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French economist Thomas Piketty became a publishing superstar this year by putting two and two together and concluding: the rich are getting richer.

His bestseller, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, uses mountains of data to calculate western wealth over the last two centuries. He says the historical statistics, drawn from many sources, show unrestrained capitalism inevitably leads to immense income inequality.

But on Friday, The Financial Times, a respected British newspaper, said it has reviewed the book's data. And it finds Piketty "got his sums wrong."

Chris Giles, the FT's economics editor in London, writes: "The data underpinning Professor Piketty's 577-page tome, which has dominated best-seller lists in recent weeks, contain a series of errors that skew his findings ... there are transcription errors from the original sources and incorrect formulas. It also appears that some of the data are cherry-picked or constructed without an original source."

And the story quotes Piketty's response. "I have no doubt that my historical data series can be improved and will be improved in the future ... but I would be very surprised if any of the substantive conclusion about the long-run evolution of wealth distributions was much affected by these improvements," Piketty said.

And with that, we launch a thousand PhD dissertations as young economists scramble to sort out who is right about the data's accuracy and import.

The final "X" in the 20th Century Fox logo glows for an extra second as X-Men: Days of Future Past gets started, but what follows is darker than dark — a bleak, dire future in which all of Manhattan is a mutant prison camp. The Sentinels (soldier-robots crafted with shapeshifter mutant DNA, and therefore adaptively lethal) are hunting down the few mutants still on the loose, while Professor Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and Magneto (Ian McKellen) are hatching a scheme with Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page) to send Hugh Jackman's Wolverine — or at any rate, his consciousness — back in time to the Nixon years to stop the mutant-war before it starts.

"What's the last thing you remember?" wonders the professor in a whisper at one point, and though he's addressing Wolverine, that's not an idle question where the audience is concerned, at least those of us who've stopped reading comic books.

Kids, who maybe can't memorize state capitals, have no trouble keeping straight the names and powers of dozens of mutants in this series, not to mention the twice-as-many actors who've played them in six pictures across 14 years. Me, not so much, so when I went to see the movie, I took along a 16-year-old, and when I had problems, I'd whisper "who's that?" and she'd whisper "Quicksilver" and I'd be okay.

Quicksilver (Evan Peters here, though the vagaries of studio contracts mean that he'll be played by Godzilla-chaser Aaron Taylor-Johnson in Warner's Avengers 2) is the coolest of this picture's new guys, zipping around so fast in a niftily conceived, enjoyably prankish slow-mo sequence in the Pentagon kitchen that he can taste soup, rearrange guards' limbs, and nudge bullets off their trajectories all in the time it takes to blink.

Everything about him is crystal clear. But X-Men: Days of Future Past is, as that title suggests, deliberately tricky — designed by director Bryan Singer to allow the audience to geek out as comic-book tropes get rejiggered and previous movies sidestepped through time-travel.

It's all but impossible to talk about the plot without spoilers, so I'll just say that everybody's acting up a storm (not to be confused with Halle Berry's briefly seen character, Storm), that someone should've thought of more for Jennifer Lawrence to do, that the special effects, while spectacular, have nothing on Mark Camacho's terrific Nixon impersonation, that the film is awesomely urgent and utterly forgettable all at once, and that it left the 16-year-old I went with bouncing with adrenaline even as she snorted derisively at what she regarded as crazy plot mis-steps.

She has, let me just say, the makings of a fine critic.

Remember your childhood? Seriously, do you really remember, way back to when you were tiny? And if you do, what are those memories shaped by? Chances are, they're influenced not just by what you truly remember, but by old photos and family stories.

And those family photos are often a starting point for a narrative we're either told by older family members or that we construct in our minds. (We've been exploring some of these ideas in our series, Photography and Memory.)

Inspired by this concept, we asked our followers on Instagram to share their "constructed" memories with us. We called it #fakememory, and received some incredibly poignant stories.

Faren Shear, of San Diego, is about 2 years old in the family photo she submitted. She's sitting on her grandmother's lap as her mother smiles down on them.

"We don't look related, because we're not — I'm adopted," Shear says. "So I always think these pictures are funny because I'm this super blonde tall child in a family or short, dark-haired people. "

For Shear, this and every other image of her mother has huge significance.

"My mom died when I was 5, so I actually don't think I saw a picture of my mom until I was maybe 16," she says. "All that stuff just got put away, and my dad got remarried and nobody talked about it, or her, or anything.

"And so all I can do is make up a story. It's like, I have the pieces, but everything else is in my head," she explains.

Part of Shear thinks she remembers this moment in the photo, but in truth, she says she has no memories of her mother that aren't posed and still. For Shear, the images mean the difference between having her mother in her life or not remembering her at all.

