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But within the span of one year, the Grahams would lose both of their sons to very different battles. In the decade since their sons died, Carol and Mark — now a retired general — have fought to prevent military suicides.

Dreazen tells NPR's Arun Rath that the Grahams, who were involved throughout the book-writing process, were nervous that people "would read it and think of them as having failed their sons in some way."

"But their reaction was, ultimately, if a few people read this and it may change them, then they're willing to have that risk out there," he says.

Interview Highlights

On the deaths of Mark and Carol Graham's sons, Kevin and Jeff

Kevin had been battling depression most of his life. When he was in college, he was diagnosed, formally and clinically, and put on medication and his mood stabilized. Kevin had been chosen for a particularly elite part of the ROTC program. So, by all measures, he looked like he was doing perfectly.

But then abruptly he took himself off the medication. He worried that, because of the stigma that exists in the military, that if they discovered he was taking medication, they'd boot him out. So he stopped taking it. And that was cataclysmic because within a matter of weeks his mood had gone back to the same dark place that it had been when he was younger.

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Retired Army Maj. Gen. Mark Graham speaks at a PTSD and brain injury conference at Fort Campbell, Ky., in 2012. The slide behind him shows his sons Kevin, who died from suicide, and Jeff, who died in combat in Iraq. Kristin M. Hall/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Kristin M. Hall/AP

Retired Army Maj. Gen. Mark Graham speaks at a PTSD and brain injury conference at Fort Campbell, Ky., in 2012. The slide behind him shows his sons Kevin, who died from suicide, and Jeff, who died in combat in Iraq.

Kristin M. Hall/AP

And on this one horrible night, he went to Melanie, his sister ... and said to her, "You have a lot of potential, you're this amazing person, don't ever forget that you have this potential." She had no idea what he was talking about and went back to sleep.

In the morning, he was supposed to have met Jeff, his older brother. He hadn't shown up so Jeff got a bit worried. He called Melanie and asked her to check. She saw this closed door — his door was usually not closed — opened it, and had this absolutely horrific sight of seeing her brother hanging from a ceiling fan.

And, a year later, Jeff, who by this point was an Army officer, was on a foot patrol on a bridge that he was leading his men across. He ... spotted something attached to the bridge, something gleaming, and turned around to tell them to stay back. And as he did, it exploded. Had he not turned to warn his men, probably most if not all of the platoon would have been killed.

So he died in this trademark way that you'd imagine a hero dying. And Kevin died very differently. And the way that the two boys' deaths were treated is what's haunted Mark and Carol for the rest of their lives.

On the different responses to the two brothers' deaths

When Jeff was killed, he was one of the first people from Kentucky to die in battle. So the Kentucky State Legislature had a resolution on the floor to honoring him. Some of the flags were put down at half-mast. There were thousands of people who were lining the road on the way to the cemetery where he was buried in Kentucky. People would come up to Mark and Carol and talk about Jeff, talk about Jeff.

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Mark Graham On Reducing Suicide Rates In The Military

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Kevin had died a year earlier. People didn't mention Kevin. ... The question of how to bury him was very different. They were a very religious family, and members of the Graham family said, "Kevin killed himself. He died a sinner, so we should not bury him in a Christian cemetery." ... Ultimately the family had a fairly small service ... it was about a hundred people, whereas for Jeff it was over a thousand.

On how Mark Graham, when he served as the commanding general at Fort Carson, fought the stigmatization of suicide and depression in the military

He arrives at a base that had this giant scandal of murders by soldiers, a horrific suicide rate, and tries to figure out, how can I make this better? And the things he did were revolutionary, which is kind of sad because they shouldn't have been. So, for instance, he would openly talk about PTSD, what it had done to his family, his own sadness. He would cry in front of other soldiers, which generals don't do. And for a lot of people at the base, first they were thinking, "Who's this softie, who's this weak man?" And only later did they think that's actually a sign of tremendous strength.

More About Fort Carson's Problems

Before Mark Graham became the commanding general at Fort Carson, NPR investigated the fort's mental health care problems. Hear the six-month series here.

Series: Mental Health Care at Fort Carson May 29, 2007

He set up a phone line, later replicated across the Army, where people could call any hour of the day and night. The phone would be answered by a sergeant he was very close to and she would get the message to him. In one particular case, a mother called and said, 'I can't reach my son, I'm worried he's going to kill himself.' The sergeant who took the call called Mark at home. They immediately had the soldier taken out of his barracks, put him into therapy, and he survived.

“ The things [Mark Graham] did were revolutionary, which is kind of sad because they shouldn't have been.

- Author Yochi Dreazen

The other thing they did — and this was the biggest of the changes he made and to my mind the most important — he created what called an Embedded Behavioral Health Team. Basically the idea was take a clinical health worker and have them be assigned to the same brigade all the time. So when this brigade deploys to Iraq or Afghanistan, this doctor goes with them. When this brigade comes home, this doctor goes with them.

The idea was [that] people will begin to trust this doctor. They won't be seen this alien person where if you see them you're going to be ostracized and seen as weak. This was someone who was part of the team. This was something that began at Fort Carson. Mark was the first person to sign off on it and now it's used across the Army.

Read an excerpt of The Invisible Front

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In Gone Girl, Ben Affleck's character might be a murderer — or he may be an innocent guy in a bad situation. In the new movie, based on the novel, he plays a man who finds himself at the center of a media circus after his wife disappears and suspicion falls on him.

Affleck, who directed, produced and starred in the Academy Award-winning film Argo, and will be taking on the role of Batman in 2016, has had a prolific 30-year career in acting. But he saysGone Girl demanded something new.

