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Major League Baseball and Match.com are trying to hit a bunch of singles.

Organized baseball and the online dating service have formed a partnership that will allow fans to find one another. It's appropriately called SINGLES.

As Match.com says, "Connecting over a shared passion like America's favorite pastime is the best way to break the ice, so ... start your search today!"

By the way: I'm a little surprised to see a dating website to refer to baseball as America's favorite pastime.

Noah Garden of Major League Baseball told the Associated Press, "The idea is put like people together with similar interest and passion. There's still always room for more butts in the seats."

That "similar interest and passion" doesn't have to be for the same baseball club. People can use the site to try to match up with someone who roots for another club, which raises — as romance always does — some intriguing questions.

Will Yankee and Red Sox fans reject each other because of their ancient rivalry? Or get beguiled by the naughty notion of running off with the kind of fan their parents warned them against? Imagine Romeo and Juliet or West Side Story recast as the story of a forbidden romance between a guy from the Bronx and a girl from Roxbury.

I have a mixed marriage myself. I root for the Cubs, and my wife is a Yankees fan. It wasn't until I fell in love with a Yankees fan I discovered that the baseball season doesn't end with the last out in Wrigley Field, but goes on all the way through October to the World Series. How would a Cubs fan know about the World Series?

Now that I'm thinking of it, I wonder whether the SINGLES site should set its algorithms to prevent Cubs fans from co-mingling. Too many Cubs couples siring and spawning could sap the strength of the nation. It's a matter of national security!

Major League Baseball believes that ballparks are fine places for a first date. A couple can watch a game that takes place at a stately pace and leaves plenty of time for conversation.

But I wonder: $6 hot dogs, $8 beers, $82 just for a single seat in aisle 137. Those are death-do-us-part prices, not first date prices. And what if that date turns out to be someone who shucks his shirt to paint his belly Milwaukee Brewers blue and wears a frizzy orange wig to jiggle in the stands and roar, "Let's go Brew Crew!"? Would that make you say, "I can't wait to bring you home to mother"?

But the major leagues and Match.com seem to trust in one of baseball's oldest bromides: hit enough singles, and you'll score.

Eight million people have signed up for subsidized private health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, President Obama said this month. Millions more obtained new coverage through the Medicaid program for the poor.

Full implementation of the health law has renewed discussions of winners and losers, makers and moochers.

Here's a corrective to common misconceptions about who pays for health care.

1) Before Obamacare we had a free-market health care system.

Government has been part of the business of medicine at least since the 1940s, when Washington began appropriating billions of dollars to build private and government hospitals. The drug industry and its customers owe much to federally funded research.

Of course Medicare for seniors and Medicaid for the poor, which both began in the 1960s, represent direct government transfers from some taxpayers to others. States have set rules for health insurance for decades.

If you're insured through an employer that files an income-tax return, your coverage is heavily subsidized by the feds. Tax deductions for private medical coverage cost the U.S. Treasury $250 billion a year.

Some would argue that private health insurance is own kind of subsidy. What the healthy pay in premiums finances care for the sick. Few patients except foreign potentates have paid their own medical bills for a long time.

2) I fully paid for Medicare through taxes deducted from my salary.

Scholars at the Urban Institute have calculated that the typical Medicare beneficiary who retired in 2010 will cost the system more than twice as much in health costs than she and her employer paid in Medicare taxes.

It's another subsidy. If Congress had designed Medicare to pay for itself rather than add to the budget deficit every year, payroll taxes would be far higher and your take-home pay would have been far lower.

3) Premiums from my paycheck fund my company health plan.

Probably not entirely. Or even mostly.

For family coverage, which cost an average of $16,351 last year, the average worker paid only 29 percent of the premium. For individual coverage, workers paid only 18 percent of the (lower) total cost.

Although premiums and out-of-pocket costs have been soaring for consumers, costs have been rising for employers, too — up by nearly 80 percent in a decade. Business spends more than half a trillion dollars annually on employee health care.

4) Government and employers pay for almost all health care.

But give workers and consumers credit. In 2012 households still paid the largest single share of health costs, according to federal actuaries. Part was premiums paid through employers and directly to insurers. Part was out-of-pocket expense.

The household portion of the health-spending pie shrank from 37 percent in 1987 to 28 percent in 2012. But it's still larger than the federal government's 26 percent share or business's 21 percent.

5) The insurance company is always the bad guy.

Human resources departments often trash-talk the company's insurance plan when telling employees the network of doctors shrank, the deductible rose or certain procedures aren't covered.

But more than half of all workers with health coverage are enrolled in so-called self-insured plans where the employer pays medical bills directly. The insurance company only processes claims.

If your company has at least 500 workers it is probably self-insured

In such plans the employer is the insurance company. And it's the employer calling the shots.

There are only two U.S. states where at least 50 percent of residents say they've recently given either money or time to charity: Utah and Minnesota, according to a new Gallup poll. Nevada and Kentucky tied for the lowest rate of charitable giving.

The poll was conducted in the last six months of 2013, when at least 600 residents of each state were asked whether they had donated money to a charity or volunteered at an organization within the past month.

Gallup produced a map based on the poll results, which found that after the top two charitable states, Hawaii, South Dakota, and New Hampshire rounded out the top five (see the full list of states below).