The family photo Olivia Howell submitted reminds her of her own mortality. It was taken when she was about 8 months old, the morning before she went into the hospital for open-heart surgery — a life-threatening prospect.

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If the judicial nomination of Michael Boggs gets derailed, at least one of Georgia's senators says it won't unravel a deal the two senators entered with the White House to select seven nominees for the federal bench in Georgia.

"The deal was we agreed on seven nominees for seven judicial appointments and asked for all of them to get a hearing at the same time, and that was the deal," said Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson of Georgia. "Everybody lived up to what they said."

Boggs, a Georgia state judge who's been nominated to fill a district court seat, has drawn strong pushback from Democrats in both chambers of Congress, as well as from the civil rights community. During his tenure in Georgia's House of Representatives more than 10 years ago, Boggs supported keeping the Confederate emblem on the old state flag, called for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage and voted for legislation to restrict abortion – including one provision to force doctors to publicly disclose how many abortions they perform.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has come out forcefully against Boggs, even saying that he might not allow Boggs a floor vote if his nomination makes it out of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Then House Democrat John Lewis of Georgia – a civil rights icon – added fuel to the fire this week when he released a written statement saying that Boggs' record is "in direct opposition to everything I have stood for during my career."

Boggs' nomination was the result of an agreement between the White House and Georgia's two Republican senators, Isakson and Saxby Chambliss. Under the "blue slip" tradition, prospective judicial nominees must receive the approval of home state senators before the Senate Judiciary Committee will process the nomination. That custom forces the White House to negotiate with home state senators as to whom it will nominate for the federal bench.

White House spokesperson Eric Schultz says Isakson and Chambliss specifically recommended Boggs.

"In the case of Georgia, we have been trying to fill these judicial vacancies for more than three years, but two of the President's nominees were blocked for nearly 11 months and returned at the end of 2011," said Schultz in an email. "Our choice is clear: do we work with Republican senators to find a compromise or should we leave the seats vacant? Four of these vacancies are judicial emergencies, and we believe it would be grossly irresponsible for the president to leave these seats vacant."

If Boggs, whose confirmation hearing was last week, doesn't make it out of committee – or if Senate leaders deny him a floor vote – Isakson said, as far as he's concerned, he won't object to the advancement of the other six Georgia nominations. The deal did not mandate that all seven nominees be treated as one inseparable package.

"We agreed to sign blue slips on all seven, if they'd agree on all seven to get a hearing. So everybody's getting an equal opportunity to get a vote and that's all we asked for," said Isakson.

The time has come for us all to take a long, step-back look at this thing we call the Tea Party.

The results from Republican primaries in a dozen states so far this year strongly suggest that the party, such as it was, is over.

It may not have made sense to use the term "party" at any time in this movement's brief history. This year, that fact has become increasingly obvious.

The Tea Party was not so much an organized force in itself as an outburst that others tried to harness. The name was shorthand for an energy that suddenly coursed through the conservative community in the first months of the Obama presidency.

The sources of that energy were and are highly diverse. The effects were undeniable in down-ballot races in most of the country in 2010 and 2012. But the energy never really assumed the form of a conventional political party, and it did not build the machinery that could produce reliable candidates and campaigns.

Yet the handle of "Tea Party" remains irresistible for admakers, activists, journalists and a boundless world of commentators in the social media space.

That is why it surprises a lot of people to see this Tea Party suddenly looking so impotent, even as President Obama and his party look increasingly vulnerable. One would think the most anti-Obama elements of the right would be on the march.

Yet Republican incumbents and other candidates backed by the party's business and political elites have won the nominations for November nearly everywhere anyone was noticing. Where insurgents arose with a clear claim to being Tea Party favorites, they have lost. In many cases, they have flat-lined weeks before the primary.

There are consensus explanations for this. Most important: Incumbents caught in the cross hairs have been far better prepared and funded than they were in 2010 and 2012. They have adjusted their behavior in office — especially in the U.S. Senate — and their behavior back home as well. They have raised huge early money and taken the fight to their challengers.

As a result, the challengers often saw their support decline as the primary neared. Some of their wounds were self-inflicted, the kind of controversies that engulfed their predecessors of 2010 and 2012 only after their nominations were secured.

Moreover, the formal campaign structures of the GOP have mobilized against the various independent groups that have been driving what we have loosely labeled the Tea Party — including FreedomWorks, Heritage Action, the Club for Growth, the Senate Conservatives Fund and Americans for Limited Government.

