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Former Massachusetts Sen. Edward Brooke, the first African-American to be popularly elected to the U.S. Senate, died today at age 95, a spokeswoman for the state Republican party said.

Brooke, a Republican who had been Massachusetts attorney general, was first elected in 1966, defeating former Massachusetts Gov. Endicott Peabody. Brooke served until 1979.

Kirsten Hughes, chairwoman of the Massachusetts Republican Party, and a family spokesman both confirmed the death.

He was a leading advocate against discrimination in housing and, along with Democratic Sen. Walter Mondale, co-authored the 1968 Fair Housing Act. In 1969, he led a bipartisan push to defeat President Nixon's Supreme Court nominee, Clement Haynsworth, who faced opposition over allegations that he favored segregation and had failed to recuse himself from cases where he had a personal financial stake.

The Boston Globe writes: "Mr. Brooke's eminence had a paradoxical aspect. What made him such a figure of racial progress wasn't his emphasizing race but transcending it. He had no choice: The year he was elected attorney general only 2 percent of Massachusetts voters were black."

The newspaper said Brooke described himself as "a self-described 'creative moderate.':

"[He] entered the Senate with Charles Percy and Mark Hatfield. A year before, John Lindsay had been elected mayor of New York. All four men were vigorous, telegenic, forward looking. They seemed the cutting edge of a new, revived GOP, turning to the center after Barry Goldwater's landslide defeat in 1964. Instead, the new, revived GOP belonged to Goldwater — and Ronald Reagan."

After the Senate, Brooke practiced law in Washington, D.C., and served as chairman of the Boston Bank of Commerce. Later, he was named to the board of directors of defense contractor Grumman.

In 2004, President George W. Bush awarded Brooke the Presidential Medal of Freedom and in 2009, he was given the Congressional Gold Medal.

U.S. Senate

In the heat of summer in 2014, Baghdad was spooked. A third of Iraq was under the control of the self-proclaimed Islamic State, or ISIS. The extremist group thrived in the chaos of the Syrian civil war, then surged over the border into Iraq and took over the cities of Mosul and Tikrit. People worried the capital might be next.

Six months on, that's changed. On New Year's Eve, for instance, the usual midnight curfew was lifted and people partied in the streets and uploaded videos of themselves letting off fireworks.

Baghdadis say that change is because they feel the pushback against ISIS has begun in earnest.

"We're always optimistic, looking for the best," says Alia al-Taiee, at a Baghdad book market. What's encouraged her is a mass mobilization of volunteers to fight the extremists.

ISIS is a Sunni Muslim group; most of those who volunteered to fight against them were Shiite. But Alia and her sister Khaha want people from every religion and ethnicity in Iraq to sign up: Sunnis, Christians and Yazidis.

And of course, the fight against ISIS hasn't come just from Iraqis, or even just from their Iranian military allies. Over Iraq and Syria, since September, American warplanes have led a coalition's efforts to cripple ISIS with bombings. Now, Americans are training Iraqi troops to fight ISIS and say they'll do the same with the rebels they back in Syria.

Analyst Hisham al-Hashemi reckons the airstrikes have already had an impact.

"The coalition targeted some of the leadership at the organizational level," Hashemi says. "This has been the most painful attack on ISIS."

Hashemi says the group has lost three senior leaders and mid-level commanders. It's more difficult for them to move around freely, and oil fields — key sources of funding — have taken a pounding. Plus, his sources tell him the number of foreigners volunteering to join them has slumped.

"There are 80 percent fewer Arab and foreign recruits," he says. "ISIS lost all of this since the coalition announced the war."

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U.S. commanders say they're debating hard with Iraqi counterparts about when to push ground troops into the ISIS-occupied areas — maybe the spring.

Maj. Gen. Dana Pittard thinks the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, the most populous ISIS-controlled city, should be taken back fast.

"We're just getting indications of morale problems," Pittard says. "And with the people that are in Mosul and seeing [ISIS], they say it's not more than a thousand there now; certainly no more than 2,000."

Pittard also says the extremists are losing local support because the people in Mosul are finding that ISIS does not govern very well. Analysts reckon the group's cachet depends on its being able to govern. But Pittard says in Mosul, Iraqi Kurdish soldiers have cut off ISIS' crucial supply lines so they can't provide fuel and clean water.

"They are clearly on the defensive, except a couple [of] tactical ambushes and a couple of small tactical counterattacks," he says, "but other than that, it's not like what we saw in June at all."

The extremists themselves constantly issue propaganda with ambitious plans for expansion and global attacks. As the international efforts to stop them get more organized, that's looking more farfetched. However, Iraqi analyst Hashemi says that doesn't mean they can't cause harm.

"They have more than 20,000 fighters in Iraq directly engaged in warfare and more than 40,000 fighters in sleeper cells," he says.

Under pressure, Hashemi thinks the group could go back underground, focusing on insurgent tactics like bombings. Meanwhile, in Syria, U.S.-led training of ground forces to fight ISIS is much slower, and complicated by the messy civil war there.

The group is likely to be weakened in 2015, but no one is betting on them being defeated entirely.

ISIS

Iraq

America's heartland is graying. The average age of a farmer in the U.S. is 58.3 — and that number has been steadily ticking upward for more than 30 years.

Overall, fewer young people are choosing a life on the land. But in some places around the country, like Maine, that trend is reversing. Small agriculture may be getting big again — and there's new crop of farmers to thank for it.

Fulfilling Work, Noble Work

On a windy hillside just a few miles from Maine's rocky mid-coast, it's 10 degrees; snow is crunching underfoot. Hairy highland cattle munch on flakes of hay and native Katahdin sheep are mustered in a white pool just outside the fence. Not far away, heritage chickens scuttle about a mobile poultry house that looks a bit like a Conestoga wagon.

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Josh Gerritsen reaches out to one of the farm's Highland calves. He says life in the city wasn't as satisfying: "You're not intimately tied to anything." Jennifer Mitchell/MPBN hide caption

itoggle caption Jennifer Mitchell/MPBN

Josh Gerritsen reaches out to one of the farm's Highland calves. He says life in the city wasn't as satisfying: "You're not intimately tied to anything."

Jennifer Mitchell/MPBN

Marya Gelvosa, majored in English literature and has never lived out in the country before. "Just a few years ago, if you'd told me that I was going to be a farmer, I would have probably laughed at you," she says.

But Gelvosa and her partner, Josh Gerritsen, a New York City photographer, have thrown all their resources into this farm, where they provide a small local base of customers with beef, lamb and heritage poultry. Gerritsen says their livelihood now ties them to a community.

"Living in the city, you commute by subway, you buy your food at the supermarket, you work in a cubicle all day," he says. "You're not intimately tied to anything."

Gelvosa and Gerritsen are part of a generation for whom global warming has been hanging overhead like the sword of Damocles. In fact, all the young farmers interviewed for this story mentioned environmental health and climate change as factors in choosing a life on the land.

The Salt

Who Are The Young Farmers Of 'Generation Organic'?

It's a generation that has grown up in the digital age, but embraced some very old-school things: the farmers market, craft beer, artisan cheese. The point, they say, is to find a way to live high-quality, sustainable lives, and help others do the same.

"It's very fulfilling work," Gelvosa says, "and noble work."

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Marya Gelvosa, 29, didn't grow up dreaming of being a farmer — in fact, as of a few years ago, she'd never even lived in the countryside. Now she and her partner Josh Gerritsen raise Highland cows and pastured eggs for a living. Jennifer Mitchell/MPBN hide caption

itoggle caption Jennifer Mitchell/MPBN

Marya Gelvosa, 29, didn't grow up dreaming of being a farmer — in fact, as of a few years ago, she'd never even lived in the countryside. Now she and her partner Josh Gerritsen raise Highland cows and pastured eggs for a living.

Jennifer Mitchell/MPBN

A Cultural Shift Towards Valuing Agriculture

In Maine, farmers under the age of 35 have increased by 40 percent, says John Rebar, executive director of the University of Maine Cooperative Extension: "Nationally, that increase is 1.5 percent."

And young farmers are being drawn to other rural Northeastern states as well, he says. Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont were all hotbeds of activity during the previous back-to-the-land movement of the 1970s. Many of those pioneers stayed and helped create farming and gardening organizations that now offer support and encouragement for new farmers.

The social climate now is very different than the one Rebar encountered 30 years ago when he himself was an aspiring producer of cattle and sheep.

"I was called 'Farmer' by my classmates in high school. That was okay with me, but you could tell it wasn't a term of endearment," he says. "There was a lot of negativity about encouraging young people to go into farming.

"So it's a cultural shift that says we value this as part of our society. We want this to be part of our social fabric, so we're going to figure out ways to make it work."

