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People often get flummoxed around death. Some get teary, others emotionally distant from the inevitable. An exhibition at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, "Death Becomes Her: A Century of Mourning Attire," embodies that tension with mourning fashion from the mid-1800s to the early 20th century. It has multi-layered fabric, tight bodices and enveloping head gear that emulates the garb of cloistered nuns. Even the faces of the ghost-white mannequins seem closed off, demure and unshakable. This is death at its most bloodless.

"I wanted Victorian melodrama; I wanted widows collapsing on the floor," says Harold Koda, curator in charge of the museum's Costume Institute. Still, Koda, who worked with a co-curator, says he would have liked a bit more juice in the installation. "You see an inert dress on a stiff mannequin. How do you get the fact that this was because somebody died, you know?"

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Joanna Ebenstein, creative director of the Morbid Anatomy Museum, poses with a taxidermy two-headed duckling. Liyna Anwar for StoryCorps hide caption

itoggle caption Liyna Anwar for StoryCorps

Joanna Ebenstein, creative director of the Morbid Anatomy Museum, poses with a taxidermy two-headed duckling.

Liyna Anwar for StoryCorps

Across the river, in the Gowanus neighborhood of Brooklyn, the Morbid Anatomy Museum tells a different story. Creative Director Joanna Ebenstein describes a scene from the museum's gallery walls: "You see here four women weeping into handkerchiefs. Their faces are obscured by their handkerchiefs and they're standing around a column in black. To me, that sums up the romanticism of Victorian mourning."

Ebenstein is a very serious woman in her 40s; she wears glasses and shoulder-length, straight hair. Standing in the museum's front gallery, she points to a box with a glass top.

"What we're looking at here is a large, framed shadowbox and in that shadowbox is a wreath of brown flowers," she explains. "And if you look closely, each of those flowers is made from hair coiled around wire. And this is probably a whole family's hair; you can tell from the different colors — you can see gray, you can see black, you can see brown."

Part of the beauty, she says, is its permanence. "What symbolizes mourning more than a floral wreath? This is a floral wreath, made of the hair of the family, that will never decay."

i i

This shadowbox, which features a floral wreath of human hair, is also part of the museum's "Art of Mourning" exhibition. Shannon Taggart/Courtesy of the Morbid Anatomy Museum hide caption

itoggle caption Shannon Taggart/Courtesy of the Morbid Anatomy Museum

This shadowbox, which features a floral wreath of human hair, is also part of the museum's "Art of Mourning" exhibition.

Shannon Taggart/Courtesy of the Morbid Anatomy Museum

There can be beauty in death, but there's tragedy here too. One vitrine has photographs of dead infants, many of them swaddled in their mother's arms. To Ebenstein, none of this is morbid.

"My whole life I've been called morbid for thinking about death and I used accept that," she says. "And at a certain point, I began to think: Well, why is it morbid to look at death? If we're all going die and every single culture but us seems to have some sophisticated, aboveboard way of talking about it in art and philosophy, why don't we? And why should I be considered morbid for being interested in what I consider the greatest problem of being a human being, which is foreknowledge of our own death?"

Ebenstein seems to have come by this obsession naturally. In a back room of the museum, there's a library of books, bones, ephemera and specimens in jars (hence the museum's name). One jar holds a bat, another a snake and yet another a pig fetus, and they're all stored in a cabinet once owned by her grandfather, who was a doctor.

The Morbid Anatomy Museum's staff seems to be a kind of extended Addams family. Tracy Hurley Martin, the museum's CEO and board chair, grew up around death. She says, "Our uncle Vito had a funeral home and he lived in it and he treated people like they were deli meat."

For Morbid Anatomy Museum Founder, Spooky Things Are Life's Work Oct. 31, 2014

The museum's attraction is partly its creepy funereal vibe. The black painted building is no Metropolitan Museum of Art, but it's become a destination. Cawleen Cavanis lives in Queens, a 40 minute subway ride away. She brought a visiting friend and was checking out the gift shop's offerings: a diaphanized mouse, sugar skulls, museum T-shirts and books, including The Morbid Anatomy Anthology, with essays about stuffed humans and demonic children. "It looks like just a lot of interesting specimens here, you know," Cavanis says. "It's definitely worth the trip."

But if you're wondering about taking selfies in the museum, Joanna Ebenstein points to a sign on the door to the galleries: "Photograph taking, digital, analog, video, spirit, is absolutely forbidden."

For those visitors who want to do more than admire, or acquire, the Morbid Anatomy Museum has lectures and workshops on making a bat in a jar and Victorian hair art.

British science is having a cinematic moment, with The Theory of Everything now and The Imitation Game soon. Yet neither film has much science in it. These accounts of Stephen Hawking and Alan Turing, respectively, are engaging and well-crafted but modeled all too faithfully on old-school romantic dramas.

In the movie universe, scientific breakthroughs — even when they help defeat the Nazis, as Turing's did — must be less important than love. Which, come to think of it, is also the corn-belt communique beamed back from Interstellar, a film that relies on the cosmological savvy of Kip Thorne, one of Hawking's closest colleagues.

Thorne appears briefly in The Theory of Everything, which introduces several of Hawking's scientific peers but focuses on a single companion: the one who wrote the book from which co-producer Anthony McCarten's script is derived.

She's Jane Hawking, nee Wilde, as embodied by the ideally named Felicity Jones. Pretty and vivacious, yet not so delicate as she appears, Jane is irresistible to the young Stephen (Eddie Redmayne) when he spots her at a party. This is one of many incidents depicted in the film that didn't exactly happen. Every time an everyday event can be transformed into a movie moment, McCarten and director James Marsh (Man on Wire) go for it.

In broad outline, the story they tell is true. Hawking, a brilliant Ph.D. candidate at Cambridge, is distracted and disorganized, but becomes studiously focused on Jane. He's diagnosed with a motor neuron disease related to ALS soon after they meet, but she marries him anyway. Soon she has three young children and a husband whose body is withering.

The couple struggles medically and financially, but he retains his intellect and wit and she her radiance and good humor. She even learns enough of his work to illustrate the conflict between quantum mechanics and the general theory of relativity — using peas and potatoes — to Jonathan (Charlie Cox), a choirmaster who becomes an intimate family friend.

Stephen wins fame as the author of A Brief History of Time, although the equation that will unify all astrophysics remains elusive. (Marsh embodies the universe in a swirling cup, quoting not Einstein but Godard's Two or Three Things I Know About Her.) Then pneumonia — whose operatic onset is another fictionalized episode — leads to a tracheotomy, and further loss of ability to communicate.

Ultimately, Jane becomes very close to Jonathan, while Stephen does the same with a therapist (Maxine Peake). And so a 25-year marriage ends, a rupture that may have been a little stormier in actuality than in this sanitized telling. Although it probably is hard to get into a shouting match with a husband who speaks through a voice synthesizer.

Devolving from a man who seems a bit clumsy to one who can barely move at all, Redmayne gives an impressive physical performance. It recalls Daniel Day Lewis' in My Left Foot — minus the rage. There's little acrimony in The Theory of Everything, which may reflect Hawking's actual outlook or just the movie's puppyish desire to please.

As gentle and saintly as Jennifer Connolly's character in A Dangerous Mind, Jones' Jane is immensely appealing if a bit unbelievable. And since in movies the essence of female virtue is cuteness, Jane barely ages over three decades.

Perhaps she took a rejuvenating whirl through the wayback machine that, in one of the clunkier touches, rewinds the story at the movie's end. Certainly it feels as if the script did, yielding the time anomaly of a 2014 film that seems to have been written when its 72-year-old protagonist was still in short pants.

And Boland treasures single words as if she were contemplating the facets of jewels: some poems' exercises in etymology are akin to slipping on a necklace. "Nostalgia" contemplates the linguistic heritage of the word "cobbler," while the magnificent "Song and Error" muses on the translation of the reason Ovid gave for his banishment from Rome, before pulling back into a breath-taking perspective on language's capacity to colonize. It's masterful work.

The stand-out sequence for me was "A Woman Without a Country;" the dedication alone had me in tears:

This sequence is dedicated to those who lost a country, not by history or inheritance, but through a series of questions to which they could find no answer.

Laced with prose sections titled in numbered "Lessons," it's a powerful mediation between the vast and the small. The poems move from grand ideas of nation to a single woman's life, blurring the reality of which is vast and which is small, and questioning whether that distance between idea and existence can be bridged. This is a passage from "Anonymity," a poem that invites the reader to walk "from room to room" in a museum:

More On Eavan Boland

National Poetry Month 2007

'Atlantis — A Lost Sonnet'

Powerless queens; stock-still, enslaved
Girls at the entryway to anonymity.
Women without a country

Assembled from the treasures of a country:
A finger of silver. A mineral breast.
An ear poured out in bronze.

I have felt broken open by Boland's language before, most keenly by passages in her "Letter to a young woman poet." In it she remembers how "the poets I knew were not women: the women I knew were not poets. The conversations I had, or wanted to have, were never complete."

I felt, reading A Woman Without a Country, that I was having a conversation — that beautiful kind of conversation where you can't nod enthusiastically enough, where each speaker articulates the other's thoughts as quickly as they occur, where you feel energized and elated and full of new understanding of each other and the world.

I'm profoundly grateful for it.

Amal El-Mohtar is the author of The Honey Month and the editor of Goblin Fruit, an online poetry magazine.

The Republican Party made historic gains during this week's midterm elections. Among their victories were three wins by black Republicans, who seem to be building momentum for diversifying the GOP ranks.

Mia Love — who is Mormon and Haitian-American — is one of those three, and Republicans in Utah's 4th District will be sending her to Congress next year.

"Many of the naysayers out there said that Utah would never elect a black, Republican, LDS woman to Congress," Love told a crowd on Tuesday. "And guess what? Not only did we do it, we were the first to do it!"

Another big winner was Tim Scott, who was appointed to the Senate in 2012, but won a full term in his own right on Tuesday. He's now South Carolina's first elected black senator, and the South's first since Reconstruction.

