trump comes from it. A former model, Trump seems to have a preference for European designers. She’s often seen wearing such luxury brands such as Gucci and Dolce Gabbana, most of which she reportedly bought off the rack. ”Expensive” and ”body conscious” are among the first words Robin Givhan uses when asked to describe Trump’s style. Givhan, a Pulitzer fashion critic for The Washington Post, says, ”It speaks to a bank account it speaks to a particular kind of social life and it speaks to a particular tribe of women who exist in New York, in particular. . .. They lead very comfortable lives. . .. They have both the time and the energy to attend to themselves.” Givhan says Trump’s look has ”a polish to it, a glamour to it, but not in a particularly personal or individual way.” Like Michelle Obama before her, Melania Trump’s choices are already making an impact. For her speech at the Republican National Convention this summer, Trump wore an ivory, cotton and silk dress with sleeves that billowed at the elbows. The $2, 195 dress (by designer Roksanda Ilincic) reportedly sold out in the days following Trump’s speech. Meanwhile, retailers in Washington, D. C. are getting ready for a very different style of first lady. The ladies consignment shop Inga’s Once Is Not Enough is something of an institution in the nation’s capital, especially for women who need to dress for formal events on a federal government salary. Sorting through the racks, owner Inga Guen says she would love to dress Melania Trump. She pulls out an olive green Oscar de la Renta dress, with ivory beading, and a black cashmere jacket with a fur collar by Valentino. ”She would look très chic — très, très, très chic — in this,” Guen says. Guen describes Trump’s style as daring and slightly eccentric with a European sensibility. She says she’s already had three new clients come into her shop who’ve been hired by the new administration. ”I have no idea how they heard about me, but I dressed them and they were so, so very happy to have met Melania Trump,” she says. Asked whether their style was anything like Trump’s, Guen replies, ”Au contraire, it was not similar to her at all. But I said, ’We have to put a little bit of oomph in your wardrobe right now, we have to be a little bit glamourous.’ ” Guen hopes to do business with Trump, but the fashion industry is splitting at the seams over whether to work with her. Some designers have said absolutely not others say it would be an honor to dress any first lady.

A police officer in Fort Worth, Texas, has been suspended for 10 days after an inquiry into his forceful arrest of a woman and her two daughters in December. The arrest was recorded and streamed live on Facebook, as The reported at the time: ”The events unfolded in southwest Fort Worth, where Jacqueline Craig called police to say a man had grabbed and choked her son after accusing him of littering. But after an officer responded to the call, the two engaged in a heated argument as bystanders, including Craig’s relatives, looked on. ”In the nearly video that’s now been viewed some 2. 5 million times on Facebook, the responding officer is seen questioning Craig, as she says the man should have spoken to her about her son. The video was posted by Porsha Craver, Craig’s niece who used a smartphone to film a screen showing the original footage — and who offers her own comments about the police encounter.” Immediately after the incident, the officer in the video was ”placed on restricted duty status by the Chief of Police” pending the outcome of an Internal Affairs investigation, the Fort Worth Police Department said. The Fort Worth reported that the officer, William Martin was ”contrite” and ”sorry” about the incident, according to police Chief Joel Fitzgerald, who called the suspension ”significant punishment” during a news conference Monday. The newspaper continued: ”Both Mayor Betsy Price and Fitzgerald said the situation was an isolated incident. He said various videos were reviewed during the investigation. ’We left no stone unturned,’ Fitzgerald said. ”The chief said the decision to suspended Martin for 10 days was his, and some members of the department’s command staff disagreed, [saying] he should have been more lenient. ” ’But the buck stops here,’ Fitzgerald said. He said Martin showed neglect of duty and discourtesy. He said the officer will undergo training before he returns to duty.” Craig told the Dallas Morning News she wanted the charges against her dropped. The newspaper reported that the charges include interference with public duty, resisting arrest, disorderly conduct and failing to provide identification. The says the charges have been forwarded to the district attorney, who will decide whether to prosecute.