More On Farming And Finances

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Reality Check For Young Farmers: It's An Expensive 'Habit'

The Salt

Here's How Young Farmers Looking For Land Are Getting Creative

Part of making it work means access to land. On their coastal farm, where acreage is more expensive than it is inland, Gelvosa and Gerritsen say they're luckier than most; Gerritsen's parents had bought the property years before, which made starting up for the couple a lot easier.

In Iowa, farmland prices are inching toward $9,000 per acre, which has some financial experts talking about a farmland bubble. But sparsely developed states like Maine still possess affordable lands, which savvy young farmers with a little money — and a lot of elbow grease — are starting to acquire.

The New Face Of The Farmer

Gene and Mary Margaret Ripley are just such a pair. In what's often cited as one of the poorest counties east of the Mississippi, they paid less than $200,000 for a full house, barn, eight acres of hay fields and enough land for their organic vegetable business.

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Buying land is a challenge for many young farmers, but Gene and Mary Margaret Ripley found an affordable property in Maine. This high tunnel lets them produce cold-hardy crops like spinach into mid-winter. Jennifer Mitchell/MPBN hide caption

itoggle caption Jennifer Mitchell/MPBN

Buying land is a challenge for many young farmers, but Gene and Mary Margaret Ripley found an affordable property in Maine. This high tunnel lets them produce cold-hardy crops like spinach into mid-winter.

Jennifer Mitchell/MPBN

The whole property amounts to 38 acres, Mary Margaret Ripley says, mostly woods. They planted 2.5 acres of cash crops in the most recent year.

"We are getting to the point where demand is outstripping our supply and so this year we cleared a one-acre section of woods right here," Gene Ripley says. "Just last week, which is really exciting, we just hired our first full-time employee, who is going to be starting in the spring."

Twenty- and 30-somethings like Gelvosa and Gerritsen and the Ripleys represent the new face of the farmer, Rebar says. They're college-educated and concerned about quality of life, and they've cashed in the usual benefits of a professional life — such as a medical plan, a retirement scheme and even a guaranteed paycheck — for something else:

"This is about creating something. This is about building something themselves. This is about using their two hands to make a difference," Rebar says.

And, he says, this new generation of farmers have made farming cool again.

young farmers

farmers

Maine

Amid all the holiday celebrations, you may have missed this story from overseas.

An Egyptian court announced a retrial for three journalists from Al Jazeera who have been languishing in jail for more than a year for the crime of reporting the news. The scheduled retrial is a small step in the right direction for a nation that has seen its historic revolution of just four years ago almost totally reversed.

Since Egypt's first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi, was overthrown by Egypt's military in the summer of 2013, the new regime has cracked down hard on all political dissent, on all news media. And, as Human Rights Watch reports, just in the last few weeks hundreds of civilians have been referred to military prosecutors.

Reigning in the military courts was one of the few tangible gains from the 2011 revolution. Now that, too, has been reversed. That's why the case of reporters Peter Greste, Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed offers a window into post-revolutionary Egypt that looks a lot like pre-revolutionary Egypt.

By all independent accounts the trial was, to paraphrase Woody Allen, a travesty of a mockery of a sham. The reporters were arrested and convicted on "terrorism" charges. But no evidence was presented to back up the charges.
Two were sentenced to seven years in prison. Baher Mohamed got 10 years.

In announcing a retrial, the court did not suspend the men's sentences or release them on bail. Another trial means more time in jail.

As one of the reporters who helped NPR cover the revolutions across North Africa, I was awed by the courage of ordinary people — especially in Egypt — to stand up to authoritarian regimes.

I was in Tahrir Square on the euphoric, chaotic night Egypt's dictator Hosni Mubarak was removed by the military after weeks of a popular street uprising demanding change.

Recently, I was searching my disorganized reporters' kit for a recording flash card that still had space on it, and I came across some of the hours of interviews in Tahrir Square that I and an NPR producer did while reporting on the revolution.

I couldn't erase it. It was part of my snapshot of history. I began to listen back. It was the day before Mubarak was ousted. Everyone in the square could feel that his departure was coming.

When we asked one 20-something college student who'd been in the square for days what he would do if Mubarak leaves, he gave us the kind of flowery, lofty response that one might easily dismiss.

But he meant every word. He said, "I want to breathe deep the air of freedom."

That student in Egypt is still waiting.

Tahrir Square

Hosni Mubarak

Egypt

As the new year begins, the Ebola virus continues its deadly spread in West Africa. More than 20,000 are infected and nearly 8,000 have died throughout the region. The number of victims keeps climbing in Guinea and Sierra Leone, and dozens of new Ebola cases in Liberia this week mark a setback after recent improvements.

"We have ways to go," says Anthony Banbury, the outgoing head of the United Nations Mission for Ebola Emergency Response, or UNMEER. He's just completed his final 6-day tour of the Ebola-affected region. Speaking from Accra, Ghana, he tells NPR's Eric Westervelt on Weekend Edition that he didn't seen any signs of complacency when he was in Liberia — neither from the leaders nor the communities. In fact, he says, things are headed in the right direction: "In Liberia, there have been new cases but just on Dec. 31, the country reported zero new cases on that day."

Goats and Soda

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And zero is his goal. In his view, letting Ebola become a permanent problem in West Africa is not an option. "The only option is getting to zero cases so there is no more presence of Ebola in humans," Banbury says. "Ebola has just ripped apart communities and families ... and we have a very big obligation to get rid of Ebola completely so these communities can go about with the lives they have and [with] the path of development."

The outbreak in Guinea has proven particularly difficult to control. Earlier this year, villagers killed health workers who were spreading awareness of Ebola. "We're facing particularly difficult challenges in Guinea due to strong resistance in many of the communities, particularly in very rural areas," he says. Yet the U.N. has been making progress, he adds, with more labs opened and more facilities coming along in the next few days.

Banbury warns that the Ebola outbreak has to stopped in not just one country but the entire region. "Solving it in one county does not mean it's over for that country because it could leap across the border as we've seen recently in cases from Guinea going into Liberia going into Mali."

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One of the greatest challenges, he says, is making sure treatment centers and burial teams are available throughout the region — even in the most remote areas. Then, he says, "we can have early detection of and response to small outbreaks." Even then, he stresses, it's up to the communities themselves to make use of the resources that international agencies and aid organizations bring in.

"We can build treatment units but if people don't go to them it's not going to help. We can have safe burial teams but if people follow unsafe practices, they aren't going to help," he says. "But I believe we are seeing improvements."

As Banbury prepares to leave his role at UNMEER, he reflects on a 10-year-old girl named Esther, who made him truly understand why stopping Ebola is a must. "She had such a sparkle and a sense of life," he says. "It was just so great that she had survived. It made me really again understand that we had to do everything we possibly could so those who unfortunately got Ebola, like Esther, could survive. But more importantly, to bring the disease back to zero so that there were no more Esthers getting it."

West Africa

ebola

United Nations

Indonesian officials say 21 more bodies from AirAsia Flight QZ8501 were recovered today from the Java Sea, bringing the number of bodies found from the air disaster to 30.

The Associated Press quotes an Indonesian official as saying five of the bodies recovered today were still strapped to their seats.

Since the flight disappeared on Dec. 27 en route from Surabaya to Singapore, weather has been an ever-present obstacle to the search.

The bulk of the 162 pass1engers and crew from the flight remain unaccounted for. The search is currently focused on an area of about 1,500 square nautical miles in the Java Sea off the Indonesian half of the island of Borneo, known as Kalimantan.

Four crash victims have been identified and returned to their families, including a flight attendant and an 11-year-old boy, the AP says.

Vessels from the U.S. and three other countries are helping look for the aircrafts so-called "black box" recorders.

Most of the passengers are thought to be inside the Airbus A320's fuselage, which has yet to be located.

"Waves were between three and four metres today, making it difficult to load bodies onto ships and [move them] between ships," Bambang Soelistyo, the head of Indonesia's search and rescue agency, was quoted by the BBC as saying.

"Tonight we are sending tug boats which should make the [body] transfers easier," Soelistyo told reporters in Jakarta, according to the BBC.

AirAsia flight QZ8501

[This piece assumes you've seen the first four seasons of Downton Abbey. As to the fifth, it avoids specific spoilers, but does talk about themes and threads enough that you might be 20 percent less surprised by a couple of developments. It's the best balance I could strike.]

Let us get this out of the way right off: Particularly after its first two seasons, Downton Abbey has been enormously uneven. It's satisfying in some moments, dull in others, and always prone to falling so in love with a particular story beat that it cannot move past it.

The season premiering in the U.S. on PBS on Sunday (and yes, lots of people still watch it on plain old television, and suggestions to the contrary say more about the limited social circle of the speaker than they do about technology) isn't free of the repetition problem. We still find Edith in a state of angst, we still find Bates and Anna suffering nobly in the shadow of suspicion about something they didn't do, and perhaps more interestingly, we find the widowed Mary Crawley echoing her first-season self more than ever: the selfish and insensitive edge that her relationship with Matthew smoothed down seems to have returned.