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Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C. greets supporters after winning his Senate race over challengers Jill Bossi and Joyce Dickerson on Tuesday. Mic Smith/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Mic Smith/AP

Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C. greets supporters after winning his Senate race over challengers Jill Bossi and Joyce Dickerson on Tuesday.

Mic Smith/AP

Texas also celebrated a historic win in Will Hurd, a former CIA officer who is the first black Republican from Texas ever to win a U.S. Congressional seat.

"It's a start," says Michael Steele, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee. "And yeah, I want more. You know, I want to get to the point where it's not notable."

Steele, the first black chairman of the RNC, is notable himself. He says these rising stars will follow the lead of former representatives Allen West and J.C. Watts, who, like other black Republicans, faced suspicion from many black voters.

"You still have to deal with the stereotype that somehow if you're a black Republican, you're not a real black person," he says.

But Steele adds there are also legitimate questions about his party's commitment to racial diversity.

"White folks get excited when they see, 'Oh, got a black candidate running for office!' " he says. "OK, that's great. But what are you doing to get them elected? It's not just enough to have the face on the ballot."

Code Switch

Black GOP Stars Rise In A Party That's Still Awkwardly White

Amy Holmes, a former speech writer for Republican Sen. Bill Frist and an anchor on the TheBlaze.com, says this newly-elected group represents an important part of the post-Obama era of politics.

"I think President Obama's election in 2008 inspired a lot of African-American politicians, including on the right," Holmes says.

Holmes points out these candidates also succeeded in places where black voters did not make up the majority.

"The old conventional wisdom has been that an African-American politician has to run from a majority African-American district," she says. "Well, these three candidates prove that's not true."

Code Switch

Why Did Black Voters Flee The Republican Party In The 1960s?

But the relationship between the GOP and black voters has to change as U.S. racial demographics continue to shift, according to Lenny McAllister, a former Republican candidate for Congress and the host of The McAllister Minute on the American Urban Radio Network.

Early exit polls show almost 90 percent of black voters supported Democrats on Tuesday, and McAllister says that allegiance to the Democratic Party diminishes black political power.

"We cannot continue to only access half of the political process," McAllister says. "We need Republicans and Democrats being actively and efficiently responsive to our needs."

Politics

Alabama's Darius Foster Wants To Bring Back 'Fight For The People' GOP

McAllister admits it will take more than these three winners for Republicans to earn the trust of black voters. But he says we shouldn't forget how a young senator from Illinois beat the odds to become America's first black president.

"The impossible happens in America, and if we're going to open up the doors to what's possible for more Americans, we have to take on this fight now," he says.

black voters

Republican party

Black republicans

Republicans

Nations attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Beijing have agreed to cooperate on the extradition of corrupt officials, a move backed by the U.S. and pushed by China, which has been on a drive to clean up bribery and money laundering in its Communist Party.

Secretary of State John Kerry, who is attending the 21-member APEC meeting, described the agreement as "a major step forward."

Kerry said: "Corruption not only creates an unfair playing field, it not only distorts economic relationships, but corruption also steals from the people ... who believe the system can work for everyone."

Reuters says the informal network would share information among anti-corruption and law enforcement authorities in the region: "The agreement commits the ... member economies in the Asia-Pacific region, including China and the United States, to "deny safe haven to those engaged in corruption, including through extradition, mutual legal assistance and the recovery and return of proceeds of corruption."

As NPR's Frank Langfitt reported earlier this week, gambling revenues in the Chinese gambling mecca of Macau are down some 20 percent since Beijing's corruption crackdown. Mainland "whales" are scared to be seen placing large bets for fear they might become a target and some are moving their gambling activities elsewhere in Asia, Frank reports. This year alone, more than 13,000 Chinese officials have been found guilty of corruption and bribery, the BBC says.

Also, the BBC notes, it's not clear how the agreement — known as the Network of Anti-Corruption Authorities and Law Enforcement Agencies (ACT-NET) — would work because the U.S., Canada and Australia, which all signed on, don't have extradition treaties with China.

Asia-Pacific

Secretary of State John Kerry

corruption

China

As far back as the early 1990s, Washington thought trade and investment eventually would make China more democratic. In the past couple of years, though, the Communist Party has doubled down on repression at home and become more aggressive overseas.

In short, things have not turned out as Washington had hoped, and relations between the world's two major powers are tense these days.

President Obama will continue to work on that tricky relationship after he arrives in Beijing on Monday for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit The gathering provides Chinese President Xi Jinping with an international platform as he hosts leaders from Japan, India and Russia and tries to boost China's standing in world affairs.

Prosperity's Unexpected Consequences

The Two-Way

China, Japan Agree To Disagree On Disputed Islands

Parallels

On China's Mainland, A Less Charitable Take On Hong Kong's Protests

China Sentences Professor Accused Of Separatist Activities

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Two decades ago, Republicans, Democrats and some prominent China scholars argued that economic engagement would change China's political system over time.

"By working with China and expanding areas of cooperation, dealing forthrightly with our differences, we can advance fundamental American interests and values," President Bill Clinton said in 1997.

James Mann, author of The China Fantasy: Why Capitalism Will Not Bring Democracy to China, says the conventional wisdom was China's authoritarian system naturally would evolve.

"Part of the theory was, it was just inevitable," says Mann, a scholar-in-residence at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C. "Any country that became prosperous and had growing trade and investment ties with the world would automatically liberalize."

One popular U.S. columnist argued that as Chinese enjoyed greater and greater consumer choices — such as various types of coffee at Starbucks — a desire for political choice would follow. After meeting with then-premier Wen Jiabao in 2005, then-U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair told reporters China was heading towards a more open political system.

"The whole basis of the discussion I have had in a country that is developing very fast — where 100 million people now use the Internet, and which is going to be the second-largest economy in the world — is that there is an unstoppable momentum toward greater political freedom," Blair told reporters in Beijing, according to Bloomberg News.

But Mann says capitalism had the opposite effect.

Chinese naval soldiers stand guard on China's first aircraft carrier, Liaoning, as it travels toward a military base in Hainan province, in this undated picture made available on Nov. 30, 2013. Tensions in the South China Sea have grown over territorial disputes between China, the Philippines, Japan and others. Reuters/China Stringer Network/Landov hide caption

itoggle caption Reuters/China Stringer Network/Landov

"It resulted in a rich, authoritarian regime, which is not what we were looking for in the first place, and which is more of a problem to deal with," he says.

China has poured some of its riches into naval power and is now tangling with Japan and the Philippines, close American allies, over disputed islands. China claims most of the vast South China Sea as its own, despite the protests of various neighbors.

Mann says American policymakers thought China would follow the path of other East Asian dictatorships, such as Taiwan and South Korea, which democratized in the 1980s. Those countries, however, relied on the U.S. for their defense, which Washington used as political leverage.

"The United States pushed Taiwan over a decade," says Mann. "None of that is going to happen in China. It has an entirely different relationship with the United States."

Minxin Pei, a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College in California, says that instead of democratizing China, economic growth helped the party strengthen its grip on power.

"The U.S. has gravely underestimated the capabilities, the determination, the resourcefulness of the Chinese Communist Part. Better economic performance gives them greater political legitimacy, and [then] they don't have to do political reform," says Pei. It also "allows them more resources to use repression to defend one-party rule."

Since coming to power in 2012, President Xi has cracked down on Internet speech and jailed all sorts of critics. Last month, an 81-year-old writer known by the pen name Tie Liu was charged with "creating a disturbance." Among his apparent offenses: publishing the accounts of some of the political victims of Mao Zedong, who died in 1976.

Shen Dingli, a professor of international relations at Fudan University in Shanghai, knows China's political failings, but says the party has made improvements for which it doesn't receive credit. Those include term limits for top leaders, who — though not popularly elected — pay close attention to public opinion.

"America somehow is impatient," says Shen, who says Americans seem to think the only form of democracy is the one-person, one-vote Western model. America "is too idealistic and is too chauvinistic."

Trends That Undermine Communist Power

How long can the Communist Party stay in power? Pei expects it to run out of gas in 10 to 15 years.

"The people who work for this system have no fundamental loyalty to the system," says Pei. Indeed, the conventional wisdom among Chinese themselves is that most people who have joined the party in the past decade primarily did so to enrich themselves through connections and graft.

"All they want to do is benefit personally from their relationship with the system," Pei continues. "So, over the long run, the system will go bankrupt."

Cheng Li, director of the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, says the party has another trend running against it. Young Chinese have dramatically different expectations than their parents.

"Let's look at the young people in Shanghai, Beijing," he says. "They are more similar to their peers in Taipei, in Tokyo, in Washington, in New York. That's a very powerful force.

"They have similar lifestyles, they have similar kind of inspiration, and sooner or later they will also want to have freedom."

Li says that's natural. When that might happen, though, is anyone's guess.

capitalism

democracy

Wealth

China

People often get flummoxed around death. Some get teary, others emotionally distant from the inevitable. An exhibition at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, "Death Becomes Her: A Century of Mourning Attire," embodies that tension with mourning fashion from the mid-1800s to the early 20th century. It has multi-layered fabric, tight bodices and enveloping head gear that emulates the garb of cloistered nuns. Even the faces of the ghost-white mannequins seem closed off, demure and unshakable. This is death at its most bloodless.

"I wanted Victorian melodrama; I wanted widows collapsing on the floor," says Harold Koda, curator in charge of the museum's Costume Institute. Still, Koda, who worked with a co-curator, says he would have liked a bit more juice in the installation. "You see an inert dress on a stiff mannequin. How do you get the fact that this was because somebody died, you know?"

i i

Joanna Ebenstein, creative director of the Morbid Anatomy Museum, poses with a taxidermy two-headed duckling. Liyna Anwar for StoryCorps hide caption

itoggle caption Liyna Anwar for StoryCorps

Joanna Ebenstein, creative director of the Morbid Anatomy Museum, poses with a taxidermy two-headed duckling.