One finding held true for all 50 states: People were more likely to have donated money than time, Gallup says. Even in the states that ranked lowest in the findings, more than 50 percent of the residents said they had donated money to charity.

Here are the states that were ranked lowest in the poll:

"The percentage of those donating [both] money and volunteering time was below 30 percent in 10 states — Nevada, Kentucky, New York, Mississippi, Arizona, Arkansas, North Carolina, West Virginia, Rhode Island, and Louisiana."

The results jibe with what Gallup called "well-being" scores in a recent study, as the organization says that people who are thriving are also more likely to give back to their communities.

Gallup also notes that "Americans as a whole do show impressive figures for their acts of kindness compared with the rest of the world." It cited a 2011 study that found U.S. residents were more likely than many others to give to charity or to help a stranger.

There are only two U.S. states where at least 50 percent of residents say they've recently given either money or time to charity: Utah and Minnesota, according to a new Gallup poll. Nevada and Kentucky tied for the lowest rate of charitable giving.

The poll was conducted in the last six months of 2013, when at least 600 residents of each state were asked whether they had donated money to a charity or volunteered at an organization within the past month.

Gallup produced a map based on the poll results, which found that after the top two charitable states, Hawaii, South Dakota, and New Hampshire rounded out the top five (see the full list of states below).

One finding held true for all 50 states: People were more likely to have donated money than time, Gallup says. Even in the states that ranked lowest in the findings, more than 50 percent of the residents said they had donated money to charity.

Here are the states that were ranked lowest in the poll:

"The percentage of those donating [both] money and volunteering time was below 30 percent in 10 states — Nevada, Kentucky, New York, Mississippi, Arizona, Arkansas, North Carolina, West Virginia, Rhode Island, and Louisiana."

The results jibe with what Gallup called "well-being" scores in a recent study, as the organization says that people who are thriving are also more likely to give back to their communities.

Gallup also notes that "Americans as a whole do show impressive figures for their acts of kindness compared with the rest of the world." It cited a 2011 study that found U.S. residents were more likely than many others to give to charity or to help a stranger.

House Democrats remained divided Friday over whether to participate in the GOP-led investigation into the deadly attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012. The attack killed the U.S. ambassador and three others.

Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said negotiations were continuing with House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, over a Democratic role in the investigation. As we told you yesterday [Thursday], the House voted mostly along party lines to establish a new investigative committee to look into circumstances surrounding the attack. NPR's Scott Neuman reported:

"Republicans accuse the White House of misleading the public about the nature of the Sept. 11, 2012, attack and stonewalling efforts by Congress to investigate. Democrats see the creation of the new investigative committee as an election-year political ploy to raise money and motivate the party's base.

In 2000, Jeff Shesol was nearing the end of his stint as a White House speechwriter for President Clinton. He went to the Democratic convention in Los Angeles, where he met a young staffer from Britain's Labour party. They struck up a friendship.

"And so almost immediately after the Clinton administration had ended, I got a call to come over and begin writing speeches," Shesol says. "Before long, Labour was in the throes of its campaign, and I was stationed there along with them."

The young staffer who brought Shesol to England 14 years ago was named Ed Miliband. Today he's head of the party, likely to become prime minister if his party, currently the opposition, wins next year's elections.

The U.S. and Great Britain often talk about the "special relationship" that exists between the two countries. That extends to political campaigns, where there is a long tradition of American consultants going to work for British candidates.

Miliband has now brought on a more recent White House veteran, Obama campaign mastermind David Axelrod, to help with next year's campaign. Shesol says it's not surprising. Politicians around the world see Obama's presidential campaigns as case studies in how to win.

"Did President Obama win because of the brilliance of his advisers, or did he win primarily because of his brilliance as a candidate? It's of course some combination of the two," says Shesol. "But you can't hire President Obama.

So politicians do the next best thing and hire his right-hand man.

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In 2000, Jeff Shesol was nearing the end of his stint as a White House speechwriter for President Clinton. He went to the Democratic convention in Los Angeles, where he met a young staffer from Britain's Labour party. They struck up a friendship.

"And so almost immediately after the Clinton administration had ended, I got a call to come over and begin writing speeches," Shesol says. "Before long, Labour was in the throes of its campaign, and I was stationed there along with them."

The young staffer who brought Shesol to England 14 years ago was named Ed Miliband. Today he's head of the party, likely to become prime minister if his party, currently the opposition, wins next year's elections.

The U.S. and Great Britain often talk about the "special relationship" that exists between the two countries. That extends to political campaigns, where there is a long tradition of American consultants going to work for British candidates.

Miliband has now brought on a more recent White House veteran, Obama campaign mastermind David Axelrod, to help with next year's campaign. Shesol says it's not surprising. Politicians around the world see Obama's presidential campaigns as case studies in how to win.

"Did President Obama win because of the brilliance of his advisers, or did he win primarily because of his brilliance as a candidate? It's of course some combination of the two," says Shesol. "But you can't hire President Obama.

So politicians do the next best thing and hire his right-hand man.

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Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling has been banned for life from the NBA after he made racist comments.

Sports bans aren't new.