At the same time, there is a theme to the season, and it's more than "rich people and poor people under one roof" (though that's still present) and more than "change, change, change!" (though that's still present, too). Specifically, this is a season heavily interested in the choices — particularly the love lives and sex lives — of women of all ages and classes.

We have already seen the single Edith burdened by guilt because she became pregnant, to the point where she wound up in a scheme to place her daughter for adoption, but only halfway, neither able to live with the adoption nor able to acknowledge the child. But now, we will see the flip side, as another single woman considers whether sex before marriage is an integral part of determining compatibility — and how to avoid pregnancy as a consequence. We will see how partially evolved attitudes allow some men to want sex, have sex, and then look down on the women they have it with for having it with them. And we will continue to see, as we did last season, that while sexual violence has little to do with sexual feelings, a social failure to separate the two makes for victims of violence who bear their considerable burdens alone.

We will see that love and sex — and emotions — do not end as going concerns at 40, at 50, or at 60. We will see women with grandchildren and even great-grandchildren deciding what to do about partners and friends. We will see women trying to figure out to navigate a world of increased independence sort of, in which they may make choices about striking out on their own at the risk of being treated as if they're doing something impossibly silly.

The show has always featured plenty of sex — after all, the first season revolved largely around a corker of a potential scandal involving a guy dying in a bed where he wasn't supposed to be. But this is much more interesting: sex as a part of life, used to contribute to conflicts and choices, rather than sex as an oh-my-goodness thing to be concealed.

What always makes Downton so frustrating is that the show creates so many brilliant, shimmering moments of both high drama and deep feeling — it really does — while at the same time being glacially paced with regard to some stories and skittering and inattentive with others. At a macro level, it can be so very middling, while at a micro level, the performances are so spot-on and many of the relationships so sturdily built that individual scenes are as good as anything on television.

Truth be told, Downton is much stronger with everything else than it is with romances, particularly since the departure of Dan Stevens as Matthew. Bates and Anna have long been trapped in a revolving door of misery that makes it honestly hard for them to do anything but grimace at each other, and the two suitors Mary began juggling last season felt more like cat toys than real prospects. Its best romance is barely one at all — the end of the fourth season found Mr. Carson and Mrs. Hughes lightly holding hands on the beach.

But, for instance, the loving exasperation that exists between Mrs. Patmore and Daisy is sweet and moving, as is the friendship between Tom and Mary, built largely on the unexpected single parenthood they have in common. Rob James-Collier has found nuance in Thomas Barrow, Evil Underbutler, who began as an almost pure villain and has emerged as a lonely person in pain who distracts himself with schemes. And the way Mary and Edith bring out each other's worst qualities is sad and aggravating, but feels specific and earned.

I haven't yet seen the Christmas special that caps the season, but I've seen the rest of it, and I did enjoy it quite a bit more than some recent chunks of the show. Maggie Smith blessedly has more to do than drop one-liners (though she does that too, of course), and there's happily very little talk about the estate, for those of you who (like me) have been long bored by that. There is still a theme of change, certainly, but it's expressed in the changes in particular people's lives, as well as in general observations about things like the dwindling number of servants. Yes, you still are asked to invest in the lives of the very wealthy, but you're asked to invest more in them as people, and less in them as Keepers Of A Certain Way Of Life.

There are moments in which people frustrated by the show's tendency to move in lazy circles will say "Good grief, not this again." But there are also sneaky touches that reminded me, at least, of why I have at times enjoyed Downton so much.

Most of us will remember 2014 as the year Ebola came to the U.S. But another virus made its debut in the Western Hemisphere. And unlike Ebola, it's not leaving anytime soon.

Goats and Soda

Experimental Vaccine For Chikungunya Passes First Test

The virus is called chikungunya: You pronounce it a bit like "chicken-goon-ya."

Although the illness is rarely fatal, it's by no means mild, says virologist Ann Powers of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It causes such severe joint pain, she says, that "people who have it can't stand up or don't even want to shake your hand because it's too painful."

Until recently, infection with the mosquito-borne virus was restricted mostly to Asia and Africa. Then, in December 2013, a few dozen cases cropped up on the island of St. Martin in the Caribbean. By February, there were thousands of cases across the region, and hundreds of thousands by June. In July, chikungunya had spread to Central America, South America — and Florida.

The Western Hemisphere recorded more than a million cases of chikungunya in 2014. The virus became endemic (dark purple) in the Caribbean, Florida and parts of Central and South America. Courtesy of Pan American Health Organization hide caption

itoggle caption Courtesy of Pan American Health Organization

"Chikungunya is an amazing virus," Powers says. "It spreads incredibly fast and is very aggressive. In some communities, more than half the population gets sick."

The Western Hemisphere recorded more than a million cases of chikungunya in 2014. The U.S. had more than 2,000 cases, with about 500 of those in the state of New York.

In nearly all these instances, U.S. residents caught the virus outside the country and then brought it back home.

But in Florida, the virus set up shop. The mosquitoes in southeastern Florida got infected with chikungunya and spread the infection to at least 11 people.

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A woman protects her child's face in Managua, Nicaragua, as health workers fumigate for mosquitoes that carry chikungunya. The virus started spreading through Nicaragua and Mexico in the fall. Esteban Felix/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Esteban Felix/AP

A woman protects her child's face in Managua, Nicaragua, as health workers fumigate for mosquitoes that carry chikungunya. The virus started spreading through Nicaragua and Mexico in the fall.

Esteban Felix/AP

"That's not very many," says Walter Tabachnick, who leads the Florida Medical Entomology Laboratory at the University of Florida. "But we're worried about this. All the blocks are falling into place. You've got to be worried about this."

Florida and the regions around the Gulf of Mexico have all the right ingredients for a huge outbreak in 2015, Tabachnick says — the types of mosquitoes that carry chikungunya, as well as a steady flow of travelers from the Caribbean and Central America (where the virus is just gaining a foothold). Mexico reported its first case of chikungunya in November.

Goats and Soda

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"There's very little predictability for chikungunya," Tabachnick says. "But would 50,000 or 100,000 cases in Florida be surprising? I don't know. I don't think so. I wouldn't be surprised."

The take-home message, Tabachnick says, is twofold. First: Clean up your yard. Get rid of all standing water, where mosquitoes grow. That includes watering cans and flower pots, he says — anything with a small puddle of water in it.

And second: "Stay tuned," Tabachnick says. "We haven't seen the end of this. There will be other cases."

Chikungunya is just getting started.

chikungunya

virus

Infectious Disease

Global Health

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is spending the holidays thinking of his future. Rubio was a prominent member of the contentious Congress that just ended. Some analysts labeled it the 'worst Congress ever.'

Shortly, Republicans will take control of both chambers. The new Congress, Rubio hopes, will be seen as "one whose work is relevant to people's daily lives."

"Right now, across America, that is people reading all this news about how great the economy is doing but they're not feeling it," he tells NPR.

“ "We certainly have different ideas about how to solve problems, and so I think you're certainly going to see that."

- Sen. Marco Rubio

Rubio has tried to make economic opportunity a signature issue as he considers a Presidential run. He's also been associated with immigration reform — though a reform measure he once supported died in the last Congress, like so much else.

He's hoping for better results in 2015, on a range of issues at home and abroad. That will depend in part on how the Republican Congress works, or doesn't work, with the Democrat in the White House. Rubio spoke with NPR about that relationship, the president's executive action on immigration, U.S. sanctions on Iran and the possibility of a 2016 run for the White House.

Interview Highlights

On President Obama's comment that he may have to use the veto pen

Well, we certainly have different ideas about how to solve problems, and so I think you're certainly going to see that. And that's not unique, other presidents have had to do that as well. And that's certainly within his power to obstruct the movement of legislation.

There are some bills where I think he won't be able to do that on — for example. sanctions on Iran. I think we'll have a supermajority, a veto-proof majority to impose additional sanctions on Iran and to require the administration to come before Congress for approval of any deal that he has with Iran. I think the same is true for the Keystone pipeline, potentially.

On the possibility of the U.S. imposing additional sanctions on Iran

I don't believe there is a prospect for a deal with Iran. ... First of all, we have to understand that the negotiators are not the decision-makers in Iran. They have to come back to the supreme leader and I'm fairly confident that the supreme leader in Iran, and others around him, have made the decision that the purpose of these negotiations were to buy time, to make progress on their nuclear program.

We've waited for more than months – we've waited now for close to, over a year – and really no serious progress has been made. On the contrary, a number of concessions have been made by the United States. In fact now the U.S. has conceded the right to enrich or reprocess. And if you give them the right to enrich or reprocess at any level, that infrastructure could very easily be ramped up in the future to produce a nuclear-grade uranium or plutonium.