Liyna Anwar for StoryCorps

Across the river, in the Gowanus neighborhood of Brooklyn, the Morbid Anatomy Museum tells a different story. Creative Director Joanna Ebenstein describes a scene from the museum's gallery walls: "You see here four women weeping into handkerchiefs. Their faces are obscured by their handkerchiefs and they're standing around a column in black. To me, that sums up the romanticism of Victorian mourning."

Ebenstein is a very serious woman in her 40s; she wears glasses and shoulder-length, straight hair. Standing in the museum's front gallery, she points to a box with a glass top.

"What we're looking at here is a large, framed shadowbox and in that shadowbox is a wreath of brown flowers," she explains. "And if you look closely, each of those flowers is made from hair coiled around wire. And this is probably a whole family's hair; you can tell from the different colors — you can see gray, you can see black, you can see brown."

Part of the beauty, she says, is its permanence. "What symbolizes mourning more than a floral wreath? This is a floral wreath, made of the hair of the family, that will never decay."

i i

This shadowbox, which features a floral wreath of human hair, is also part of the museum's "Art of Mourning" exhibition. Shannon Taggart/Courtesy of the Morbid Anatomy Museum hide caption

itoggle caption Shannon Taggart/Courtesy of the Morbid Anatomy Museum

This shadowbox, which features a floral wreath of human hair, is also part of the museum's "Art of Mourning" exhibition.

Shannon Taggart/Courtesy of the Morbid Anatomy Museum

There can be beauty in death, but there's tragedy here too. One vitrine has photographs of dead infants, many of them swaddled in their mother's arms. To Ebenstein, none of this is morbid.

"My whole life I've been called morbid for thinking about death and I used accept that," she says. "And at a certain point, I began to think: Well, why is it morbid to look at death? If we're all going die and every single culture but us seems to have some sophisticated, aboveboard way of talking about it in art and philosophy, why don't we? And why should I be considered morbid for being interested in what I consider the greatest problem of being a human being, which is foreknowledge of our own death?"

Ebenstein seems to have come by this obsession naturally. In a back room of the museum, there's a library of books, bones, ephemera and specimens in jars (hence the museum's name). One jar holds a bat, another a snake and yet another a pig fetus, and they're all stored in a cabinet once owned by her grandfather, who was a doctor.

The Morbid Anatomy Museum's staff seems to be a kind of extended Addams family. Tracy Hurley Martin, the museum's CEO and board chair, grew up around death. She says, "Our uncle Vito had a funeral home and he lived in it and he treated people like they were deli meat."

For Morbid Anatomy Museum Founder, Spooky Things Are Life's Work Oct. 31, 2014

The museum's attraction is partly its creepy funereal vibe. The black painted building is no Metropolitan Museum of Art, but it's become a destination. Cawleen Cavanis lives in Queens, a 40 minute subway ride away. She brought a visiting friend and was checking out the gift shop's offerings: a diaphanized mouse, sugar skulls, museum T-shirts and books, including The Morbid Anatomy Anthology, with essays about stuffed humans and demonic children. "It looks like just a lot of interesting specimens here, you know," Cavanis says. "It's definitely worth the trip."

But if you're wondering about taking selfies in the museum, Joanna Ebenstein points to a sign on the door to the galleries: "Photograph taking, digital, analog, video, spirit, is absolutely forbidden."

For those visitors who want to do more than admire, or acquire, the Morbid Anatomy Museum has lectures and workshops on making a bat in a jar and Victorian hair art.

In the current Ebola crisis, much of the focus has been on Liberia and Sierra Leone. But the virus also continues to spread in Guinea, where the first case in the current outbreak was identified in March.

Shots - Health News

The Ebola Outbreak 3 Weeks In: Dire But Not Hopeless

Shots - Health News

Why Is Guinea's Ebola Outbreak So Unusual?

According to the latest figures from the World Health Organization, Guinea has had fewer cases than either Sierra Leone (4,759) or Liberia (6,525). WHO has recorded 1,731 Ebola cases and 1,041 deaths in Guinea. This, however, is just a few dozen fatalities fewer than in Sierra Leone. And despite the lower numbers in Guinea, some data suggest the outbreak is spreading faster there than in the neighboring countries.

Goats and Soda spoke with Marc Poncin, response coordinator for Doctors Without Borders in the Guinean capital of Conakry, to get a better picture of the outbreak.

Where does the epidemic stand in Guinea right now?

There's clearly been a new phase starting in mid-August. From mid-August until now we've seen a much higher number of cases compared to the first and second peaks of the epidemic. So we are clearly in a serious situation.

This Ebola outbreak first came to light in Guinea. Several times the outbreak has appeared to be almost finished. What happened?

Very clearly at the end of May we were almost over with the epidemic. Again at the end of July things were looking much better compared to the month before. I think that it's mainly the importation of cases from Sierra Leone and Liberia that creates a very difficult situation in Guinea. As of June, when the epidemic began to hit the fan, there've been a lot of people leaving those countries [Liberia and Sierra Leone] to come back to their family [in Guinea]. Some of those people were sick without knowing it. When they were back, they started to show symptoms and contaminate their own family and the people around them. We've seen that many, many times. This explains why the epidemic re-launched and why it was very difficult to control it again.

So this reverse migration of Guineans has spread the virus all over the country.

The epidemic is now covering 14 districts out of 33 in the country. Some of those districts are highly affected. Since mid-August we've seen a regular increase of cases each week. We don't know if we've reached the peak.

You worked on an Ebola outbreak in Uganda in 2008 and have cited four elements necessary to get the virus under control: treatment of patients, surveillance, public awareness and safe burials of victims. Those sound like basic steps.

The complexity is to have those four principles functioning at the same time. If you have just treatment, it is not enough. If you don't have good surveillance, if you don't have good contact tracing, then you cannot stop the transmission chain. You will always run after the epidemic, like we've seen in Liberia.

Africa

Guineans Scramble To Defend Themselves Against Deadly Virus

How have Guinean officials responded to the outbreak?

The situation in Guinea is very different than the situation in the two other countries. In Guinea the situation is very bad, but it's clear that the authorities never gave up on the epidemic. They've been always trying to do something — maybe not enough, but they've been always present and trying to coordinate the response. If you come to Guinea, you'll be very surprised. You arrive in a country that's functioning normally. Generally speaking, you can have a normal life. The markets are functioning.

The schools did not restart because they are trying to find a way to make sure they protect children, but they have a strong willingness to restart the schools.

In Liberia and Sierra Leone, international aid agencies have stepped up their response to the epidemic. What's the situation been in Guinea?

This is a big difference with other countries. From the beginning of the crisis until now, MSF [Doctors Without Borders] is running all the beds for Ebola in Guinea, and this is not a good thing.

Just as the U.S. has pledged to help Liberia and the U.K. is sending troops to Sierra Leone, France has vowed to help Guinea [its former colony] battle this outbreak.

The French Red Cross and the French aid agency Alima are both opening new Ebola centers in Guinea. And the Guinean government has launched a plan to eliminate the disease by Jan. 31. Is that possible?

I think it's unrealistic that we can control it by January of 2015, but there is a strong will to increase the response and to have a quick impact on the epidemic.

Guinea

ebola

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

More than 70 years since it surfaced in public, John Steinbeck's story "With Your Wings" will see publication in print today for the first time Friday. The Associated Press reports that, despite being read during a 1944 radio broadcast by Orson Welles, the story had never been put to page and released — so far as experts are aware.

Andrew F. Gulli, managing editor of The Strand Magazine, reportedly stumbled across a transcript of Welles' broadcast during a trawl through the archives at University of Texas at Austin. The piece itself is very much of its time, a wartime story that dwells on the challenges of a black American pilot's return home.

"Steinbeck was an idealist. He saw America as this wonderful land with so much to offer but on the flip side, he could see inequality, he could see greed and excess destroying the working classes," Gulli told the AP in an email. "This story strikes me as an effort to show middle America that African-Americans were carrying on a huge burden in defending the United States and the allies during the war."

The story appears in the quarterly's holiday issue, which is out today.

In The Nick Of Time: Joshua Ferris has won the 2014 International Dylan Thomas Prize. In a ceremony Thursday night, the American author's recent novel, To Rise Again at a Decent Hour, beat out a shortlist of six other books that included such favorites as The Luminaries, Eleanor Catton's 2013 Man Booker Prize winner; and Eimear McBride's Baileys Prize-winning A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing.

The Dylan Thomas prize, which awards just under $50,000 to "the best published or produced literary work in the English language," this year bumped up its age limit from 30 to 39 years old, the age at which the poet himself died. And the rule change came not a moment too soon for Ferris, who turns 40 on Saturday.

Peter Stead, the president of the prize, raved about this year's winner, calling it "a novel which encapsulates the frustration, energy and humor that goes into the making of New York."

It's a sentiment echoed by Michael Schaub, in his review of the book for NPR. "To Rise Again at a Decent Hour isn't just one of the best novels of the year, it's one of the funniest, and most unexpectedly profound, works of fiction in a very long time."

1st new comic in 20 years from creator of Calvin and Hobbes. Delightful and needs no caption. http://t.co/qE0xiBTS3R pic.twitter.com/nWpcwdmygN

— Steve Silberman (@stevesilberman) November 5, 2014

Calvin's Creator, Back In Panels: Bill Watterson, the man behind the beloved Calvin and Hobbes, has made another tentative step back toward the spotlight this week. Tapped for honors at the Angouleme International Comics Festival in France, Watterson drew up a brand-new strip to serve as the festival's poster. Reporter Steve Silberman tweeted the madcap results.

Audio Expansion At Scribd: The e-book subscription service Scribd has announced a massive expansion to its catalog, adding more than 30,000 audiobooks to the e-book titles it already offers. The move adds a new layer to Scribd, which began in 2007 as a document sharing website and just over a year ago launched its e-book lending arm.