projects like the musical film La La Land and FX’s TV comedy Atlanta won big at Sunday’s Golden Globe awards. But the most powerful moment of the night belonged to Meryl Streep, who used her acceptance speech for the honorary Cecil B. deMille Award of the 2017 Golden Globes, to deliver a harsh rebuke of Donald Trump and to advocate for press freedom. Recalling the moment Trump mocked a disabled reporter from The New York Times during a campaign rally, Streep labeled it one performance in the past year that ”stunned” her. There was nothing good about it, but it was effective and it did its job. It made its intended audience laugh, and show their teeth. It was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter. Someone he outranked in privilege, power and the capacity to fight back. It kind of broke my heart when I saw it, and I still can’t get it of out my head, because it wasn’t in a movie. It was real life. And this instinct to humiliate, when it’s modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody’s life, because it kinda gives permission for other people to do the same thing. In what The New York Times described as a brief telephone interview early Monday morning, Trump said he had not watched Streep’s remarks. But Trump said he was not surprised he had been criticized by ”liberal movie people,” and dismissed Streep as a Hillary Clinton supporter. Trump also denied, as he frequently has, that he intended to mock Times reporter Serge Kovaleski for his disability, the incident to which Streep was apparently referring. Just a few hours later, Trump reiterated his remarks to the Times in a trio of tweets. Streep also urged the audience to support the Committee to Protect Journalists to preserve an independent press, and specifically outlined the wide and varied birthplaces of many Golden Globe nominees and winners. ”Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners,” she said. ”And if we kick ’em all out you’ll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts.” Streep wasn’t the only one to take on the less than two weeks before his inauguration. Host Jimmy Fallon joked at the show’s start that the Golden Globes were ”one of the few places left where America still honors the popular vote.” While accepting the award for best supporting actor in a limited TV series, The Night Manager Hugh Laurie joked it would be the last Golden Globes ceremony, because the awards are chosen by an association with the words ”Hollywood,” ”foreign” and ”press” in the title — groups Trump has criticized in the past. These barbs capped an evening in which the Hollywood Foreign Press Association championed the musical film La La Land, handing it a record seven awards, including best director for Damien Chazelle, best actor in a musical or comedy for Ryan Gosling and best actress in a musical or comedy for Emma Stone.

Sunday night’s Golden Globes were, in the great tradition of the Golden Globes, full of unexpected winners and a certain fondness for Hollywood itself. In this case, that fondness manifested itself in part through a sweep of the film awards for La La Land, which — in case you haven’t yet heard — is about dreamers. Elsewhere, Meryl Streep talked Trump, Donald Glover cleaned up, Tracee Ellis Ross had her moment, and awards shows continued to be the gift that may not keep on giving, but certainly keeps on going. It’s just the beginning of awards season, but we’ll be with you till the end. Meanwhile, we’ll have a full episode of Pop Culture Happy Hour this Friday, covering Hidden Figures and the new One Day At A Time.

Tom Hiddleston is trending on Twitter, and not for a good reason. Last night at the Golden Globes, he won a best actor award for the AMC series The Night Manager. But his acceptance speech didn’t go over as well as his performance. Hiddleston recounted a visit he made to see medics from Doctors Without Borders in South Sudan. He was serving as a humanitarian spokesman for the United Nations Children’s Fund, and some of the medics ”wanted to say hello” because ”during the shelling the previous month they had The Night Manager.” Hiddleston continued: ”The idea that I could . .. provide some relief and entertainment for people who work for UNICEF and Médecins Sans Frontières and the World Food Programme who are fixing the world in the places where it was broken made me immensely proud.” The internet showed no mercy. Sample tweets: Hiddleston is part of a long list of stars who’ve served as the celebrity face of a global goodwill organization. Today, the U. N. roster of celebrity advocates ranges from singer Selena Gomez to Indian cricket superstar Sachin Tendulkar. This generation’s most famous U. N. goodwill ambassador, Angelina Jolie, has dedicated a significant portion of her time to the UNHCR’s work with refugees. Other nonprofits have celebrity advocates as well. So let’s step back from the Hiddleston flap and take a look at this phenomenon. What makes an ideal celebrity spokesperson? Are there some who are better than others? And how do NGOs — nongovernmental organizations — go about picking them? The U. N. has a long history of integrating celebrities in its campaigns, dating back to stage and screen star Danny Kaye, who linked up with the UNICEF agency in 1954. Many who work in the international