In 1990, New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner was banned from day-to-day management of the club by Major League Baseball Commissioner Fay Vincent.

Steinbrenner was reinstated in 1993.

Sterling is 80. He comes from another time and is not only the senior NBA owner –– since 1981 –– but also, although probably this won't surprise you, historically the very worst owner in all of sport.

Click on the audio link above to hear Deford's take on the issue.

Editor's Note: On May 10, Iran Davar Ardalan, a senior producer at NPR, will be the recipient of an Ellis Island Medal of Honor in New York. The annual award is given to "American citizens who have distinguished themselves within their own ethnic groups while exemplifying the values of the American way of life," according to the National Ethnic Coalition of Organizations. Ardalan's grandfather traveled from Iran and arrived on Ellis Island in 1919.

My family's love affair with America blossomed at Harlem Hospital in 1927. That's when my grandmother Helen Jeffreys first set eyes on my grandfather Abol Ghassem Bakhtiar. Helen was a nurse at the nursing school affiliated with Harlem Hospital and Abol was a doctor on the surgical staff.

Abol took Helen on a number of dates to Coney Island and mesmerized her with his poetry readings from the Shahnameh, a 10th century epic recorded by Persian poet, Ferdowsi. The Shahnameh chronicles the journey of a nation seeking justice and yearning for freedom of expression, with mythical and pre-Islamic historical rulers as its heroes and heroines. But it wasn't just the poetry Helen fell in love with, it was Abol's resilience, his resolve, and his fortitude. He had made the great journey to the shores of America, from a remote village near the legendary Bakhtiari tribe in Iran to realize his dream of becoming a physician.

Loving and Learning in Harlem

House lawmakers in South Carolina have voted to slash funding for two of the state's largest public colleges in retaliation for the introduction of books with gay themes into the schools' freshman reading programs.

In February, the South Carolina House of Representatives voted to cut $70,000 — the entire cost of the programs — from the College of Charleston and the University of South Carolina Upstate.

The Senate is debating the state budget this week, and multiple efforts to reinstate the funds have thus far failed.

The College of Charleston had assigned incoming students to read "Fun Home," a graphic novel about the author's struggle with her family and sexual orientation that includes illustrations of lesbian sex. The University of South Carolina Upstate selected "Out Loud: The Best of Rainbow Radio," a compilation of radio stories about being gay and lesbian in the South for a similar program.

Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel, was also developed into a Pulitzer-nominated off-Broadway musical. Last month, the New York cast of the play traveled to Charleston to perform it in support of the students, striking back at lawmakers who voted for the cuts.

One lawmaker who took offense was Republican Rep. Garry Smith. "Any freedom, including academic freedom, comes with responsibility," Smith told NPR. "You can't run into a crowded theater and shout fire when there's no fire."

Smith says the college failed to present multiple perspectives about the novel. "You need to discuss it from a true academic debate standpoint which looks at all aspects of it. That was not done," he says.

Students, for their part, have organized demonstrations and phone banks, urging the governor to block the threatened cuts.

Some College of Charleston students also see the move as part of a larger effort to control political discourse at the school. They say that, in addition to the funding cuts, the GOP-controlled legislature recently handpicked one of their own to run the college.

South Carolina Lt. Gov. Glenn McConnell, a conservative Republican, was recently selected to become the college's next president. Media reports suggest the college's governing board chose him under pressure from lawmakers, and against the advice of a search committee.

"It just reeked of insider dealings, backroom political maneuvers and political and economic pressure being put on the board of trustees," says student Matt Rabon, who has been protesting the appointment.

McConnell spent more than 30 years in the state Senate. And he's known for his affection for Civil War history and the Confederate flag.

McConnell did not agree to an interview with NPR. But he has the support of at least one well-known Democrat, longtime Charleston Mayor Joe Riley. "He's a good guy. And a very nice, hardworking person," the mayor says. "I think he'll be an excellent college president."

Political writer Andy Brack, who runs the political website Statehouse Report, says state lawmakers likely see in McConnell an opportunity for more control of the college. He says choosing McConnell may be the price the college was willing to pay for a stronger relationship with the legislature.

"It's tough being a college president these days," he says. "And one might think that a reason McConnell was hired is that he understands state budgeting and the relationships with the legislature, which has a big control over the universities in this state."

While McConnell's selection prompted students to stage a sit-in, he'll assume his new role as president of the College of Charleston at a quieter time on campus, on July 1, when most students are away.

Just nine women have given birth while serving in the United States Congress.

Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) has the distinction of having done it three times.

Her son Cole was born in 2007 with a condition called Trisomy 21. Grace came in 2010, followed by Brynn this past November.

"Thankfully, she's a good sleeper and she's a good eater," says McMorris Rodgers. "That makes a big difference for a mom."

Even though she has a high profile job as chair of the House Republican Conference, McMorris Rodgers insists she's just like the rest of us.

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A House committee on Thursday voted to issue a subpoena to Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki over allegations of delays at VA hospitals that may have caused as many as 40 deaths of patients waiting for care.

In addition to calling Shinseki to testify, lawmakers also subpoenaed records from a Phoenix VA hospital that allegedly maintained an alternate wait list showing that patients waited only a few weeks for treatment when in fact some waited more than a year.

