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Republican congressman Bill Cassidy has defeated Democratic incumbent Mary Landrieu in Louisiana's runoff Senate election, boosting the Republican majority in the incoming Senate.

NPR's Debbie Elliott reported Friday that Cassidy, who has pledged to repeal Obamacare, followed a campaign strategy of linking Landrieu to Obama, highlighting her support of the unpopular president.

Landrieu, meanwhile, faced funding challenges: "With the midterm elections settled elsewhere, and control of Capitol Hill solidified for the GOP, Mary Landrieu has been left largely to fend for herself. National Democratic groups have pulled spending for the Louisiana runoff."

Landrieu was the last remaining Democratic senator from the Deep South.

Rep. Bill Cassidy

Mary Landrieu

Louisiana

Moonshine might bring to mind an illegal backwoods still in the mountains of the South, carefully hidden to evade authorities. In recent years, though, legal distilleries have been popping up in sort of a moonshine renaissance — and artisanal hooch is now a thing.

In Alabama, legal moonshine starts in an 80-gallon kettle in a horse barn in rural Bullock County. The man in charge is Jamie Ray.

"This where I'd steep the grain. I'll add a sack of rye to this ... Let it seep for a couple of hours and that converts the grain to a simple beer," Ray says.

Craft Distillers Fuel American Whiskey Renaissance

9 min 39 sec

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After fermentation, some time to cook in the still and then condensation, Ray ends up with the clear, unaged whiskey known as moonshine. Last year, Ray and a business partner started High Ridge Spirits — Alabama's only legal distillery.

"We started with the original white 'shine; it's 100-proof," he says. "It's made with rye and sugar, which is the traditional recipe in this area."

Bullock County is known for illegal moonshine, and that nod to a backwoods heritage has helped fuel a wave of small distilleries opening up around the country in recent years.

The Salt

Moonshine As Moneymaker? Eastern Tennessee Will Drink To That

"It has nostalgia to it," says Jaime Joyce, who wrote a recent book on moonshine. "It's got a story attached to it and it's so American in a way that's really appealing to people right now."

It's a story of poor, rural families subsisting on moonshine, particularly during the Great Depression, in the face of a big, mean government. Movies romanticized it; George Jones sung its praises.

Jones' "White Lightning" goes on to talk about a government agent hunting for a still. And even today, unless you have a license, it is illegal to distill your own whiskey.

Those who have secret stills "are breaking the law and they have to be caught and punished," says Dean Argo, a spokesman for the Alabama Alcoholic Beverage Control Board.

Since the early days of the country, law enforcement has gone after illegal distillers since they don't pay taxes on their products. Argo says Alabama saw a surge in tips about illegal activity, so the board created a moonshine task force last year. These are six full-time agents, affectionately known as "Still Team Six."

The Salt

Making Moonshine At Home Is On The Rise. But It's Still Illegal

"They will go out into the woods, they will walk those trails and they will search until they find something or until they believe that the tip was erroneous," Argo says.

Argo says in the first year agents destroyed 27 stills. He doesn't expect the task force to end anytime soon.

Meanwhile, the legal trade is trying to find new converts.

At The J. Clyde, a pub in Birmingham, a bartender serves up High Ridge Spirits' moonshine in a cocktail called the Alabama honeymoon.

He drops in some honey, pours in the moonshine, adds lemon and then mixes it in a shaker. It's topped off with ice and a bit of local craft beer. The concoction is sweet and kind of sour, but with telltale burning of moonshine.

This fancy $10 cocktail is infused not just with lemon, honey and beer, but with fond nostalgia — which is giving this traditional underground drink a whole new appeal.

The Salt

Small-Batch Distilleries Ride The Craft Liquor Wave

The Salt

New York Toasts Long-Awaited Revival Of Its Distilleries

moonshine

Alabama

Los Angeles police say they will investigate a woman's claims that in the mid-1970s at the age of 15, she was molested by comedian Bill Cosby.

The Associated Press says:

"The investigation was opened Friday after Judy Huth, who is suing Cosby for sexual battery, met with detectives for 90 minutes, Officer Jane Kim said.

"Huth's civil suit claims Cosby forced her to perform a sex act on him in a bedroom of the Playboy Mansion around 1974 when she was underage."

The AP says Cosby's attorney, Martin Singer, filed a response on Thursday to the lawsuit by Huth, now 55, calling her claims "absolutely false" and alleging they are part of an extortion effort.

Although the LAPD did not give any details of the investigation, Police Chief Charlie Beck on Thursday urged potential victims of sex abuse by Cosby to speak with detectives, the AP says.

The latest troubles for Cosby, 77, come as more than 15 have come forward to accuse the comic actor of sexual misconduct including several claims of rape.

Cosby, in an interview with NPR last month, declined to comment on allegations by Barbara Bowman, who recently published a column in The Washington Post saying that in 1985, when she was 17, the comedian drugged and raped her. In a separate videotaped interview with the AP last month, Cosby replied "no comment" to a question about Bowman's charges.

Similar claims were made a decade earlier by another woman, Andrea Constand, who settled with Cosby out of court in 2006.

Bill Cosby

Los Angeles

Max Weinberg — a proud son of Newark, N.J., where we are taping our show this week — has been drumming with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band for some 40 years.

We've invited Weinberg to play a game called, "We're sorry, New Jersey."

Regular listeners may know that Peter Sagal has taken more than a few potshots at his home state over the years, and Wait Wait is here to make amends. We'll ask Weinberg three questions about wonderful and interesting things about New Jersey, taken from the magisterial Encyclopedia of New Jersey, which, despite what you've heard, does not have a leopard print velour cover.

Copyright © 2014 NPR. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

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NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.

When we first see Nicky Vreeland in the new film Monk with a Camera, he's a middle-aged man in a burgundy robe and with a shaved head. In other words, he's a Buddhist monk — the abbot of Rato Dratsang, one of the Dalai Lama's monasteries, and director of The Tibetan Center in New York City.

But as Vreeland maneuvers through his present, we get glimpses of his past as the grandson of fashion icon Diana Vreeland. Once upon a time, he was a chic, young Manhattanite who hobnobbed in posh zip codes and apprenticed with the great photographers Richard Avedon and Irving Penn.

Vreeland gave that all up in the late 1970s for the life of a monk. But the film doesn't make you ask what he gave up; it makes you ask, "What did Nicky Vreeland find?" He tells NPR's Scott Simon that there was no single life-changing event that made him become a monk. "I think that one takes little steps along one's path, and if one takes them honestly and seriously, they lead to all sorts of funny places."

Interview Highlights

On deciding to become a monk and getting his head shaved

For me it was a desire to remove a part of my image. I think we all ... work at presenting ourselves the way we wish to be presented, to be seen. And I think that shaving my head the first time was really to be naked, to remove that, to just feel what it was like to be without.

Movie Reviews

A Frustrating Love Letter In 'Monk With A Camera'

On raising more than $400,000 with his photography to finish building a new monastery after the 2008 crash prevented other cash promises from being fulfilled

[The photographs] saved us — they became a show that went around the world and raised a lot of money. ... I have to admit that I must believe in magic — if my photographs could raise that, something was happening to make it happen.

On what it's like to sit on the throne of the Rato Dratsang, which has been occupied for centuries

That's very tough. In all seriousness, sitting on that throne is really humbling. To sit on top of everyone — people whom I know are more qualified, are brighter, are more advanced in their practice — and to preside over them on a throne is really an exercise in working on your mind and in remembering impermanence, remembering that all attainments are so easily lost and remembering the work that I still have to do.

On what happens to us after this life

The Dalai Lama's attendant once took me by the arm and said to me, "You know, when our robes get worn out we get rid of them and we have new ones made. It's the same with the body. When we die, the body has ceased to exist and we reincarnate and continue our lives."

Rolling Stone says new discrepancies have emerged in its recent story about an alleged campus rape at the University of Virginia.

Activists completed their more than 120-mile march from Ferguson to the Missouri state capitol building in Jefferson City. Melissa Block speaks to NAACP President Cornell William Brooks.

Fast-food workers rallied around the country Thursday, calling for a minimum wage of $15 an hour. But in suburban Detroit, a small but growing fast-casual burger and chicken chain has already figured out how to pay higher wages and still be profitable.

When Moo Cluck Moo opened its first location almost two years ago, the starting pay for all workers was $12 an hour. The idea, according to co-founder Brian Parker, was to train everyone to multitask.

No one is just flipping burgers. All of the workers are expected to be jacks-of-all-trades: They bake buns from scratch daily, they house-make aioli and prepare made-to-order grass-fed burgers and free-range chicken sandwiches.

And, now, says Parker, the investment is paying off. Revenue is up at the chain's two locations. And workers are sticking around. And their pay now? It's up to $15 an hour. By comparison, a typical fast-food worker in the U.S. makes about $8 or $9 an hour.

"Because of our low turnover, and the fact that people are really into their jobs, $15 an hour wasn't a big stretch," Parker says.

Parker says there are savings in not having to constantly train new hires, and his workers are empowered because they're given so much responsibility.

The Salt

Across The Country, Fast-Food Workers Rally For $15-An-Hour Pay

When we stopped in for a visit this week, manager Dan Chavez was standing at the grill preparing a made-to-order Moo Burger. He has been cooking in restaurants for 15 years, so he knows how to move quickly from the grill to the fryer. He also oversees baking and talks to customers.

"It's more fun than I've had at other jobs, because we get to do everything ourselves," he says.

And Chavez says the higher-than-average wages are a big part of his job satisfaction.

"It feels good just to be able to pay my bills and enjoy a little of life," Chavez says.

In the beginning, Parker wasn't sure the higher wages would be sustainable. But now the restaurants are thriving. "We're ... going to show a profit in the last quarter," Parker says. And he and his partner are planning to add new locations.

Now, in order to make this model work, customers have to pay a little more.