"Performance-wise it wasn't something that I've had to do, I don't think ever, as an actor," he tells NPR's Arun Rath. "I haven't done many movies where there was a sort of thriller component like this."

Affleck tells Rath it was freeing for him to play such a murky character, and that working with director David Fincher was an education. He also addresses the 2003 flop Daredevil, and gives a shout-out to public media.

Interview Highlights

On the freedom he had with his character in Gone Girl

The really liberating thing was ... usually when you play a protagonist and you're a lead in the movie there are sort of some unspoken rules. You know, you have to be a good person, you have to be a leader, you have to be smarter than everyone in the room, you have to kind of ... give people steely glares and that kind of thing.

And in this case, we weren't encumbered by that at all. The whole idea of likeability was sort of thrown out of the window. And I thought that was really exciting and liberating as an actor because you didn't know where this guy was gonna go.

On the transition back to acting after directing his own films

When you're working with a director you really trust, who you really admire, it's actually quite relaxing. ... David [Fincher] is the sort of prime example of that because he really is a master. I mean, Social Network and Se7en — he's made movies that I think are really modern masterpieces. ... Not only did I trust David, but it was a chance for me to learn from him as a director and to steal some tools from his box.

On whether he has any trepidation about starring in the upcoming Batman, given his regrets about the 2003 film Daredevil

Indeed I have regrets about Daredevil. I have regrets about all the movies that I don't think were executed properly. ... Look, if I thought we were remaking Daredevil, I'd be out there picketing myself ... and that goes for other movies as well that I haven't been happy with. You know, I'm hard on myself and I have exacting standards and I want to do excellent work and I don't always succeed, but I think you have to start out with that drive.

[Batman] was written by Chris Terrio, who wrote Argo, who's not a comic guy. And it's directed by Zach Snyder, who's a incredibly magical sort of visual stylist who's steeped in the comic world. And you have this sandwich of talents. I felt very confident about it. ... I thought it would be nice to make one of these movies really, really good.

On getting his start in public broadcasting

I started at 7 years old working ... on a television show called Voyage of the Mimi, which is an educational show about math and science that was part documentary and part drama. And it was produced at WGBH in Boston and I did it when I was 7, then 9, then 10, then hosting the documentaries. ... It gave me my start ,and to this day people come up to me and go, "You know, I had to watch Voyage of the Mimi in sixth grade." I'm not sure they're grateful, exactly, but it is how I got going.

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Violence echoed in Hong Kong's streets Saturday, as clashes between pro-democracy protesters and counter-protesters continued, with Occupy Central organizers saying their supporters have been attacked by pro-Beijing groups that include gang members. City officials say the streets need to be clear by Monday.

Discussions between the protesters and the government broke down after the violence. And with thousands of protesters still in the streets, some are fearing that a crackdown might be imminent.

"Things can turn very drastic within the next couple of hours," Democratic Party member and Hong Kong University associate professor Dr Law Chi-kwong said in an email quoted by the South China Morning Post. "I am begging everyone I know to leave."

One week after the mostly student-led protests began, violence flared Friday and Saturday in incidents that involved "what appeared to be a coordinated group of pro-Beijing protesters," as we reported yesterday.

Police arrested 19 people during the recent clashes, which also left 18 people injured.

From Hong Kong, NPR's Anthony Kuhn reports:

"Pro-democracy protesters wearing yellow ribbons and pro-government protesters wearing blue ones argued and tussled again in the working-class Mong Kok district. The counter-protesters say the past six days of demonstrations have caused unacceptable chaos and economic losses to Hong Kong.

"Pro-democracy protesters allege that the government has hired criminal gangs to attack them. Police have confirmed that some of those arrested have links to organized crime. As a result, yesterday, protest leaders called off planned talks with government officials."

The protesters say they want to replace Hong Kong Chief Executive CY Leung in open elections that aren't influenced by Beijing. Leung says he'll stay in his post.

In a speech today, Leung condemned last night's violence and said the streets must be clear of demonstrations by Monday.

"The government and the police have the responsibility and resolution to take all actions necessary to resume social order and let the government and all 7 million citizens resume their normal work and life," Leung said, according to a translation by the South China Morning Post.

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People watch as pro-democracy demonstrators gather for a Saturday night rally in Hong Kong. Hong Kong has been plunged into its most serious political crisis since its 1997 handover. PHILIPPE LOPEZ/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption PHILIPPE LOPEZ/AFP/Getty Images

People watch as pro-democracy demonstrators gather for a Saturday night rally in Hong Kong. Hong Kong has been plunged into its most serious political crisis since its 1997 handover.

PHILIPPE LOPEZ/AFP/Getty Images

Hong Kong protests

If it weren't for American manufacturing, I wouldn't be here today.

Literally.

A century ago, my grandfather moved from Poland to Youngstown, Ohio, to work in a steel mill. At the time, Ohio factories were cranking out steel slabs, tires and cars — building a mountain of wealth that the next generation could climb. And the generation after that.

But what will happen in the 21st century? Is the path that led to higher ground blocked now?

The answer is complicated.

That's because, on the one hand, U.S. manufacturing is booming. Customers everywhere want our aircraft, electrical equipment, engines, metal products, chemicals and much more.

So in dollar terms, output is at record levels — worth more than $2 trillion. Back in 1964, remembered as a glorious time in our industrial history, factories generated only about $1.3 trillion in inflation-adjusted dollars.

Only two other rivals can play in the $2 trillion ballpark: China, which has about four times as many people, and the entire European Union, with more than a half-billion people in 28 countries.