aid community point to the 1980s as the ”tipping point” when celebrities and NGOs really forged bonds. That’s the view of Sam Worthington, chief executive officer of InterAction, an alliance of NGOs (InterAction has worked with the U. N. in the past). Consider the 1985 Live Aid concert, which produced the song ”We Are the World” to aid victims of the Ethiopian famine. A who’s who of the music industry sang a song that sold 20 million copies, with proceeds going to famine victims. Picking a celebrity to front a cause isn’t just a matter of approaching a hot star. First and foremost, a celebrity must be ”likable” with a stellar character, says Nanette Braun, chief of communications at U. N. Women. And of course there can be a payoff for the celebrity. In a media environment where a celebrity’s every move is photographed and analyzed, charitable work can help shape someone’s image. Worthington emphasizes that passion is central to a successful partnership between NGO and celebrity. A track record helps to indicate this. Anne Hathaway, he says, named as a U. N. goodwill ambassador last year, is a good example of a person who has been outspoken for girls and women’s rights: Hathaway has held previous posts advocating against child marriage with the Nike Foundation and was the narrator of Girl Rising, a 2013 CNN documentary that followed seven girls around the world as they sought an education and better lives for themselves. But a previously held public stance can only go so far in indicating a celebrity’s commitment, Worthington stressed. ”The issue is finding a celebrity for whom the cause actually means something and an individual who is able to advance the cause,” he says. Rajesh Mirchandani, the vice president of communications at the Center for Global Development, agrees. But there is a down side, he notes: Celebrities can be distracting because of their celebrity. ”If they [celebrities] are too famous, or infamous, the media is going to be more interested in their personal doings than the project they are supposed to be fronting,” he said. An ”unlikely but powerful” example of a celebrity who has been able to walk the tightrope between offering an organization publicity and awareness while also acting as a strong role model is actress Angelina Jolie, says Mirchandani. Jolie began her work with the UNHCR as a goodwill ambassador in 2001 after adopting eldest son Maddox while filming Lara Croft: Tomb Raider in Cambodia and becoming interested in the local history of refugees. Jolie developed a focus on the needs of refugee women and emergency medical relief. In 2012, the U. N. offered her the rare distinction of ”special envoy,” recognizing her role in attracting attention to the refugee cause. But matches don’t always work out. PETA, the animal rights group, once arranged for model Naomi Campbell to pose nude to promote its stance: ”We’d rather go naked than wear fur.” A few years later, Campbell was promoting fur for Dennis Basso. Then there’s the clueless celebrity. In 2013 a Telegraph reporter accompanying Downton Abbey star Elizabeth McGovern on a goodwill trip to Sierra Leone with the group World Vision wrote this: ”I ask about her new role as charity ambassador. She says that she has never been to Africa, and does not know what to expect. As if to prove this point, when we refuel in Dakar, Senegal, she gets mixed up and says we have stopped in Darfur, a region in western Sudan, some 4, 000 miles away.” Other celebrities are praised for their involvement. U2 singer Bono is cited by industry analysts as a model celebrity in his efforts to bring attention to poverty and disease in Africa. The ONE Campaign has been lauded by groups like the U. S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations for helping pass the Electrify Africa Act of 2016, which would help bring electricity to 50 million Africans by 2020, and GAVI for helping to secure funding for vaccines. ”He really changed the way we think of celebrities and charities,” Worthington of InterAction remarks. Emma Watson, who sparkled in Hollywood with her turn as Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter franchise, has since marked herself as a vocal feminist with her #heforshe gender equality campaign after she was appointed a goodwill ambassador for U. N. Women in 2014. A video of her speech promoting the cause went viral and boosted not only Watson’s profile as an actress with a conscience but also the profile of U. N. Women. Indeed, celebrities have been the backbone of many fundraising and publicity efforts. The U. N. even has an office dedicated to brokering partnerships. But once the celebrity is chosen to represent their cause, it’s really up to him or her what to do with it. Commitments can vary, and there is no ruling authority that watches what a celebrity does. And there is always the danger of the Hiddleston backlash. ”In the best cases, the most enlightened celebrities understand that their fame and wealth is not the objective, but the platform from which to make a real difference in the world,” says Mirchandani, ruefully adding, ”If only they all did.” After Hiddleston’s remarks last night, it seemed that no one was talking about the work of Doctors Without Borders in South Sudan. They were just talking about . .. Tom Hiddleston.