On Obama's executive action on immigration and what the president has called a 'nativist trend in parts of the Republican Party'

Politics

Despite Election Defeat, Obama Sees Room To Push His Agenda

The Two-Way

Republicans Sort Their Priorities For The New Congress

First of all, I think the use of 'nativist' to describe opposition to his form of immigration reform is inaccurate and unwise. I think there are very legitimate reasons to believe that this country has a right to have immigration laws and have those laws respected. A million people a year come to the U.S. legally, and there aren't any voices saying that that should be stopped.

Now there are voices, including my own, saying that how we immigrate to the U.S. should be reformed. It should be more of a merit-based system instead of a family-based system because of the dramatic economic changes that we've had in the 21st century where it's difficult for low-skilled workers to find jobs.

On a possible 2016 presidential run

First, let me say I have tremendous respect for Gov. [Jeb] Bush, and I've said repeatedly if he runs he'll be a very credible candidate. Potentially the frontrunner, at least in the early stages, because of all the strengths and advantages that he brings to the process. As far as, you know, speculating about whether two people from the same state can run, it's not unprecedented. We certainly know a lot of the same people, we also know some different people. The decision I have to make is: where is the best place for me to serve America to carry out this agenda that I have to restore the American dream given the dramatic economic changes we've had in the 21st century? Where is the best place for me to achieve that? Is it in the Republican majority in the Senate or is it as a candidate, and ultimately as president of the United States? If I decide it's as president, then that's what I'm going to do irrespective of who else might be running.

This is not a gut decision, this is one that one needs to make obviously on the basis of facts and reality. And so I haven't made a decision yet on it; I don't have a date in mind or a time frame in mind, but certainly soon. We're closer to a decision than we were a month ago.

More than 360 African health workers died of Ebola this year. Some of them made headlines around the world, such as Dr. Umar Sheik Khan, the Sierra Leonean physician who treated more than 100 Ebola patients before contracting the disease himself.

Goats and Soda

Doctor Remembered For Dedication To Fighting Deadly Ebola

But most of the fallen health workers didn't get that degree of attention. They were doctors, nurses, midwives, lab technicians. They didn't have the proper protective equipment. As they tried to save the lives of others, they sacrificed their own.

The loss is tremendous. Liberia, for example, a nation of 4.3 million, had only about 50 doctors before the Ebola outbreak. The country has reportedly lost four of them to the epidemic.

In some West African clinics and medical facilities, the faces of the lost health workers stare out from tribute walls: Photos of the deceased are posted in hallways outside offices and examination rooms. A person's name and job may be scrawled in ink underneath the photo, along with a personal note.

At Kenema Government Hospital in Sierra Leone, the messages included:

"Angie, We all love U but God loves U. May her soul rest in perfect peace."

"Gone but not forgotten. R.I.P."

"Another fallen hero."

Goats and Soda

Dangerous Deliveries: Ebola Leaves Moms And Babies Without Care

NPR's photographer John Poole visited the Liberian Midwives Association in its cramped headquarters in Monrovia, the country's capital, to take pictures of the 30-some portraits displayed on a wall "Can you imagine waking up one morning, and the first thing that hits you is the death of a friend?" says Lucy Bahr, the president of the association. "Then before you can say a word, there's another death?

"It is very sad that we have to go through this loss in a country that had just a handful of midwives and health workers," she says. "As I am speaking to you, another midwife a few days ago, she treated a patient at her private clinic. The patient had Ebola so she contracted the disease and died."

The death toll may be greater than we know, Bahr says. "People die in some remote rural villages, and we do not have any information on them."

Yet in the midst of all this sorrow, there is hope. "West Africans are resilient," says Dr. Aaron Buseh, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee College of Nursing, who is originally from Liberia. "They will probably rise up again from this serious epidemic," he predicts.

Barh agrees: "We cannot give up now," she says. "As for me, I feel it is my calling and passion to save lives."

Goats and Soda

A Son Is Lost Without His Mother. So Is A Country

To those who lost their lives, we echo the words of family, friends and colleagues: "You are fallen heroes. You are gone but not forgotten. May you rest in perfect peace."

Pictured above, from left to right:

Top Row: Sando Sirleaf Jr, Sharon Shamoyan, Laurene W. Togba-RN [registered nurse], Kortoe M. Berry-RN, Gloria Tonia Banks, David Korpu-RN, Jamaimah Harlebah-RN, Youngor Suakollie-RN

Second row: Alice M. Paasewe-CM [certified midwife], James J. Kemokai-RN, James T. Daah-RN, Enid D. Dalieh-RN, Mercy W. Dahn-RN, Layson Zuu-RN, Josephine K. Gibson-RN, Tamba Eric Fallah-RN.

Third row: Kebeh Bernice Zawu, Roseline K Moliwulo-CM, Kebbeh Marzou Akoi, Mohammed Sheriff-RN, Otino J. Garpue-RN, Joseph Sulon-RN, Esther D. Kezelee-RN, Zion S. Nuah-RM

Fourth row: Martha Y. Tom, Isatu Isatu Boyah Salifu, Enoch W.W. Saywon, Nornor Friencelai Kollie, Christian Tulah Harris, Joseph M. Khakie, Nathaniel S. Kollie-RN, Anita Leela Sackie.

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She is one of the African health workers who caught Ebola and died. Dr. Ameyo Adadevoh was the head of First Consultants Medical Centre in Lagos, Nigeria. In July, Liberian-American Patrick Sawyer flew sick to the city from Monrovia, ended up at her clinic and turned out to have Ebola. He wanted to leave. Dr Adadevoh and her team refused to let him go – if she had, he could have triggered a widescale epidemic in Lagos, a city of twenty million people. Instead, the outbreak was limited in Africa's most populous nation and Nigeria was declared Ebola-free in October by the World Health Organization.

Dr. Adadevoh's only child, Bankole Cardoso, returned to Nigeria last year from the U.S., where he'd studied at Boston College, then worked in New York in financial services. But he missed his extended family and so returned home to Nigeria and started a taxi service, EasyTaxi.

Cardoso, who turned 26 while his mother was fighting Ebola, shared his thoughts about her life and death – and her legacy.

How did Ebola come into your life?

Once the Liberian national came into Nigeria and was rushed to my mother's hospital — of course this was the first time Nigeria had ever had Ebola.

When you say your mother's hospital – Dr. Ameyo Adadevoh was the chief doctor at First Consultants Medical Centre in Lagos.

Yes, she was there for 21 years. That's where I was born, that's where all my cousins were born, my friends were born. So many people go to that hospital because of her. She's synonymous with First Consultants Hospital.

Upon seeing the patient, she was told that he was coming from Liberia, so she immediately suspected that he may have an infectious disease, because he was being treated for malaria at the time.

And she noticed that [it] seemed as if he was bleeding on the surface of his skin. So that was the first time I ever heard her speak about Ebola.

What did she say?

All I remember her saying at the time — this was just her nature, never about herself — just I remember what she was saying was that he seemed scared, the patient. And so she was praying for him and telling him everything will be fine.

Just like her normal self, as you would hear from anyone in Nigeria that has come across her, that she is completely selfless. She gives her all to all her patients. When someone is ill, she is happy to do an in-house call, she's happy to do anything to make sure they're fine.

Beyond the medicine, she was always there for people

I remember her being so affected that he was so scared and worried about himself, when she had to tell him that she believes he has an infectious disease.

Later on, I found out that when he was told he had an infectious disease, he went bananas, he was furious and he demanded to be released from the hospital.

At that point, and this I know as well, the Liberian government was calling her and pressuring her to release him, that he had come for an important meeting, an international conference in Calabar — in the eastern part of Nigeria.

So they demanded for him to be released, citing that he was kidnapped by the hospital and that it's against his human rights to keep him there.

They threatened her multiple times. She stood her ground. There was no way to let him go because he was putting the rest of Nigeria at risk if he left the hospital.

By now your mother knew he had Ebola?

On the Monday I believe they did the test. By the Tuesday or Wednesday it was confirmed.

I remember her being preoccupied the whole time, with this on her mind that she has an Ebola patient.

That there's no Ebola treatment unit?

Precisely and at the time there were messages going around Nigeria – avoid First Consultants Hospital, avoid Obalende — which is the area the hospital's in — because there's an Ebola patient there.

She was concerned that the image and reputation of her hospital was being really damaged.

The Liberian-American Patrick Sawyer died. Your mother then had to face a 21-day incubation period during which she could develop Ebola.

When she fell ill herself, it was more my dad noticing. Normally she's an extremely active person. But one Saturday she seemed to be just taking her time, not really her normal self.

So he suspected and we spoke, and she says she feels okay. When she didn't go to work on Monday and Tuesday is when she started to feel ill.

She didn't want to go into the isolation unit. Because when the Liberian national was at her hospital, I remember she used the world uninhabitable. That that place was uninhabitable [the isolation unit that was being made ready by the health authorities].

Eventually, two days later, an ambulance came and we went to the isolation unit. The WHO doctor said he has dealt with hundreds of Ebola patients. In every five, two walk away, two have to be managed, one dies.