The new audiobooks will be available to subscribers under their current plan of $8.99, and the library will feature not just older titles, but frontlisted ones. With the new addition, Scribd says its e-book service now totals more than 500,000 books.

Young Obsession: At The Millions, Jared Young offers an appreciation of Michael Crichton, who passed away six years ago this week. With it, Young pairs a few stories of his own desperate attempts — and failures — to follow in the considerable footsteps of the man himself.

"What fascinated me about Michael Crichton's books was that they were so utterly, magnificently plausible," he writes. "It had seemed, at the outset, like an easy thing to accomplish, but I soon faced the unfortunate truth: I wasn't a novelist ... not, at least, in the meticulous, academic manner of Michael Crichton."

michael crichton

Orson Welles

Book News

Dylan Thomas

books

In a gift the Los Angeles County Museum of Art says is the largest in its history, billionaire Jerry Perenchio is donating art worth an estimated $500 million to the museum.

From member station KPCC in Los Angeles:

"The collection — at least 47 pieces with an estimated value of $500 million — includes work by such European masters as Pierre Bonnard, Edgar Degas, douard Manet, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Ren Magritte, Pablo Picasso and others."

The paintings and other works collected by Perenchio, 83, won't go into the museum's permanent collection until after his death.

"He has offered to us to show some of the highlights very soon," Museum CEO and Director Michael Govan tells KPCC. "In fact, in a matter of months, so you'll get a taste of that."

The donation also includes a requirement that the museum follow through on plans to rebuild its campus.

The Los Angeles Times reports that the public donation is a divergence for Perenchio, who has largely avoided the spotlight.

"In this case, I've decided that it's worth a temporary step into the spotlight and to encourage other collectors to give to LACMA and support the fundraising," Perenchio tells the newspaper.

A former talent agent and TV executive, Perenchio scored a billion-dollar payday in 2007 when he sold his part of Univision, the Spanish-language network he helped buy in 1992.

Longtime sports fans might also recall that Perenchio was the promoter who put together a famous 1973 tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs, billed as the "Battle of the Sexes."

fine art

Whether you viewed this week's midterm elections as exhilarating or bruising, you're probably ready to move on at this point, which makes the timing problematic for Roberto And's lightweight election comedy, Viva La Libert (Long Live Freedom).

Not that opening the week before local elections last year did much for it at the Italian box office. Perhaps party scandals don't register as they once did. The film begins with Enrico Oliveri, a leftist politician who's used to losing, arriving at a party function feeling listless and out-of-sorts. His opposition party's poll numbers are in the tank. And his dull, bureaucratic speeches don't fire up crowds. They sometimes even get shouted down, and that's what happens with this supposedly friendly audience.

So, without telling a soul, including his wife, Enrico packs a suitcase and disappears to the out-of-country home of a somewhat startled ex-girlfriend he hasn't seen in years, determined to lay low for a few days and see what his party does without him.

Knowing the press will have a field day with the disappearance, his campaign manager frantically tries to find him, even contacting Enrico's brother Giovanni, who's just out of a mental institution. Enrico's identical twin brother, as it happens, and ... well, you see where this is headed. Unlike his political sibling, who never says anything remotely controversial to a reporter, cheerfully unbalanced Giovanni is a walking soundbite.

"Fear is the music of democracy," he tells a journalist who shows up while he and the campaign manager are dining in a cafe. "And in the chamber of deputies, not one idiot knows he's an idiot."

The interview makes headlines — good headlines for a change — and the campaign manager decides to see if Giovanni can deliver an actual speech, only to have him crumple it up and say he'll just improvise.

"You must be crazy," sputters the manager.

"So they say," chuckles the imposter, who is soon charming union leaders, whipping campaign crowds into a frenzy, and dancing barefoot with a previously skeptical Madame Chancellor, quite literally sweeping her off her feet ... along with the electorate.

The film's writing isn't as pointed as it might be. Giovanni rallies his leftist troops with speeches every bit as bromide-filled as most political chatter. And director And doesn't worry much about what having an actual madman in office might do to Italian politics. He seems content to let actor Toni Servillo lark about, alternately depressively and irrepressibly, as the two brothers. As for the party-that-never-wins having to actually govern — that's a scenario that might be fun to watch ... playing out harmlessly on screen.

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Chief warden Emmanuel de Merode calls Virunga "the greatest park on Earth" for its remarkable diversity, including rare mountain gorillas. Courtesy of Virunga Film hide caption

itoggle caption Courtesy of Virunga Film

Chief warden Emmanuel de Merode calls Virunga "the greatest park on Earth" for its remarkable diversity, including rare mountain gorillas.

Courtesy of Virunga Film

In a new documentary, Virunga, mountain gorilla orphans play with their handler in a nondescript concrete building in a Congolese national park. They jump. They tackle each other. They hug. They play pranks.

When the gorillas are onscreen, the film, by British director Orlando von Einsiedel, is absolutely charming. But they're just one part of a complicated story encompassing everything from the fate of these animals (only about 800 remain in the world) to the best way that Virunga National Park can benefit the people of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). As always, there are opposing interests and forces, ranging from conservation to oil drilling and tourism.

Under constant threat of poaching, the gorillas themselves teeter on the brink of extinction. While results of a 2010 census offered hope — 480 mountain gorillas were estimated to be living within the park, and conservation efforts had contributed to a 3.7 percent annual growth of the species — the film clearly shows that Virunga's mountain gorilla population is not in the clear.

And neither is Virunga. It's Africa's first national park and has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979 because of its remarkable diversity, including the highest concentration of mammals in the world. It boasts 50 percent of all the terrestrial species in Africa and a topography that includes lowlands, wetland savannahs, tropical rainforests and volcanoes.

Gorillas And Guerrillas Share The Troubled Congo

But since 1994, the two million-acre park has suffered. Aside from the wildlife poaching, 140 park rangers have been killed either by militants or poachers. Virunga borders major communities; a 20-year civil war has claimed more than five million Congolese lives and made the dense forests a hiding place for militias while also serving as a refuge for fleeing citizens. Its foliage has made it a convenient base camp for the Congolese Revolutionary Army's M23 rebel fighters, and an escape for armed groups from neighboring Rwanda.

Meanwhile, a British petroleum company has begun to explore the park. Many locals believe oil money will enrich their day-to-day lives, but environmentalists argue that drilling would lead to the destruction of this African paradise.

Virunga's staunchest defender, a key figure in the documentary, is the park's chief warden, Emmanuel de Merode, 44. He's a Belgian prince who has lived his entire life in Africa and is the only foreign national to serve in the Congolese government. For de Merode, protecting Virunga is personal: He's run the park for six years, studied it as an academic and risked his life for it. In April, unidentified gunmen ambushed him on a road outside the park and shot him multiple times in the chest and abdomen. Local residents and emergency surgery saved his life. By May, he was back on the job.

While de Merode doesn't like to discuss the shooting, he is eager to speak about the importance of sustainable development — which he defines as using natural resources in a safe, productive way that benefits both wildlife and the community.

"We have two million acres of land set aside for conservation because it is important for humanity," de Merode said by phone from New York, where he has been promoting the film. "With local communities, we can create 100,000 jobs in the next five to eight years. There's no way the oil sector can achieve that. Sustainable development can."

The park, aided by foreign investment organizations, has taken small steps toward encouraging development in surrounding communities, focusing heavily on small hydroelectric plants that draw on rivers in and around the park to provide power and jobs without negatively affecting the pristine environment.

A plant created last year "is community-based, off-grid and serves the community with 400 kilowatts, [the equivalent of] 40,000 light bulbs — enough to supply one block of New York for a year," de Merode says. Although a relatively small project, "It has transformed a community and encouraged investment," he says. Meanwhile, "A German company has finished construction for a soap factory with 400 jobs, driving up the price of palm oil for 100,000 farmers around town ... All of the profits are retained in Congo."

That isn't the case, de Merode contends, where the British oil company SOCO International is concerned. While successful oil exploration in Virunga would provide trickle-down benefits to surrounding areas, he says, most of the profits would not benefit locals.

The Virunga film includes footage shot undercover by French freelance journalist Melanie Gouby, showing SOCO representatives offering bribes to park officials, making racist remarks about the Congolese ability to manage the park ("We should re-colonize these colonies, they act like children, they're not mature," says one SOCO employee) and proposing how SOCO could overtake de Merode's park ranger unit to drill within park boundaries, a violation of international law due to Virunga's World Heritage status.

"There's an alternative to this form of development," De Merode says, one that wouldn't "[damage] the natural environment."

If peace comes to the DRC, Virunga will become an increasingly strong draw for tourism, de Merode suggests, particularly given the adorability of the mountain gorillas. Estimates suggest 3,000 to 6,000 tourists already visit the park annually.

He believes that Virunga's natural gifts match, and even beat, those of better known African tourist destinations. Kenya's tourism, de Merode points out, brings in millions. Virunga could, in his opinion, someday make Kenya's tourism revenues pale in comparison.

For now, things seem to be taking a turn for the better in Virunga. In June, SOCO struck a deal mediated by the World Wildlife Fund to stop drilling unless "UNESCO and the DRC government agree that such activities are not incompatible with [the park's] world heritage status." But this doesn't mean de Merode is resting. If anything, he is fighting more tirelessly than ever.

These days, he is vigorously promoting the park's conservation efforts as part of the documentary's publicity tour, along with the gorilla caretaker featured in the film. He hopes Virunga — warmly received by critics, funded by philanthropist Howard G. Buffett and featuring Leonardo di Caprio as executive producer — will encourage audiences to see that what happens in the park as an issue with consequences far beyond the DRC's borders.

Should things in Virunga deteriorate, "I'm genuinely concerned about the ramifications across the world," de Merode said. "If we don't do anything, what's happening in Virunga is something we will deeply regret, that our children will deeply regret. That would be the destruction of the greatest park on Earth."