All have trophies on the wall from backing anti-establishment or populist campaigns around the country. But they have yet to back a winner this year at the statewide level, with the exception of Ben Sasse in Nebraska, whose win was a split decision (some Tea Party affiliates backed his main opponent).

The upshot, at least at this stage of the primary season, is the full reinstatement of the Old Guard in every region. There could still be a stunner in Mississippi or elsewhere this summer, but the opportunities are dwindling fast.

So is the Tea Party finished? Yes, if you insist on calling it the Tea Party. Because that phrase implies the phenomenon is some sort of organized unit in the usual sense. And the Tea Party never really was one.

Better to think of it as an expression of frustration on the part of conservative activists and true believers who blamed the GOP hierarchy for Barack Obama and a Democratic Congress. These often angry populists thought the 2008 GOP candidate and campaign had lacked the fire and fervor they themselves still felt for the cause.

And they feared that Republicans in Congress would lie down and let the Obama regime do whatever it wanted.

The Tea Party pushback organized early in 2009, first around taxes ("Taxed Enough Already?") and then around the new health care law — derisively dubbed Obamacare.

In 2010 and 2012 the loose-knit band beneath the Tea Party banner disrupted the Republican nominating process around the country. Most notably, it derailed Republican incumbents or party-anointed candidates for the U.S. Senate in Alaska, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Texas, Missouri, Indiana, Kentucky, Florida and Delaware. All 10 seats had been (or were expected to go) Republican, but the Tea Party nominees wound up winning only four.

Yet even when it was strongest, the Tea Party movement never coalesced as a political organization. By comparison, Ross Perot's quixotic bid for the White House in 1992 had more characteristics of actual party organization, and so too did the fading echoes of it in the United We Stand movement and the Reform Party that followed.

The Tea Party has always been a label in search of something to stick to. It has never had even a symbolic national leader or a central committee — or even a national meeting. Some of the organizations that use Tea Party in their name raise far more money than they convey to any candidates, seeming to exist primarily to raise money so that they can exist.

The senators who represent the movement at its most successful — Marco Rubio, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz — differ profoundly on such issues as immigration, foreign intervention, voting rights and fiscal policy.

At this point, the phrase Tea Party has nearly lost all meaning. It can still be used as a catch-all descriptor for any candidate, commentator or activist who wishes to be further to the right than some real or imagined opponent.

And unless a dramatic reversal of fortune comes soon, it will soon have one other connotation: futility.

An all-new meteor shower makes its debut tonight, and astronomers say it could put on a show starting as early as 10:30 p.m. ET Friday night and peaking early Saturday. Called the Camelopardalids, the shower is named after the giraffe constellation. It's expected to be visible in nearly all of the U.S., if skies are clear.

"No one has seen it before," NASA says, "but the shower could put on a show that would rival the prolific Perseid meteor shower in August."

The shower is new to Earthlings because its parent, Comet 209P/LINEAR, was only discovered 10 years ago. It passes through Earth's orbit of the sun once every five years or so, leaving a trail of debris behind it.

"North America is well placed for observing the May Camelopardalids," NASA says, adding that "observations are best from the northwestern United States and southern Canada."

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No fewer than three comedies about finding love in midlife open this week, all of them shiny with major stars. Is it time to stop whining about the dearth of romantic comedy for mature audiences? Only if you prefer quantity to quality.

I haven't seen Blended, a Warner Bros. picture featuring Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore (talk about milestones, Gertie's turning 40!) as failed blind-daters marooned in a recreation park with their respective kids. Leaving aside the fact that Sandler is a terrible fit with family fare (he was magnificently dark and dangerous in Punch-Drunk Love and Grown Ups 2), any movie that isn't Neighbors but boasts a song titled "You Suck" has to give prior pause.

The Love Punch, an overbearingly chipper caper from director Joel Hopkins, shoots for vintage screwball and misses for lack of wit. The plot is topical and mostly to be expected: A divorced couple repairs to France to recover lost pensions from horrid corporate fat cats and — following the usual recriminatory flimflam — rediscovers one another against scenic backdrops. Spark renewal ensues obediently after much falling about and some of the lamest banter I've heard since Sex and the City 2. The movie is only worth your time if you like looking at Emma Thompson (who's never looked English-rosier) and Pierce Brosnan (aging enviably as the rangy and craggy invariably do) putting in the best teamwork they can muster. Unfortunately, chemistry-wise, they appear to be playing brother and sister.

To its credit, Words and Pictures gets that there's no need to dispatch skittish lovers to exotic climes in the service of a satisfying midlife romance. In fact, you can pretty much jettison plot, if only because by that stage in life almost everyone is lugging enough emotional baggage to fill a whole archive of verbal swordplay. The action in most middle years is inner life and halting connections, which require a script incisive enough to get at the back and forth and to and fro of two people sidling up to love while backing away from the hurt they see barreling toward them again.