Grass-fed Moo Burgers on a homemade bun start at about $6. This compares to a Big Mac, which retails in the U.S. for about $4.80. That's a price differential of just over a dollar.

In starting the company, the founders say, they were motivated by the lack of options. "We couldn't find an affordable place to take our kids and grandkids that didn't have hormones, preservatives," they write on the company's website.

They now vet their suppliers to make sure all the food they buy meets their specifications, and they source their beef from Joseph Decuis Wagyu Farm in Indiana.

"We're building a brand," Parker says. And part of getting Moo Cluck Moo out there is telling people about its sourcing of beef and chicken, and talking about its commitment to paying people a living wage.

"I'm not driving around in a six-figure sports car," Parker says. But he does have his eye on the future.

So are small burger chains like Moo Cluck Moo — which are willing to pay workers more and serve more upscale menus — going to put pressure on the giants such as McDonald's and Burger King to raise wages?

"No, I don't think so," says Michael Strain, an economist at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute.

Strain says there are two different models here, and two different kinds of customers. These new chains appeal to people who are willing to pay more for food prepared from scratch. But, he says, traditional fast-food chains are not going to go away.

"McDonald's appeals to people who like the Dollar Menu, and to people for whom that price point is appealing," he says.

And McDonald's will likely continue to offer its Dollar Menu, and other value pricing, as long as it can find people who are willing to work for the kind of wages it currently offers.

But if workers become too expensive, Strain argues, we'll start to see more automation — and fewer fast-food jobs.

"Imagine if some machine gets invented that can operate the french fry machine at McDonald's, " Strain says. That's one less worker needed at the fryer.

This automation has been happening for a while, Strain says. When he was a kid, it was a person — not a soda machine — that filled his cup.

fast food workers

Imagine you're sitting back one evening, planning your holiday shopping list, knowing that every day you wait to get to the shops, the value of your money will be losing ground.

That's what's happening in places like Russia, Venezuela, Nigeria and other nations that rely heavily on oil exports.

Oil was more than $100 a barrel at the start of the summer. Now it's around $70 a barrel, and many forecasts say it could go lower still.

Falling oil prices have been good news for consumers and businesses here in the U.S. and in the many countries around the world that import oil. But it's having a domino effect in oil-exporting nations. Government budgets are strained. Economies are struggling. The currency is crashing.

The Russian ruble was trading at around 35 to the U.S. dollar this summer. But the ruble has been heading south ever since oil prices started tanking. Now it takes more than 50 rubles for a dollar.

The swift drop in oil prices caught many producers off-guard, says Caroline Freund, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

"Over the last few years, oil producers had gotten used to a situation where oil was above $100 a barrel," she says. "So what had happened in these countries is they just had money to burn, so they're spending money on handouts to the public, keeping people happy, exploiting their resources even more ... and that's now on the decline."

i i

People walk past a display with currency exchange rates in Moscow on Wednesday. Falling oil prices have contributed to a number of economic problems, including a currency that has fallen from 35 rubles to the dollar this summer to more than 50 rubles to the dollar now. Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP

People walk past a display with currency exchange rates in Moscow on Wednesday. Falling oil prices have contributed to a number of economic problems, including a currency that has fallen from 35 rubles to the dollar this summer to more than 50 rubles to the dollar now.

Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP

Freund says oil producers with large populations used to government subsidies are being hard-hit. So too are those countries without the financial cushion to ride out the price crash.

"It's hardest for these countries that don't have reserves, really high reserves, like a Venezuela or an Iraq or an Iran, as compared with a Saudi Arabia or a [United Arab Emirates] or Kuwait, where they've really piled up the reserves and can hold out for quite some time," she adds.

Part of the reason oil prices are so low right now is oversupply, which is linked to slowing demand in countries such as China. It's also due to a strong dollar, says Donald Dony, an energy analyst in Victoria, British Columbia.

Related NPR Stories

The Two-Way

Russian Ruble Plummets, And 4 Other Oil-Slump Related Headlines

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As Oil Prices Fall, Who Wins And Who Loses?

"At this point right now, the U.S. dollar, the U.S. economy is definitely hands and feet over top of just about anybody else out there, certainly better than Europe, and is stronger than most of the Asian economies," he says. "So as the U.S. dollar goes up, other currencies start to go down."

And commodities like oil are linked to the U.S. dollar. So countries with a weakened currency are likely to buy less oil, which in turn affects the exporting nations.

Parallels

Why Does Saudi Arabia Seem So Comfortable With Falling Oil Prices?

While the current price of oil is at its lowest level since 2010, it's been much lower in the past three decades, says Brenda Shaffer, an energy expert and visiting professor at Georgetown University. Even when compared with today's prices, oil-dependent nations have always managed to get by.

"These countries, they've seen it when it's been up, when it's been down. Even President [Vladimir] Putin himself has been president of Russia in every type of oil price — the low, the high, the crisis," Shaffer says. "I think it's nothing new for these governments."

Still, Shaffer says countries that depend on a certain oil price to balance their budgets could be vulnerable to instability. But Shaffer says it's premature to think that nations will fundamentally change their foreign policy behavior.

"Things like Russia pulling out of Crimea, or Iran changing its stance on the nuclear program, things that these countries see as national interest, they're not going to give up because of the oil price," Shaffer adds.

She says there's an intricate relationship between oil prices and geopolitics: It's like a kaleidoscope, where one change can set off unintended consequences. She says Washington may take satisfaction that Russia is feeling a financial pinch, but low oil prices could also signal a slowing in the global economy.

currencies

Nigeria

oil

Russia

Iran

"They want somebody who's going to go out there and fight for their money," Autry says. "They're used to bad boys, and that's sometimes what it takes to get stuff done in business. They want a fierce competitor that operates within not necessarily the letter of the law, but the reality of what you can get away with in the law."

Ellen Cushing of San Francisco Magazine wrote what's so far the most detailed profile of Kalanick, Uber's CEO. She says that all of the talk of Uber disregarding the rules, being tough — and sometimes just mean — is true. And it's valued.

"I think it's really him [Kalanick]," says Cushing. "I think that the sort of hyperaggressive, hypercompetitive behavior is rewarded in Silicon Valley, so I think that he's being egged on to some degree, but everything I saw, everyone I've talked to, people who have known him for a very long time — he's been like this for a very long time."

Autry also says that Uber, in having to go up against city governments and the entrenched taxicab industry, needed to be tough.

"They really had to go toe-to-toe with local government and with the vested interests of the taxi drivers' unions and coalitions, trying to undo them," says Autry. "If they didn't have that nature, they couldn't be where they are now."

Autry thinks, for all of the bad press Uber has been receiving, it's still press, and that can be a good thing.

"From a money standpoint, sometimes it doesn't hurt to be all over the news," he says. "There's a whole lot of Americans who didn't know what Uber was, but they do now."

For its part, in that same statement announcing its latest financials, Uber acknowledged that it might need to change:

"This kind of growth has also come with significant growing pains. The events of the recent weeks have shown us that we also need to invest in internal growth and change. Acknowledging mistakes and learning from them are the first steps. We are collaborating across the company and seeking counsel from those who have gone through similar challenges to allow us to refine and change where needed.

"Fortunately, taking swift action is where Uber shines, and we will be making changes in the months ahead. Done right, it will lead to a smarter and more humble company that sets new standards in data privacy, gives back more to the cities we serve and defines and refines our company culture effectively."

Technology

Drivers, Passengers Say Uber App Doesn't Always Yield Best Routes

But, Autry argues, some of that change might come without Kalanick.

Uber Criticized For Surge Pricing

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"A lot of venture capitalists say there's a CEO for each phase of the company," says Autry. "And clearly at some point, once Uber becomes the dominant party — they'll be bigger than the collective taxicab industry — then no, they can't afford to have that attitude, and they're going to have to be Nice Uber. And you'll have to see a transition in leadership, because I don't think the current leadership can be Nice Uber."

But for now, Kalanick continues to run the toughest company in Silicon Valley, and investors seem happy to keep throwing money Uber's way.

Travis Kalanick

Uber

Fast-food workers rallied around the country Thursday, calling for a minimum wage of $15 an hour. But in suburban Detroit, a small but growing fast-casual burger and chicken chain has already figured out how to pay higher wages and still be profitable.

When Moo Cluck Moo opened its first location almost two years ago, the starting pay for all workers was $12 an hour. The idea, according to co-founder Brian Parker, was to train everyone to multitask.

No one is just flipping burgers. All of the workers are expected to be jacks-of-all-trades: They bake buns from scratch daily, they house-make aioli and prepare made-to-order grass-fed burgers and free-range chicken sandwiches.

And, now, says Parker, the investment is paying off. Revenue is up at the chain's two locations. And workers are sticking around. And their pay now? It's up to $15 an hour. By comparison, a typical fast-food worker in the U.S. makes about $8 or $9 an hour.

"Because of our low turnover, and the fact that people are really into their jobs, $15 an hour wasn't a big stretch," Parker says.

Parker says there are savings in not having to constantly train new hires, and his workers are empowered because they're given so much responsibility.

The Salt

Across The Country, Fast-Food Workers Rally For $15-An-Hour Pay

When we stopped in for a visit this week, manager Dan Chavez was standing at the grill preparing a made-to-order Moo Burger. He has been cooking in restaurants for 15 years, so he knows how to move quickly from the grill to the fryer. He also oversees baking and talks to customers.

"It's more fun than I've had at other jobs, because we get to do everything ourselves," he says.

And Chavez says the higher-than-average wages are a big part of his job satisfaction.

"It feels good just to be able to pay my bills and enjoy a little of life," Chavez says.

In the beginning, Parker wasn't sure the higher wages would be sustainable. But now the restaurants are thriving. "We're ... going to show a profit in the last quarter," Parker says. And he and his partner are planning to add new locations.

Now, in order to make this model work, customers have to pay a little more.

Grass-fed Moo Burgers on a homemade bun start at about $6. This compares to a Big Mac, which retails in the U.S. for about $4.80. That's a price differential of just over a dollar.