Virunga premieres Friday, Nov. 7, on Netflix.

national parks

gorillas

development

conservation

environment

documentary

Democratic Republic of Congo

As far back as the early 1990s, Washington thought trade and investment would eventually make China more democratic. In the past couple of years, though, the Communist Party has doubled down on repression at home and become more aggressive overseas.

In short, things have not turned out as Washington had hoped. Now, relations between the world's two major powers are tense — which will be in the spotlight as President Obama arrives in Beijing on Monday for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.

The gathering provides Chinese President Xi Jinping with an international platform as he hosts leaders from Japan, India and Russia and tries to boost China's standing in world affairs.

Prosperity's Unexpected Consequences

Two decades ago, Republicans, Democrats and some prominent China scholars argued that economic engagement would eventually change China's political system.

"By working with China and expanding areas of cooperation, we can advance fundamental American interests and values," President Bill Clinton said in 1997.

James Mann, author of The China Fantasy: Why Capitalism Will Not Bring Democracy to China, says the conventional wisdom was China's authoritarian system would evolve.

"Part of the theory was it was just inevitable," says Mann, a scholar-in-residence at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C. "Any country that became prosperous and had growing trade and investment ties with the world would automatically liberalize."

But Mann says capitalism had the opposite effect.

"It resulted in a rich, authoritarian regime, which is not what we were looking for in the first place and which is more of a problem to deal with," he says.

China has poured some of its riches into naval power and is now tangling with Japan and the Philippines, close American allies, over disputed islands. China claims most of the vast South China Sea as its own, despite the protests of various neighbors.

Chinese naval soldiers stand guard on China's first aircraft carrier Liaoning as it travels toward a military base in Hainan province, in this undated picture made available on Nov. 30, 2013. Tensions in the South China Sea have grown over territorial disputes between China, the Philippines, Japan and others. Reuters/China Stringer Network/Landov hide caption

itoggle caption Reuters/China Stringer Network/Landov

Mann says American policymakers thought China would follow the path of other East Asian dictatorships, such as Taiwan and South Korea, which democratized in the 1980s. Those countries, however, relied on the U.S. for their defense, which Washington used as political leverage.

"The United States pushed Taiwan over a decade," says Mann. "None of that is going to happen in China. It has an entirely different relationship with the United States."

Minxin Pei, a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College in California, says instead of democratizing China, economic growth helped the party strengthen its grip on power.

"Better economic performance gives them greater political legitimacy and they don't have to do political reform," says Pei. It also "allows them more resources to use repression to defend one-party rule."

Since coming to power in 2012, President Xi has cracked down on Internet speech and jailed all sorts of critics. Last month, an 81-year-old writer known by the pen name Tie Liu was charged with "creating a disturbance." Among his apparent offenses: publishing the accounts of some of the political victims of Mao Zedong, who died in 1976.

Shen Dingli, a professor of international relations at Fudan University in Shanghai, knows China's political failings, but says the party has made improvements for which it doesn't receive credit. They include term limits for top leaders, who — though not popularly elected – pay close attention to public opinion.

"America somehow is impatient," says Shen, who says Americans seem to think the only form of democracy is the one-person, one-vote Western model. America "is too idealistic and is too chauvinistic."

Trends That Undermine Communist Power

How long can the Communist Party stay in power? Pei expects it to run out of gas in 10 to 15 years.

"The people who work for this system have no fundamental loyalty to the system," says Pei. Indeed, the conventional wisdom among Chinese themselves is that most people join the party and government primarily to enrich themselves through connections and graft.

"All they want to do is benefit personally from their relationship with the system," Pei continues. "So, over the long run, the system will go bankrupt."

Cheng Li, director of the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, says the party has another trend running against it. Young Chinese have dramatically different expectations than their parents.

"Let's look at the young people in Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen," he says. "They are more similar to their peers in Taipei, in Tokyo, in Washington, in New York. That's a very powerful force."

"They have similar lifestyles. They have similar inspirations," Li continues. "Sooner or later, they will also want to have freedom."

Li says that's natural. As to when that might happen, though, that's anyone's guess.

China

As far back as the early 1990s, Washington thought trade and investment would eventually make China more democratic. In the past couple of years, though, the Communist Party has doubled down on repression at home and become more aggressive overseas.

In short, things have not turned out as Washington had hoped. Now, relations between the world's two major powers are tense — which will be in the spotlight as President Obama arrives in Beijing on Monday for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.

The gathering provides Chinese President Xi Jinping with an international platform as he hosts leaders from Japan, India and Russia and tries to boost China's standing in world affairs.

Prosperity's Unexpected Consequences

Two decades ago, Republicans, Democrats and some prominent China scholars argued that economic engagement would eventually change China's political system.

"By working with China and expanding areas of cooperation, we can advance fundamental American interests and values," President Bill Clinton said in 1997.

James Mann, author of The China Fantasy: Why Capitalism Will Not Bring Democracy to China, says the conventional wisdom was China's authoritarian system would evolve.

"Part of the theory was it was just inevitable," says Mann, a scholar-in-residence at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C. "Any country that became prosperous and had growing trade and investment ties with the world would automatically liberalize."

But Mann says capitalism had the opposite effect.

"It resulted in a rich, authoritarian regime, which is not what we were looking for in the first place and which is more of a problem to deal with," he says.

China has poured some of its riches into naval power and is now tangling with Japan and the Philippines, close American allies, over disputed islands. China claims most of the vast South China Sea as its own, despite the protests of various neighbors.

Chinese naval soldiers stand guard on China's first aircraft carrier Liaoning as it travels toward a military base in Hainan province, in this undated picture made available on Nov. 30, 2013. Tensions in the South China Sea have grown over territorial disputes between China, the Philippines, Japan and others. Reuters/China Stringer Network/Landov hide caption

itoggle caption Reuters/China Stringer Network/Landov

Mann says American policymakers thought China would follow the path of other East Asian dictatorships, such as Taiwan and South Korea, which democratized in the 1980s. Those countries, however, relied on the U.S. for their defense, which Washington used as political leverage.

"The United States pushed Taiwan over a decade," says Mann. "None of that is going to happen in China. It has an entirely different relationship with the United States."

Minxin Pei, a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College in California, says instead of democratizing China, economic growth helped the party strengthen its grip on power.

"Better economic performance gives them greater political legitimacy and they don't have to do political reform," says Pei. It also "allows them more resources to use repression to defend one-party rule."

Since coming to power in 2012, President Xi has cracked down on Internet speech and jailed all sorts of critics. Last month, an 81-year-old writer known by the pen name Tie Liu was charged with "creating a disturbance." Among his apparent offenses: publishing the accounts of some of the political victims of Mao Zedong, who died in 1976.

Shen Dingli, a professor of international relations at Fudan University in Shanghai, knows China's political failings, but says the party has made improvements for which it doesn't receive credit. They include term limits for top leaders, who — though not popularly elected – pay close attention to public opinion.

"America somehow is impatient," says Shen, who says Americans seem to think the only form of democracy is the one-person, one-vote Western model. America "is too idealistic and is too chauvinistic."

Trends That Undermine Communist Power

How long can the Communist Party stay in power? Pei expects it to run out of gas in 10 to 15 years.

"The people who work for this system have no fundamental loyalty to the system," says Pei. Indeed, the conventional wisdom among Chinese themselves is that most people join the party and government primarily to enrich themselves through connections and graft.

"All they want to do is benefit personally from their relationship with the system," Pei continues. "So, over the long run, the system will go bankrupt."

Cheng Li, director of the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, says the party has another trend running against it. Young Chinese have dramatically different expectations than their parents.

"Let's look at the young people in Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen," he says. "They are more similar to their peers in Taipei, in Tokyo, in Washington, in New York. That's a very powerful force."

"They have similar lifestyles. They have similar inspirations," Li continues. "Sooner or later, they will also want to have freedom."

Li says that's natural. As to when that might happen, though, that's anyone's guess.

China

What's in your home, always on, ready to listen to you and constantly adapting to the way you talk? Why, it's Amazon's Echo speaker. Think a less portable Siri or Google Now, but hands-free.

Are you ready to bring an eavesdropping device that's connected to the cloud into the privacy of your abode?

Here's how Amazon describes Echo on its site:

"Amazon Echo is designed around your voice. It's always on—just ask for information, music, news, weather, and more. Echo begins working as soon as it hears you say the wake word, 'Alexa.' It's also an expertly-tuned speaker that can fill any room with immersive sound."

According to the demo video, Echo answers trivia questions (Alexa, how tall is Mount Everest?), it tells jokes, helps the kids with homework and plays music on demand. You can ask it for a "flash news briefing" with the latest headlines. (The demo video features news from NPR.) And it keeps a running shopping list for you — it is from Amazon, after all.

YouTube

You can put the 9 1/4-inch-tall device anywhere in the room (as long as it's near an electric plug), and something called "far-field recognition" — seven microphones using "beam-forming technology" — can hear you from any direction, Amazon says.

Related NPR Stories

All Tech Considered

Hey Celebs, Are You Lonesome Tonight? Siri's Gotcha

On Smartphones, The Power Of Voice Can Be Used Against You

In a post titled "Amazon's new Echo device marries Sonos with Siri," Gigaom notes that Echo isn't the first device of its kind:

"There have been efforts to build these kinds of smart assistants for your home before. The Ubi aims to be a kind of intercom for the smart home, and the Aether speaker aims to combine cloud music streaming with voice input. However, Amazon's strength is that it could combine Echo with its other devices and services to make it a lot more valuable out of the box."

There's a button to turn off Echo's microphone, but as you can imagine, some people might be uneasy with a listening device planted squarely in their living room or bedroom.

As a commenter named Hicham Bouabdallah wrote on TechChrunch:

"NSA, CIA and FBI would like to personally thank Amazon for installing spy mics in every home. Having said that, love the idea of an always on personal assistant."

Echo also works away from home using a free app on Amazon's Fire OS and Android as well as desktop and iOS browsers. It's selling for $199, invitation only, though Amazon Prime members are eligible to get it for $99.