And so he said that, in this condition, where he was working with bare health bones, understaffed, he was really battling and it's going to be a tough situation.

Then the doctor was speaking to her and after he told us he suspects she has this disease. Of course at that point, I completely lost it, but I spoke to her and she was like, do not worry, this thing is not going to kill me.

Was her morale low?

This is someone whose morale is never low. Even then her morale was not low. She is such a fighter.

How was she responding in those first days?

Suddenly, every day seemed to be getting worse and worse, so [the doctor] told us to prepare ourselves for what was to come.

Five days later she was still there. And things seemed to be getting better, perhaps. And [the doctor], for the first time he had something to say — maybe it could be neurological damage at the end of the day.

This was probably day eight or nine. This was my birthday.

The next day we come expecting some more positive news, and that day the story just changes. He says it will be a matter of time.

Until you lost your mother?

Yes.

Were you able to to digest that?

Of course not. My dad was able to comfort me, but I was lost completely.

Losing a mother is tough in any circumstances, but losing her after she had tried to fight for the life of a patient suffering from Ebola, losing her to Ebola — that must have been devastating.

Yes, completely. Devastating doesn't come close or even cover it.

What were you thinking?

Anger, confusion – they're probably the two most forceful feelings I had.

The fact that your mother is hailed as a hero – does that help?

It was difficult at the beginning as we began to grieve. Her picture was everywhere, in the newspapers, on television, on social media. But now it helps in the sense that people are offering genuine support. This came from our nucleus of family and friends to begin with. But then after that, it has become even bigger. And so, I was comforted by people I know and now I'm being comforted by people I don't even know.

What do they say about your mother?

That your mother was great, she did this for our country. She really made a difference — an impact. She's a heroine.

That's what's intriguing to me now, to hear different stories from different people. [They say] "she treated my grandfather, she treated my mother, she treated me, she treated my children. She treated four generations of our family". And you hear that from so many different people. That all helps.

How old was your mother?

She was 57. A lot of people that knew her — her patients and those that knew her outside of the hospital — were very surprised. They thought she was 40 or something. She had a very young personality. She took care of herself. She was too young. Fifty-seven.

And you must be thinking, I'm glad I came home, back home to Nigeria?

Things happen in mysterious ways, right? There I was in New York, comfortable. No reason really to come back.

But there was this feeling inside me that I wanted to be home because of the family. That's where I belong. Thank God I did come back. But also, at times, I think if I was there, she would have visited me or maybe she wouldn't have been here.

Is it lonely in the house without your mother?

It's definitely not the same. Every household connected to our family feels the same. There's just something missing. Because, like I mentioned, she was this special bond between every single one of us. She just had this special relationship with everybody.

How will you memorialize your mother?

We have set up a health trust fund in her name — Dr. Ameyo Stella Adadevoh. www.drasatrust.org

It's a health fund set up to improve the Nigerian healthcare system by working with institutions on a community level and by improving healthcare across Nigeria.

Because the national health infrastructure is poor.

Exactly and also because that is what she loved to do. She was in healthcare her whole life. Her father was a doctor, a professor. He opened the Infectious Diseases hospital in Nigeria which is where my mother passed.

He was a renowned doctor as well. Her family is full of doctors. This is what she loved to do. She could be on holiday — anywhere, but she still attended to patients. She would do anything for patients.

So to memorialize her, we want to continue impacting healthcare in Nigeria — giving people trust and faith in Nigerian healthcare.

What kind of projects will you take on?

Still in discussion phase. healthcare system, infectious diseases, education. Focusing on those main areas.

We've already received some Hazmat suits to distribute to Nigerian hospitals.–

The protective gear that those who are fighting Ebola wear, to keep safe.

Even other infectious diseases. It's important that Nigeria be prepared for all infectious diseases.

Nigeria often gets a very bad press: Boko Haram, the missing kidnapped schoolgirls, complaints that Nigeria should be superrich with its oil wealth and yet people are so poor, because of corruption. But on this first case of Ebola in Nigeria, your country is earning plaudits from all over the world for stopping the virus.

Exactly. I read somewhere that Nigeria was ranked 107th out of 109 countries in terms of healthcare, by the WHO, in 2000. So the fact that we beat this is definitely something that we had no divine right to do. I think people are shocked that Nigeria could pull off something like that.

This has shown that, within our own country we can take control. We didn't need, really, outside help out of this situation. I really believe my generation is inspired by that.

Your mother would be pleased to hear that.

She will be. The last thing she said to me was that she was proud of me. I feel still incredibly connected to her, despite the fact that she's not here.

So she's continuing to inspire you?

Definitely. Absolutely. It's strange because, of course, there are times where I feel that she's still around. But then I'm like, "Don't be Silly". But there are really times when I feel she is working her magic how she used to do.

Did your mother discuss with you how she may have become infected with Ebola?

There have been different theories that I heard from the hospital. That she touched an [intravenous fluid] drip bag. I read in places that she had pushed the man — but that's not true, because my mum was small and he was a big guy!

She always maintained that she never had contact with him directly. So she claimed that it was a mystery how she got this.

Was faith a part of Dr. Adadevoh's life?

Hugely a part of my mother's life and mine through her. She was an incredibly spiritual person. Her faith was incredibly strong. And so we'd go to church together and things like that.

She would actually call in priests and pastors to pay last rites to her patients that were not going to make it. And she had such a strong belief. Her last words were "Blood of Jesus" according to the doctor.

You say she was incredibly energetic and always up and about. Do you think she gave up?

Absolutely not. The doctors — they kept saying she is a fighter, so she's going to pull through. Giving up — it just doesn't exist for her.

ebola

Nigeria

A year ago, Russia's economy was riding high. Today, the country is widely thought to be entering a recession, if it's not already there.

The plunge in oil prices has been the main culprit, but Russia's economy has had trouble regaining its footing because of sanctions imposed by the West after the annexation of Crimea. President Obama and other Western leaders were quick to condemn Russia when it annexed the Crimean peninsula last March, and they struggled to find a way to show their outrage.

"Obviously a military response to Ukraine was not on the table, and some response was necessary," says William Pomeranz of the Woodrow Wilson Center.

The response was a series of limited economic sanctions on companies and individuals close to President Vladimir Putin. These sanctions were derided as ineffectual, but European countries that depend on Russia for oil and gas were reluctant to go further. Then in July came a tragedy that would force the West's hand.

A Malaysian airliner was shot down over Ukraine allegedly by separatists backed by Moscow.

"The sanctions took off to a whole new level in the aftermath of the shooting down of the Malaysian airliner," Pomeranz says. "After that much more comprehensive and sectoral sanctions were introduced."

The new sanctions made it much tougher for Western banks and companies to do business with Russia. By themselves, these sanctions didn't have a huge impact, says Robert Kahn of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Parallels

Has Vladimir Putin Just Overplayed His Hand?

Parallels

As Crimea's Borders Change, So Do Lives

"But I would also argue that sanctions are, if you will, a force multiplier in this environment, that they are making the oil price dislocations much more powerful than they would have been otherwise," Kahn says.

Parallels

In Crimea, Many Signs Of Russia, Few Of Resistance

The sanctions coincided with a steep drop in the price of oil, which has become the lifeblood of Russia's economy. With inflation climbing, the value of the ruble fell by more than 40 percent. Russian companies that had borrowed in euros and U.S. dollars struggled to pay their debts, and Kahn says the sanctions left them with few options to handle the crisis.

"The normal buffers that an economy like Russia has to respond to an oil price shock aren't there," he says. "Borrowing abroad to smooth what might be a temporary shock can't do it. Expanding trade to offset the loss of oil revenue really is quite limited in the current environment."

At the same time, Russia has lashed back by blocking imports from the West, making it much tougher to acquire meats and produce from Europe and North America. Russia's oil wealth has given it large foreign reserves. But it's been forced to spend more than a fifth of them this year to stabilize its banks and companies, and keep its ruble from sliding too much.

Russian economist Sergei Guriev, who teaches at Sciences Po in Paris, says Moscow can't keep spending down its reserves forever.

"Currently it cannot borrow, and so it is clear that in two or three years when Russia completely spends the reserves, it will have to make substantial spending cuts, and this is not going to be politically popular," Guriev says.

Meanwhile, some in Congress have called for ratcheting up sanctions against Moscow. But Guriev, who fled his homeland for political reasons, warns against pushing Russia too far. A country with nuclear weapons is now facing what he says is nothing less than an existential crisis, and cornering its government can only make the world a less stable place.

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Gyms have built their business model around us not showing up. Gyms have way more members than they can actually accommodate. Low-priced gyms are the most extreme example of this. Planet Fitness, which charges between $10 and $20 per month, has, on average, 6,500 members per gym. Most of its gyms can hold around 300 people. Planet Fitness can do this because it knows that members won't show up. After all, if everyone who had a gym membership showed up at the gym, it would be Thunderdome. If you are not going to the gym, you are actually the gym's best customer.