In starting the company, the founders say, they were motivated by the lack of options. "We couldn't find an affordable place to take our kids and grandkids that didn't have hormones, preservatives," they write on the company's website.

They now vet their suppliers to make sure all the food they buy meets their specifications, and they source their beef from Joseph Decuis Wagyu Farm in Indiana.

"We're building a brand," Parker says. And part of getting Moo Cluck Moo out there is telling people about its sourcing of beef and chicken, and talking about its commitment to paying people a living wage.

"I'm not driving around in a six-figure sports car," Parker says. But he does have his eye on the future.

So are small burger chains like Moo Cluck Moo — which are willing to pay workers more and serve more upscale menus — going to put pressure on the giants such as McDonald's and Burger King to raise wages?

"No, I don't think so," says Michael Strain, an economist at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute.

Strain says there are two different models here, and two different kinds of customers. These new chains appeal to people who are willing to pay more for food prepared from scratch. But, he says, traditional fast-food chains are not going to go away.

"McDonald's appeals to people who like the Dollar Menu, and to people for whom that price point is appealing," he says.

And McDonald's will likely continue to offer its Dollar Menu, and other value pricing, as long as it can find people who are willing to work for the kind of wages it currently offers.

But if workers become too expensive, Strain argues, we'll start to see more automation — and fewer fast-food jobs.

"Imagine if some machine gets invented that can operate the french fry machine at McDonald's, " Strain says. That's one less worker needed at the fryer.

This automation has been happening for a while, Strain says. When he was a kid, it was a person — not a soda machine — that filled his cup.

fast food workers

There are more twins in the "millennial generation" than any other generation, thanks partly to a twin boom in the '90s. The main reason was a new technology called in vitro fertilization, which in its early days frequently produced twins, triplets and other multiple births.

The result? A million "extra" twins born between 1981 and 2012.

And all of them might be hurting the economy.

"Basically we'd prefer people not being twins to being twins," says economist Mark Rosenzweig.

Join The Conversation

Use the hashtag #newboom to join the conversation on social media.

Rosenzweig's career is built on studying twins. But if he's being honest, he thinks twins are bad economic news.

First, there are the health care costs. Twins are more likely to be born prematurely, which can lead to all sorts of expensive medical problems.

Birth weight matters, too: Rosenzweig did a study based on hundreds of female twins in Minnesota that looked at the effect of birth weight on lifetime earnings.

"The birth weights of twins are on average about 28 ounces lower," he says. "So the earnings result was 16 percent lower, related to the fact that they had lower birth weight."

That's right: on average female twins make 16 percent less money over their lifetimes than non-twins — just because they're born less chubby. And lest you think it's only the girls who are in trouble, multiple studies have also found low birth weight in boys correlates with less educational success, which also means earning less money.

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And then there's the family stress of bringing home two babies.

"The birth of twins, it's usually greeted with a great deal of shock: a two-person stroller, two cribs, two of everything, basically," says twin researcher Nancy Segal, who runs the Twin Studies Center at Cal State Fullerton.

It also means a doubling of other costs, like college tuition. Raising all the extra millennial twins has been hard on many family budgets. And then, if the twins were conceived through in vitro fertilization, there's the cost of having them in the first place; the procedure is expensive.

But despite the cost, Segal doesn't buy the idea that twins are a bad thing for society. She points out twins tend to support each other emotionally, and tend to live closer to each other and to family than regular siblings, which can make them more available to care for aging parents.

And being twins might just help them economically too.

Matt and Mike Gradnani are identical twins and they're really close. They went to college together, they played football and rugby together and they go to bars together. At 25 years old, they live together in an apartment they own together, which they could afford because there are two of them.

"I mean we both kinda felt that it would be smarter in the long run to put money in our own investment, instead of someone else's pocket," says Matt. "And ultimately the two of us could afford a lot more together than we could individually."

And Mike and Matt even co-own a successful business selling real estate. How's that for hurting the economy?

But they're just two of the one million extra millennial twins entering the workforce, and starting families of their own, in the coming years. The ultimate economic impact of all those twins is yet to be known.

twins

It's been nearly a year since Colorado made recreational marijuana legal, and since then, pot has become a billion-dollar business in the state. And some growers have made it a mission to make it legitimate and mainstream.

"Change the face," says pot entrepreneur Brooke Gehring. "But really, not to be the stereotype of what they think is stoner culture, but to realize they are true business people that are operating these companies."

Gehring, smartly dressed in a business suit carrying an iPad and briefcase, runs two businesses, Patient's Choice of Colorado and Live Green Cannabis, and they are about as transparent as they come.

Parallels

Legal Pot In The U.S. May Be Undercutting Mexican Marijuana

Her marijuana is grown in a converted furniture warehouse in an industrial district in Denver. Tucked in with a Safeway distribution center and landscaping company, the growers here permeate the air. The smell of fresh marijuana is everywhere.

And you know you've gotten to Gehring's grow house when you see a police station across the street.

"Where most people may have said, 'No, we don't want to grow marijuana around the police,' for us it's another security measure," she says.

Gehring spent $3 million just to retrofit her warehouse.

There are about 5,000 plants in here — part of about 50,000 companywide. Gehring expects to reach $10 million in sales this year. So you can see why security is such a big deal. It should also be no surprise that this is a tightly regulated business.

i i

Marijuana plants at a grow house in Denver are ready to be harvested. Ed Andrieski/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Ed Andrieski/AP

Marijuana plants at a grow house in Denver are ready to be harvested.

Ed Andrieski/AP

"These are our RFID tags, and this essentially goes onto the plant once it goes into our tracking system. This is how the state monitors us to know our plant counts," Gehring says.

Even the shake that falls on the floor gets scooped up, weighed and reported.

This is how Gehring wants it — she knows that tough regulations are the only way this industry will continue and even thrive. It's one of the reasons why she has a key seat on a state advisory panel that's helping write the regulations.

"We have a state that supports us, and we have a government that is willing to work with the industry, work with law enforcement, work with the Department of Public Health and Environment and try to come up with a system to which they can collect taxes and revenues, and we can operate, create jobs and also make profits as a business," she says.

But the federal government could come in any day and shut all of this down if it wanted to. And given that, Gehring has a lot of reservations about how fast this industry has grown.

"I guess as an industry, I worry that people will overproduce, and the people that overproduce and don't have an outlet to be able to sell it, they might consider the option of selling it outside of the regulated market," she says.

Parallels

Uruguay Tries To Tame A 'Monster' Called Cannabis

Think about it: Every Coloradan is allowed to buy up to an ounce per transaction — tourists a little less — but there isn't really a limit. People also can grow their own plants. It's not hard to imagine how quickly a lot of product could move into the wrong hands.

Gehring isn't the only one worrying about this.

"I think it's pretty safe to say that we are becoming a major exporter of marijuana," says Colorado's Attorney General John Suthers. "You go to some of these warehouse districts and there's maybe four or five grow operations, and I think some people are counting on the fact that nobody's going to notice that this particular one isn't licensed, no one's going to particularly notice that a lot of marijuana's going out the back door."

Suthers says his office and the DEA recently seized from a warehouse district an undisclosed amount of pot that was bound for out-of-state markets. There's no telling how far the black market takes legally grown marijuana from Colorado, or who's doing the taking. But as NPR reported on Monday, a DEA official confirmed that the Mexican cartels are buying Colorado pot and bringing it into Mexico for sale there. It's triple the potency of marijuana grown outdoors in Mexico.

"All this activity of course is undermining the regulatory system in Colorado, where we're supposed to be collecting taxes," Suthers says.

Shots - Health News

Colorado Tries Hard To Convince Teens That Pot Is Bad For You

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Colorado's Pot Brownies Now Come With Instructions

Even Gehring knows this could be her undoing, and it's one of the reasons she originally opposed Colorado's recreational pot ballot measure two years ago. She thought it was premature and worried that the controls just weren't there yet. Gehring says she could be producing more under the licenses that she currently holds, but she wants to make sure all of the internal controls are in place so everything is accounted for.

"I view the black market as our biggest competition and could be the biggest, I would say, roadblock to really having the federal government on board with legalization," she says.

But being here, you get the sense that entrepreneurs like her are more excited than they are nervous. They see themselves as being on the frontier, like the early wildcatters in the oil business, staking their claim early, helping write the rules, taking on all this risk.

"We do have the entrepreneurial spirit, we do see the opportunity of being true pioneers in what we're doing," she says.

And Gehring is used to balancing opportunity and some risk: Before she got into the pot business in 2009 she was a commercial banker.

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The global economy rolls along more smoothly when it's not riding a unicycle. It needs additional wheels for momentum and stability.

That is, in effect, what Treasury Secretary Jack Lew is telling leaders of other advanced nations.

In a get rolling speech Wednesday to the World Affairs Council, Lew said the U.S. economy is moving at a good pace these days but needs support from the flat economies of Japan and the European Union.

Other countries cannot "rely on the United States to grow fast enough to make up for weak growth in major world economies," he said.

When Europe and Japan get too weak, demand drops for made-in-America products and services, and the U.S. dollar gets too valuable, making life tougher for U.S. exporters.

"The world is stronger if we all take steps to bolster domestic demand," Lew said.

He spoke in Seattle, where he was doing a warm-up act ahead of the main event this weekend in Australia. In Brisbane, he will join President Obama and other world leaders for a G-20 summit, focused on spurring global growth.

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Lew says the United States has a huge stake in the success of its first-world trading partners.

"The United States exports more than $2 trillion of goods and services to the world," he said. "It is very much in our economic and national interest when the rest of the global economy is growing."

The Obama administration is in a strange position. Just last week, it suffered big political setbacks in domestic elections. But on the world stage, Obama leads the most impressive economy. In the most recent quarter, this country grew at 3.5 percent — a very robust pace for a mature economy.

In the United States, the stock market is booming, budget deficits are melting away, corporate profits are breaking records and the unemployment rate is falling, down to nearly half the level set five years ago.