One last question: What if your name is Alexa?

speech recognition

Siri

Amazon.com

A glitzy new production facility in Manhattan is a far cry from the bedrooms where many YouTube creators used to shoot their videos. Every inch of YouTube Space New York, which opened Thursday, can be used as a potential set.

The space contains three production studios and an area called Brand Lab, designed to bring Madison Avenue to YouTube's door.

Adam Relis, head of the facility, points to a portion of the floor covered with Lucite. More than 300,000 linear feet of cable are running beneath his feet. "That's 187 times the Empire State Building," he notes.

YouTube, the world's most popular site for video streaming, has been spending big in recent years. Once known for featuring cute cat videos, the company is all grown up now and sees itself in competition with companies like Netflix, Hulu and even traditional TV.

The new studio is a big part of YouTube's strategy to attract new viewers. The resources here are all reserved for YouTube content creators. Those with more than 5,000 subscribers will be free to make whatever videos they want here, says Lance Podell, global head of YouTube spaces. And anyone with a YouTube channel can attend worskhops like "Audience Building Essentials."

"I think a playground is a great way to describe" the facility, Podell says. "My first dream is that ... folks respond to it and immediately show up saying, 'I've got my thinking cap on. I've brought three other creators I know, and we have a really great idea and we'd like to try it here.' "

YouTube has also invested in production studios in Los Angeles, London and Tokyo, where creators have made more than 6,000 videos. The company can't, however, point to a single video produced in those facilities that has gone viral.

i i

The New York facility is available free to YouTube creators with more than 5,000 subscribers. The other Spaces have yet to produce a big hit, but YouTube says the sites are designed to spur creativity, not just draw eyeballs. YouTube hide caption

itoggle caption YouTube

The New York facility is available free to YouTube creators with more than 5,000 subscribers. The other Spaces have yet to produce a big hit, but YouTube says the sites are designed to spur creativity, not just draw eyeballs.

YouTube

No matter. YouTube says the spaces, part of the video sharing site's evolution since Google acquired it for $1.7 billion in 2006, help to expand the horizons of its creators.

James McQuivey, a media analyst at Forrester Research, says YouTube is "seeing the billions of dollars that cable networks and broadcasters have, and they're saying, 'I want some of that billion, I have a fair shot at it, but in order to have some of what they've got, I've got to do some of what they do.' That means building studios and it means funding producers."

Those producers, McQuivey points out, manage to help pull in about 1 billion unique visitors to the site per month.

Digital Life

A War To Watch: YouTube Takes On Television

It is generally thought that YouTube has been profitable since 2011, though it is hard to come up with specific numbers because Google doesn't break out YouTube's earnings.

Code Switch

While Films And TV Shows Miss Latinos, A YouTube Outlet Grows

McQuivey says building production facilities is part of YouTube's plan to increase revenue by getting viewers to stay longer.

"The cat videos have been phenomenal at getting to know YouTube — to maybe even come back and spend a few minutes there a day," he says. "But they're not going to get you 15, then 30, then 60 minutes a day on YouTube, which is what YouTube ultimately wants."

But will sophisticated production values add to YouTube's bottom line? McQuivey says that's beside the point.

"Most of that content probably would have been produced elsewhere anyway. But in the end, if everyone is getting together in the studio, making something that is successful — well, that all works towards YouTube's eventual vision of the future."

McQuivey also says opening a production facility in New York sends a clear signal to the television industry on its own turf — that YouTube is ready to partner with producers who are ready to join its digital revolution.

viral videos

Television

YouTube

streaming

video

Check your kitchen cabinets — there's a good chance a CorningWare casserole dish is inside.

If there isn't, you probably know someone who has one. CorningWare, the popular white cookware often decorated with blue cornflowers, has been a fixture at family gatherings and potluck dinners for decades.

S. Donald Stookey, credited with creating a synthetic ceramic glass in the 1950s that led to CorningWare, died Tuesday at age 99.

The durable cookware is able to withstand extreme temperatures, making it perfect for casseroles. The dishes can go from oven to table and then into the refrigerator or freezer. Later, CorningWare could be used in microwave ovens and cooktops.

Stookey discovered glass ceramics in 1952 — the fortuitous outcome of an experiment gone wrong.

As The Associated Press tells the story, "Stookey was a young scientist researching the properties of glass ... when he put a glass plate into an oven to heat it. But the oven malfunctioned. Instead of heating to about 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit, the oven shot up to more than 1,600 degrees. Stookey expected to find a molten mess. Instead, he found an opaque, milky-white plate. As he was removing it from the oven, his tongs slipped, and the plate fell to the floor. But instead of shattering, it bounced."

i i

S. Donald Stookey, photographed in 1950, prepares to expose an image to ultraviolet light. Stookey forever changed cooking with the invention of CorningWare. AP hide caption

itoggle caption AP

S. Donald Stookey, photographed in 1950, prepares to expose an image to ultraviolet light. Stookey forever changed cooking with the invention of CorningWare.

AP

And bounce is exactly what sales of CorningWare did. By the end of the 1950s, it was one of Corning's most successful products.

CorningWare is still on store shelves. Corning spun off its consumer-products division in 1998, and the cookware is now marketed by World Kitchen.

Stookey held the patent on CorningWare. His son, Donald Stookey, told the AP that he believes his father made money on a percentage of the sales — but did not get rich.

In 1986, Stookey received the National Medal of Technology from President Ronald Reagan. And in 2010, he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

CorningWare

S. Donald Stookey

A trade group representing more than 1,400 for-profit colleges has filed a lawsuit against the federal government over regulations aimed at curbing industry abuses.

The group seeks to stop a federal regulation, known as the "gainful employment rule," that was formally put into place last week by the U.S. Department of Education. The rule restricts access to federal student-aid dollars for institutions deemed to have too many students who struggle to pay back their student loans.

The rule is aimed at cracking down on institutions that charge excessive tuition, especially for programs that have little value on the job market. The Department of Education says the regulation could potentially affect up to 840,000 students, and, the trade group says, 3.5 million in the next 10 years. Two million students are currently enrolled in for-profits.

The for-profit colleges depend heavily on federal aid money, and the lawsuit filed Thursday is the latest salvo in a battle that has now stretched over five years and at least one other lawsuit.

At issue in the current suit are the criteria used to determine whether, and how many, students are struggling. The Education Department is proposing to compare graduates' student loan debt to their earnings. The schools say such a measure is unfair because how much money students make after graduating is not in their control.

"The gainful employment regulation is nothing more than a bad-faith attempt to cut off access to education for millions of students who have been historically underserved by higher education," Steve Gunderson, president and CEO of the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities, which brought the lawsuit, said in a statement.

Dorie Nolt, the Education Department press secretary, said, "We're confident that the department is within its legal authority in issuing gainful employment regulations that will protect students and taxpayers' investments by bringing more accountability and transparency to career training programs."

Barmak Nassirian, an independent policy analyst, says the legal case is really trying to get at something much bigger: "An industry is really challenging the right of an agency to question its entitlement to free federal money."

Both he and Ben Miller, a senior education policy analyst at the New America Foundation, say that even should the rule survive this new challenge in court, enforcement efforts could be defunded by the new Republican-controlled Congress, or the idea could be axed altogether by the next president.

Bottom line, Nassirian says, "I think 'gainful' is as good as dead politically."

And, Miller points out, in the long run having the rule on the books may be beside the point.

He notes that enrollment in for-profit colleges fell by about 250,000 students between 2010 and 2012. "Three things happened," he explains. "First, when the department started this process in 2010, it started to freak schools out and force them to go re-evaluate programs and close or shrink the poor performers."

Miller points to the example of one-year certificate programs in criminal justice that advertised after the popular CSI drama series on TV but gave graduates few plausible job prospects.

Second, media attention over the past few years has highlighted the problems with these and other practices in the for-profit industry.

"Continued public attention got students to be more discerning in consumer choices," Miller said.

Finally, he added, the financial troubles and collapse of Corinthian Colleges this summer took one of the most frequently criticized large players out of the picture.

All of which means, Miller said, that "the idea behind the rule works faster than the rule itself."

Airlines are paying less for jet fuel these days. But don't expect that price drop to translate into Thanksgiving travel bargains for you.

Rather than cut fares, airlines are turning fuel savings into cash for acquiring aircraft, upgrading software, rewarding workers and attracting long-term investors, according to John Heimlich, chief economist for Airlines For America, A4A, a trade group.

The major carriers that filed for bankruptcy during the Great Recession have learned to be more "fiscally responsible," Heimlich told reporters Thursday. After years of fighting with creditors, "they are paying their bills," he said.

In the long run, "enhanced creditworthiness" will create a more stable industry that can better serve travelers, Heimlich said.

But for now, those bill-paying efforts are sending air fares higher, with carriers pushing them up five times this year, according to Farecompare.com.

While A4A notes that fares are lower than in 2000 after adjusting for inflation, consumers might point out that today's higher fees and taxes have driven up total travel costs. In addition, in many markets, fliers have fewer choices following a merger wave that combined American Airlines with US Airways; United with Continental; Delta with Northwest; and Southwest with AirTran.

Business

Regulators And Airlines Fight Over Fares, Fees And Fairness

Heimlich points out that the consolidated industry needs additional revenue to keep pace with higher operating costs for aircraft loan payments, rents, landing fees, new software and skilled labor.

In fact, the industry's capital expenditures for the first nine months of this year amounted to more than $1 billion per month — the highest rate of reinvestment in 13 years, he said. Customers are benefiting from those investments by getting more Wi-Fi options, updated gate areas, new aircraft and better kiosks.

These upgrades may attract more travelers in the future, but for now, domestic air traffic growth has been restrained, still running below pre-recession levels.

Heimlich predicts that this year's improving economy will help nudge up air travel to 24.6 million passengers over the Thanksgiving travel period, an increase of 1.5 percent from last year. But that number is still about 6 percent lower than the Thanksgiving period before the recession hit, he said.