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Still, Americans worry. They have seen factory jobs disappear at a breathtaking pace. In 1979, nearly 20 million Americans made goods for a living. Today, only about 12 million are still standing on factory floors.

As a portion of the economy, manufacturing has shriveled. When my parents got married in 1952, manufacturing made up nearly 28 percent of the economy. Now, it's about 12 percent.

And the U.S. manufacturing position in the world has shifted dramatically. The U.S. share of global manufacturing has dropped from about 30 percent in the early 1980s to just about 17 percent today, according to a Congressional Research Service report.

So we wonder: What is the long-term outlook?

To find answers, NPR will be visiting factories and talking to experts over the next several weeks. The series, called American Made: The New Manufacturing Landscape, kicked off this week when NPR's David Greene reported on his visit to Rochester, N.Y.

And Friday is National Manufacturing Day, an annual celebration backed by trade groups. They have scheduled about 1,500 events, such as factory tours and equipment demonstrations.

So this is a good time to reflect on manufacturing. That Congressional research study turned up these points to ponder:

Manufacturing output has grown more rapidly in this country than in Europe or Japan during the past decade. But China and South Korea have been outpacing us in growth.

Factory wages are still good here, at about $27 an hour. But workers earn more in some other advanced countries, including Germany, Canada, France and Japan.

In the United States, development dollars mostly go into advanced sectors, like electronic instruments and pharmaceuticals. In other countries, the R&D focus is on more mundane sectors, such as machinery and motor vehicles.

Overall, most experts are bullish about U.S. manufacturing, citing these factors:

Energy. The shale-gas revolution has cut natural gas prices by two-thirds since 2008. That cost advantage is making U.S. manufacturing far more competitive.

Technology. Wireless intelligence and data analytics are giving manufacturers better control over production.

Additive manufacturing. In the past, manufacturing involved a lot of cutting and grinding, wasting both materials and energy. With an additive process, manufacturers can layer on materials to build goods, leaving little waste.

The bad news for workers is that virtually everyone expects more of them to be replaced by equipment and software. Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers summed up the consensus view in a recent essay, saying: "There are good reasons to expect an uptick in the next few years in manufacturing employment. But the long-term trend is inexorable ... technology is allowing the production of far more output with far fewer people."

I grew up surrounded by mills, mines and factories. I have covered manufacturing for decades, and I must agree with Summers. I know that if a poorly educated person like my grandfather showed up at a steel mill today, he wouldn't get a foot in the door.

Modern mills need metallurgists, electrical engineers and quality-control managers — not laborers.

For workers with the right skills, the economic ladder at a steel mill reaches higher than ever, up into an impressive, whirling workplace where computers, robots and automated equipment create wealth.

But the lowest rungs have been sawed off. And finding ways to make sure families like mine can still rise up will be the greatest economic challenge of the 21st century.

manufacturing

[Note: This post discusses plot points and story lines from previous seasons.]

The first episode of the final season for FX's biker drama Sons of Anarchy begins with a familiar scene: gang leader/hero Jackson "Jax" Teller brutalizing a man in jail, interspersed with images of his gang and family living life — including his mother caring for his sons — with a mournful tune playing in the background.

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Airing on Tuesday, Sept. 9, it's a bracing way to bring viewers up to speed since the show's action-packed season finale last year. That's when Jax's wife was brutally beaten and stabbed to death in their home — by Jax's mother, in a crime that was covered up from everyone by another member of the gang.

But the opening is also a potent reminder of just how Sons of Anarchy has managed to become one of FX's highest-rated series. (The episode where Jax's wife was killed by Katey Sagal's Gemma Teller was the second-highest-rated episode of the show's history). FX reports that the sixth season averaged 5 million key viewers (age 18 to 49) — and 3.6 million of them are men.

Sons of Anarchy works, in part, because it's designed as a soap opera for guys, wrapping emotional stories of family love, betrayal, sacrifice, scandal and murder in a mix of high-adrenaline outlaw action.

For every scene with a shooting or beating — and there are a lot — there are also moments of misguided love, tangled loyalties, complicated friendships and deadly family politics.

"If Jax finds out, not only will he have lost a wife, he'll lose his mother," Gemma Teller tells Juice, the gang member who covered up her crime. "I'm the only thread holding this family together ... as selfish as it seems, keeping our truth away from him is the right thing to do."

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The poster for Sons of Anarchy's seventh and final season features Charlie Hunnam as Jackson "Jax" Teller. FX Networks hide caption

itoggle caption FX Networks

The poster for Sons of Anarchy's seventh and final season features Charlie Hunnam as Jackson "Jax" Teller.

FX Networks

Sounds like something you'd expect from Helena Cassadine, the murderous matriarch on General Hospital who killed her own daughter in one story line.

Fans sometimes make a different comparison, likening Sons to Shakespeare. There's some truth to the analogy — especially when Ron Perlman played Clay Morrow, a guy who secretly had killed Jax's dad to marry his mom and take over running the gang. Back then, the show often felt like a Harley-fueled version of Hamlet.

Except Jax never wanted to kill himself, only those who stood in the way of taking care of himself, his family and his gang. Eventually, that list included Morrow, whom Jax killed last season.

Sons of Anarchy also humanizes characters often depicted as degenerate villains in other stories. The biker club sells guns to other dangerous gangs; their side businesses also include a porn video studio and brothels, but the show keeps viewers rooting for these characters by riding a fine line between outlaw and sleazebag. You almost never see them killing someone who isn't somehow involved in the criminal world or law enforcement.

It's a sometimes idealized vision of the outlaw life, where standup guys are judged by their loyalty to family and crew, absent some of the sordid realities in a life of crime.