So gyms try to attract people who won't come. If you haven't been a "gym person" in the past, chances are good that paying for a gym membership won't change that. Gyms know this and do what they can to attract people who haven't traditionally been gym rats. Instead of displaying challenging equipment like weight benches and climbing machines in plain view, gyms will often hide weight rooms and other equipment in the back. Many gyms now have lobbies that are designed to look like hotels and fancy restaurants. "For the longest time, the design was around the sweat," says Rudy Fabiano, an architect who designs gyms all over the world. "Twenty-five years ago ... clubs could be very intimidating. Remember there were the baggy pants that everybody had and the bodybuilders would bring their own jug of water?" Once gyms started looking more like hotels, coffee shops and restaurants, people who weren't bodybuilders started feeling comfortable in gyms. The casual gymgoer was born.

Our brains want to be locked into annual contracts with gyms. Normally, we hate being locked into long contracts (cellphones, cable packages), but gym memberships are an exception. "Joining a gym is an interesting form of what behavioral economists call pre-commitment," says Kevin Volpp, director of the Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics at the Wharton School. Volpp says we actually like the idea of being locked into a gym contract ... at first, anyway. "They're picturing the 'new me' who's actually going to go to the gym three times a week and become a physical fitness machine." We convince ourselves that since we have committed to putting down money for a year, we will make ourselves go to the gym. And then, of course, we don't.

Just when we try to get out, they feed us, massage us and ply us with alcohol. Gyms have big issues with retention, and most lose around half their members every year. Once we realize that we haven't been going to the gym, even $20 per month can feel like too much. To try to combat this, gyms look for ways to offer value to customers who aren't necessarily into working out. Planet Fitness has bagel breakfasts once a month and pizza dinners. Those are its busiest times. It also has massage chairs. Other gyms have mixers and movie nights and spa treatments.

Without slackers like us, gyms would be a lot more expensive. The reason gyms can charge so little is that most members don't go. People who don't go are subsidizing the membership of people who do. So, if you don't work out, you are making gyms affordable for everyone. If you are one of the brave few who actually do go to the gym, you are getting an amazing deal.

Gyms have built their business model around us not showing up. Gyms have way more members than they can actually accommodate. Low-priced gyms are the most extreme example of this. Planet Fitness, which charges between $10 and $20 per month, has, on average, 6,500 members per gym. Most of its gyms can hold around 300 people. Planet Fitness can do this because it knows that members won't show up. After all, if everyone who had a gym membership showed up at the gym, it would be Thunderdome. If you are not going to the gym, you are actually the gym's best customer.

So gyms try to attract people who won't come. If you haven't been a "gym person" in the past, chances are good that paying for a gym membership won't change that. Gyms know this and do what they can to attract people who haven't traditionally been gym rats. Instead of displaying challenging equipment like weight benches and climbing machines in plain view, gyms will often hide weight rooms and other equipment in the back. Many gyms now have lobbies that are designed to look like hotels and fancy restaurants. "For the longest time, the design was around the sweat," says Rudy Fabiano, an architect who designs gyms all over the world. "Twenty-five years ago ... clubs could be very intimidating. Remember there were the baggy pants that everybody had and the bodybuilders would bring their own jug of water?" Once gyms started looking more like hotels, coffee shops and restaurants, people who weren't bodybuilders started feeling comfortable in gyms. The casual gymgoer was born.

Our brains want to be locked into annual contracts with gyms. Normally, we hate being locked into long contracts (cellphones, cable packages), but gym memberships are an exception. "Joining a gym is an interesting form of what behavioral economists call pre-commitment," says Kevin Volpp, director of the Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics at the Wharton School. Volpp says we actually like the idea of being locked into a gym contract ... at first, anyway. "They're picturing the 'new me' who's actually going to go to the gym three times a week and become a physical fitness machine." We convince ourselves that since we have committed to putting down money for a year, we will make ourselves go to the gym. And then, of course, we don't.

Just when we try to get out, they feed us, massage us and ply us with alcohol. Gyms have big issues with retention, and most lose around half their members every year. Once we realize that we haven't been going to the gym, even $20 per month can feel like too much. To try to combat this, gyms look for ways to offer value to customers who aren't necessarily into working out. Planet Fitness has bagel breakfasts once a month and pizza dinners. Those are its busiest times. It also has massage chairs. Other gyms have mixers and movie nights and spa treatments.

Without slackers like us, gyms would be a lot more expensive. The reason gyms can charge so little is that most members don't go. People who don't go are subsidizing the membership of people who do. So, if you don't work out, you are making gyms affordable for everyone. If you are one of the brave few who actually do go to the gym, you are getting an amazing deal.

This year saw some very large corporate mergers and takeovers. Comcast and Time Warner's proposed deal topped the list.

Globally, there was $3 trillion worth of deals announced this year — the biggest year for mergers and acquisitions since the financial crisis. And the trend is expected to continue next year.

It wasn't the number of deals that was impressive, it was the large sums involved. And they involved some big names such as Reynolds American buying smaller tobacco rival Lorillard for $28 billion, and Burger King closing on its deal to buy Canadian coffee and doughnut icon Tim Hortons for $11 billion.

David Harding, who leads corporate mergers and acquisitions for Bain & Company, says, to him, this was all fairly predictable.

"The M&A industry is highly cyclical," he says. "It's a little bit like sun spots."

And this year's flare up, he says, was driven in part by companies' huge cash coffers.

"There is a tremendous amount of capital sloshing around in the world, looking for a home," he says.

“ "The M&A industry is highly cyclical. It's a little bit like sun spots."

- David Harding

Harding says the economy is improving, but companies in the U.S. and Europe are finding it hard to grow "organically," as they say in business circles. So instead, Harding says, they're looking at targeted acquisitions.

In one of the year's biggest deals, Facebook bought messaging software firm WhatsApp for an eye-popping $22 billion. Drug firm Actavis announced plans to buy both Allergan and Forest Laboratories this year, as pharmaceutical companies tried to buy their way into new markets and expertise.

The corporate merger trend is likely to continue, says Harding. The dramatic fall in oil prices is setting the stage for still more mergers among some companies in the energy and manufacturing sectors.

"Shale industry, for example, are going to come under distress, and so they are going to be looking for white knights to buy them," Harding says.

And, he says, selling begets selling. As the value of deals goes up, more companies are willing to sell, creating a collective swell.

"My sense is that 2015 will be a bigger year than 2014," Harding says. "But there will be a falloff at some point in the not too distant future."

Richard Jeanneret, a vice chair at Ernst & Young who advises clients on deal-making, agrees.

"To use a baseball analogy, we're in the early innings," he says.

The Two-Way

Burger King To Buy Canada's Tim Hortons For $11 Billion

Jeanneret says he expects more mid-sized companies to get in on the action next year, making it a bigger year for mergers and acquisitions overall.

Business

Move To Curb U.S. Corporate Tax Dodges Could Delay Reform

The Two-Way

Will Comcast Get Federal OK To Buy Time Warner?

A number of this year's deals — including Burger King and Tim Hortons — caused a big stir because they involved U.S. companies buying smaller firms, and then moving headquarters abroad to avoid paying higher U.S. corporate taxes. The practice, known as tax inversion, prompted the Obama Administration to change the tax rules in September.

That change scuttled the year's biggest announced deal — drug maker AbbVie's plans to buy UK-based firm Shire for $54 billion. AbbVie publicly criticized the Obama Administration.

But Jeanneret says tax inversions were not a major factor in this year's deals.

"It makes for great fodder," he says. "It's clearly been present in some very large transactions, but the reality is the volume is extremely low."

In the past, some companies have been burned by bad deals. But Jeanneret says companies are vetting deals more carefully than they did a decade ago.

"At that time they were responding to market pressures to be bigger," he says. "Now the marketplace wants greater focus."

So sometimes that means merging. But other times — as was the case this year with eBay and Hewlett-Packard — it means spinning off old acquisitions that didn't work out.

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Six bodies and debris seen floating in Indonesian waters may have ended the mystery of AirAsia Flight 8501, which crashed into the Java Sea with 162 people aboard and was lost to searchers for more than two days.
The bodies were found about 100 miles from land and 6 miles from the plane's last known coordinates. The plane vanished Sunday on its way from Indonesia to Singapore after encountering storm clouds.
The six bodies have been recovered and taken to an Indonesian navy ship. The Naval Aviation Center commander at the Surabaya air force base says the bodies were not wearing life jackets.
The discovery came after several pieces of red, white and black debris were spotted in the Java Sea near Borneo island. AirAsia planes are red and white.

Newly-elected House Majority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana is facing criticism over a speech he reportedly made to a gathering of white supremacists in 2002. According to the Washington Post, the remarks were given at a conference of the European American Unity and Rights Organization, a group founded by David Duke, former Ku Klux Klan leader and Louisiana State Legislator.