Some Senate Republicans and the American Legion have called on Shinseki to resign over the controversy.

"I'm not ready to join the chorus of people calling on him to step down," Boehner, R-Ohio, said of Shinseki at a news conference, adding that there is a "systemic management issue throughout the VA that needs to be addressed."

Speaking with NPR on Wednesday, Shinseki rebuffed questions about a possible resignation, saying the inspector general had yet to report on the situation at Phoenix Veterans Affairs Health Care system.

"Allegations like this get my attention," Shinseki told All Things Considered. "I take it seriously and my habit is to get to the bottom of it.

"If allegations are substantiated, we'll take swift and appropriate action," he said.

Mobile messaging service Snapchat has agreed to a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission over allegations that it deceived customers by collecting their user information without permission.

Snapchat's mobile app promises users that video and photos will "disappear forever" soon after they're sent, thus insuring privacy and safeguarding against data collection.

But according to the FTC the company "made multiple misrepresentations to consumers about its product that stood in stark contrast to how the app actually worked."

The New York Times elaborates:

"[In] its complaint, the commission said the messages, often called snaps, can be saved in several ways. The commission said that users can save a message by using a third-party app, for example, or employ simple workarounds that allow users to take a screenshot of messages without detection.

"The complaint also said Snapchat transmitted users' location information and collected sensitive data like address book contacts, despite its saying that it did not collect such information. The commission said the policies allowed security researchers to compile a database of 4.6 million user names and phone numbers during a recent security breach."

A new film, We Are The Giant, follows six people's stories during the Arab Spring revolutions. Tell Me More's Celeste Headlee finds out more about their motivation from activist Maryam Al Khawaja and co-producer Razan Ghalayini.

"What's driving them is love. It's not power driven. It's not about politics. It's really just about having a better life for your children, supporting the people that you love, and building a country that you're proud of," Ghalayini says.

The story you thought was long over is back: Monica Lewinsky, the former White House intern whose affair with President Clinton eventually led to his impeachment and made her the object of punch lines and scorn, has written an article in Vanity Fair in which she says, "It's time to burn the beret and bury the blue dress."

Lewinsky, who was 21 at the time of the affair, is now 40. She writes that it's "time to stop "tiptoeing around my past — and other people's futures."

The full article is available today in Vanity Fair's digital edition. You need a subscription to access the story. Here are some excerpts.

On the affair with the president:

"Sure, my boss took advantage of me, but I will always remain firm on this point: it was a consensual relationship. Any 'abuse' came in the aftermath, when I was made a scapegoat in order to protect his powerful position. ... The Clinton administration, the special prosecutor's minions, the political operatives on both sides of the aisle, and the media were able to brand me. And that brand stuck, in part because it was imbued with power."

How the scandal affected her employment prospects:

"I was never 'quite right' for the position. In some cases, I was right for all the wrong reasons, as in 'Of course, your job would require you to attend our events.' And, of course, these would be events at which press would be in attendance."

On reports that Hillary Clinton recently told a friend that Lewinsky was a "narcissistic loony tune":

"My first thought, as I was getting up to speed: If that's the worst thing she said, I should be so lucky. Mrs. Clinton, I read, had supposedly confided to [her friend Diane] Blair that, in part, she blamed herself for her husband's affair (by being emotionally neglectful) and seemed to forgive him. Although she regarded Bill as having engaged in 'gross inappropriate behavior,' the affair was, nonetheless, 'consensual (was not a power relationship).' "

Why now?

Lewisnksy writes that she decided to come forward after the suicide in 2010 of Tyler Clementi, the 18-year-old Rutgers University student who was secretly watched via webcam kissing another man. She says that following his suicide, "my own suffering took on a different meaning. Perhaps by sharing my story, I reasoned, I might be able to help others in their darkest moments of humiliation. The question became: How do I find and give a purpose to my past?"

Drudge, Dowd and Beyonc:

"Thanks to the Drudge Report, I was also possibly the first person whose global humiliation was driven by the Internet."

During the scandal, she says she referred to New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, who criticized Lewinsky for her role in the scandal, as "Moremean Dowdy," but "today, I'd meet her for a drink."

And of Beyonc's song "Partition," Lewinsky writes: "Thanks, Beyonc, but if we're verbing, I think you meant 'Bill Clinton'd all on my gown,' not 'Monica Lewinsky'd.' "

Reaction

Reaction to the piece has been, as you might expect, swift.

Lynne Cheney, the wife of former Vice President Dick Cheney, told Fox News that she wondered "if this isn't an effort on the Clintons' part to get that story out of the way. Would Vanity Fair publish anything about Monica Lewinsky that Hillary Clinton didn't want in Vanity Fair?"

Hillary Clinton is seen by many as a Democratic presidential contender in 2016.

Slate political reporter Dave Weigel wrote that the VF article is being talked about as Lewinsky's first words on the affair with Bill Clinton, but is in fact not. He says:

"It's been 15 years since Lewinsky cooperated with Andrew Morton for Monica's Story, which you can pick up for $0.01 on Amazon, so hot is the interest in this story. (Even after you pay shipping, it's cheaper than a copy of Vanity Fair.) It's been just 12 years since Lewinsky cooperated with Monica: Black and White, a documentary she promoted on cable news. It's been 10 years since Bill Clinton published My Life, his memoir, and Lewinsky broke her silence to accuse the former president of lying."