Still, you can have too much chat if the repartee is not up to snuff. The movie, which is set in a moderately posh Connecticut high school, is at least half an hour too long. The windy script, by former teacher Gerald Dipego, feels more like hard-working ping-pong than an escalating, sexy flirtation between two scarred arty types. It doesn't help that, ludicrously, they're facing off over which has more power, literature or fine art.

British actor Clive Owen is miscast as tweedy Eng. Lit. teacher Jack Marcus. His American accent keeps slipping, and he's too much the recessive hunk to play a once-acclaimed poet who never shuts up so as to drown the voices in his boozed-up head, the ones that tell him he's a failure and possibly a cheat.

Where on earth do movies get their teachers from? Jack addresses his students as "droids," inveighs against their use of social media and lack of critical skills, and brooks no alternative to his own fairly middlebrow tastes, which run to Updike and Ian McEwan. In the real world, where fee-hungry schools now cater to rather than instruct their pupils, his disdain would earn him a rap over the knuckles from the Dean. Here the Dean (a refreshingly cast Navid Negahban, who plays a terrorist on Homeland) is displeased because Jack is neglecting the groundbreaking literary mag he founded at the school. He's not too happy about the frequent benders, either.

So far, so familiar. Enter Juliette Binoche, though, and Words and Pictures wakes right up. Binoche has a face made for woe, which has gotten her into a trap playing beautiful, glum women to whom terrible things happen. And a bad thing has happened to Dina DeSanto, an abstract painter whose worsening rheumatoid arthritis has thrust her into teaching art at the school.

There, she enters into a transparently pre-coital war of words with Jack. Ludicrous as it is, Binoche's gusto (her own paintings are featured as Dina's work in progress) and her filthy bark of a laugh more than make up for Jack letting off recurrent steam with a double Scotch.

Words and Pictures is no more than a middling offering from Australian director Fred Schepisi's long and uneven oeuvre, which includes The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, A Cry in the Dark, Six Degrees of Separation and an underappreciated little gem, Last Orders. But it's worth seeing for Binoche's Dina, a woman who hangs onto her principles and her appetite for life even when it shows her careless disrespect. I'm not sure what she sees in Jack, but it's no stretch to guess what he sees in her.

For the first time in decades, researchers trying to develop a vaccine for malaria have discovered a new target they can use to attack this deadly and common parasite.

Finding a target for attack is a far cry from having a vaccine. And the history of malaria vaccines is littered with hopeful ideas that didn't pan out. Still, researchers in the field welcome this fresh approach.

Shots - Health News

A View From The Ground: Thailand Confronts Drug-Resistant Malaria

A coordinated attack on an outdoor market in northwest China has left 31 people dead, prompting promises of a vigorous government response. Bombs and cars were used to inflict damage on people at the market.

The early morning attack came in the Xinjiang region, where the government called it "a serious violent terrorist incident of a particularly vile nature," according to the AP. Previous terrorist attacks have been blamed on the area's Muslim Uighur minority.

The attackers struck a street market in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, where vendors had set up tables to sell vegetables, eggs, and other wares on a tree-lined street. From Shanghai, NPR's Frank Langfitt reports for our Newscast unit:

"Two off-road vehicles drove in opposite directions through a morning street market a little before 8 a.m. hitting pedestrians, according to Chinese media. The occupants tossed out explosive devices before they came to a stop and the vehicles exploded.

"Photos posted to Chinese social media showed the bodies of four people lying in the road who appeared to have been hit. An elderly woman sat next to them, dazed with blood streaming from her forehead.

"No groups have taken responsibility for the attack, which left more than 90 injured.

"On April 30, a bombing at the Urumqi train station killed one civilian. A militant group called the Turkistan Islamic Party claimed it was behind the bombing."

The air in Richwood, W.Va., is saturated with the smell of ramps — a pungent, garlicky, peppery smell so strong that it eclipses almost everything else in the room. Under this smell there's the faint aroma of bacon grease, in which the ramps have been fried. They're served with brown beans and ham.

As hundreds of people wait in line for their meal, local songwriter John Wyatt plays his Richwood Ramp Song, including this verse:

"If you've never had the chance

to partake of tasty ramps,

come on up to Richwood in the Spring.

Where there's ramps to say the least

and our annual ramson feast

and a great variety of other things."

This is the 76th Annual Feast of the Ramson or, as locals call it, the Ramp Feed. Ramps are found all over Appalachia, and they're the first wild food to appear in the forest each spring.