Beijing is launching a new police force aimed at tackling its persistent smog problem. This comes after a month of particularly severe air quality that left the capital and dozens of other Chinese cities blanketed in thick, brown smog. The city’s acting mayor, Cai Qi, announced over the weekend that the new environmental police force will crack down on polluters such as ” barbeques, garbage incineration, biomass burning, [and] dust from roads,” according to the Xinhua news agency. He didn’t offer any more specifics about the squad. Cai also announced other measures to tackle the persistent problem, including closing the city’s only plant. In 2017, ”coal consumption will be cut by 30 percent to less than 7 million tonnes” and ”another 300, 000 old vehicles will be phased out,” the news agency reports. Cai said the city also plans to shutter 500 factories and upgrade 2, 560 others, according to the news agency. ”I totally understand the public’s concerns and complaints over air pollution,” Cai said, admitting that he checks the air quality index ”first thing in the morning.” China’s environmental problems are exacerbated by difficulties enforcing regulations. ”China’s ministry of the environment said during last week’s hazardous smog, inspection teams found factories resuming production, despite being given orders,” NPR’s Rob Schmitz reports from Beijing. Rob explains the main drivers of China’s air pollution: ”China’s air pollution is mainly caused by power plants and inefficient vehicles. While the government tries to answer public calls to address the issue, it’s also addressing the challenge of an economic slowdown and maintaining growth.” The environment minister, Chen Jining, said in a statement that he personally ”felt guilty” and ”wanted to reproach himself” about the smog. He added that it made people feel anxious. Last week, China issued its red alert for fog in some northern and eastern regions, according to a ministry statement. As The reported, some 72 cities were under pollution alerts. The pollution has deadly consequences — as we reported, the World Health Organization said 1, 032, 833 deaths in China in 2012 were attributable to air quality. That’s the highest in the world.

In Georgia, lawmakers are set to pass a more than $20 billion budget this year and grapple with a failing hospital system. But Georgia, like many other states, faces a serious human resource problem in its Legislature: Salaries are often low and many politicians can’t afford to be lawmakers. Former Georgia state Rep. LaDawn Jones loved serving in the General Assembly even as she juggled raising two kids and running a law practice. But she left after one term because the job didn’t pay enough. ”I absolutely believe that we need to increase the wage for legislators to keep up with the times,” said Jones. Lawmakers in Georgia make $17, 342 a year, plus a per diem for lodging and meals when the Legislature is in session and reimbursement for mileage. Serving in the Georgia Legislature is considered a job, but it took much more of Jones’ time than that and she had to hire extra help for her law firm. ”If I really sat down and did the math I’m certain that the amount that I paid out was equal or more than what I received,” she said. Most state lawmakers don’t make much, While a few big states have legislatures with higher pay (California pays lawmakers $100, 113 a year and Pennsylvania pays $85, 339) but in most states, legislators are paid like it’s a job. According to data compiled by the National Conference of State Legislatures, 30 states pay $30, 000 a year or less to legislators. New Mexico doesn’t pay lawmakers at all, while those in New Hampshire make just $200 per term. Median household income in the United States was $55, 775 in 2015, according to the Census Bureau. ”Not paying legislators is like a very pound foolish thing,” given the size of state budgets and complexity of issues that legislatures tackle every year, said Stanford University political scientist Neil Malhotra. That low level of pay also keeps many people from entering politics, said Malhotra. ”There’s very, very few working class people in legislatures. This might have something to do with why a lot of legislation does not seem very friendly towards working class people.” Even those with jobs can find it hard to take several months off a year to work in a state capitol. Mike Dudgeon, chief technical officer at the video game company Studios, is retiring from the Georgia General Assembly after six years as a state representative because he struggled to balance his professional and political commitments. ”Some people suggested that I sort of do the and keep my seat in the Legislature and just do the bare minimum, just go down and vote and kind of do that,” said Dudgeon. ”But I just can’t do that, it’s not my personality. If I’m going to do anything I’m going to do it well.” No raise in sight, In Georgia, there’s no sign lawmakers will get a raise anytime soon. ”I’m not in favor of increasing legislative pay,” said David Shafer, a leader in the Georgia Senate. ”I don’t know that anyone serves in the General Assembly because of the pay, and I don’t know that we would attract a better legislator if the pay were higher.” That’s a perspective shared by lawmakers around the country, said Malhotra, because it doesn’t look good for politicians to vote to give themselves raises. ”People don’t want to pay politicians more money because they don’t like politicians very much,” he said. Both retiring lawmakers Dudgeon and Jones worry a big raise could spawn more career politicians. They like the idea of ”citizen legislators” who take time off from their jobs to meet at the state capitol for a few months out of the year, if they can afford it. While compensation for state lawmakers is relatively low, some draw salaries in fields closely related to their work in the Legislature, such as public relations and law. Others make up for years of low pay once they retire by quickly jumping to consulting and lobbying firms where compensation is much higher. As the new legislative session opens in Georgia, Jones wishes she could be in the mix. But Jones felt she ”could not dare ask my family to continue to make such a big sacrifice.” Instead, Jones plans to focus her political passions closer to home on local issues that she can afford to work on.