These are also working-class guys. As I noted in 2011, FX has had a suite of high-quality shows that make antiheroes of working-class white guys in ways you don't see elsewhere in television, through programs including Justified, Louie and the long-gone, firefighter-focused black comedy Rescue Me.

The Sons crew members aren't driving big cars or living in nice suburban subdivisions; they're "average guys" who just happen to make a living selling guns, porn and prostitutes.

The show also has its own version of soap opera melodrama and unbelievable leaps of logic. Charlie Hunnam's Jax Teller has gotten away with more crimes than 10 guys on America's Most Wanted, and seeing him avoid suspicion in his wife's murder is yet another turn to stretch the bounds of logic.

Make no mistake: This is a story geared toward men, focused on fathers and sons, male bonding and loyalty, with an FX-level splash of violence and sexuality. The show's strongest female character, Gemma Teller, wound up killing Jax's wife Tara — the only other major strong, independent female character.

As this seventh season opens, Jax is more dangerous than ever, seeking revenge for the death of his wife by planning an elaborate scheme against the crime family he assumes murdered her.

Early in the show's run, tension in the series sprang from whether Jax would figure out that his mother and stepfather conspired to murder his father. Now, as the show spins out its last season — with guest stars like Marilyn Manson, Lea Michele, Courtney Love and Malcolm-Jamal Warner along for the ride — the question of whether he'll discover that his mother killed his only love hangs over everything.

Like many good soap operas, it all comes down to the good son and the bad parent — even when the story is laced with bullets and biker gangs.

Brazilians head to the polls Sunday in one of the most exciting elections in recent history there. The presidential race pits two women against each other — a first for the South American country.

Candidate Marina Silva, if elected, would make history by being the first Afro-Brazilian president. But first she must beat incumbent Dilma Rousseff, a former Marxist guerrilla who was tortured under the dictatorship in Brazil.

It's been an election season filled with shocks. The presidential candidate Eduardo Campos was killed in a plane crash in mid-August, thrusting Silva, his vice presidential running mate, into the top spot on the socialist ticket. And suddenly what looked like an easy re-election for Rousseff got very competitive and very negative.

Rousseff is fighting for her political life and hasn't pulled any punches. One campaign ad shows a greedy cabal of businessmen literally taking food off a working class family's plate. It alleges Silva's plan to make Brazil's central bank independent will hand over its power to big business.

Silva responded with an impassioned spot of her own, talking about growing up hungry and poor in the Amazon and saying she wasn't going to stoop to Rousseff's scare tactics.

There is a third candidate, Aecio Neves. He's from the right and is in third place, but has recently been moving up in the polls. None of the candidates seem to have the required 50 percent to win outright, and so the election will — it seems — go to a second round.

Everyone is required by law to vote in Brazil and debates can get rather heated, as we discovered when we visited the humble, tin-roofed house of the dos Santos family.

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Leila dos Santos says last time she voted for Rousseff, but this time she wants to vote for Silva.

"When we voted Dilma the first time, we expected more, I expected more, for the country," Leila says.

Leila's 65-year-old mother Ana says she is going to vote for Rousseff and her governing Workers' Party. She says she appreciates the social programs like Bolsa Familia, which gives cash to families in return for sending children to school.

"She looked after the poor a lot," Ana says. "What would happen to the poorer northeast of the country if not for the money she gives?"

Leila's younger sister Aurea is going to vote for the rightist candidate, Aecio Neves. She thinks Rousseff's party, known as the PT, and all of its recent corruption scandals have shown they have been in power too long.

But under Rousseff's party Brazil boomed. Her predecessor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, enacted policies that raised millions onto the lowest rung of the middle class. People like the dos Santos family are more interested in services like health and education than poverty reduction.

Leila says she wants to be able to rely on the country's health system but she can't.

"We have a basic health unit in the community here, but it never has a pediatrician, never has a doctor," she says.

And that's why this election is too close to call.

The neighborhood of Jardim Angela in Sao Paulo's south was formed a dozen years ago when people from the poor northeast of the country invaded the land there and built makeshift homes. Now, it's a proper neighborhood with a community center and paved roads, its history a reflection of the dramatic changes in Brazil in the last decade.

This neighborhood was staunchly in Rousseff's camp in 2010. They helped elect her into office, but now people here have splintered.

"Dilma Rousseff is ending her term with Brazil in much worse shape than when she received it," says David Fleischer, a professor of political science at the University of Brasilia.

Brazil's economy is stagnating, and the same party has ruled for 12 years. People are tired and want change, Fleischer says.

But more recent polls show that Rousseff's negative campaign ads have been working. Her popularity has been steadily climbing and her message that change can be as frightening as it is enticing is resonating.

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Brazil

It turns out the Secret Service isn't too good at protecting the White House, and maybe one reason is that we don't want it to be.

Secret Service agents are famously willing to sacrifice their own lives to protect the president and his family. They are also trained to take the lives of others in defense of their protectees.

But are they equally prepared to do either of those things for the White House itself? Should it be policy for the armed agents around 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to use deadly force whether the president or his family is present or not?

Most Americans see the White House as a symbol of the nation, like the Capitol or the flag. Most do not realize how exposed the physical reality of that symbol is, situated in the center of a major urban metropolis with an antiquated security fence just yards from the front door.

It is surely possible for the Secret Service to shoot anyone who jumps or squeezes through that fence, but in recent months that would have included at least one errant toddler — whose story was told in the media as a cute back-page "bright."