The news was first reported at cenlamar.com by Lamar White, who writes about politics in Louisiana. Lamar writes that there's no way Scalise didn't know what type of crowd he was talking to:

"...why was Scalise even there in the first place? He can't pretend like he was confused and just stumbled into the wrong conference due to a scheduling error or a drug-induced hallucination, and he can't feign ignorance about the organization; their acronym may have been vague, but their agenda was crystal clear. Unless Steve Scalise is totally incompetent, he knew exactly where he was headed when he parked his car in the lot in front of the Landmark Best Western."

But The Washington Post reports Scalise spokesperson, Moira Bagley Smith, says that back in 2002 her boss didn't know the group's "ideology and its association with racists and new-Nazi activists." The Post also reports that some allies of Scalise say he was "poorly staffed during the period, when he was busy touring the state promoting his efforts to curb state spending."

While Smith did not deny the allegation, she did send NPR the following statement:

Throughout his career in public service, Mr. Scalise has spoken to hundreds of different groups with a broad range of viewpoints. In every case, he was building support for his policies, not the other way around. In 2002, he made himself available to anyone who wanted to hear his proposal to eliminate slush funds that wasted millions of taxpayer dollars as well as his opposition to a proposed tax increase on middle-class families. He has never been affiliated with the abhorrent group in question. The hate-fueled ignorance and intolerance that group projects is in stark contradiction to what Mr. Scalise believes and practices as a father, a husband, and a devoted Catholic."

The Atlantic reports Scalise is set to become a power player in the Republican-controlled Congress once the new session begins next year:

"Scalise, 49, won his seat in the House in 2008 and has advanced quickly. After leading the Republican Study Committee, an influential conservative bloc, he won the post of majority whip that opened up following Eric Cantor's surprise primary defeat in June. That puts him behind only Boehner and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy in the House leadership hierarchy. Inside the Capitol, he's known as a friendly conservative who is relentlessly on message, a trait that endeared him to party leaders who supported him over more freewheeling, gaffe-prone colleagues."

Roll Call is reporting that Scalise has spoken about David Duke before. The site says Scalise embraced "many of the same 'conservative' views as Duke," but he also acknowledged, "The novelty of David Duke has worn off."

A year ago, same-sex marriage was legal in 18 states and Washington, D.C. Now that number is up to 35 states, and there's a strong possibility that the issue will go before the Supreme Court in the year ahead.

While activists in the legal and political battle over same-sex marriage called 2013 a banner year for their cause, they're calling 2014 a "super banner year."

"This moment that we are in is nothing any of us could have predicted," says Kate Kendall, the executive director of the San Francisco-based National Center for Lesbian Rights. "Just barely 10 years ago, there was not a jurisdiction in this country where a same-sex couple could legally marry and now just a little over 10 years, 35 states!"

Kendall and other supporters of same-sex marriage are optimistic their side will ultimately prevail because state laws banning same-sex marriage were struck down this year by federal judges across the country. At the appeals court level, four circuit courts ruled in favor of same-sex marriage. In October, the Supreme Court rejected without comment petitions to review those lower court rulings.

Politics

Turf Shifts In Culture Wars As Support For Gay Marriage Rises

"It was the first time that the Supreme Court had the opportunity to say, 'We're going to let a whole set of marriage rulings in lower courts stay just the way they are,' " says Ned Flaherty, a Boston-based marriage equality activist who tracks court decisions. "That had not happened before, so it was a new type of progress that had not been seen."

But barely a month later, judges in the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals went the other way. They upheld laws banning same-sex marriage in four states: Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky and Tennessee.

That created a new conflict among the circuit courts — some in favor of same-sex marriage, one against. It was a game changer, says Chapman University law professor John Eastman, who opposes same-sex marriage.

"I think the proponents of re-defining marriage are overly optimistic in their anticipation of an ultimate ruling in their favor," Eastman says.

Ultimately, both supporters and opponents of same-sex marriage agree that the 6th Circuit's decision increases the likelihood that that the Supreme Court will have to step in.

Still, there's no way of knowing which, if any, cases the Supreme Court might consider.

Among the couples waiting to hear are Thomas Kostura and Ijpe DeKoe of Memphis, Tenn. They were married in New York two years ago, just before DeKoe, an Army sergeant, was deployed to Afghanistan. Upon his return, DeKoe was stationed at Naval Support Activity Mid-South Naval base in Tennessee, and Kostura says he wasn't sure how he would be accepted as a military spouse.

"What surprised me was how welcoming everyone I met in Tennessee was and how they themselves respected our marriage," Kostura says. "Really at this point it's only been the state who hasn't recognized our marriage."

Kostura and DeKoe filed suit along with two other same-sex couples to have their marriages recognized by the state of Tennessee. DeKoe says no couple should have to base a job choice on how a state is going to treat their marriage.

"In my case it's military, but any couple that marries anywhere should be able to move to Tennessee without a problem," he says.

Amid the speculation over whether the Supreme Court might take a same-sex marriage case, another potential front in the cultural war over marriage is slowly emerging.

In South Carolina, for example, there's a bill that would allow judges and other public officials to refuse to issue marriage licenses if it violates their religious beliefs.

Eastman, the law professor, says he expects similar moves in other states to preserve the traditional definition of marriage as between only a man and a woman.

"As long as there's a fight to re-define the institution of marriage that runs contrary to your human nature, human nature's going to have a way of fighting back," he says.

Eastman says the Supreme Court could ultimately allow different states to have different laws on marriage.

The justices are expected to decide in January whether they will hear a case and they may issue a decision by summer.

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Each December, economists make predictions. And each new year, they get hit by unexpected events that make them look more clueless than prescient.

This year's bolt out of the blue was the plunge in oil's price, which no one saw coming.

Still, top economists' forecasts did get a lot right for 2014. One year ago, most were predicting healthy growth, tame inflation, low interest rates, rising stock prices and declining unemployment — and that's just what we got.

Now they are looking ahead, and once again, their forecasts are brimming with good cheer. These are among the most common predictions for 2015:

GDP will keep growing quickly. The gross domestic product — a measure of all U.S. goods and services — has been on a tear. The Commerce Department's latest revision shows GDP advancing at an astonishing 5 percent over July, August and September.

That growth spurt suggests the U.S. economy has momentum heading into the new year. Lower energy prices will give consumers more money to spend, and that should help boost revenues for stores, restaurants, hotels and more.

"Our assessment for growth in 2015 will now be around 3 percent," Doug Handler, chief U.S. economist for IHS Global Insight, wrote. For an economy in its sixth year of expansion, a 3-percent annual pace would be impressive.

Employers will hire and pay more. In 2013, the unemployment rate averaged 7.4 percent. Last December, economists were predicting a slide to about 6.6 percent.

As it turned out, the jobless rate tumbled to 5.8 percent, and now economists see the rate dipping to 5.5 percent or lower in the coming year.

"With stronger economic growth, the U.S. will add about 230,000 jobs per month on average next year," according to the forecast of Gus Faucher, senior economist at PNC Financial Services Group. That would add up to about 2.8 million net new jobs in 2015.

Currently, the country has 2.8 million people struggling with long-term unemployment. So if Faucher's prediction were to come true, workers finally could enjoy a healthy market where job openings and willing workers would match up. And the increased demand for workers would help push up stagnant wages.

Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen makes a statement on jobs and the economic outlook Dec. 17 in Washington, D.C. Cliff Owen/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Cliff Owen/AP

Inflation will be exceptionally low. Even though the economy has been heating up, the price of energy has been cooling. The year began with crude oil selling for about $110 a barrel, and is ending with the price at about half that. Oil's plunge has driven down prices for gasoline, home heating oil, jet fuel and more.

Seeing that change, the Federal Reserve has sharply cut its forecast, saying that inflation will run between 1 percent and 1.6 percent in 2015. That's down from a September forecast of 1.6 percent to 1.9 percent.

Interest rates will inch up. OK, you're heard this before. Time and again, economists have predicted that interest rates would tick up. And time and again, they have been wrong.

For example, when this year began, the average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was carrying an interest rate of 4.43 percent. Most economist thought that rate would rise. But as the year wound down, the 30-year rate was running at about 3.75 percent.

Nevertheless, economists think this time is different and that rates really will rise in 2015. In a mid-December statement, Fed policymakers said they "can be patient" when it comes to timing a rate increase, but most economists figure patience will run out by midyear, and that will lead to a slow, steady ratcheting up of interest rates to more normal levels.

When it comes to the strategy of holding down rates to stimulate growth, "we believe the Fed's work is now done," said Bernard Baumohl, chief global economist with The Economic Outlook Group.

Stocks will go higher. The stock market has been zooming up for years now. The Dow Jones industrial average stood at 6,627 in early March 2009, during the worst of the Great Recession. But with the recovery going strong, the stock average has been pushing above 18,000.