U.S. success shows "the resilience and determination of the American people," Lew said. "It also reflects the ease of starting businesses, our highly competitive product markets, and the ability to reap rewards from entrepreneurship."

Meanwhile, Japan's economy is stuck, with its inflation-adjusted growth rate running at less than 1 percent over the past decade. Europe may be on the brink of its third recession in six years.

Lew says that to grow, countries need a "comprehensive policy approach" that involves not only better fiscal and monetary decisions, but "structural" changes. When he talks about "structure," he's referring to the policy frameworks that hold back growth.

So, for example, in Japan, structural reform would mean changing laws that prevent young immigrants from replacing retired workers; helping women with children stay in the workforce and allowing more competition among companies. In Europe, it would mean making the banking sector less secretive.

In addition to speaking in Seattle, Lew talked with NPR's Robert Siegel, host of All Things Considered. Lew said that while he is offering advice to other countries, he knows this country still has many of its own problems to solve.

For one thing, "wages are not growing," he said. To help fix that, Congress should raise the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, he said. For low-income families, "the minimum wage makes a big difference," he said.

In addition, Congress should start spending more on rebuilding infrastructure, which would boost construction jobs, and pass laws to reform the tax code and increase trade, he said. "We still have work to do," he said.

This weekend, Will Falls decided to skip the local mall near Raleigh, N.C., and shop online instead.

"No standing in line, no finding a parking spot," he says. "Just get comfortable and go at it."

Millions of Americans did the same — Falls helped contribute to an 8.5 percent increase in online shopping Monday compared with 2013, according to data from IBM.

That growth stands in contrast to an 11 percent drop in sales reported by the National Retail Federation at brick-and-mortar stores over the Black Friday weekend compared with a year ago.

"I definitely believe there is cannibalization occurring from the perspective of online against the stores," says Bob Drbul, an analyst and managing director at Nomura Securities.

Of course, some of that cannibalization is going to the retailers' own online arms, he notes.

As for how consumers shopped online, most used desktop computers, which accounted for three-quarters of online sales — though the use of mobile devices rose sharply.

Another reason for the drop in in-store shopping this past weekend, Durbl says, is that retailers spread their Black Friday sales across the whole month of November.

Elle Phillips, a graphic designer from near Boise, Idaho, had family members visiting for Thanksgiving this past weekend. They took very different approaches to their holiday purchases, she says.

The Two-Way

Black Friday Sales Down At Stores, Surge Online

"They wanted to go Black Friday shopping," says Phillips, 37. "I prefer to avoid it at all costs."

Her brother-in-law headed for the hunting and camping retailer Cabela's at 4 a.m., Phillips says. He came back six hours later, with tales of a checkout line stretching to the back of the huge store.

"It literally took him two hours just to get through to the register with a couple of hoodie sweaters," Phillips says. "So that just sort of ... verified the reason why I don't go out on Black Friday."

Phillips, meanwhile, did her shopping online, including finding some new Doc Marten boots for her husband. She looked first for the best price on Amazon, "and then I actually went straight to the manufacturer's website ... and I found an equally good price there, all with free shipping."

That kind of price shopping and free shipping is forcing profit margins down for retailers, says analyst Drbul. But he expects a strong holiday season nevertheless.

A big reason is that falling gas prices are putting more money in consumers' pockets.

This year, Drbul says, "has the potential to be the best retail performance since 2011."

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California's Humboldt County is known for its towering redwoods. But this region about 200 miles north of San Francisco has another claim to fame. Humboldt is to weed what Napa is to fine wine — it's the heart of marijuana production in the U.S.

Every fall, young people, mostly in their 20s, come from all over the world to work the marijuana harvest. They come seeking jobs as "trimmers" — workers who manicure the buds to get them ready for market. The locals have a name for these young migrant workers: "trimmigrants."

There are more than 100,000 marijuana plants growing in the hills around Humboldt, the county sheriff's office estimates. They all need to be harvested around the same time and processed quickly to avoid mold and other problems. So from September through November, it's all hands on deck. That's where trimmigrants, also called scissor drifters, come in.

To understand this story, you need to know what trimming is. Marijuana grows like a huge bush, and the flower it produces is the marijuana bud. Trimmers manicure the buds, snipping off the leaves and stems and then shaping them with their scissors.

The idea is to make the weed stand out, so it sells well at medical marijuana dispensaries and on the street.

Garberville, a tiny town of about 900 residents in Humboldt, swarms with trimmigrants during the season — girls and guys with big, bulky backpacks and pit bulls. Many of them look like modern-day hobos.

I meet Fermin, a 24-year-old artist from Tennessee, at the far end of town. Like all the trimmers I spoke with, Fermin would use only his first name. Trimming for an illegal operation could make him an accessory to a drug crime.

"I heard you could get work pretty easy," Fermin says. "The reality is it's taking a little bit longer than I expected."

i i

Kristen Nevedal co-founded the Emerald Growers Association, a group of 400 marijuana farmers from across California. The Garberville resident says that "trimmigrants" are straining her small town. Brett Myers /Youth Radio hide caption

itoggle caption Brett Myers /Youth Radio

Kristen Nevedal co-founded the Emerald Growers Association, a group of 400 marijuana farmers from across California. The Garberville resident says that "trimmigrants" are straining her small town.

Brett Myers /Youth Radio

Fermin has been here for about a month and hasn't found any work yet. It's getting colder and the rains are coming. He sleeps in the woods just outside town and Dumpster-dives for food. Until he finds a job trimming weed, he gets by on selling his art and playing music on the street.

'We Cannot House These People'

Trimmers are paid by the pound, and fast trimmers can make $300-$500 a day, in cash and under the table — but of course, if the place where you're trimming gets busted, it could also land you in jail.

Some trimmigrants, like Fermin, give the impression they're here to work. But the scene is also attracting drifters who hang around looking pretty drugged out. Locals say European youths often get hired over Americans, who are stereotyped as hippie kids.

Kristin Nevedal says migrant trimmers are everywhere, obstructing local businesses and damaging the river with their squatter camps. Nevedal is a local resident and co-founder of the Emerald Growers Association, a group of 400 marijuana farmers all over California.

"This is not the fun vacation thing to do, right? To like, show up in Garberville in the fall and see if you can get a job," Nevedal says. "We cannot house these people. Like, don't come unless you have a job."

According to the county sheriffs, the majority of growers in Humboldt are operating illegally. So hiring strangers from the side of the road, they say, puts the growers at risk.

There is risk for trimmers, too. Every year, some go missing, and trimmers have even been killed. They often work in remote areas with no cellphone service or running water, sleeping in tents. Sometimes they don't even know where they are.

Tim Blake has been growing marijuana since the '70s. His collective, Healing Harvest Farms, is just south, in Mendocino County. Blake's is a small farm, and it's legal. He grows 25 plants — the county limit for medicinal marijuana — but the plants are huge.

"Look at the different colors," Blake says, showing off his plants. "You got the purples, then you got the dark greens, the light greens."

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Colorado's Pot Industry Looks To Move Past Stereotypes

Blake's marijuana plants look almost like small trees. They're 10 feet high and he says each one will produce about 8 pounds of weed.

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Legal Pot In The U.S. May Be Undercutting Mexican Marijuana

"As soon as you squeeze it, you can feel the resin on it," says Blake, handling a plant. "It gets right on your fingers. It's like, all over it."

Good Pay — At Least For Now

Blake brings me to the trimming room where six people, most in their 20s, are sitting and snipping away. Out of concern that a stranger could steal his entire harvest, which is worth almost a quarter-million dollars, Blake only hires trimmers he knows.

"You're sitting here all day long," said a trimmer named Bishma, a local who does catering work that mostly supports his wife and two kids. But during the fall harvest, he lives on the farm full time.

"Some people think I sit eight hours at a job," said Bishma, "[but] it's like we're sitting here 14 hours. And it's the same repetitive motion over and over and over again, so people just go to town and just, like, listen to every kind of music they can."

Music is a big part of trimming, and the faster the music, the faster the trimmers snip. I watch as their scissors sync with the beat.

Lots of locals depend on marijuana for part of their livelihood. For young people who manage to get into the trimmigrant workforce, it's a job so lucrative that some can make all of their money for the year during the three-month harvest.

But as laws around the country change — making marijuana legal — analysts say the pay scale is bound to go down, making trimming more like any other low-paid farmwork.

And, like farmwork across the country, marijuana production is already becoming mechanized — gradually making trimmigrants a thing of the past.

This story was produced by Youth Radio.

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

Just over two years into a rocky partnership, Microsoft and Barnes & Noble have decided to call it quits. The mega-bookseller announced Thursday that it plans to buy out Microsoft's stake in its albatross of an e-reader, the Nook.

Microsoft bought into the Nook in 2012, investing $300 million to earn a share of about 17 percent in its ownership. In the time since, hopes for the deal's prospects have faded. A low point came with news of last year's holiday sales, which showed Barnes & Noble's Nook division plummeting 60.5 percent from the year before, according to Publishers Weekly. In June of this year, the bookseller announced a plan to spin off its Nook unit into a separate company sometime next year — news that was greeted with cheers from investors.

Now, Microsoft will sell its stake in Nook Media back to Barnes & Noble for about $125 million.

"As the respective business strategies of each company evolved, we mutually agreed that it made sense to terminate the agreement," a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement.

Barnes & Noble stock fell about 5 percent Thursday on news of the announcement.

The Passing Of A Poet: Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Claudia Emerson passed away Thursday at the age of 57, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports. Emerson won the prize in 2006 for her book Late Wife and served as Virginia's poet laureate from 2008 to 2010. More recently, she conducted research in Italy on a Guggenheim fellowship, returning to her home state to assume a post teaching at Virginia Commonwealth University in 2013.

Haymakers: This is how bad the storied feud between Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal got: When Mailer shoved Vidal down backstage after a terse TV interview, Vidal parried the blow with a remark of his own: "Words fail Norman Mailer yet again."