It is also surely possible to electrify the fence or its immediate vicinity, but that would very likely lead to incidents of an unpleasant nature — and all the predictable reaction in the media and beyond.

In either event, the Secret Service would be pilloried as either inept or trigger-happy. The president would be portrayed as besieged, unfeeling, remote. Even the signs on the fence warning of lethal consequences would be a ghastly image.

In 1995, a truck bomber in Oklahoma City killed 168 people and leveled a major federal building. In response, the Secret Service succeeded in closing Pennsylvania Avenue to vehicles, lest a copycat park a truck within yards of the North Portico of the White House.

But even now, it is possible for pedestrians to get close enough that a sprinter can cross the grass and enter the building. That is what 42-year-old Omar Gonzalez was able to do on a Friday night. The Washington Post revealed this week that Gonzalez got to the Green Room on the ground floor before being subdued. That contradicted earlier reports of his being stopped in the entryway.

All this led to the resignation of Secret Service Director Julia Pierson, following an animated House hearing Tuesday on the incident. Member after member denounced the officials of the agency, proclaiming their shock and dismay. Surely they spoke for millions of their constituents, who usually rank the Secret Service among the federal agencies they are most inclined to trust.

Yes, the agents could have shot him. They also could have released trained dogs that might have taken him down. But that would have meant an ugly story about the treatment of a man carrying nothing more threatening than a knife, as was noted at the hearing by former Secret Service Director W. Ralph Basham.

"We could be here having a very different conversation," said Basham, making the point that decisions about security at the White House were not and had never been the province of his agency alone.

The Secret Service has never been able to guarantee the safety of the president. That point has been stated and restated countless times. Anyone willing to exchange his own life for that of the president has always had, and still has, at least a theoretical chance of succeeding.

The recent revelations about the jumper and of an unknown gunman hitting the White House in November 2011 are disturbing and should prompt a review of agency policy and practice — and some soul-searching on the part of all concerned.

But there are also sound reasons behind the reluctance to build an impregnable White House. Draconian measures such as closing Pennsylvania Avenue to pedestrians or barricading Lafayette Square park across the street would be undesirable and unattractive — offensive to the national attitude toward the White House as "the people's house."

The president obviously must be protected. But what politician wants to be seen as living within a fortress in a state of siege?

In ancient Roman times, top generals hand-picked a few legionnaires to guard their own personal headquarters. The HQ was called a praetor, and the protectors became known as praetorian guards. These elite units grew in size and importance until Caesar Augustus made them his official protectors.

Over the next three centuries the praetorians became a key element in Rome's recurring power struggles, sometimes protecting emperors and sometimes assassinating them. Since then the term praetorian has been used to connote a protective inner circle that either grows too powerful or otherwise becomes a problem.

The Secret Service is surely a far cry from such a force. But allowing armed guards all the leeway they might require to do their job perfectly can have unintended consequences as well.

In the countries of West Africa where Ebola is taking its heaviest toll, one special concern is for the thousands of children whose parents have died from the illness.

According to UNICEF, at least 3,700 children in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone have lost one or both parents to Ebola since the outbreak's start.

“ Once the little boy was taken to the survivor's home, the community around refused to let the boy stay with her because of the fear, because of the stigma, that the virus could come into the community.

- Andrew Brooks, UNICEF

The figures are climbing, says Andrew Brooks, UNICEF's head of child protection for West and Central Africa. In Liberia alone, where he's currently based, Ebola has robbed about 2,000 children of their parents.

One particular case struck him.

On Sunday, he says, "I was called to one of the Ebola treatment units urgently. There was a 4-year-old boy there whose mother was admitted a couple of days before. She had arrived in such a terrible state that [social workers] could get very little information from her. All they had was the mother's name, two cell phone numbers, and the boy's name — not even his age."

The woman died. Her son was tested for Ebola, and the test result was negative.

"So, there was a need to get the boy quickly out of the Ebola treatment unit," Brooks says. Treatment centers are rough places for children, and also are filled with the potential for infection.

Government social workers found a survivor, considered likely immune to the disease, who was willing to take the boy in that day.

"But once the little boy was taken to the survivor's home," Brooks says, "the community around refused to let the boy stay with her because of the fear, because of the stigma, that the virus could come into the community."

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The boy was moved to the home of another survivor. A social worker was able to track down the boy's aunt, who was overjoyed to learn that her nephew was still alive. He'll move in with her once he clears the 21-day incubation period.

"There are many more like him," says Brooks. "His case shows the complexities of managing this kind of care for a child."

This isn't the first time Brooks has worked with stigmatized children. Years ago, he worked in Liberia with Save The Children to resettle former child soldiers, sometimes back into the very communities where they had committed atrocities. Those were not easy negotiations.

"But this is another dimension," says Brooks. "These children ... do represent a real risk, a continued risk, when they start showing symptoms."

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To some extent, the fear of these orphans is legitimate, he says. They've been in close contact with infected people. Even if they test negative for the disease early on, they aren't considered fully clear until they've made it 21 days without showing any symptoms. Still, even people harboring the virus aren't contagious unless and until they show symptoms.

Brooks says the focus now should be educating caregivers about how to care for a potential patient safely — and to seek medical care quickly if the child develops early signs of infection.

"As much as possible, children should be cared for by the normal people who care for children – their families, extended families, communities," Brooks says.

The Liberian government is strengthening the systems that allow social workers to track down extended family members, he says.

"As a last resort, we're starting to work with the government to put in place some centers — called interim care centers — where children can go for the 21-day period," Brooks says. The centers are meant to provide "the reassurance and the confidence that the communities and families would need to be able to take the children home," he explains. "But it's an uphill struggle, and the needs are far surpassing the available resources at the moment."