Mothers should feel comfortable infants in public, Pope Francis said on Sunday, even if they are in one of the most sacred spaces in Catholicism. Speaking at an annual ceremony to commemorate the baptism of Jesus, the pope addressed the families of 28 infants who were to be baptized in the Sistine Chapel. Some of the babies began to wail as the ceremony wore on, according to Vatican Radio: ”As the sounds of crying grew louder, the Pope joked that the concert had begun. The babies are crying, he said, because they are in an unfamiliar place, or because they had to get up early, or sometimes simply because they hear another child crying. Jesus did just the same, Pope Francis said, adding that he liked to think of Our Lord’s first sermon as his crying in the stable. ”And if your children are crying because they are hungry, the Pope told the mothers present, then go ahead and feed them, just as Mary breastfed Jesus.” This is not the first time the leader of the Catholic Church has expressed support for women who are . As The Washington Post reported: ”During the same baptismal ceremony two years ago — in which he baptized 33 infants in the Sistine Chapel — he urged mothers to feel free to their children if they cried or were hungry. The written text of his homily during that ceremony included the phrase ’give them milk,’ but he changed it to use the Italian term ’allattateli, which means ’ them.’ ” ”You mothers give your children milk and even now, if they cry because they are hungry, them, don’t worry,” the pope said. Although the pope has repeatedly justified his position in the most traditional terms possible — harking back to the infancy of Christ himself, the stance on does challenge norms in some churches. In 2014, the National Catholic Reporter published an article describing a mother who said she was told during church was ”inappropriate.” In a 2012 Christianity Today article titled ” in the Back Pew,” writer Rachel Marie Stone recalled, ”On a family trip to St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City, as I started to my son in the sanctuary, I was whisked away by a security guard to the bathroom. ”Countless other Christian women, trying to feed their children without having to miss a sermon, have faced the disapproval of others who think breasts have no place in the sanctuary,” she continued.

In South Korea, preparing for the worst has become a routine part of life. Twice a year, the country runs air raid drills in case of an attack by North Korea. Citywide sirens go off at 3 p. m. in the capital, Seoul. They’re supposed to bring the bustling city to a temporary halt. ”It’s a simulation of what will happen at a time of war,” says Jeong a spokesman for Seoul’s Yongsan district. South Korea is still stuck in a technical state of war with North Korea, and has been since the North invaded in 1950. With Pyongyang’s ever more frequent missile launches and nuclear tests, Seoul — with a population of 10 million near the border — says it’s got to be ready. ”These drills are something every South Korean knows,” Jeong says. Drivers are expected to slow down and pull over — and most of them do. Pedestrians are expected to take cover. But it’s not clear that everyone outside knows they’re supposed to pretend an air attack is coming. On the day we witnessed a drill in late August 2016, there was a look of confusion among some folks on the streets when the sirens went off. Inside, government workers do know the drill. They have to, since they are the only ones required to take part in these each time. At the Yongsan district office, the lights go out at the where people pay their taxes. Bureaucrats file downstairs to the lowest level of the underground parking garage. ”I think it will be over soon. Like about 10 minutes, 15 minutes,” says Will Park, who is interning at the district office. He grew up in the U. S. so this is his first air raid drill ever. We’re huddled with his in the dark. ”I’m just following the directions . .. just moving with the flow,” Park says. And just as quickly as it started, the drill is over. The 300 or so employees of this district office take the stairs or the elevators and get back to work. So is this kind of drill really necessary? ”If we keep doing these drills, if war does happen, people will be able to deal with it without being too shocked,” says Jeong, the district office spokesman. The North Korean border is just a drive from Seoul. Kim Jong Un ordered more than 20 missile tests last year alone. And since he has been in power, he has presided over three nuclear tests — two of them in 2016. ”In the event war breaks out, we can minimize the damage to human lives through repetitive practice,” says Jeong. That’s what preparedness is about: repetitive practice for a situation no one wants to see. Haeryun Kang contributed to this story.