But the yearly tradition of harvesting and eating wild ramps in Richwood symbolizes renewal and hope for a town that's struggling.

Richwood is a lumber and coal town where those industries employ a lot less people than they used to. As jobs have gone, so has much of the population. But the festival marks an annual return for many Richwood natives.

Dana Johnson moved to Alabama decades ago, but he comes home for the festival each spring to make sure he gets his dose. "They are considered a spring tonic. They're good for you," Johnson says.

Many people like Johnson have left Richwood to find jobs or open new businesses out of state. Since 1980, the town has lost more than 40 percent of its population and a third of the remaining 2,000 or so residents live in poverty, according to data from the city and the U.S. Census Bureau. The Ramp Feed is one of the few moments in the year when this depressed small town feels like a thriving community again.

Out-of-towners like Kerry Comisky from East Hampton, Conn., also make the trip to the mountains of West Virginia. "This is my first time tasting ramps and my first time to the ramp festival," says Comisky. "I plan to come back every year."

Comisky's bought a wooden table and a wooden coffee grinder — and fresh ramps, of course — from Four Seasons Outfitters & Adventure Sports, just along the two-lane highway into town.

In addition to supplying the area with recreational equipment for enjoying the nearby Monongahela National Forest, the store's owner, Bruce Donaldson, is the largest ramp seller in Richwood. He ships about 20,000 pounds of ramps each year to buyers all over the U.S. and hires locals to forage them.

"My men, the men that work for me, are basically laid off in the wintertime. A lot of them's in the logging industry. A lot of them transfer to the coal fields," Donaldson says. "They'll work a month, they'll be laid off. Sometimes they'll have to go 100 miles to find their job."

Along the side of the road, many people are camped out, hawking the ramps they've harvested.

Tyler McCune, 11, is out with his uncles and stepfather, selling the wild leeks for $4 a pound. He wears faded jeans and a navy blue T-shirt. His blue eyes squint in the sun.

His grandfather and stepfather used to work in the sawmills, though his grandfather is now disabled and his stepfather is out of work. Each spring, they still dig ramps as a family. Some people here worry that ramps are being over harvested and there's debate over how much of a threat that is.

McCune says his grandfather taught him how to harvest them the right way, without being what he calls an "over-picker."

"Over-pickers, they dig every ramp they see," McCune says. "You can dig a lot of ramps, but you can at least leave some roots behind. That way they'll grow. And we'll be able to keep having this good ramp feed up here in Richwood everybody enjoys."

At the end of the one-day festival late last month, organizers estimate that the crowds have consumed about 1,700 pounds of wild ramps. The local chamber of commerce raised between $3,000 and $4,000. The money will help the city remove a few abandoned, derelict buildings and add more art and historic photos to the vacant storefronts in downtown Richwood.

It says something about Kentucky's Republican Senate primary that its most memorable aspect wasn't some fiery debate exchange between Sen. Mitch McConnell and challenger Matt Bevin, or any kind of clash like that. There was no debate.

Instead, it was a weird viral web video from the Senate minority leader's campaign that featured him smiling in different contexts. Naturally it was one endlessly mocked by late night comedians and parodied on the web — it also led to the coining of a new word: "McConnelling."

On Tuesday, McConnell made short work of Bevin, his Tea Party backed challenger. In honor of that famous Louisville native Muhammad Ali, let's just say McConnell knocked his opponent out in an early round before the Senate minority leader could even work up much of a sweat.

Judging by the punches thrown in their respective primary-night victory speeches, McConnell's November fight against Alison Lundergan Grimes, who easily won the Democratic primary, looks like its going to be punishing. The contest is now tied according to a recent Bluegrass Poll.

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

Ray Bradbury's Los Angeles house is for sale. The bright yellow three-bedroom house where the author of Fahrenheit 451 lived with his wife costs $1.495 million. As The Los Angeles Times' Carolyn Kellogg notes, Bradbury wrote about physical legacies in Fahrenheit 451: "Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there."

Ladies, try to contain yourselves: critic and lady-drool expert William Giraldi condemns what he calls women's "drooling enthusiasm for Fifty Shades [of Grey]" in an essay for The New Republic. He writes, "At least people are reading. You've no doubt heard that before. But we don't say of the diabetic obese, At least people are eating." He adds, "[R]omance novels, like racists, tend to be the same wherever you turn." I would posit that Oreos are the same wherever you turn, or IKEA furniture, but racists and romances come in a staggering variety of forms. (For thoughts on the richness of the romance genre, check out Bobbi Dumas' lovely essay for NPR. For a consideration of the varieties of racists, you can't do better than Ta-Nehisi Coates' recent essay on subtle versus overt racism.)