He says this year, Sunday, Nov. 30, will be the busiest air travel day of this year, followed by Wednesday, Nov. 26.

George Hobica, founder of Airfarewatchdog.com, says bargain hunters have better luck finding cheap flights when they are willing to accept "middle seats next to the lavatory, red-eye flights, or 5 a.m. departures."

air travel

Airlines

It's a record most Alaskans might wish they could give back: The Center for Public Integrity calculates that KTUU TV in Anchorage ran more U.S. Senate ads this cycle than any other television station in the country — 12,300 in all.

Those Senate spots made up the bulk of the 13,400 political ads since January. KTUU General Manager Andrew MacLeod says 2014 was the the station's busiest year ever. By contrast, off-year 2013 was relatively light.

Besides gubernatorial and U.S. Senate primaries, the election year also brought out advertisers for key ballot measures, including those for legalizing recreational marijuana, raising the minimum wage, and empowering he legislature to block a controversial mine near the Bristol Baby Fisheries Reserve (they all passed).

But the hottest battle was the Nov. 4 face off between Democratic Sen. Mark Begich and Republican challenger Dan Sullivan. By Thursday it was still undecided, with Sullivan holding an 8,000-vote lead and Begich holding out until some 20,000 uncounted ballots can be tallied.

Besides the candidates and the party committees, the Wesleyan Media Project tracked 22 outside groups buying TV time for the race. It estimates they aired more than 58,000 ads.

The Sunlight Foundation reported late in October that all those advertisers spent $120 per voter –- more than triple the figure for any other Senate race.

Even so, Tuesday's turnout was about 15 percent lower than Sunlight projected. On Thursday, the online Alaska Dispatch calculated that overall spending by the candidates, party committees and outside groups came to about $225 per voter.

U.S. Senate

Alaska

Campaign ads

What's in your home, always on, ready to listen to you and constantly adapting to the way you talk? Why, it's Amazon's Echo speaker. Think a less portable Siri or Google Now, but hands-free.

Are you ready to bring an eavesdropping device that's connected to the cloud into the privacy of your abode?

Here's how Amazon describes Echo on its site:

"Amazon Echo is designed around your voice. It's always on—just ask for information, music, news, weather, and more. Echo begins working as soon as it hears you say the wake word, 'Alexa.' It's also an expertly-tuned speaker that can fill any room with immersive sound."

According to the demo video, Echo answers trivia questions (Alexa, how tall is Mount Everest?), it tells jokes, helps the kids with homework and plays music on demand. You can ask it for a "flash news briefing" with the latest headlines. (The demo video features news from NPR.) And it keeps a running shopping list for you — it is from Amazon, after all.

YouTube

You can put the 9 1/4-inch-tall device anywhere in the room (as long as it's near an electric plug), and something called "far-field recognition" — seven microphones using "beam-forming technology" — can hear you from any direction, Amazon says.

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In a post titled "Amazon's new Echo device marries Sonos with Siri," Gigaom notes that Echo isn't the first device of its kind:

"There have been efforts to build these kinds of smart assistants for your home before. The Ubi aims to be a kind of intercom for the smart home, and the Aether speaker aims to combine cloud music streaming with voice input. However, Amazon's strength is that it could combine Echo with its other devices and services to make it a lot more valuable out of the box."

There's a button to turn off Echo's microphone, but as you can imagine, some people might be uneasy with a listening device planted squarely in their living room or bedroom.

As a commenter named Hicham Bouabdallah wrote on TechChrunch:

"NSA, CIA and FBI would like to personally thank Amazon for installing spy mics in every home. Having said that, love the idea of an always on personal assistant."

Echo also works away from home using a free app on Amazon's Fire OS and Android as well as desktop and iOS browsers. It's selling for $199, invitation only, though Amazon Prime members are eligible to get it for $99.

One last question: What if your name is Alexa?

speech recognition

Siri

Amazon.com

On election night in a hotel ballroom in Anchorage, Alaska, Sen. Lisa Murkowski picked up a chair and waved it over her head.

"I am the chairmaaaaaaaaaaan!" she shouted.

The Republican takeover Tuesday night puts Murkowski in charge of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. That's great news for Alaska, which is always eager for the feds to allow more oil drilling up here. But what does her chairmanship mean for the other side of that coin — global warming?

At that same election-night party, Murkowski said she takes climate change seriously.

"I come from a state where we see a warming. We're seeing it with increased water temperatures; we're seeing it with ice that is thinner; we're seeing it with migratory patterns that are changing," she said. "So I look at this and I say this is something that we must address."

But does she mean we should address the cause of global warming? Hard to say, since she's apparently not so sure what the cause is — or whether mankind is to blame. She mentioned a volcano she had heard about in Iceland.

"The emissions that are being put in the air by that volcano are a thousand years' worth of emissions that would come from all of the vehicles, all of the manufacturing in Europe," she said.

Remembering The Exxon Valdez Oil Spill

25 Years After Spill, Alaska Town Struggles Back From 'Dead Zone'

"What can I say?" wonders Princeton professor Michael Oppenheimer, a leading expert on climate change. "It's simply untrue. I don't know where she gets that number from."

Oppenheimer says it's actually the other way around: Annual emissions from Europe are 10 times bigger than the annual emissions of all volcanoes put together. And he says the argument misses a bigger point: Humans are adding carbon dioxide to what was a balanced system.

"So not only is the number wrong, but the context is highly deceptive," he says.

But casting doubt on mankind's role kind of makes sense in Alaska — a place where the warming itself is becoming too hard to ignore.

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Oil, carried here by the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, is fundamental to the state's economy. But Alaskans also face the effects of climate change in their daily lives. Al Grillo/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Al Grillo/AP

Oil, carried here by the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, is fundamental to the state's economy. But Alaskans also face the effects of climate change in their daily lives.

Al Grillo/AP

In the very same hotel where the Republicans had their victory party, there is a climate change conference going on. It's a conference for land managers who are dealing with global warming right now: They're talking about things like what to do when melting permafrost moves your sewer pipes and water runs the wrong way. This isn't a conference about stopping global warming — it's about living with it.

Scientist Scott Rupp of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks admits that Alaskans tend to avoid talking about the cause.

"You know, that's a tough thing for a place like Alaska," he says. "I mean, there's no way of getting around the pragmatic fact that we depend on fossil fuels for the majority of our state budget. We also experience the highest energy prices anywhere in the country."

Rupp says talking about the cause politicizes things.

"But if we stick to the impact part of things, which is part of the equation of living in Alaska — and has been for 10, 20 years now — you can kind of side-step that," he adds.

On the forefront of global warming, Alaska and its politicians have settled into a kind of acceptance. Instead of arguing about causes, they've decided to concentrate on trying to adapt.

Alaska

climate change

Ukraine says Russia has sent 32 tanks and 16 howitzer artillery systems across its border, threatening an already fragile ceasefire that was agreed to back in September.

Reuters reports:

"'The deployment continues of military equipment and Russian mercenaries to the front lines,' spokesman Andriy Lysenko said in a televised briefing referring to Thursday's cross-border incursion.

"The report of a new Russian movement of armor across the border follows a charge on Thursday by pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine that Kiev government forces had launched a new offensive - which Kiev immediately denied."

Of course, all of this comes just days after separatists in eastern Ukraine defied the central government in Kiev by holding elections. Russia said it would recognize the results, which led to further fears from Western countries and Kiev that Russia would continue its incursion into Ukraine.

And just in case you haven't been paying attention this is a CliffNotes version of how we got here: This whole conflict started after violent protests ended in the ouster of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych. Seizing on the opportunity and instability, Russia annexed Crimea, a peninsula with long, historical ties to Russia. Since then, Kiev and Russia-backed separatists have been trading words and fire. In September, they came to a cease-fire agreement.

The BBC reports that if the troop movement is confirmed, it would prove a serious blow to an already-fraying cease-fire deal. The BBC explains that earlier this week:

"President Petro Poroshenko has accused the rebels of tearing up a peace deal and said a law granting the rebel-held regions partial autonomy would be scrapped. He has ordered reinforcements to key cities in case of a rebel offensive.

"But the separatists hit back on Wednesday, arguing that it was the scrapping of the special status deal that broke the peace agreement."

crisis in Ukraine

Ukraine

Beijing and Tokyo have jointly acknowledged their competing claims over the sovereignty of an uninhabited island chain, effectively setting aside a contentious dispute and paving the way to renew high-level contacts two years after China unilaterally froze relations.

The Associated Press reports that China's Foreign Ministry said the two sides agreed they had "different positions" on the islands referred to by Tokyo as the Senkaku chain and by Beijing as the Diaoyus. The two sides would "gradually resume political, diplomatic and security dialogues," it said. Japan's Foreign Ministry released a similarly worded statement.

The New York Times says: "The agreement is the first public declaration by the two countries that they are seeking better relations and want to end the prolonged standoff, which has damaged their economic ties and at times seemed to bring them close to conflict."

Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe are widely expected to hold a meeting the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit next week in Beijing. Abe said a meeting with his Chinese counterpart had yet to be finalized, but that it looked promising.

"Until now the door was closed, unfortunately, but this agreement has achieved a momentum," he said on BS Fuji television, according to AP.

The Senkakus/Diaoyu islands in the East China Sea have been the source of tense naval encounters, especially following a move by Japan to nationalize the islands two years ago. In a tit-for-tat response, China declared an air defense zone over the islands.

Although largely staying out of the fray, President Obama earlier this year suggested that Washington stands behind Tokyo's claim.

The Senkaku/Diaoyu row is just one of several island disputes between China and its maritime neighbors, including Vietnam and the Philippines.

China

Japan

To clamp down on health care costs, a growing number of employers and insurers are putting limits on how much they'll pay for certain medical services such as knee replacements, lab tests and complex imaging.

A recent study found that savings from such moves may be modest, however, and some analysts question whether "reference pricing," as it's called, is good for consumers.