Orwell In Prison: In George Orwell's 1933 memoir, Down and Out in Paris and London, he dove deeply into the trod-upon underworlds of both cities to examine the effects of poverty personally. But for some time now, it has been in question just how deep Orwell truly went, and how much of his stories he might have made up instead.

Well, The Guardian reports that at least one of his stories is accurate: the 1931 incident recounted in Orwell's unpublished essay "Clink," in which he baited police by being publicly drunk, drawing 48 hours in a London prison to investigate conditions there. The newspaper cites Dr. Luke Seaber, who claims to have discovered court records that offer "unambiguous external confirmation that Orwell did indeed carry out, more or less as described, one of his 'down-and-out' experiments."

Elsewhere, an essay by Robert Butler in Intelligent Life reflects on the decades that have passed since Orwell's death — decades that have been exceedingly kind to his legacy. And even as Orwell's reputation endures, readers are reminded that this is partly because there isn't just one Orwell.

"There are many Orwells," Butler writes. "The literary Orwell sits at his typewriter with a rollie dangling from his lip. The militant Orwell stands head and shoulders above his fellow anti-fascist recruits in Spain. The rural Orwell crouches down to feed a goat (he liked to lecture his less practical friends, such as V.S. Pritchett, on milking). The paternal Orwell fits a shoe on the foot of his young son, perched on his knee."

Exclusive Passages In India: Indian President Pranab Mukherjee is drawing flak from brick-and-mortar booksellers for his exclusive deal with Amazon. The deal means that his book The Dramatic Decade: The Indira Gandhi Years, which sees release Dec. 11, will be available only through Amazon for its first three weeks — after which other booksellers will finally get a crack at it. As The Times of India reports, the heartburn over Mukherjee's book is just one skirmish in a fight over an India's exploding e-commerce market.

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Given the times, the Norwegian thriller Pioneer is hardly the first thriller in recent memory to delve into the poisonous fallout from a nation's suddenly acquired wealth. But it may be the first to conduct business from the floor of the noirishly cinematic North Sea, a roiling stretch of gray water where huge supplies of oil and gas were discovered off the coast of Norway in the 1980s. Trust me, this is not Bikini Bottom.

Expertly directed by Erik Skjoldbjaerg (who made the original Insomnia, later remade by Christopher Nolan with Al Pacino and Robin Williams), Pioneer takes its cue from the thrillers of the 1970s. So it's less concerned with seeking the truth than with paranoia's nasty little habit of swelling to fill all available psychic space in the mind of any poor shlub who tries to take on Mighty Mammon. That's a daunting task under the best of circumstances, but it can turn deadly when undertaken from inside a pressure chamber 500 meters under the sea, where the Norwegian government, aided by American industry, means to lay a pipeline to the shore.

That's mostly where we find Petter (Aksel Hennie), an alpha deep-sea diver growing crazier by the hour as he tries to find out who or what is behind the apparently accidental death of his experienced brother Knut (Andre Eriksen) in what ought to have been a routine dive. The more Petter pokes his nose into standard procedure, the less standard it looks to him. Americans and Norwegian pols get bossy; fat envelopes change hands a lot. Colleagues slide between support and menace: one slips him a potentially incriminating videotape and pays a price; another may or may not be taking orders from foreign bodies; still another is blamed for the death of Knut, whose grieving widow (Stephanie Sigman) is mysteriously reluctant to join Petter in his bid for justice. Is an American diver (Wes Bentley, giving great scowl) trying to kill him or protect him?

Is a war between Big Government and Bigger Finance being waged over Petter's hot head? Pioneer is rooted in real events: The Norwegian divers, who may or may not have sustained neurological damage from the expedition, filed suit against the government; the dispute drags on today. But Skjoldbjaerg nimbly juggles realism with genre, with Polanski a powerful influence. Petter's psychic anxiety and confusion recall Chinatown, while Pioneer's palette owes much to the murky, slate-gray ambiance of The Ghost Writer. The underwater sequences stun and terrify — nothing says claustrophobia quite like two weeks in a pressurized diving bell with someone you can't necessarily trust — and there's almost as much moisture and terror on land to drive Petter round the bend.

Like Jack Nicholson's Jake Gittes, Petter is a crusader crossed with a rube who doesn't understand the forces he's up against. The movie's take on human nature is only a shade less jaundiced than Polanski's. Watching Petter grow ever more unhinged by the ambiguity of his quest, one thinks of Noah Cross' dictum that in the right time and place, everyone is capable of anything. Where powerful interests are at play, Petter discovers, it can be awfully hard to tell whodunit.

This post was updated at 11:10 a.m. ET for clarity.

How would you — or do you — identify on online dating sites? Gay? Straight? Bisexual? Well you're about to have many more options on OkCupid, one of the most popular sites for people seeking love and connection.

OkCupid has about 4 million users, and within the next few weeks the site will give all of them brand-new options for specifying their gender and sexual orientation — options like androgynous, asexual, genderqueer and questioning.

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"Young people like the idea of fluidity," says psychology professor Ritch Savin-Williams. He runs Cornell University's Sex and Gender Lab and studies identity and relationships. He says young people are far more likely to look beyond gender binaries and see sexual orientation on a continuum.

"I think the new categories are pretty great," says a 21-year-old TJ. That's the name on his OkCupid profile. TJ has checked off OkCupid's boxes for straight and male because those are closest to how he sees himself. But with the new options, TJ says he'll probably identify as trans man, transsexual and transmasculine, meaning he's a masculine man born biologically female. He also plans to update his sexual orientation to queer and heteroflexible, which means he mostly goes for girls — with exceptions. (Right now, all of those terms are in TJ's written profile. That's been the only space users have had to express more nuanced gender and sexual identity.)

Mike Maxim, chief technology officer at OkCupid, says the dating site wasn't originally designed to handle dozens of terms and hundreds of variables. "The site was definitely constructed around, you know, just men and then women; and, you know, men ... looking for women."

And of course women looking for men. Some of these new identifiers won't appeal to a huge market, but Maxim says why leave people out? And why not add a little cutting-edge cachet by helping to bring a new lexicon into the mainstream? Still, adding so many new terms was a technical challenge.

"That was probably the primary reason we haven't done this earlier," Maxim says. "You know, this has been a feature that's been requested now for, I don't know, years."

And OkCupid isn't alone. Earlier this year, Facebook added more than 50 new terms for selecting gender identity. But terms can fall in and out of fashion. Savin-Williams notes that "bicurious," which used to be a fairly commonplace identifier on dating sites, is now considered uncool. And he hears new vocabulary all the time, like while teaching a gender and identity workshop at a high school.

All Tech Considered

Facebook Gives Users New Options To Identify Gender

"One young woman defined herself as 'squiggly,' " he says. "And there was silence and everyone was saying, 'What exactly is that?' And then she said, 'Well, I feel like that's what I am in terms of my gender and sexuality. I'm squiggly.' A lot of people began to shake their heads and said, 'Yeah, that's pretty good. I feel that way too.' "

OkCupid doesn't currently plan to add squiggly to any of its categories, but single NPR fans, please take note: Apparently, sapiosexual, which refers to people who are attracted to intelligence, is one of its most popular new terms.

gender identity

OkCupid

In an age when consumers have become increasingly suspicious of processed food, the Internet has become a powerful platform for activists who want to hold Big Food accountable.

One of the highest-profile of these new food crusaders is Vani Hari, better known by her online moniker, Food Babe. Among her victories: a petition that nudged Kraft to drop the artificial orange color from its mac and cheese, and another one that helped get Subway to do away with the common bread additive azodicarbonamide — which Hari noted was also used in making yoga mats.

To followers on her website and on social media, who are known as the Food Babe Army, Hari is a hero. And with a book and TV development deal in the works, her platform is about to get a lot bigger.

But as her profile grows, so too do the criticisms of her approach. Detractors, many of them academics, say she stokes unfounded fears about what's in our food to garner publicity. Steve Novella, a Yale neuroscientist and prominent pseudoscience warrior, among others, has dubbed Hari the "Jenny McCarthy of food" after the celebrity known for championing thoroughly debunked claims that vaccines cause autism.

The Salt

Subway Phasing Out Bread Additive After Blogger Flags Health Concerns

Hari is a self-styled consumer advocate and adviser on healthful eating. Her website, FoodBabe.com, offers recipes, tips for nutritious dining while traveling, and, for $17.99 a month, "eating guides" that include recipes, meal calendars and shopping lists. But she's best-known for her food investigations, frequently shared on social media — posts in which she flags what she deems to be questionable ingredients.

Take, for example, Hari's campaign urging beer-makers to reveal the ingredients in their brews. Among the ingredients that concerned Hari was propylene glycol, a chemical used in antifreeze. But, as cancer surgeon and blogger David Gorski writes, the product used in some beers to stabilize foam is actually propylene glycol alginate — which is derived from kelp. "It is not the same chemical as propylene glycol, not even close. It is not antifreeze," he wrote.

Another beer ingredient that got Hari up in arms? Isinglass, or dried fish swim bladders, which may sound, well, fishy, but has been used to clarify beers for well over a century. Such mix-ups prompted historian Maureen Ogle, the author of Ambitious Brew: The Story of American Beer, to dissect Hari's claims, point by point, in a post on her site titled "What's In YOUR Beer? Or, The Dangers of Dumbassery."

The Salt

Just What Is In Pumpkin Spice Flavor? (Hint: Not Pumpkin)

Hari's approach capitalizes on growing consumer distrust of both Big Food companies and their unfamiliar, industrial-sounding ingredients, and of regulators' ability to oversee them effectively. Some of these chemicals and additives may indeed be questionable, but food scientists would argue that nearly all are safe. So why do food companies respond to her demands, if they have nothing to hide?

Because, Gorski writes, "companies live and die by public perception. It's far easier to give a blackmailer like Hari what she wants than to try to resist or to counter her propaganda by educating the public."