What can the U.S. — or anyone — do to return more than 200 abducted girls to their families in Nigeria? And what might happen if the U.S. engages with another violent group of extremists? Retired Gen. Carter Ham, who until last year led the U.S. African Command, says there's still a chance to help.

Ham's former command will be part of the U.S. effort to search for the missing schoolgirls, who were kidnapped three weeks ago by Islamist extremist group Boko Haram. The group's leader said this week that he plans to sell them. Ham says he suspects some of the girls may have already been sent to other countries.

"I suspect they've been probably dispersed by now. That'll be a difficult challenge," Ham tells NPR's Steve Inskeep on Morning Edition. "But we have surveillance platforms, signals intelligence and other capabilities that would be helpful."

If you've ever seen your waiter sneeze, you may have asked for a different server. If you've seen one sneeze repeatedly, you might wonder why he's still at work, serving tainted food.

See, most restaurant workers don't get paid when they stay home sick. But, some go to work anyway, when they've got the sniffles or worse, because they need the paycheck.

For labor advocates, that's a problem.

"The fact that we're forcing people to go to work sick is not something we want to do as a society," says Maryland state Rep. John Olszewski Jr., a Democrat. "We shouldn't put people in a situation where they're forced to make impossible choices between themselves and their work and their families."

Last month, New York City began requiring employers to provide paid sick days, joining the ranks of other cities such as Washington, Seattle and San Francisco.

But while several cities have been willing to impose such requirements, states have been more reluctant. Olzewski's bill attracted a majority of his fellow state House members as co-sponsors, but went nowhere this year.

Instead, a number of states — particularly in the South — have passed laws that block local governments from imposing sick day requirements on businesses.

"The problem I see with paid sick leave is not so much offering it, but the fact that it's mandated," says state Rep. Gail Lavielle, a Connecticut Republican. "It seems as though the state is determined to do everything it can to discourage businesses from coming here and staying here."

Not Available To All

The more money you make, the more likely it is that you can stay home when you're sick and still get paid.

A big majority — 87 percent — enjoy that benefit among the top 25 percent of earners. Only 34 percent of those in the bottom 25 percent have the same privilege, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Part-time workers are usually out of luck.

"Servers in restaurants and home health workers are the least likely to have paid sick time and the most likely to have contact with the public," says Vicki Shabo, vice president of the National Partnership for Women & Families.

A number of women's organizations have embraced the cause of providing paid sick leave. House Democrats tout the idea as part of their "economic agenda for women and families."

"It is not only good for workers, but also for businesses who have lower retention costs and greater productivity, as well as the broader economy," says Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), who has sponsored federal legislation mandating paid sick leave.

Swapping Shifts

With Congress unlikely to address the issue, the action is in the states.

In 2011, Connecticut became the first state to mandate paid sick leave. A survey of Connecticut employers released earlier this year by the Center for Economic and Policy Research and the City University of New York suggests that the cost for businesses has been minimal.

"A year and a half after its implementation, more than three-quarters of surveyed employees expressed support for the earned paid sick leave law," the study concludes.

"That's probably the opposite of what we're hearing," says Nicole Griffin, executive director of the Connecticut Restaurant Association. "When the paid sick leave bill passed in Connecticut, employers felt it was yet another burden we'd have to deal with."

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In 1977, death row inmate Gary Mark Gilmore chose to be executed by a firing squad. Gilmore was strapped to a chair at the Utah State Prison and five officers shot him.

The media circus that ensued prompted a group of lawmakers in nearby Oklahoma to wonder if there might be a better way to handle executions. They approached Dr. Jay Chapman, the state medical examiner at the time, who proposed using three drugs based loosely on anesthesia procedures at the time: one drug to knock them out, one to relax or paralyze them and a final drug that would stop their hearts.

Many states quickly followed suit. The three-drug execution cocktail, which later became known as Chapman's Protocol, has been the preferred method across the U.S. ever since.

But last week's botched execution – in the same state where the technique was developed — has raised questions about execution norms. Although the drugs and the question of whether they work are at the center of the debate, the reality is executions are carried out by people and people sometimes make mistakes.

Many also struggle with their involvement for years to come.

Chapman's protocol depends on a number of things that he never foresaw: that in the years to come doctors and nurses, skilled in the art of finding veins, would no longer agree to participate; that drug makers in Europe would refuse to allow their drugs to be used; that unregulated pharmacies would have to replicate the drugs or that prison staff would be responsible for the dosage and the administration.

Chapman supports the death penalty. But he shakes his head at some of the problems.

"In one situation I was made aware of, the needle was inserted into the vein pointing away from the body," he says. "And I have never even known anybody that would imagine doing that sort of thing."

There have been all manner of problems: inmates that wake up midway through – or cry out in pain.

Former prison officers say it is because putting a dog to sleep is one thing; killing a person is something else entirely.

"This is not normal behavior for right-minded humans to engage in," says Steve Martin, who participated in several executions in Texas in the 1980s. His job was to man the phones in case of a reprieve. He says the whole process is emotionally crippling.