The California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS), which administers the health insurance benefits for 1.4 million state workers, retirees and their families, has one of the more established reference pricing systems.

More than three years ago, CalPERS began using reference pricing for elective knee and hip replacements, two common procedures for which hospital prices varied widely without discernible differences in quality, says Ann Boynton, who helps set benefits policies at CalPERS.

Shots - Health News

Opting Out Of Your Insurance Plan's Network Can Be Costly

Working with Anthem Blue Cross, the CalPERS set $30,000 as the reference price for those two surgeries in its preferred provider organization plan.

Members who get surgery at one of the 52 hospitals that charge $30,000 or less pay only their plan's regular cost-sharing. If member choose to use an in-network hospital that charges more than the reference price, however, they're on the hook for the entire amount over $30,000, and the extra spending doesn't count toward their annual maximum out-of-pocket limit, Boynton says.

"We're not worried about people not getting the care they need," says Boynton. "They have access to good hospitals; they're just getting it at a reasonable price."

In two years, CalPERS saved nearly $6 million on those two procedures, and members saved $600,000 in lower cost sharing, according to research published last year by James C. Robinson, a professor of health economics at the University of California, Berkeley, and director of the Berkeley Center for Health Technology. Most of the savings came from price reductions at expensive hospitals.

The agency recently set caps on how much it would spend for cataract surgery, colonoscopies and arthroscopic surgery, Boynton says.

Those who have studied reference pricing say it is most appropriate for common, non-emergency procedures or tests that vary widely in price but are generally comparable in quality. Research has generally shown that higher prices for medical services don't mean their quality is higher. Setting a reference price steers consumers to high-quality doctors, hospitals, labs and imaging centers that perform well for the price, proponents say.

Others point out that reference pricing doesn't necessarily save employers a lot of money, however. A study released earlier this month by the National Institute for Health Care Reform examined the 2011 claims data for 528,000 autoworkers and their dependents, both active and retired. It analyzed roughly 350 high-volume and/or high-priced inpatient and ambulatory medical services that reference pricing might reasonably be applied to.

The overall potential savings was 5 percent, the study found.

"It was surprising that even with all that pricing variation, reference pricing doesn't have a more dramatic impact on spending," says Chapin White, a senior policy researcher at RAND and lead author of the study.

Even though the results may be modest, a growing number of very large companies are incorporating reference pricing, according to benefits consultant Mercer's annual employer health insurance survey. The percentage of employers with 10,000 or more employees that used reference pricing grew from 10 percent in 2012 to 15 percent in 2013, the survey found. Thirty percent said they were considering adding reference pricing, the survey found. Among employers with 500 or fewer workers, adoption was flat at 10 percent in 2013, compared with 11 percent in 2012.

This spring, the Obama administration said that large group and self-insured health plans could use reference pricing.

The health law sets limits on how much consumers have to pay out of pocket annually for in-network care before insurance picks up the whole tab — in 2015, it's $6,600 for an individual and $13,200 for a family plan. But if consumers choose providers whose prices are higher than a plan's reference price, those amounts don't count toward the out-of-pocket maximum, the administration guidance said.

Leaving consumers on the hook for amounts over the reference price needlessly drags them into the battle between providers and health plans over prices, says White.

"You expect the health plan to do a few things: negotiate reasonable prices with providers, and not to enter into network contracts with providers who provide bad quality care," White says. "Reference pricing is kind of an admission that health plans have failed on one or both of those fronts."

health care costs

Affordable Care Act

Health Insurance

All around the country, gasoline prices have been falling for weeks, down to an average of about $3 a gallon. Those lower prices are helping restrain inflation across the board.

On Wednesday, the Labor Department said its consumer price index barely inched up 0.1 percent last month. Over the past 12 months, the CPI has risen by 1.7 percent, roughly half of its historical average rate of increase.

That sounds great for consumers.

But some economists see possible trouble ahead. They worry that if energy prices were to keep sliding, the process could contribute to deflation — a brutal cycle of falling prices last seen in this country during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Economists consider deflation to be the nightmare scenario. To understand why, imagine you own a factory. To make your product, you first must purchase parts and raw materials. You promise workers a certain wage. You borrow money to expand.

All of these transactions are based on the idea that you will be able to sell your goods at a particular price. But what if prices start falling?

Suddenly, you can't afford to repay your loan or live up to your contract with workers. You can't afford the parts that already are sitting on your inventory shelves. You have to start selling products at a loss, even as your competitors are slashing their prices.

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The downward pressure creates a vicious cycle that quickly leads to a broad plunge in the value of businesses, homes and other investments. While inflation can be painful and corrosive over time, deflation can crush an economy like a boulder out of the sky.

So where is the downward price pressure coming from today? Look overseas.

In both Europe and China, growth is weak. When consumers and companies in other countries start cutting their purchases of energy and goods, then global prices fall.

All over the world, central bankers and policymakers are trying to stimulate growth to keep prices from falling further. In this country, the Federal Reserve, which sets the direction of interest rates, wants to see the inflation rate hold steady at 2 percent.

"Given the deflationary winds blowing our way from Europe, the Fed is going to want to see CPI much higher" before boosting interest rates, Jonathan Lewis, the top investment officer at Samson Capital Advisors, said in an analysis.

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@officialdavet shared this image from Lake Orion, Mich., as part of our callout for photos of gas prices across the country. @officialdavet/Instagram hide caption

itoggle caption @officialdavet/Instagram

@officialdavet shared this image from Lake Orion, Mich., as part of our callout for photos of gas prices across the country.

@officialdavet/Instagram

For most Americans, here's what all of this means: Wages and prices are not moving much, and interest rates are remaining low. There may be a danger of deflation lurking just over the horizon, but so far, the drop in energy prices has been a boost for consumers.

Many are applauding the pleasures of low inflation. For example, they can buy a car with a cheap loan and then fill it up with cheap gas. That can help stimulate the economy in this country by increasing travel and consumer purchasing power.

"I'm on a very tight budget," said Macy Gould, a Lexington, Ky., resident who graduated from college in May. She was thrilled this past weekend when she was able to refuel for about $2.83 a gallon. "Spending less on gas is a real help to me," she said.

Earlier this year, a driving trip she wanted to make to St. Louis "just wasn't doable," she said. Now that the cost of gas is down so much, "I'm hoping I can get that back on the calendar."

deflation

gas prices

Somewhere around the world, someone is trying to breach the security system of a large company. These attempted intrusions happen all the time.

Some experts say that to defeat the bad hackers, you've got to partner with the good ones. Recruit them to find holes and bugs in software and, when they do, pay them for it.

So-called bug bounty programs are becoming the new normal in Silicon Valley's high-tech sector. But another heavily hacked sector — the financial industry — isn't biting on the idea.

Risky Business?

At Yahoo's headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif., dozens of people are listening to security experts from Google, Twitter, Yahoo and PayPal explain why they're inviting hackers to attack their corporate networks.

"If you care about the product [and] you care about your customers, you care about your customers' security — this is what you have to do," says Dean Turner, director of security intelligence at PayPal.

The online world is full of risk — and that risk is not going away. PayPal has responded by calling out to hackers with an open invite. This past year alone, the company says it has paid about 1,000 of them for confidentially reporting big security holes. These do-gooder hackers, called "white hats," come from over 66 countries and all walks of life — teenagers, tech workers, unemployed geeks.

Turner admits it's a tricky relationship. "You have to be reasonable," he says. "You have to be fair and you've got to be very clear about what your expectations are in terms of the exchange of information."

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Like other tech companies, PayPal expects these self-appointed researchers to only hack their own personal customer accounts — not others — in the research process.

The hackers in turn expect the price to be right — say a few hundred dollars for a small bug, and tens of thousands for a big one. This isn't charity work, and they can always sell their findings to the black market.

"If you try to shortchange the researchers," Turner warns, "you're going to find out pretty quickly that you're going to be in trouble."

Sitting in the audience, Robert Auger, from the online file storage company Box, wonders about extortion. "Have you bumped into situations where people have tried to get more money out of you than you agreed to?" he asks.

Turner responds matter-of-factly. "Does it happen? Sure. Do you modify the rules? No."

New Conventional Wisdom

Paying outsiders to attack you was a radical idea just years ago. But the online world has grown so quickly and the cyberattacks against consumers have been so aggressive, Silicon Valley has changed its mind.

"There's thousands or tens of thousands of people out there with the skill sets that could help us find these bugs and get them fixed faster," Yahoo Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos says. "And there's nothing lost by bringing them kind of into the fold and giving them an opportunity to participate."

The biggest banks in the United States do not agree.

NPR contacted a dozen financial institutions. Like high-tech firms, they're under constant attack. But only one of them, GE, says it has a method for outsiders (customers or researchers) to report a security issue to the company. Citibank and Wells Fargo declined to even state whether they have such a method because, they explain, they don't discuss cybersecurity matters with the public.

Stamos has heard this before. "For most companies, they don't want to ever talk about security unless it's an absolute emergency and they've had a breach," he says. "And I think that's a mistake."

In a statement to NPR, the Financial Services Roundtable says the banks and insurers that are its member have not "traditionally" paid bug bounties. Such security programs are "usually" for technology companies that make software, like Microsoft, the group says.

Stamos doesn't buy that statement.

"Several of the large banks have more tech employees than we have employees overall," he says. "So hopefully they're able to adapt what we've done for themselves."

New Programs Court Banks

A few Silicon Valley startups are trying to help banks and companies outside the high-tech sector adapt systems to disclose vulnerabilities and pay bug bounties.

Katie Moussouris, policy director for HackerOne, set up a program for pre-screened hackers to attack (and improve) specific products — say a new online payments system. But just a handful of financial institutions signed up.

"A lot of these organizations confuse having a clear way to report vulnerabilities to them with an open invitation to hack their systems," she says. "And those are two very different things."

Moussouris says banks are missing an opportunity to protect their customers.

white hat hackers

cybersecurity

banks