Critics note that Hari lacks credentials in nutrition or food science; she's a former consultant who studied computer science. Hari declined to be interviewed for this story; through her publicist, she told NPR she isn't speaking to media until her new book is released in February. But when the Charlotte Observer asked her about such criticisms, Hari answered, "I've never claimed to be a nutritionist. I'm an investigator."

But that lack of training often leads her to misinterpret peer-reviewed research and technical details about food chemistry, nutrition and health, says Kevin Folta, a professor of horticultural sciences at the University of Florida and vocal online critic of Hari. "She really conflates the science," he tells The Salt.

"If anything, she's created more confusion about food, more confusion about the role of chemicals and additives," Folta says.

More recently, as we've reported, Hari's attacks on the lack of pumpkin in Starbucks' Pumpkin Spice lattes prompted the Institute of Food Technologists to release a video explaining the chemicals that replicate that squash flavor in a cup of Joe.

"What she does is exploit the scientific ignorance and fear of her followers," says Kavin Senapathy, an anti-pseudoscience blogger who frequently challenges the assertions in Hari's posts. "And most of us are in agreement that we simply can't accept that."

Senapathy and other online critics, using parody names like Science Babe, Chow Babe and Food Hunk, have taken to Twitter and Facebook in an organized effort to engage with Hari's followers and counter her scientific claims.

So why not simply ignore Hari? Because her reach is growing: Last month her op-ed was featured in The New York Times' Room for Debate section. In October, Experience Life magazine, a health and fitness publication, featured her on its cover. That decision prompted critics to bombard the magazine's Amazon page with single-star reviews for putting "an uneducated fearmonger" on its cover.

And this fall, Hari addressed the University of Florida as part of a lecture series for freshmen on "The Good Food Revolution." That talk prompted Folta to write a scathing blog post about her visit in which he accused her of being "afraid of science and intellectual engagement."

He was angry that her talk didn't include a question and answer period in which he could challenge her on some of her scientific assertions. "When you bring in a self-appointed expert, a celebrity more than a scientific figure, it does have the effect of undoing the science we are trying to instill in our students," Folta told me.

Ultimately, Folta says, he thinks Hari's heart is in the right place. "She does seem to come from an honest intention of wanting people to think about good food choices and health." But, he says, "it's a question of science."

Other critics are less generous in their assessment, noting that Hari isn't just raising the alarm about food additives. Through affiliated marketing partnerships, she is also making money by referring her website readers to organic and non-GMO food brands, as Ad Age has reported. Indeed, the Food Babe brand, a registered LLC, has become a full-time job for Hari, who also earns fees from speaking appearances.

"Unfortunately, the Web is cluttered with people who really have no idea what they are talking about giving advice as if it were authoritative, and often that advice is colored by either an ideological agenda or a commercial interest," Yale's Novella writes on his blog. "The Food Babe is now the poster child for this phenomenon."

Hari has brushed off such questions about her motivations and scientific proficiency. "I know that I'm doing the right thing," she told the Observer. "I'm trying to help people understand things that no one else has spoken out about."

But the message of Hari's campaigns boils down to "this toxic secret thing they are putting in my food is making me [sick]," says John Coupland, a food scientist at Penn State, in an email to The Salt.

"I personally think this is largely a distraction from more real concerns" about the food system, says Coupland. Problems, he says, like advertising aimed at kids, the environmental impacts of food production, food waste and hunger.

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A former Chinese domestic security chief has been arrested and expelled from the Communist Party on charges of bribery and leaking state secrets. Zhou Yongkang, who has been under investigation for months, becomes the highest-ranking leader to become ensnared in the country's high-profile crackdown on corruption.

The net around the 71-year-old Zhou — who controlled the police, security and intelligence services before his retirement in 2012 — had been tightening in recent months, with family members and former subordinates detained on suspicion of corruption, "raising expectations that Zhou would soon fall, as well," NPR's Anthony Kuhn reported back in July.

Zhou, who rose up the Communist Party ranks as a key figure in the country's oil-and-gas industry, was the most senior of nine leaders to fall under investigation.

At the time, the official People's Daily newspaper noted in an editorial that Zhou's case sent a clear signal that no Communist Party official was above the law.

A statement released by Xihnua at midnight said, "the party's elite decision-making politburo said that Zhou's case had been handed over to judicial authorities, setting the stage for his trial," according to Reuters.

In June, Chinese President Xi Jinping reportedly told a closed-door meeting of the Politburo that "The two armies of corruption and anti-corruption are at a stalemate.

"In my struggle against corruption, I don't care about life or death, or ruining my reputation," a state-run newspaper in northeast China quoted him as saying.

In a possible foreshadowing of Zhou's ultimate fate, last year flamboyant regional politician Bo Xilai was given a life sentence on charges of bribery, embezzlement and abuse of power. Bo was considered a close ally of Zhou's.

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China

Russian President Vladimir Putin said today that the "difficulties" his country faces "also create new possibilities," and insisted that while he isn't interested in a "long-term arms race" with the West, Russia would do what it takes to defend itself.

Putin's state of the union address to Russia's Parliament comes as his country's relations with the West are at their lowest point since the end of the Cold War. Russia's invasion of Ukraine's Crimea region set off a chain of events that has resulted in Western sanctions targeting Russia's economy, which has also been weakened by falling oil prices.

The situation is compounded by a fragile cease-fire between pro-Russia separatists in Ukraine and the government in Kiev.

Putin insisted today that the invasion of Crimea was a "historic reunification."

"Crimea is of huge and sacred importance to Russia, just like the Temple Mountain is to those who follow Judaism," he said.

[We've explained previously why Russia views Crimea as part of its historic territory.]

Putin also accused the West of trying to build a new "Iron Curtain" around Russia, saying the crisis in Ukraine was merely a pretext for the West to isolate Russia. He said the West's goal was to break up Russia, in a manner similar to Yugoslavia.

"The deterrence policy was not invented yesterday," he said, "it has been always conducted toward our country, for decades, if not centuries."

He added: "Every time somebody considers Russia is becoming too powerful and independent, such instruments are turned on immediately."

Still, tensions with the West have hurt the Russian economy, which faces a recession next year. Oil prices are around $70 per barrel. Russia's budget is predicated on oil being priced at around $100 per barrel. The country is a major oil and gas producer. Since the crisis began in March, the ruble has lost a third of its value.

In his hourlong speech today, Putin outlined steps to bolster the economy, but the markets appeared unimpressed.

Putin's remarks came hours after an attack by militants in the Chechen capital, Grozny. Russian officials said 10 police officers were killed and 28 wounded in the gun battles with militants. Six other people were killed along with at least nine militants.

"Those 'rebels' have again manifested themselves in Chechnya," Putin said in his remarks. "I'm sure the local guys, local low-enforcement bodies, will cope with that. ... Let's support them."

Putin

Vladimir Putin

Russia

Meet Vikram. He's that cute baby in the picture above. Now, take a closer look at his neckwear.

It's traditional for newborns in northern India to wear a black thread necklace as a symbol of good health and good fortune, but Vikram's got a high-tech version. The round pendant on the string is a wearable device called Khushi Baby that carries his vaccination history inside a computerized chip about the size of a dime.

i i

Healthcare workers in Rajasthan India pose with two of Khushi Baby developers: Ruchit Nagar (center) and Leen van Besien (second from right). Mohammed Shahnawaz/Courtesy of Khushi Baby hide caption

itoggle caption Mohammed Shahnawaz/Courtesy of Khushi Baby

Healthcare workers in Rajasthan India pose with two of Khushi Baby developers: Ruchit Nagar (center) and Leen van Besien (second from right).

Mohammed Shahnawaz/Courtesy of Khushi Baby

Khushi Baby was created by undergrads at Yale University in spring 2013. The students were taking a class called "Appropriate Technologies for the Developing World." The assignment: create a gadget for tracking health data in remote environments.

That's not just a classroom exercise. Parents in India (and many other countries) receive paper health cards to keep track of a child's vaccine doses, but paper is easily misplaced, says Leen van Besien, who co-developed the idea for Khushi Baby. And there aren't digital health records to consult. In Rajasthan, where Vikram lives, clinicians write vaccination information by hand in in large paper logbooks as they travel from village to village. Thousands of names are kept in the books, making it hard to search through when a vaccine card is misplaced.

A lost card could prove fatal. India boasts one of lowest vaccine coverage rates in the world, in part because kids fall off their vaccine schedules. For example last year, 7 million children did not receive all three doses for pertussis, also known as whooping cough). As a result, India recorded more cases of this life-threatening disease — 31, 000 — than any other nation.

To keep costs low, the team used inexpensive computer chips that can communicate with smart phones. Each necklace costs $1, while the cheapest compatible smart phone costs $150. The team avoided using metal clasps on the necklace, which can fall off and be a choking hazard. So the necklace just slips over the head. The plastic pendant, which encases the computer chip, is waterproof.

During a trip to villages in Rajasthan this summer, the team partnered with Seva Mandir, a grassroots NGO that helps distribute government-provided vaccines in remote regions.

"Tracking health data on paper is cumbersome and expensive, with threats of mistakes. We are hoping that the Khushi Baby project will resolve these problems," Priyanka Singh, CEO of Seva Mandir.

i i

Here's how the necklace works. Courtesy of Khushi Baby hide caption

itoggle caption Courtesy of Khushi Baby

Here's how the necklace works.

Courtesy of Khushi Baby

Thanks to a successful Kickstarter campaign that raised $25,000, Khushi Baby will roll out a pilot project in 2015, providing necklaces to the 4,000 kids vaccinated by Seva Mandir health workers each year. The project also won Yale's 2014 Thorne Prize for Social Innovation in Health, a $25,000 cash award.

The clinicians will have the smartphone app so they can record the innoculations and upload the info to Seva Mandir computers. That way it'll be easier to track kids who missed a dose — and to know how many vaccines are needed for the next trip.