David Bowie had long wanted to make a record with a jazz band, and on Jan. 8 of last year, he realized his dream with the release of Blackstar. Two days later, he was gone. Donny McCaslin’s band helped him make that record, and now, a year later, we pay tribute to Bowie and Blackstar by bringing McCaslin’s band to the Tiny Desk. It’s been exciting to see jazz find its way into the broader music world in recent years think Kendrick Lamar and in general. Musicians such as McCaslin often play in their own small circuit, but have much to offer popular music. As a bandleader and sax player, he’s put out a dozen albums, the most recent of which is Beyond Now, with musicians Tim Lefebvre on bass, drummer Mark Guiliana and keyboardist Jason Lindner. Beyond Now was recorded after Blackstar, features a few Bowie covers and stretches the band’s own usual boundaries. For this Tiny Desk concert, you can hear an extraordinary group playing extraordinary music — including an instrumental version of ”Lazarus,” from Blackstar. Just as Bowie brought these musicians into his world, I hope this set takes you down McCaslin’s jazz path. Beyond Now is available now. (iTunes) (Amazon) Donny McCaslin (saxophone) Jason Lindner (keys) Tim Lefebvre (bass) Mark Guiliana (drums). Producers: Bob Boilen, Niki Walker Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin Videographers: Niki Walker, Nicole Boliaux Production Assistant: Anna Marketti Photo: Raquel . For more Tiny Desk concerts, subscribe to our podcast.

Chances are your doctor has stopped taking notes with pen and paper and moved to computer records. That is supposed to help coordinate your care. Increasingly, researchers are also exploring these computerized records for medical studies and gleaning facts that help individual patients get better care. Computerized medical records are hardly new. Pioneers at one of the nation’s first HMOs, Kaiser Permanente, were using electronic medical records as far back as the 1970s and saw them as a big part of the future of medicine. ”The part of it that they didn’t envision that we’re envisioning now, is how proactive a role patients would be taking,” says Dr. Tracy Lieu, who heads Kaiser’s research division in Oakland, Calif. Medical records don’t simply store facts about an individual’s health. There’s a big potential for a database of medical records to be mined to help shape an individual’s treatment. ”Patients are always saying, don’t just give me the averages, tell me what happened to others who look like me and made the same treatment decisions I did,” Lieu says. ”And tell me not only did they live or die, but tell me what their quality of life was about.” Kaiser hasn’t put this concept into action, but it’s working toward it. Lieu has a prototype of how it could work. She scoots up to a keyboard in her office and types in ”pancreatic cancer.” That search function pulls up data from Kaiser’s long history of treating this disease. She can narrow that search by cancer type, stage, patient’s age and treatment options, to look at trends and outcomes. The records also include information about patients’ feelings and emotional states based on a survey that patients routinely fill out. (Individuals are not identified in the database.) That provides a hint about how a person felt before, during and after cancer treatment. But it’s not as complete a picture as patients might want as they weigh their options about treatment choices. Unfortunately, getting that level of detail could be a challenge, because it requires much more data than doctors currently collect. ”If you’re a patient and someone says, ’Gee, we’d like you to fill out this survey on a routine basis,’ you’re going to say ’Why?’ ” she says. ”’What will this get me? How will this help my care?’ ” Yet that information could be incredibly useful to other patients contemplating treatment decisions. Another piece missing from the Kaiser records is genetic information about patients. Here, the Geisinger Health System in Pennsylvania is making strides. It has sunk a lot of money and effort into adding gene scans to electronic medical records. It already has scans for 50, 000 patients in its system. Dr. David Ledbetter, the chief scientific officer, says that number is growing fast, toward a goal of more than 125, 000 patients ” and beyond. ”Even though this is primarily a research project, we’re identifying genomic variants that are actually important to people’s health and health care today,” Ledbetter says. Geisinger patient Jody Christ volunteered to get the genetic screen during one of her routine medical visits. Her doctor had been concerned about her high cholesterol and told her to work on getting in shape. ”So I started to ride a bike and 10 minutes in, I would start to get a sensation down my left arm,” she says. That made the from Elysburg, Pa. uneasy, so she stopped exercising. But last February she got a call from the program that had run the genetic testing. They told her she had inherited a genetic trait called familial hypercholesterolemia, and that was why she had persistently high cholesterol levels. The disorder makes the body unable to remove cholesterol from the blood, making patients more vulnerable to narrowing of the arteries at an early age. That genetic diagnosis led to a series of clinical tests through the spring. Toward the end of April, Christ took a stress test, which suggested serious heart trouble. A few days later, her heart vessels were scanned in the cardiac catheterization lab, ”and by May 5th I was having triple bypass surgery.” She feels much better today and is grateful that she had volunteered for the genetic test that revealed this serious problem. ”I feel they saved my life,” Christ says. Genetic testing like this (known as exome sequencing) is not routine because the tests typically cost a few thousand dollars. But Ledbetter says the prices are falling fast, and this year could even be in the $300 range. ”So we think as the cost comes down it will be possible to sequence all the genes of individual patients, store that information in the electronic medical record, and it will guide and individualize and optimize patient care,” he says. Doctors don’t know how to interpret most of the genetic results. But there are a few genetic variations, like Christ’s cholesterol marker, that are clear indications of serious health problems. Ledbetter said variants like that have shown up in 3. 5 percent of the patients they studied recently. That means the test doesn’t provide actionable information for the vast majority of the people who get it. But ”that 3. 5 percent is going to grow,” Ledbetter says, as scientists learn to identify more genes that are associated with disease, and scientists identify more of those genes in their population. ”I don’t know what the final number will be, but it will be in the 5 to 10 percent range.” The hope, he says, is that it will help reveal the biology of more common forms of cancer and cardiovascular disease, and possibly more complex diseases like obesity and diabetes. Geisinger’s experiment, done in partnership with a company called Regeneron, which funds and performs the gene scans, is an important foray into the new world where genetic data merge with electronic medical records. ”The scientific community has been waiting to see what would happen here,” says Dr. Harlan Krumholz, a professor of medicine at Yale University who researches cardiology and health care. He’s excited at the prospect of being able to look at physical symptoms in medical records and then look for genetic variations that could be responsible, but he says that the system is so far not at all robust. ”The quality of data [collected in medical records] is not necessarily research quality,” Krumholz says. Think of something as basic as the language in these medical records. The word ”shock” in a medical record could mean different things to different people. ”So I think it would be unfortunate if people felt that all of a sudden we had this remarkable treasure trove. There’s a long way to go to move from where we are now to where we need to be,” he says. The federal government is planning to recruit a million volunteers to expand this approach to research in its Precision Medicine Initiative, which has been rebranded as the ”All of Us” research program. The Department of Veterans Affairs started a similar effort in 2012. Scientists there have gathered a huge amount of data, which they are now starting to explore. But medicine is not yet at home in the world of big data, Krumholz says. ”Medicine’s got to catch up, and medicine’s got to understand how best to take advantage of all the information that’s been generated every day,” he says. The early experiences, at Kaiser, Geisinger and elsewhere, are helping find the path forward.

French police have reportedly arrested more than a dozen people during raids linked to the robbery of reality TV star Kim Kardashian West in Paris last October. During the robbery, a group of thieves burst into the private residence where Kardashian West was staying, held her at gunpoint, then escaped on bicycles with jewelry worth about $10 million. There’s some confusion about exactly how many people police have arrested — some French media outlets say 16, while others say 17. DNA left at the scene proved crucial to the investigation, one police official told Agence . ”One of the DNA samples matched an individual known to police for robbery and criminal offences, who is considered a major thug,” the official told the news agency. He added that they were able to then ”build up a picture of the criminal network behind the robbery . .. adding that it stretched to Belgium.” Police arrested people during raids in Paris and in southern France, Agnes a spokeswoman for the Paris prosecutor’s office, told The New York Times. She added that ”the oldest of those arrested was 72 and that several of the others were in their 40s, 50s and 60s, which suggested that they were part of an ’experienced” group,’” according to the newspaper. The police targeted those suspected of carrying out the robbery, along with intermediaries and those thought to be responsible for selling the stolen items, Le Figaro reports. Immediately after the robbery, a spokeswoman for Kardashian West said she was ”badly shaken but physically unharmed,” as The noted at the time. Since then, she has kept a relatively low profile, but she tearfully recalled the ordeal in a promo video released Friday for her family’s reality TV show Keeping Up With The Kardashians. ”They’re going to shoot me in the back,” she recalled thinking as she was surrounded by her family members. ”There’s no way out. . .. It makes me so upset to think about it.”