And, while more social workers would be helpful, Brooks says, the top priority is to get enough beds and trained medical staff to keep parents alive.

Orphans

ebola

Here's another entry in the strange bedfellows political show, 2014 edition: As Election Day gets closer, some Republicans in battleground races seem to be moving to the center on a number of issues. Their latest sea change is the minimum wage.

Alongside pay equity, infrastructure investment and college affordability, raising the minimum wage is at the center of the Democrats' election year economic agenda. President Obama has given numerous speeches on the minimum wage, excoriating Republicans in Congress for blocking a federal minimum wage hike. "Either you're in favor of raising wages for hardworking Americans, or you're not," he said in April.

He makes it sound so simple — but this is politics.

As free-market conservatives, Republicans are philosophically opposed to raising the minimum wage. But a handful of Republican candidates in tight races have come out in favor of raising the minimum wage on the state level.

Bruce Rauner, running for governor of Illinois, has said in the past that he believed the minimum wage could be lowered, or even eliminated. But now, Rauner says, if Illinois passed tort reform and tax reform, he would support raising the state wage. He's also come out in favor of raising the federal minimum wage.

Why the change? Illinois is one of five states this year that has a minimum wage hike on the state ballot. These propositions are hugely popular and usually pass with 60 or even 70 percent of the vote.

In Arkansas and Alaska, where there are also minimum wage referendums on the ballot, Republican Senate candidates Tom Cotton and Dan Sullivan say they'll vote for them. In Sullivan's case, he was previously opposed to the ballot proposition, but then, his spokesman said, "he had a chance to read the initiative."

Democrats are crying foul. They were hoping to use the referendums to get more of their supporters to the polls. If there's no difference between the Republican and Democratic candidates on this issue, that might be harder.

Ted Strickland, the populist former governor of Ohio, says these Republicans have had a foxhole conversion. "Most people understand that when someone embraces a policy they have previously rejected, and they do it just a short time before an election," says Strickland, "they are acting out of political expediency rather than out of convictions and courage."

Republican strategist Sarah Fagen says that in this case what Republicans consider to be good policy — letting the free market work — is not good politics. Republicans would rather avoid the debate over the minimum wage altogether and focus on other issues, she says, so they've made a kind of tactical retreat.

Remaining opposed to a federal wage hike but supporting a state hike allows them, says Fagen, to be true to "their economic philosophy but still be reasonable to voters who are demanding that the minimum wage be increased."

Republicans are choosing their battles more carefully this year. They're moving to the center on issues like contraception or the minimum wage, and that's caused some fancy political footwork on both sides. In some states, Republican legislators voted to raise the state wage in order to avoid having the issue on the ballot. But in Alaska, Democrats in the Legislature blocked a bill so that the issue would be on the ballot this fall.

And that raises the obvious question: Can these ballot propositions actually help Democratic candidates?

Progressive activist Brad Woodhouse says yes, up to a point. Using the minimum wage ballot referendums as bait, Democrats can target drop-off voters who might only come out and vote because they think it's in their economic interest.

"You hope that if they come out to increase the minimum wage," says Woodhouse, "that they'll vote for the Democrat."

Ballot initiatives can boost turnout — by about 1 percent. That, theoretically, could help Democrats win an otherwise close race.

But academics who study ballot referendums say no minimum wage initiative has ever determined the outcome of a state race. John Matsusaka, director of the Initiative and Referendum Institute at the University of Southern California, points out that there are many examples of Republican candidates winning statewide even as minimum wage ballot referendums also passed 2 to 1.

"The Democrats might get a bump from this," says Matsusaka. "But the people who look closely at these data have a hard time finding that it makes a big difference."

So the bottom line is that these initiatives are very good for people who want to raise the minimum wage, but they're less useful as a political tool for Democrats looking for help in a Republican-leaning political landscape.

If it weren't for American manufacturing, I wouldn't be here today.

Literally.

A century ago, my grandfather moved from Poland to Youngstown, Ohio, to work in a steel mill. At the time, Ohio factories were cranking out steel slabs, tires and cars — building a mountain of wealth that the next generation could climb. And the generation after that.

But what will happen in the 21st century? Is the path that led to higher ground blocked now?

The answer is complicated.

That's because, on the one hand, U.S. manufacturing is booming. Customers everywhere want our aircraft, electrical equipment, engines, metal products, chemicals and much more.

So in dollar terms, output is at record levels — worth more than $2 trillion. Back in 1964, remembered as a glorious time in our industrial history, factories generated only about $1.3 trillion in inflation-adjusted dollars.

Only two other rivals can play in the $2 trillion ballpark: China, which has about four times as many people, and the entire European Union, with more than a half-billion people in 28 countries.

More On Manufacturing

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As Overseas Costs Rise, More U.S. Companies Are 'Reshoring'

Economy

Manufacturing 2.0: Old Industry Creating New High-Tech Jobs

Business

For Manufacturing Jobs, Workers Brush Up On Math

Still, Americans worry. They have seen factory jobs disappear at a breathtaking pace. In 1979, nearly 20 million Americans made goods for a living. Today, only about 12 million are still standing on factory floors.

As a portion of the economy, manufacturing has shriveled. When my parents got married in 1952, manufacturing made up nearly 28 percent of the economy. Now, it's about 12 percent.

And the U.S. manufacturing position in the world has shifted dramatically. The U.S. share of global manufacturing has dropped from about 30 percent in the early 1980s to just about 17 percent today, according to a Congressional Research Service report.

So we wonder: What is the long-term outlook?