Those outside of India can also buy in. While the Kickstarter campaign is going on, a $25 contribution will not only sponsor a necklace for a child in Rajasthan but get you a necklace, too. Via the Khushi app, your smart phone will get an alert when the baby gets a vaccine.

immunization

vaccine

India

A former Chinese domestic security chief has been arrested and expelled from the Communist Party on charges of bribery and leaking state secrets. Zhou Yongkang, who has been under investigation for months, becomes the highest-ranking leader to become ensnared in the country's high-profile crackdown on corruption.

The net around the 71-year-old Zhou — who controlled the police, security and intelligence services before his retirement in 2012 — had been tightening in recent months, with family members and former subordinates detained on suspicion of corruption, "raising expectations that Zhou would soon fall, as well," NPR's Anthony Kuhn reported back in July.

Zhou, who rose up the Communist Party ranks as a key figure in the country's oil-and-gas industry, was the most senior of nine leaders to fall under investigation.

At the time, the official People's Daily newspaper noted in an editorial that Zhou's case sent a clear signal that no Communist Party official was above the law.

A statement released by Xihnua at midnight said, "the party's elite decision-making politburo said that Zhou's case had been handed over to judicial authorities, setting the stage for his trial," according to Reuters.

In June, Chinese President Xi Jinping reportedly told a closed-door meeting of the Politburo that "The two armies of corruption and anti-corruption are at a stalemate.

"In my struggle against corruption, I don't care about life or death, or ruining my reputation," a state-run newspaper in northeast China quoted him as saying.

In a possible foreshadowing of Zhou's ultimate fate, last year flamboyant regional politician Bo Xilai was given a life sentence on charges of bribery, embezzlement and abuse of power. Bo was considered a close ally of Zhou's.

Bo Xilai

Xi Jinping

corruption

China

Ebola has "orphaned" about 2,000 children in Liberia, health authorities say. Some children are being looked after in two shelters in the country's capital, Monrovia. Reuniting the kids with their relatives, or finding them foster homes, can take time.

“ They need more love, definitely. Losing your parents is hard. It's very hard to take, so we need to give them more love.

- Hawa Sherman, who supervises a shelter for Ebola orphans

These are kids who have come into contact with sick people but aren't showing signs of Ebola themselves. The children must be monitored for 21 days — the cycle of the Ebola virus — in a care center to ensure they are also not infected, says Anthony Klay Sie of ChildFund Liberia, the nonprofit running the shelters.

"Children are placed in a group of three. If a child starts to show signs and symptoms of Ebola, that child is immediately isolated," he says. "The entire essence of this center is to help break transmission of the virus within family settings."

So far, the shelter has recorded five cases of Ebola among the children, Klay Sie says. Three died, and two have survived.

Goats and Soda

3-Year-Old Ebola Survivor Proposes To Nurse

Those who are healthy have to go through a two-stage process before they can be reunited with family. Once they've completed the first observation period, the children move to a second shelter. After at least 21 days there, they are eligible to go to their new home or to extended family.

Today is that day for 18 children.

Cars wait outside the shelter as Sienna Wisseh, assistant director of Liberia's Family Welfare Division, gives out orders. She is helping to supervise the children's departure.

i i

Sienna Wisseh of Liberia's Family Welfare Division (center) directs the packing of supplies that will be given to families adopting or reuniting with children. John W. Poole/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption John W. Poole/NPR

Sienna Wisseh of Liberia's Family Welfare Division (center) directs the packing of supplies that will be given to families adopting or reuniting with children.

John W. Poole/NPR

"The six bags, they go in the car with the children — and a blanket and a bucket, everything," Wisseh tells the staff.

Each child is given clothes, toiletries and a blanket, along with about 55 pounds of rice and cooking oil. They're also given colorful mattresses, Klay Sie says.

All of the items are part of the reunification packages provided by the government and other nonprofits.

Goats and Soda

After Losing Parents To Ebola, Orphans Face Stigma

"Normally, children who come from a family that had an infected person, their belongings are all burned," Klay Sie says. "So upon their return, they may find it difficult to start life over."

Some of the children have been here for as long as two months, like the Togba sisters: 13-year-old Lovetee and 12-year-old Tray. Both are wearing delightful bobble hairstyles and broad smiles. But these turn to nervous, sorrowful looks as the girls remember the loved ones they've lost to Ebola.

"We were [a family of] seven," Lovetee remembers. "My father, my grandma, my auntie, my uncle and my brother died."

Lovetee calls the uncle who died her Pa, or her father, because he was the one looking after the Togba sisters and paying their school fees.

i i

Makutu Jabateh hugs her daughter, Mabana Konneh, 5, as the little girl returns home to her neighborhood in Jacobstown, Monrovia. John W. Poole/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption John W. Poole/NPR

Makutu Jabateh hugs her daughter, Mabana Konneh, 5, as the little girl returns home to her neighborhood in Jacobstown, Monrovia.

John W. Poole/NPR

"The first time I came to this place, I was sad because the place was strange to me," Tray says through Siatta, a Liberian journalist who was with us. "It was just my sister and I."

It's a bittersweet moment, says Hawa Sherman, the supervisor of the children's shelters. "I'm very happy, and I'm sad because over the months we have got so used to them," she says. "We are happy because they are going to be reunited with their families, and we will also miss them, too."

"They need more love, definitely," Sherman adds. "Losing your parents is hard. It's very hard to take, so we need to give them more love."

i i

A family receives a mattress, a bag of rice, cooking oil, blankets and bleach for each child it adopts. John W. Poole/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption John W. Poole/NPR

A family receives a mattress, a bag of rice, cooking oil, blankets and bleach for each child it adopts.

John W. Poole/NPR

When the cars set off, there's a short delay as a couple of the colorful mattresses, heaped onto the roof of one vehicle, get caught on the gate.

First stop is Jacobstown, a neighborhood at the end of a dirt road on the outskirts of Monrovia.

After the cars arrive, Ebola survivor Makutu Jabateh squeals with delight as she hugs her newly returned 5-year-old daughter, Mabana Konneh.

More than 800 children have been resettled in Liberia to date, UNICEF says. The children have to be reintegrated into the community.

"So many times, you notice that the communities are afraid of the children," says Sienna Wisseh of the Family Welfare Division. "So many communities don't even want to associate themselves with the children."

i i

"Thank you for taking care of my children," Weah Korveh says, as she reunites with her 3-month-old son, Sekou Dukely, in Jacobstown. Korveh recovered from Ebola but lost several family members to the disease. John W. Poole/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption John W. Poole/NPR

"Thank you for taking care of my children," Weah Korveh says, as she reunites with her 3-month-old son, Sekou Dukely, in Jacobstown. Korveh recovered from Ebola but lost several family members to the disease.

John W. Poole/NPR

Stigmatization of Ebola survivors and those whose family members have died from the virus has been a problem in Liberia. Jacobstown's community leader, Oscar Wisseh Sr., has a brief word with the small, happy gathering.

"We do not stigmatize the parents, and we will not stigmatize the children," he tells them. Then papers are signed and certificates delivered.

Ebola survivor Weah Korveh, who lost six family members, has just been reunited with her 3-month-old son, Sekou Dukely. She starts to cry as she thanks those who have looked after her baby boy.

"Thank you for taking care of my children," she says between sobs. "So many of my people passed away."

Baby Sekou's mother breaks down as she talks, but she gets her message across.

adoption

ebola

Liberia

Global Health

Imagine you're sitting back one evening, planning your holiday shopping list, knowing that every day you wait to get to the shops, the value of your money will be losing ground.

That's what's happening in places like Russia, Venezuela, Nigeria and other nations that rely heavily on oil exports.

Oil was more than $100 a barrel at the start of the summer. Now it's around $70 a barrel, and many forecasts say it could go lower still.

Falling oil prices have been good news for consumers and businesses here in the U.S. and in the many countries around the world that import oil. But it's having a domino effect in oil-exporting nations. Government budgets are strained. Economies are struggling. The currency is crashing.

The Russian ruble was trading at around 35 to the U.S. dollar this summer. But the ruble has been heading south ever since oil prices started tanking. Now it takes more than 50 rubles for a dollar.

The swift drop in oil prices caught many producers off-guard, says Caroline Freund, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

"Over the last few years, oil producers had gotten used to a situation where oil was above $100 a barrel," she says. "So what had happened in these countries is they just had money to burn, so they're spending money on handouts to the public, keeping people happy, exploiting their resources even more ... and that's now on the decline."

i i

People walk past a display with currency exchange rates in Moscow on Wednesday. Falling oil prices have contributed to a number of economic problems, including a currency that has fallen from 35 rubles to the dollar this summer to more than 50 rubles to the dollar now. Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP

People walk past a display with currency exchange rates in Moscow on Wednesday. Falling oil prices have contributed to a number of economic problems, including a currency that has fallen from 35 rubles to the dollar this summer to more than 50 rubles to the dollar now.

Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP

Freund says oil producers with large populations used to government subsidies are being hard-hit. So too are those countries without the financial cushion to ride out the price crash.

"It's hardest for these countries that don't have reserves, really high reserves, like a Venezuela or an Iraq or an Iran, as compared with a Saudi Arabia or a [United Arab Emirates] or Kuwait, where they've really piled up the reserves and can hold out for quite some time," she adds.

Part of the reason oil prices are so low right now is oversupply, which is linked to slowing demand in countries such as China. It's also due to a strong dollar, says Donald Dony, an energy analyst in Victoria, British Columbia.

Related NPR Stories

The Two-Way

Russian Ruble Plummets, And 4 Other Oil-Slump Related Headlines

Parallels

As Oil Prices Fall, Who Wins And Who Loses?

"At this point right now, the U.S. dollar, the U.S. economy is definitely hands and feet over top of just about anybody else out there, certainly better than Europe, and is stronger than most of the Asian economies," he says. "So as the U.S. dollar goes up, other currencies start to go down."