In an interview with Fresh Air's Terry Gross, Lost for Words author Edward St. Aubyn explains why he reads: "Books always had this very powerful effect on me because of some communication, somebody seeming even in a very symbolic or displaced way to understand what I was feeling. And I think that is the miracle of literature, is this private communication between one intelligence and another."

For the last few months, Philip Roth has been going on an extended farewell tour, announcing his last book, his last reading, and his last public appearance (sometimes more than once). The New Yorker's Andy Borowitz reports that Roth has also eaten his final sandwich: "Roth's retirement from sandwich eating, announced in an interview with a Dutch literary magazine, came as a surprise to the worlds of publishing and sandwiches."

Jane Fonda is writing a novel. Enough said.

Ty Cobb, miserable human being that he was, is still considered the greatest American athlete of his era. But did you know the Georgia Peach never played on a championship team? Still, when the first Baseball Hall of Fame elections were held, he got the most votes –– even more than Babe Ruth.

Ted Williams was never a champion, either. Nor Barry Sanders, Elgin Baylor, Dan Marino or many of the very best team athletes.

Recently, however — and especially with basketball — the opinion has swiveled up that a great star is somehow deficient if he didn't play on a championship team, didn't lead his team to victory.

Currently, the onus is on Kevin Durant of the Oklahoma City Thunder. Sure, he's the league MVP. But, somehow, even at the callow age of 25, his resume appears suspect because his team hasn't won a title. We went through the same nonsense a few years ago when a noble LeBron James was carrying a whole woebegone Cleveland team on his back, but couldn't win it all.

Of course, then LeBron goes to Miami with a couple of superb teammates and wins one championship, and then another, and somehow this certifies him to be spoken of in the same breath as Michael Jordan, who, of course, won six championships –– only none of them until Scottie Pippen showed up to ride shotgun. Really, though, would Jordan have been any less the player had Pippen never put on a Bulls uniform aside him?

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Despite Thailand's declaration of martial law in what the army said was an effort to end political unrest, most Thais were going about life as normal.

In many ways, it's business as usual for the country of 67 million, where the military has been in power at least as often as the elected politicians. The familiarity of the event led to some interesting scenes, with people taking selfies with soldiers on the streets of Bangkok on Tuesday.

Most of the population remembers the 2006 coup d'tat that drove out Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and many recall multiple times that the army moved out of the barracks and on to the streets. In all, there have been 11 successful coups since 1932 and another handful that failed.

This time though, Army Chief Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha insists what's happening is not a coup, but just a way to restore "peace and order for people from all sides." He said martial law would continue until "the country is safe and there is stability." One government aide called the army's move "half a coup d'etat."

Time, however, writes that "despite military denials, the imposition of martial law across Thailand has been criticized by government supporters as yet another putsch."

Pavin Chachavalpongpun, associate professor at the Centre for Southeast Asian Studies at Kyoto University, is quoted by Time as saying, "I think you can call this a coup ... because this is about taking away power from the people, taking control of the political situation and human rights."

For many people who sympathize with the opposition yellow-shirt movement, martial law represents a victory of sorts. For six months, many campaigned for the ouster of Thaksin's sister, Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, and the leadership of the yellow-shirt movement strongly hinted that the military should topple her.

Although the country's Constitutional Court dismissed Yingluck and nine of her cabinet ministers earlier this month, the rump of her Pheu Thai party government remained in power.

On the other hand, Yingluck's supporters — many of whom come from the country's poor and rural northeast — seem to be taking the army at its word. There's another dynamic: many of the enlisted soldiers stationed on the street also hail from the northeast.

Following the army's move, Thailand's acting Prime Minister Niwatthamrong Boonsongphaisan called for new elections, originally set for July, to take place instead on August 3. He issued a statement saying: "The government wishes the same for national peace and hopes that the martial law is imposed by way of peaceful means and equality with no violence."

"This action of the Royal Thai Army must be under the principles of constitution and democracy with the king as head of state," he said.

Niwatthamrong later said he was "talking to the army chief's side and there are many pressing issues we need to discuss, including elections and reform."

Gather round, children, and I will tell you of a dark time. A cruel time.

It was a time when reality dating shows were even worse than they are now.

Little remains of what was once a rich tapestry of such programming, if by "rich" you mean "smelly" and by "tapestry" you mean "garbage heap." Back in the day, Joe Millionaire featured a poor guy posing as a rich guy. Married By America resulted in nobody getting married. Monica Lewinsky hosted a show called Mr. Personality where the guys wore masks. Average Joe ended with a climactic twist where the woman confessed the terrible secret that she had once dated Fabio. (True story. True story.) Love Cruise and Temptation Island and Paradise Hotel and Eden Something Something all gave people opportunities to walk around in bikinis and dream the ultimate dream: of one day being able to get into a sweaty nightclub populated by other reality-show refugees on a Friday night.

Gradually, like a surging tide of fetid water with rotted fish floating in it, this particular fad slowly faded. All that was left of this era, the single gleaming salmon judged marginally safe to eat, was The Bachelor franchise, which totters along drunkenly, both figuratively and literally, as its participants engage in a sort of premarital trial by combat in which the prize is a bland and/or terrible person delivered to you, caked in makeup, on a silver tray made of the internet.

But with summer approaching, Fox has decided to revisit that terrible old time, much as one might decide to become a historical reenactor specializing in plagues of locusts, with I Wanna Marry 'Harry,' a show that posits that women stupid enough to believe that Prince Harry is trying to find a wife on a Fox reality show are nevertheless interesting enough to treat as humans rather than props. We are told that he is just Matt, an average guy, but the women are led to believe he is Prince Harry.

It should be said first that I Wanna Marry Harry is, above all else, patently and ferociously fake — an accusation often leveled against reality television of all kinds despite being deserved to varying degrees. There are, after all, Bachelor couples who got married and had kids. That show is, let's say, 70 percent fake. I Wanna Marry Harry is about 112 percent fake, with the extra 12 percent coming from the fake butler who's been piled on top of the fake dating — just like Joe Millionaire's butler was.

Consider the very idea that 12 real human women who, in many cases, profess an affinity for Prince Harry could "believe" this story. Could "believe," that is, that a member of a royal family that is historically so private that the very idea of their wearing underpants would probably get you thrown out of the country if you mentioned it in print would suddenly decide to find a romantic partner by asking Fox to go round up some models and actresses and model-actresses. (Plus a couple of special education teachers and other brains-y types who are probably there to be disapproving of everyone else.)

Could "believe" that while royal spouses are probably vetted with a vigor normally reserved for Supreme Court nominees, the family (gazillion-dollar industry that it is) was willing to substitute bikini strutting.

Could "believe" that people who prefer not to be seen in public acknowledging they have a nose, let alone picking it, would send a young fellow who could under not implausible circumstances become king off to rub elbows and other parts with a bunch of fame-seeking Americans.

Gaze upon these women, and you will realize that even these women — even these women — cannot possibly believe such a thing. They can only be in on the joke. Only. No, this is not even the bent and massaged reality of The Bachelor; it is pure fantasy. And the fantasy is not romance, as the show might have you believe. The fantasy is comeuppance for vain, beautiful, terrible, greedy women. Oh, sure, Matt may wind up picking one of them and confessing he's not a royal, and she may say, "Oh, that's okay!" and leap into his arms. But the real fantasy here lies in week after week watching as woman after woman reveals herself to be a grubbing, grasping, infantile harpy for wanting what the show is dangling in front of her, as well as a moron for believing it's the truth.

Believe it or not, there were bad old days of reality dating shows, and this is what they were like. Fake, cheap, witless and mean, in a way that makes The Bachelor look like Anna Karenina. This is woman-hating television for women, times 10, turned up to eleven, with a side of fries. Summer will provide opportunity after opportunity to enjoy frivolity made with substantially less malice than this, not to mention frivolity that doesn't immediately create the sense that Nickelback's "How You Remind Me" is about to come on the radio.

Let's start with the basics: Stepan Bandera was born in 1909 in what is now western Ukraine. In 1959, the Soviet Union's KGB poisoned Bandera with cyanide and he died in Munich, West Germany.

Between those two dates, black and white quickly fades to gray.

In western Ukraine, many see him as a freedom fighter who battled domination by the Soviet Union and other European powers before and during World War II. They see themselves as the heirs to Bandera's struggle.

In eastern Ukraine, Bandera has entirely different connotations. Pro-Russian separatists see him as an ally of Hitler, a fascist who was responsible for killing tens of thousands.

This is no dusty, historical debate. His name has been on Ukrainian lips since political turmoil began shaking the country last winter. More than a half-century after his death, he is one of the most important and divisive characters in Ukraine's current drama.

"Everybody knows Bandera took the side of fascist Germany during World War Two," said a musician named Valery, when asked about Bandera in the eastern city of Donetsk.

So which was he: Freedom fighter or fascist? Hero or villain?

"There are few topics in contemporary European modern history which are so divisive and (contentious) as the status of Stepan Bandera," says historian Per Rudling of the University of Lund, in Sweden.