To find answers, NPR will be visiting factories and talking to experts over the next several weeks. The series, called American Made: The New Manufacturing Landscape, kicked off this week when NPR's David Greene reported on his visit to Rochester, N.Y.

And Friday is National Manufacturing Day, an annual celebration backed by trade groups. They have scheduled about 1,500 events, such as factory tours and equipment demonstrations.

So this is a good time to reflect on manufacturing. That Congressional research study turned up these points to ponder:

Manufacturing output has grown more rapidly in this country than in Europe or Japan during the past decade. But China and South Korea have been outpacing us in growth.

Factory wages are still good here, at about $27 an hour. But workers earn more in some other advanced countries, including Germany, Canada, France and Japan.

In the United States, development dollars mostly go into advanced sectors, like electronic instruments and pharmaceuticals. In other countries, the R&D focus is on more mundane sectors, such as machinery and motor vehicles.

Overall, most experts are bullish about U.S. manufacturing, citing these factors:

Energy. The shale-gas revolution has cut natural gas prices by two-thirds since 2008. That cost advantage is making U.S. manufacturing far more competitive.

Technology. Wireless intelligence and data analytics are giving manufacturers better control over production.

Additive manufacturing. In the past, manufacturing involved a lot of cutting and grinding, wasting both materials and energy. With an additive process, manufacturers can layer on materials to build goods, leaving little waste.

The bad news for workers is that virtually everyone expects more of them to be replaced by equipment and software. Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers summed up the consensus view in a recent essay, saying: "There are good reasons to expect an uptick in the next few years in manufacturing employment. But the long-term trend is inexorable ... technology is allowing the production of far more output with far fewer people."

I grew up surrounded by mills, mines and factories. I have covered manufacturing for decades, and I must agree with Summers. I know that if a poorly educated person like my grandfather showed up at a steel mill today, he wouldn't get a foot in the door.

Modern mills need metallurgists, electrical engineers and quality-control managers — not laborers.

For workers with the right skills, the economic ladder at a steel mill reaches higher than ever, up into an impressive, whirling workplace where computers, robots and automated equipment create wealth.

But the lowest rungs have been sawed off. And finding ways to make sure families like mine can still rise up will be the greatest economic challenge of the 21st century.

manufacturing

As they always do on Labor Day, political candidates will begin their campaign sprint to Election Day.

And for years, they have been running on simple advice: "It's the economy, stupid." But this time around the track, they may discover that many Americans want to hear about other issues as well.

Wait. What?

The economy is not the No. 1 issue?

That's right. Gallup pollsters asked voters what was important, and the No. 1 topic turned out to be dissatisfaction with politicians. No. 2 was immigration. The economy had slipped to No. 3.

Given the depth of the recession and slow motion of the recovery, it can be almost jarring to realize that the U.S. economy no longer is in crisis mode. Despite a setback amid harsh weather this past winter, economists now say the recovery is advancing at a good clip.

Just last week, the Commerce Department revised its measure of total growth, the GDP, up to 4.2 percent for April, May and June. That very strong pace of expansion was two-tenths of a point higher than previously thought.

And the Conference Board's leading economic index's surged 0.9 percent in July, the sixth straight monthly gain.

"The big jumps in the leading economic index over the past couple of months indicate solid growth for the U.S. economy through the rest of 2014," Stuart Hoffman, chief economist for PNC Financial Services, said. "The economy is close to firing on all cylinders."

Of course for the millions of Americans who lost jobs or homes during the Great Recession, a true recovery may yet seem very far off. But for many households, life really is getting back to normal.

Here are some statistics to help understand how much has changed since the last midterm congressional election in 2010, when most people said the economy was "extremely" important in choosing candidates.

JOBS — In November 2010, voters were heading to the polls in a country that had been staggered by job losses. That month, the unemployment rate was at a frightful 9.8 percent. Currently, it's down to 6.2 percent.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics says that in June, the most recent month for which it has data, employers had 4.7 million job openings, the highest number in 13 years. And July marked the sixth straight month with new hires exceeding 200,000, the first such streak since 1997.

STOCKS — If you had money in a 401(k) retirement savings plan back in 2010, you probably were feeling sick to your stomach heading into that election cycle. On Labor Day of that year, the Dow Jones industrial average was still hovering around 10,500 — down dramatically from its 2007 peak of about 14,000.

But these days, the Dow is hovering around 17,000. In other words, your savings have recovered all that was lost in the financial crisis, and you're watching markets set new highs.

DEFICIT – In the 2010 election, a major issue was the exploding budget deficit. But in an update released last week, the Congressional Budget Office said the federal deficit is now shrinking faster than previously forecast because of sustained growth and low interest rates.

The deficit for fiscal 2014 is now projected to be $506 billion, or just 2.9 percent of gross domestic product. That is less than one-third of the deficit's recession peak — and below the average deficit level over the past 40 years.

GAS PRICES – Despite the turmoil in the Mideast, gas prices have remained tame this summer. Gasoline has been averaging around $3.43 a gallon, down by about a dime from last year. This will be the cheapest Labor Day driving period since 2010, according to AAA, the auto club.

AUTO SALES – In August 2010, new vehicle sales were slightly below 1 million. This August, J.D. Power and its partner LMC Automotive say total sales reached 1.5 million.

Other indicators involving housing and business investment also have been looking positive this summer.

So does all of this mean voters are in a cheery mood?

No. There's still lots to worry about. In fact, a new Rutgers study found that workers feel "insecure, underpaid, highly stressed, and generally unhappy at work."