And commodities like oil are linked to the U.S. dollar. So countries with a weakened currency are likely to buy less oil, which in turn affects the exporting nations.

Parallels

Why Does Saudi Arabia Seem So Comfortable With Falling Oil Prices?

While the current price of oil is at its lowest level since 2010, it's been much lower in the past three decades, says Brenda Shaffer, an energy expert and visiting professor at Georgetown University. Even when compared with today's prices, oil-dependent nations have always managed to get by.

"These countries, they've seen it when it's been up, when it's been down. Even President [Vladimir] Putin himself has been president of Russia in every type of oil price — the low, the high, the crisis," Shaffer says. "I think it's nothing new for these governments."

Still, Shaffer says countries that depend on a certain oil price to balance their budgets could be vulnerable to instability. But Shaffer says it's premature to think that nations will fundamentally change their foreign policy behavior.

"Things like Russia pulling out of Crimea, or Iran changing its stance on the nuclear program, things that these countries see as national interest, they're not going to give up because of the oil price," Shaffer adds.

She says there's an intricate relationship between oil prices and geopolitics: It's like a kaleidoscope, where one change can set off unintended consequences. She says Washington may take satisfaction that Russia is feeling a financial pinch, but low oil prices could also signal a slowing in the global economy.

currencies

Nigeria

oil

Russia

Iran

Russian President Vladimir Putin said today that the "difficulties" his country faces "also create new possibilities," and insisted that while he isn't interested in a "long-term arms race" with the West, Russia would do what it takes to defend itself.

Putin's state of the union address to Russia's Parliament comes as his country's relations with the West are at their lowest point since the end of the Cold War. Russia's invasion of Ukraine's Crimea region set off a chain of events that has resulted in Western sanctions targeting Russia's economy, which has also been weakened by falling oil prices.

The situation is compounded by a fragile cease-fire between pro-Russia separatists in Ukraine and the government in Kiev.

Putin insisted today that the invasion of Crimea was a "historic reunification."

"Crimea is of huge and sacred importance to Russia, just like the Temple Mountain is to those who follow Judaism," he said.

[We've explained previously why Russia views Crimea as part of its historic territory.]

Putin also accused the West of trying to build a new "Iron Curtain" around Russia, saying the crisis in Ukraine was merely a pretext for the West to isolate Russia. He said the West's goal was to break up Russia, in a manner similar to Yugoslavia.

"The deterrence policy was not invented yesterday," he said, "it has been always conducted toward our country, for decades, if not centuries."

He added: "Every time somebody considers Russia is becoming too powerful and independent, such instruments are turned on immediately."

Still, tensions with the West have hurt the Russian economy, which faces a recession next year. Oil prices are around $70 per barrel. Russia's budget is predicated on oil being priced at around $100 per barrel. The country is a major oil and gas producer. Since the crisis began in March, the ruble has lost a third of its value.

In his hourlong speech today, Putin outlined steps to bolster the economy, but the markets appeared unimpressed.

Putin's remarks came hours after an attack by militants in the Chechen capital, Grozny. Russian officials said 10 police officers were killed and 28 wounded in the gun battles with militants. Six other people were killed along with at least nine militants.

"Those 'rebels' have again manifested themselves in Chechnya," Putin said in his remarks. "I'm sure the local guys, local low-enforcement bodies, will cope with that. ... Let's support them."

Putin

Vladimir Putin

Russia

Updated at 10:36 a.m.

President Obama named Ashton Carter, a former No. 2 Pentagon official, as his pick to succeed Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.

Obama described Carter today as one of the "nation's foremost national security leaders."

Carter called the nomination an "honor and a privilege."

He said he accepted the offer because of "the seriousness of the strategic challenges we face, but also the bright opportunities that exist for America if we grab hold of them."

He said, if confirmed, he will give Obama "candid" strategic and military advice.

Carter's name began to surface this week as a possible replacement for Hagel, who announced Nov. 24 that he was stepping down once a successor was confirmed. NPR's Eyder Peralta noted that Carter, though unknown to the public, is "regarded as having a great intellect."

He is expected to enjoy bipartisan support during the nominating process.

Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Olka., said earlier this week that he supports Carter "very strongly."

If confirmed, Carter will be Obama's fourth defense secretary [after Robert Gates, Leon Panetta and Hagel].

A Rhodes scholar, Carter has a doctoral degree in theoretical physics from Oxford University. He would inherit the Pentagon as the U.S. faces many global challenges, including the fight against the Islamic State militant group in Iraq and Syria, a resurgent Russia and unrest in other parts of the world. He also faces newer challenges such as cyberthreats.

Ashton Carter

Chuck Hagel

Obama

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

Just over two years into a rocky partnership, Microsoft and Barnes & Noble have decided to call it quits. The mega-bookseller announced Thursday that it plans to buy out Microsoft's stake in its albatross of an e-reader, the Nook.

Microsoft bought into the Nook in 2012, investing $300 million to earn a share of about 17 percent in its ownership. In the time since, hopes for the deal's prospects have faded. A low point came with news of last year's holiday sales, which showed Barnes & Noble's Nook division plummeting 60.5 percent from the year before, according to Publishers Weekly. In June of this year, the bookseller announced a plan to spin off its Nook unit into a separate company sometime next year — news that was greeted with cheers from investors.

Now, Microsoft will sell its stake in Nook Media back to Barnes & Noble for about $125 million.

"As the respective business strategies of each company evolved, we mutually agreed that it made sense to terminate the agreement," a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement.

Barnes & Noble stock fell about 5 percent Thursday on news of the announcement.

The Passing Of A Poet: Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Claudia Emerson passed away Thursday at the age of 57, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports. Emerson won the prize in 2006 for her book Late Wife and served as Virginia's poet laureate from 2008 to 2010. More recently, she conducted research in Italy on a Guggenheim fellowship, returning to her home state to assume a post teaching at Virginia Commonwealth University in 2013.

Haymakers: This is how bad the storied feud between Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal got: When Mailer shoved Vidal down backstage after a terse TV interview, Vidal parried the blow with a remark of his own: "Words fail Norman Mailer yet again."

Orwell In Prison: In George Orwell's 1933 memoir, Down and Out in Paris and London, he dove deeply into the trod-upon underworlds of both cities to examine the effects of poverty personally. But for some time now, it has been in question just how deep Orwell truly went, and how much of his stories he might have made up instead.

Well, The Guardian reports that at least one of his stories is accurate: the 1931 incident recounted in Orwell's unpublished essay "Clink," in which he baited police by being publicly drunk, drawing 48 hours in a London prison to investigate conditions there. The newspaper cites Dr. Luke Seaber, who claims to have discovered court records that offer "unambiguous external confirmation that Orwell did indeed carry out, more or less as described, one of his 'down-and-out' experiments."

Elsewhere, an essay by Robert Butler in Intelligent Life reflects on the decades that have passed since Orwell's death — decades that have been exceedingly kind to his legacy. And even as Orwell's reputation endures, readers are reminded that this is partly because there isn't just one Orwell.

"There are many Orwells," Butler writes. "The literary Orwell sits at his typewriter with a rollie dangling from his lip. The militant Orwell stands head and shoulders above his fellow anti-fascist recruits in Spain. The rural Orwell crouches down to feed a goat (he liked to lecture his less practical friends, such as V.S. Pritchett, on milking). The paternal Orwell fits a shoe on the foot of his young son, perched on his knee."

Exclusive Passages In India: Indian President Pranab Mukherjee is drawing flak from brick-and-mortar booksellers for his exclusive deal with Amazon. The deal means that his book The Dramatic Decade: The Indira Gandhi Years, which sees release Dec. 11, will be available only through Amazon for its first three weeks — after which other booksellers will finally get a crack at it. As The Times of India reports, the heartburn over Mukherjee's book is just one skirmish in a fight over an India's exploding e-commerce market.

Book News

Barnes & Noble

Microsoft

Amazon

Nook

books

Russian President Vladimir Putin said today that the "difficulties" his country faces "also create new possibilities," and insisted that while he isn't interested in a "long-term arms race" with the West, Russia would do what it takes to defend itself.

Putin's state of the union address to Russia's Parliament comes as his country's relations with the West are at their lowest point since the end of the Cold War. Russia's invasion of Ukraine's Crimea region set off a chain of events that has resulted in Western sanctions targeting Russia's economy, which has also been weakened by falling oil prices.

The situation is compounded by a fragile cease-fire between pro-Russia separatists in Ukraine and the government in Kiev.

Putin insisted today that the invasion of Crimea was a "historic reunification."

"Crimea is of huge and sacred importance to Russia, just like the Temple Mountain is to those who follow Judaism," he said.

[We've explained previously why Russia views Crimea as part of its historic territory.]

Putin also accused the West of trying to build a new "Iron Curtain" around Russia, saying the crisis in Ukraine was merely a pretext for the West to isolate Russia. He said the West's goal was to break up Russia, in a manner similar to Yugoslavia.

"The deterrence policy was not invented yesterday," he said, "it has been always conducted toward our country, for decades, if not centuries."

He added: "Every time somebody considers Russia is becoming too powerful and independent, such instruments are turned on immediately."

Still, tensions with the West have hurt the Russian economy, which faces a recession next year. Oil prices are around $70 per barrel. Russia's budget is predicated on oil being priced at around $100 per barrel. The country is a major oil and gas producer. Since the crisis began in March, the ruble has lost a third of its value.

In his hourlong speech today, Putin outlined steps to bolster the economy, but the markets appeared unimpressed.

Putin's remarks came hours after an attack by militants in the Chechen capital, Grozny. Russian officials said 10 police officers were killed and 28 wounded in the gun battles with militants. Six other people were killed along with at least nine militants.

"Those 'rebels' have again manifested themselves in Chechnya," Putin said in his remarks. "I'm sure the local guys, local low-enforcement bodies, will cope with that. ... Let's support them."

Putin

Vladimir Putin

Russia