In the 1930s, Bandera fought for Ukrainian independence. Ukrainian lands were divided between huge, powerful neighbors. Germany, Poland, and the Soviet Union all saw Ukraine as a useful tool.

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Chinese officials say that charges against military staff for hacking into U.S. computers are an example of hypocrisy, citing U.S. surveillance and wiretapping. The foreign ministry summoned the U.S. ambassador to complain about the charges Monday.

"From 'WikiLeaks' to the 'Snowden' case, U.S. hypocrisy and double standards regarding the issue of cyber-security have long been abundantly clear," the defense ministry said on its website, according to Agence France-Presse.

The U.S. said Monday that it has filed criminal charges against five officials from Unit 61398, a division of the country's army that has previously been tied to hacking operations. The Justice Department issued FBI "Wanted" posters with names and photos of the men, in a move widely seen as a bold attempt to embarrass the Chinese. The U.S. says the men hacked into computer systems of U.S. companies to steal trade secrets.

From Shanghai, NPR's Frank Langfitt reports:

"China's government has angrily denied it backed commercial espionage against the U.S., and said attacks out of America in the last couple of months had seized control of more than a million computers here. "

"Revelations by Edward Snowden about National Security Agency spying have made it harder for the U.S. to press its case.

"In March, leaked documents showed the NSA had hacked Huawei, the Chinese telecom giant. One goal was to find any links between Huawei and China's People's Liberation Army.

"The U.S. insists it does not share intelligence gathered in such operations with American firms. But most Chinese don't believe that."

The first person to sail single-handed and non-stop around the world has joined others in urging the U.S. Coast Guard to resume a search for four missing British yachtsman who disappeared aboard a 40-foot sailboat in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean last week.

Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, who completed his record-breaking circumnavigation in 1969, has joined the families of the crew in asking the U.S. to restart the search for the crew of the Cheeki Rafiki after the Coast Guard called it off on Sunday saying it believed the possibility of finding survivors was remote.

The boat's charter company said it believed the four men were adrift in a life raft and that the Coast Guard had given up the search too soon, a view shared by Knox-Johnston. An online petition has also been started calling for the resumption of the search.

"We stow life rafts where they are easily accessible they have also got hydrostatic release valves on them if the boat sinks they automatically release them and let them float to the surface, everyone trains for this, every yachtsmen goes and does a sea survival course," Knox-Johnston told BBC Radio 5. "This was an experienced crew they almost certainly would have done that, they would have known the score."

The Cheeki Rafiki's skipper contacted charter company Stormforce Coaching on Thursday, saying the crew was "keeping the situation stable," the firm's principal, Doug Innes, said in a statement.

"Unfortunately we lost contact during the early hours of Friday morning and we believe the crew abandoned to the life raft," Innes said.

"Search and Rescue authorities were mobilised and a mixture of Canadian and US aircraft along with merchant vessels searched throughout Friday and Saturday. Although the search efforts coordinated by Boston were exceptional we are devastated that search has been called off so soon after the abandonment to a life-raft.'

On Saturday, a cargo ship reported seeing an upturned hull in the same general vicinity the men were last reported – about half-way between the U.S. East Coast and the Azores Islands.

CV Maersk Kure photographed hull of capsized sailboat #cheekirafiki | 2 PLB's (406MHz) activated. #saveoursailors #UK pic.twitter.com/DiwsyTFBmB

— Jamestown (@CifJamestown) May 19, 2014

Like bacon or cupcakes before it, the waffle is enjoying a surge in popularity, showing up everywhere from the Taco Bell Waffle Taco to Chicken and Waffles potato chips.

But fame has its price, and before the waffle hits rock bottom and checks itself into rehab for exhaustion, let's try the White Castle Waffle Breakfast Sandwich.

Miles: A waffle sandwich with bacon. The only thing that could make this sandwich more trendy was if it was squeezed into a pair of skinny jeans.

Robert: Waffles, fried chicken patty, bacon and artificial maple syrup flavoring: It's the four major food groups of my childhood!

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In 2008, Nathan Deuel and his wife packed up their things and moved to Saudi Arabia. That country, famous for being largely closed to westerners, was newly open to handful of journalists. The couple moved to Riyadh. A year later, in 2009, their daughter was born.

Then came the Arab Spring. In the midst of political convulsions, and with an infant, the family decided to stay in the Middle East, even when Deuel's wife, foreign correspondent Kelly McEvers, became NPR's Baghdad Bureau chief. As the region erupted in revolution, Deuel moved with their young daughter to Istanbul, then to Beirut.

Nathan Deuel's memoir of his time in the Middle East is titled Friday Was the Bomb: Five Years In The Middle East. He spoke with the host of Weekend All Things Considered, Arun Rath.