He remembers a couple times when the execution team couldn't get the needles inserted properly.

"Boy, it just ratcheted up everything," he says.

"People don't realize," he says, "you just killed somebody and you've been a part of it and it affects all of us."

Carroll Pickett was the chaplain at 95 executions in Texas through the mid-90s. He remembers one time prison staff spent 40 minutes trying to find a vein until the inmate sat up and helped them. "Some of them would go outside and throw up," he says.

Over time, Pickett says, the staff unraveled. "And these were some good, good men. Basically, they all left. Every one of them," he says.

Pickett and Steve Martin both say the memories of every execution haunt them. Martin says he often thinks of one inmate in particular, who worked on an inmate program with the prison director.

"The last words he ever uttered on this earth were thanking the director," he said, crying. "It just struck me that this guy's fall partner was not even given the death sentence and here we have this person we're executing whose last — at least articulated — thought was to give thanks to the person who was going to execute him."

Corrections officials in Oklahoma say that, at the moment, they are anticipating that the courts will postpone next week's execution — at least until they're certain what went wrong last week.

To identify the elephants, Turkalo learned to draw the animals' ears — each ear's shape and markings are unique to each individual. She and other scientists also recorded their calls. "Not only do they recognize each other's calls, but the calls go far," she told NPR correspondent Alex Chadwick, who spent days with her back then, observing the elephants with Bill McQuay. "I could hear the call and say, 'Yeah, that's a juvenile being pushed out of a hole by its mother; it's protesting.' Or you hear a rumble, and you know it's probably an adult female, rumbling for a family — either saying, 'I'm here,' or 'Let's go.' "

But Turkalo's 22 years with those elephants came to a disastrous end last year, when civil war in the republic found its way to the Dzanga bai. Turkalo had lived through civil strife before, but this time, she tells us, it was much worse. "This time they covered most of country," she says, "pillage, rape and kill."

They were the Seleka — the Muslim rebels who had overthrown the national government in the spring of 2013. As she sips her tea in the Providence coffee shop, Turkalo is the picture of calm. But last year at the bai, she says, she feared for her life. It was just impossible to stay. She well remembers the day when the war came to the bai. "It was the 24th of March," she says. "I heard they were on their way."

Get recipes for Mimosa With Fresh Orange Juice And Raspberry Puree, Fresh Bloody Mary, Spiked Strawberry-Basil Lemonade, Gordon's Cup and Blackberry Daiquiri.

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law this week that requires books containing obscenities to come in sealed packages with warning labels and that bans cursing in movies and the performing arts. The law is set to take effect July 1, and violators will face fines. NPR's Corey Flintoff reported from Moscow that the law "doesn't specify exactly which words will be banned — that will be up to the Ministry of Culture, which oversees theaters and film. A similar law that applies to television already bans the Russian version of the F-word, plus vulgar names for male and female body parts." He adds that the legislation "is supported by religious conservatives, who see swearing in the media as a sign of Western decadence and permissiveness."

Speaking of swearing, David Remnick writes in The New Yorker about the "florid and flexible lexicon of profanity, known as mat," pointing to Victor Erofeyev's wonderfully filthy celebration of mat in 2003 in the same magazine. Erofeyev explained, "Unlike indecent terminology in most languages, mat is multilevelled, multifunctional, and extensively articulated — more a philosophy than a language. Dostoyevsky claimed that a Russian could express the entire range of his feelings with one word, which he dared not write. That word is khuy, a term for the male sexual organ."

Ninth Letter is running excerpts from Portuguese writer Jos Lus Peixoto's memoir Inside the Secret, about his travels in North Korea. In the third episode, he writes about visiting the first hamburger restaurant in Pyongyang: "At lunchtime, the restaurant was completely empty of customers. As if to make up for the lack of customers, there was a surfeit of staff behind the counter, girls in uniform corralled into the small, cramped space. Caught unawares by our arrival, they all lifted their heads at once, like startled deer. There were around a dozen of us and I was near the back of the line. I got my food an hour later."

The Nobel Prize-winning Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka talks to CNN's Christiane Amanpour about the Nigerian government's handling of kidnapped girls: "Where it will end, I do not know. But one thing is certain: The president and his government cannot sleep easy after what has happened to Nigeria."

Dana Perino, Fox News commentator and White House press secretary under President George W. Bush, has a book deal. Called And the Good News Is ..., the book will be published by Twelve, an imprint of Hachette, in May 2015. According to a press release, Perino "reveals the lessons that have successfully guided her through a life of challenges and achievement."

Literary agent Andrew Wylie, a ferocious critic of Amazon and all-around scary dude, told The Buenos Aires Herald in an interview: "Initially I thought that Amazon was a beautiful idea because unlike the chains, every book was presented as a single copy, an infinite belt. So you did not get piles of Danielle Steel and one copy of Susan Sontag. You had one of each. There was equality of presentation, which was one of the horrors of the chains." Now, he says that Amazon has become a monopoly.

The gunmen who abducted 276 girls from a school in Nigeria last month wore uniforms and said they were soldiers who had come to help, according to a girl who escaped her captors. The girls were led outside – and it wasn't until the gunmen stole food and set fire to the school that the girls became certain they were in trouble.