Just as millions of older Americans never were able to shake off the financial and psychological impacts of the Great Depression, many people today are struggling to get back on track and feel confident again. The Rutgers study concluded that "despite sustained job growth and lower levels of unemployment, most Americans do not think the economy has improved in the last year or that it will in the next."

That kind of reaction is common in a downturn. For example, following the 1980-82 recession, pessimism lingered. In October 1984, during the Reagan administration, 63 percent of Americans said they thought the next generation would be worse off.

But polling shows that over time, a recession's impact starts to recede as new issues grab center stage. This summer's news has been filled with disturbing reports about immigration, the Middle East, Ukraine, Ferguson, Ebola, ISIS and even airplane catastrophes.

"Many more Americans now mention a non-economic issue — such as dissatisfaction with government, immigration or ethical and moral decline — than an economic one as the top problem," the Gallup poll concluded.

gas prices

Economy

It was an ordinary Friday. Courtney Brown, 24, of Kalamazoo, Mich., was busy looking for a job. "I've applied all kinds of places," she says. "Wal-Mart, Target, Verizon Wireless."

Then she got a strange letter in the mail. " 'We are writing you with good news,' " she reads to me over the phone. " 'We got rid of some of your Everest College debt. ... No one should be forced to mortgage their future for an education.' "

The letter went on to say that her private student loan from a for-profit college, in the amount of $790.05, had just been forgiven outright by something called the Rolling Jubilee.

Since November 2012, Rolling Jubilee has purchased and eradicated about $15 million worth of debt arising from unpaid medical bills. Today, the group announced that it has erased $3.9 million in private student loans, including Courtney Brown's and those of almost 3,000 other students of the for-profit Everest College.

Rolling Jubilee is a project of a group of economic activists called Strike Debt, which formed out of the Occupy Wall Street movement. The group timed today's announcement for the third anniversary of that protest. The word "jubilee" refers to a time decreed in the Bible, every 49th year, when all debts were ritually forgiven, and slaves and prisoners freed.

"Some debts are just, and others are unjust," Thomas Gokey, one of Strike Debt's organizers, says, explaining the group's stance. "Providing affordable, publicly financed, world-class education is a moral debt we are failing to pay."

Rolling Jubilee's tactic takes advantage of a peculiar characteristic of modern debt. When people stop paying, debts become delinquent. The original owner, say a bank, eventually writes the debts off and sells them off at bargain-basement prices to third-party collectors.

Rolling Jubilee has managed to step in instead and buy some of this secondary market debt, using donations raised online — in this case, buying student loan debt for less than 3 cents on the dollar. But instead of trying to collect this debt, the group makes it disappear.

More than 40 million Americans now have some form of student loan debt, totaling an estimated $1.2 trillion. The amount erased by Rolling Jubilee, and the number of students helped, will not make a practical dent in that sum. "It doesn't solve the problem," says Gokey.

Instead, what he and the group's members are trying to do is draw attention to the plight of millions of people with unpaid student loans, especially high-interest private loans from relatively expensive for-profit colleges.

"They're the worst of the worst," says Gokey. The next step, he says, is to organize large numbers of people to press for policy changes that would allow debtors to be released from obligations they can't meet. Currently, student loans are nondischargeable in bankruptcy under most circumstances.

When Brown first got the letter from the Rolling Jubilee, it sounded like "a scam" — too good to be true. "I was in shock," she recalls. But after speaking to Gokey, "it made me feel better."

Brown says she had nearly completed a one-year program to become a dental assistant when Everest College assigned her to an internship in Battle Creek, Mich., about a 30-minute drive from her home.

"I had no transportation to Battle Creek. I asked them to find me a program closer, but with that type of internship you have to go out and find your own. And I didn't have those kinds of connections." As a result, she had to drop out of the program and, unemployed, found herself unable to pay her loans.

The for-profit college industry as a whole has come under increased scrutiny for its disproportionate contributions to the $1.2 trillion in student loan debt. While enrolling about 13 percent of students, who tend to be first-generation working adults, for-profits are responsible for a little under half of student-loan defaulters.

Strike Debt targeted Corinthian Colleges — the company that owns Everest College and two other for-profit college chains — deliberately. As NPR Ed previously reported, Corinthian Colleges is in the process of selling off most of its campuses.

Corinthian was already facing severe financial trouble when the Department of Education placed a hold on financial-aid payments to the company over the summer, because of a failure to satisfy some requests for information.

Corinthian Colleges has some 200 lawsuits pending against it for allegedly fraudulent practices. This includes a case brought by the California attorney general for violations of consumer protection and securities laws.

Yesterday, the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau announced yet another lawsuit against the company, this time for alleged predatory lending. The federal agency seeks relief for borrowers, saying the company misled students about job prospects, pressured them to take out high-interest private loans, and then used aggressive debt-collection tactics.

Company officials have defended their practices.

"Students who continue to study at our schools do so because there is clear, independent evidence that they receive a quality education," Kent Jenkins Jr., a Corinthian spokesman, told NPR Ed. He forwarded the company's official response to the California allegations, which said the complaint "paints a misleading and inaccurate picture of our schools."

Everest College and the other Corinthian colleges aren't officially shutting down. In fact, Everest is still recruiting and enrolling students as it searches for a buyer for its campuses. The decision of the Department of Education to allow most of the campuses to keep operating under new management also means borrowers, not the government or lenders, are still on the hook for those loans.

But not the lucky ones, like Brown. The weekly calls from debt collectors will stop. And, she says, she will soon be able to continue her job search without worrying that a hiring manager will see a ding on her credit report.

"I feel better knowing that it's off," she says. "I feel like I can do something better with myself."