"Don't worry, we're soldiers," the men told the girls, according to a 16-year-old girl who told her story to the AP. "Nothing is going to happen to you."

But after setting the fire, she says, the men began shouting, "Allahu Akhbar" (God is great), "And we knew."

Three weeks after the mass kidnapping, most of those girls are still missing; more than 50 of them escaped. The extremist Islamist group Boko Haram, which has previously targeted schools (the name means "Western education is forbidden"), claimed responsibility for the abduction Monday.

The case has provoked outrage in Nigeria, where crowds at a rally chanted "We want our girls," echoing a phrase that has inspired a campaign on Twitter: "Bring back our girls."

As the Two-Way reported yesterday, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan finally spoke publicly about the kidnapping, responding to public dissatisfaction with the government's handling of the case.

After the Nigerian president spoke, Boko Haram's leader issued a video statement claiming responsibility for the crime, confirming widely held suspicions.

"I abducted your girls. I will sell them in the market, by Allah," Abubakar Shekau said on the recording, according to a translation by CNN.

Many nations have condemned the mass abduction; the U.S., Britain, and others have also offered to help find the girls.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague had this to say:

"The actions of Boko Haram and using girls as the spoils of war, the spoils of terrorism, is disgusting. It is immoral. It should show everybody across the world that they should not give any support to such a vile organization."

In recent years, the effort to bring the Mafia under control in Sicily has spilled over into the world of food. Today a movement of small organic agricultural cooperatives has sprung up across the island to farm land once confiscated by the Mafia and bring these goods to a global market.

Libera Terra means free land, or land free from Mafia. A cooperative of farmers and other producers working under this banner creates organic olive oil, wine, pasta, grains and more and provides Mafia-free jobs in a country with staggering unemployment, deep-seated corruption and a rich kitchen tradition.

"It's very difficult to buy something to eat here in Sicily and be sure that it has nothing to do with the Mafia," says Gabrielle Mastrilli. "When you eat food with the Libera Terra label, you are sure that the product and the worker, they don't have anything to do with the Mafia."

Mastrilli is a photographer and writer who, like so many of the young people of the island, had left to find work, specifically Mafia-free work. His family has a long history in organizing Sicilian agriculture against the Mafia's stronghold on wages, working conditions and employment in the fields. With the birth of Libera Terra, Gabriele has recently returned to the island to promote the cooperatives.

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At the end of a weathered street lined with sooty apartment blocks and mini-markets, in a smoky budget hotel in central Athens, the refugees wait.

"This lobby is like Syria," says a small, green-eyed man who calls himself Muhammad and says he's from Aleppo. "That guy is from Damascus," he says, pointing. "That one is from Homs, that one from Latakia."

There are about 80 Syrians here, including six neighbors from Yarmouk, the Palestinian neighborhood in Damascus. They sit together at a table in the hotel's breakfast room, sipping sweet, hot Nescafe from tall glasses.

"We stayed at home as long as we could, waiting for some kind of end to the war," says Lulu, a 25-year-old scholar of Arabic literature. Like most Syrians interviewed here by NPR, she didn't want to give her last name because she feared for family members who remain in Syria.

"But the war is not ending, and we have to find another home," Lulu says.

She's small and intense, her long, thick black hair in a ponytail. She fled from Damascus to Turkey with her father, Saif. Then they rode in a tiny, crowded boat from the Turkish coast to the Greek island of Kos.

"We were 13 people, at the night," she says. "I was very afraid, but I believe if I travel to [Europe], I can take my husband, my mother and my sister from Syria."

At least 2.6 million Syrians have fled the country since the war began three years ago, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Most are in refugee camps in neighboring countries such as Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey.

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At least 22 people, including four children, are dead after two small boats carrying illegal migrants capsized off the Greek coast in the eastern Aegean Sea.

Joanna Kakissis, reporting for NPR from Athens, says survivors told the Hellenic Coast Guard that as many as 65 people were on the two smuggling boats — a 30-foot yacht and a 6-foot dinghy.

Rescue teams managed to save 36 people after the boats started sinking early Monday and were still searching for the seven others thought to be missing.

The coast guard says it saved 250 migrants in similar incidents this weekend.

The Associated Press calls the incident on Monday "one of the deadliest migrant boat accidents in Greek waters in recent years and the third fatal one this year." According to the AP:

"The vessels overturned before dawn off the island of Samos, a favorite destination for migrant-smuggling gangs because it's close to the Turkish coast. The Greek coast guard said it was not immediately clear what caused the overloaded craft to capsize.

What was once experimental is now becoming more common — journalists and photographers are increasingly putting small commercial drones in the air to shoot photo and video. But when they do, they're on shaky legal ground. Federal regulators currently prohibit drone use for commercial purposes — including reporting — as they work to write longer term guidelines on who and where small drones can fly.

Just last week, when a tornado ripped through Arkansas, it carved a path of damage so wide, that the best way to see its destruction was from the air. KATV, the ABC affiliate in Little Rock, Ark., aired several minutes of damage video. It was recorded by a photographer from his drone, which has a built-in video camera that shot from about 150 feet in the air.

"You can provide people in the affected area and outside of it a much greater perspective on just the scope and scale of the disaster," says Matt Waite, who started and leads the Drone Journalism Lab at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. When he opened it in 2012, it was the first drone journalism lab in the world.

All Tech Considered

FAA Head: Safety, Privacy Concerns Abound In Regulating Drones

Sure, you can still hear congressional Republicans talking about repealing the Affordable Care Act.

But there's clearly something different about the current climate, and the GOP approach to Obamacare. The thrill of repeal may not be gone for Republicans, but much of the urgency of repeal is.

For starters, the House GOP doesn't have more repeal votes lined up for these weeks after the spring recess.

When Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., the House majority leader, recently informed his colleagues what was on their schedule — and thus part of their messaging for the mid-term election — the schedule contained no repeal votes.

Instead, he said the House would likely vote on, among other bills, contempt legislation against former Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner for the agency's controversial examination of non-profit political groups. They might even vote on extending some tax credits. But not an ACA repeal.

And this comes after what seemed like an insatiable hunger for repeal votes. The House has had more than 50 of them.

A recent bipartisan NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, conducted by Democratic and Republican pollsters Hart Research and Public Opinion Strategies, indicated that the grassroots energy behind the repeal effort isn't what it used to be.

Between December and April, support for repealing the law fell five percentage points. Since Democratic support for the law has stayed fairly constant, it would be independents and even Republicans who would account for that shift.

Research by Stan Greenberg, a respected Democratic pollster, confirmed this. Greenberg told journalists during a recent teleconference that, based on new data, the intensity to repeal the ACA has dropped significantly since December — even in Republican districts.

Meanwhile, the percentage of voters wanting the law to be implemented has risen.

"What's driving this is a dramatic change among independent voters," Greenberg said. "You had in December a majority of independents who were for repeal, 48 percent, with a lot of intensity, that was a painful number... Repeal intensity has dropped from 48 to 39 percent."

Another recent survey, a tracking poll done for the Kaiser Family Foundation, found that 58 percent of voters wanted Congress to fix the law instead of repealing it. About 35 percent supported repeal.

Part of what is going on is that, after a notably shaky start with the flawed Healthcare.gov website, the ACA has had some real or perceived successes.

More than eight million people signed up for health insurance, exceeding the administration's publicly stated goal. And many of the problems with the federal health exchange were fixed.

The repeal effort was also significantly damaged by last year's partial government shutdown. Some Republicans had urged the shutdown, arguing it would force Obama to consider undoing his signature domestic policy achievement.

Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and other Republican leaders never bought that logic but allowed those GOP voices to have their way, at least initially.

While the energy for repealing the health law may have receded from where it was two or three years ago, that's not to say that it has turned the corner in public perception — far from it.

A Washington Post/ABC News poll found plenty of reasons for President Obama and congressional Democrats to be worried about the vibes surrounding the law during this mid-term election year. A plurality of Americans still find the law not living up to their expectations – a Pew Research/USA Today poll released Monday reports just 41 percent approve of the ACA, compared to 55 percent who disapprove.

That's a sure danger sign for Democrats in 2014.

One of the many casualties of Syria's civil war is the country's architectural heritage. We've told you about damage to the historic 11th century Umayyad mosque and the ancient city of Palmyra. Now comes a story from The Associated Press about damage to the Crac des Chevaliers, a castle that held off a siege by the Muslim warrior Saladin during the Crusades.

The castle, like the two other sites, is a UNESCO World Heritage site. It lies about 25 miles from Homs, a flashpoint city in the 3-year-old conflict between Syria's rebels and forces loyal to President Bashar Assad.

Two years ago, Assad's forces began a blockade of the Sunni-dominated village of Hosn, which they believed was aiding the rebels. The rebels, the government said, were linked to al-Qaida and were targeting neighboring Christian villages. Government troops began bombarding Hosn, prompting the village's 9,000 people to take refuge inside the nearby Crac des Chevaliers. Those inside the citadel included rebel fighters who lobbed mortars outside its walls at the nearby villages.

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When Snapchat first landed, its ephemerality was hard for some people to wrap their heads around. Messages disappear seconds after being viewed, the tools to draw or write on photos are rudimentary and then, there was the whole matter of teens using it for sexting.

But two years post-launch, Snapchat has taken hold as other companies scramble to catch up. On Thursday, Snapchat introduced a new feature that allows users to, well, chat with friends. Before, you could send one-off Snaps that would disappear after being viewed. Now, you can also text and video chat back and forth — and when the conversation is over, it all disappears into the ether as well.

All Tech Considered

Teens Dig Digital Privacy, If Snapchat Is Any Indication

Every day, all over the world, newborns die when they don't have to. They die from preventable infections and because their tiny bodies can't stay warm enough.

Shefali, a mother from Bangladesh, knows this global tragedy all too well.

"Whenever a child is born and then dies, we're overwhelmed with grief," she says. "It's terrible."

Shefali has given birth to six children at home in her village in Bangladesh. Only three of her babies have survived the first week of life.

"We feel like we need to take the child to the doctor, but we can't," she says in a new report, from the non-profit aid group Save the Children. "I'm not the only one here who has lost children — there are many other mothers like me."

Many of these deaths are not inevitable, doctors say, but innovations aimed at preventing them are just beginning to be deployed.