Some skeptics think the stock market is due for a "correction" that would knock down prices by 10 percent or more in 2015. But the more typical prediction is that with oil prices running so low, investors will want to keep putting money into companies that stand to benefit from increased consumer spending.

Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst at S&P Dow Jones Indices, summed it up in a recent tweet, saying "high-octane optimism once again prevails on the Street."

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Ever wanted to travel to the depths of the ocean? Or fly in a solar powered plane? Or time travel back to the big bang? Now's your chance. This TED Radio Hour playlist will transport you to some incredible places.

James Cameron: How Far Can Curiosity Take You?

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David Christian: What Are The Origins Of The Universe?

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Betrand Piccard: Can The Sun Fuel A Flight Around The World?

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Thousands of vehicles are stranded in the French Alps unable to come or go from ski resorts in southeastern France due to particularly heavy snowfall and icy conditions.

One man was reportedly killed when his car slid off into a ravine.

The BBC reports that as many as 15,000 motorists who spent Saturday night unable to move due to the snow and ice, are still unable to move in the region of Savoie, west of Turin, Italy.

Officials set up emergency shelters in at least 12 towns, France 24 says.

The BBC says:

"Conditions improved on Sunday, with French forecasters lifting an orange weather alert - France's second highest - of ice and snow, according to French media reports.

"The French government had earlier urged drivers to "exercise the utmost caution" and avoid travel if possible."

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Wars raged in the Middle East and beyond. Economic woes stretched across continents. Crashing oil prices boosted some countries and slammed others. World leaders had a lot on their plate this past year. They were responsible for some of their trouble, and some of it just happened to them.

Whether they earned their good fortune or got hammered by bad luck, here's a look at the leaders who fared the best and the worst in 2014, plus a peek at what they can expect next year:

Vladimir Putin's Bipolar Year

It's possible the Russian president had both the best and the worst moments of any leader this year.

No one got off to a better start, at least among his own people. The Winter Olympics in Sochi were a rousing success in February. Shortly afterward, Putin sent the Russian military off to seize Crimea in Ukraine. His popularity at home soared.

But perhaps no leader finished the year in sharper decline. Falling oil prices are squeezing Russia's economy as are Western sanctions. The ruble has crashed and Russia's central bank says the economy could shrink by 4.5 percent in the coming year.

For now, Putin can console himself with a popularity rating still north of 80 percent. But next year looks rough.

As NPR's Moscow correspondent Corey Flintoff noted, "However Putin's next year may begin, it's hard to imagine that it will involve any immediate reduction in the tensions that flared so high in 2014."

Putin acknowledged the hard road ahead when he told his ministers not to take the traditional two-week vacation at the start of the new year.

"For the government, for your agencies, we cannot afford this long holiday, at least this year — you know what I mean," said Putin.

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Syrian President Bashar Assad, shown here in July, appeared to be in a tough position at the beginning of the year. But many analysts say his hold on power grew stronger over the course of 2014, due in part to the U.S. bombing campaign against the Islamic State. SANA/AP hide caption

itoggle caption SANA/AP

Syrian President Bashar Assad, shown here in July, appeared to be in a tough position at the beginning of the year. But many analysts say his hold on power grew stronger over the course of 2014, due in part to the U.S. bombing campaign against the Islamic State.

SANA/AP

Bashar Assad's Unexpected Break

As Syria's civil war metastasized and the Islamic State rapidly expanded its reach, it hardly seemed possible that things could get worse for embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad.

But as ISIS grew more powerful in both Syria and Iraq, the U.S. intervened with airstrikes against the radical Islamist group. This halted the ISIS advance and allowed Assad him to focus his forces on more moderate rebels.

U.S. officials insist the air campaign does not mean they are supporting Assad. But many analysts say it's having that effect even if it's unintended. Joshua Landis, a Syria analyst and professor at the University of Oklahoma, argues that Assad now "has the United States as a strategic ally" and that he ends the year looking strong.

Also, Assad overwhelmingly won a presidential election in June, which the West denounced it as illegitimate. Still, Assad has retained core support in his Alawite community and remains entrenched in Damascus even if many parts of the country are in flames and beyond his reach.

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President's Recep Tayyip Erdogan year included a number of provocative statements and a move into a new presidential palace, known as the White Palace, which has 1,100 rooms. AP hide caption

itoggle caption AP

President's Recep Tayyip Erdogan year included a number of provocative statements and a move into a new presidential palace, known as the White Palace, which has 1,100 rooms.

AP

The Odd Pronouncements Of Turkey's Leader

After a dozen years as prime minister, Recep Tayyp Erdogan was elected president and recently moved into a monumental 1,100-room palace. Not bad.

But his year was also marked by strange statements, aggressive moves against opponents and periodic friction with the United States. Here's a sampling:

— He described birth control as "treason."

— He told Latin American Muslim leaders that Muslims discovered America in 1178, more than three centuries before Columbus arrived.

— He angered many women when, speaking at a women's conference, he said, "You cannot bring man and woman down to equal levels, it's against the creation. Their nature and bodies are clearly different."

As NPR's Istanbul correspondent Peter Kenyon reported, "These and other remarks began to raise troubling questions: Is Turkey still a reliable NATO ally? Is a model majority Muslim democracy becoming just another repressive state in a region that has too many of those already?"

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Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro (right), shown at a summit in Cuba in October, is a close ally of Cuban President Raul Castro (left). Both have been highly critical of the U.S., but Cuba and the U.S. announced they now plan to normalize relations. Venezuela, meanwhile, was already facing serious economic problems before the price of oil, it's main export, fell sharply. Enrique De La Osa/Reuters/Landov hide caption

itoggle caption Enrique De La Osa/Reuters/Landov

Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro (right), shown at a summit in Cuba in October, is a close ally of Cuban President Raul Castro (left). Both have been highly critical of the U.S., but Cuba and the U.S. announced they now plan to normalize relations. Venezuela, meanwhile, was already facing serious economic problems before the price of oil, it's main export, fell sharply.

Enrique De La Osa/Reuters/Landov

Venezuela Gets Blindsided

The South American nation and its President Nicolas Maduro have a well-defined profile: heavily dependent on oil exports, a close friend of Cuba and vehemently anti-American.

That was a bad combination in 2014. Oil prices are now roughly half of what they were this summer, a crippling blow to a country where the economy was already suffering widespread shortages of basic goods and inflation of more than 50 percent.

If oil prices are fickle, at least Venezuela could depend on Cuba as a steadfast ally in anti-Yankee vitriol. Then came the Dec. 17 announcement by Presidents Obama and Raul Castro that the U.S. and Cuba planned to normalize relations.

Maduro, who became president last year after Hugo Chavez died of cancer, is looking increasingly broke and isolated heading into 2015.

Pope Francis waves to the faithful in St. Peter's Square in Vatican City on Dec. 17. The pope's popularity is high, even among non-Catholics, and he has been increasingly active in global political matters. Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Getty Images

Did Anyone Have A Good Year?

There's no clear winner here. China's President Xi Jinping has consolidated power and looks like he may become China's most powerful leader since Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s. But China's economy has cooled and Xi himself has acknowledged that his sweeping anti-corruption campaign is facing resistance and is at a stalemate.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is widely viewed as Europe's most important national leader as she presides over the country with the strongest economy on an otherwise sluggish continent. In a glowing profile of her in The New Yorker, writer George Packer described her as "the world's most powerful woman."

Pope Francis, in his first full year as the pontiff, may have had a better year than any other global leader. His austerity and humility have broad global appeal. Church scandals that predated his papacy have faded. And he has become increasingly outspoken and active on global politics — including a key role in brokering the U.S.-Cuba thaw.

"In the 21 months since his election, the first pope to take the name of Saint Francis has emerged as a moral leader on the global stage, addressing both Catholics and the world beyond," NPR's Rome correspondent Sylvia Poggioli reported. "Francis is a master at blending the spiritual with the political."

Greg Myre is the international editor for NPR.org. Follow him on Twitter @gregmyre1.

It's time to set the table for 2015. What will be the next kale? Has the cupcake breathed its last?

We're headed for high times. As states legalize marijuana, cannabis comestibles are coming. Pot brownies — so 1960s — are joined by marijuana mac 'n' cheese and pot pesto. There's a new cooking show called Bong Appetit.

Another crushed leaf is this year's super drink. Matcha is made from green tea and promises a calmer energy boost than Red Bull. The Japanese have been drinking it for centuries.

In more news from the plant world, kale, the mother of all trends, and Brussels sprouts, another trendsetter, have become parents. Their baby is called kalette — little clumps of kale on a Brussels sprout-like stalk. The first new vegetable since broccolini is now available in markets near you.

And what could be better on your vegetables than a little lard? Animal fats being reconsidered include pork fat (lard), beef fat (tallow) and chicken fat (schmaltz).

This is also the year we will become bitter: bitter greens, bitter beer, bitter salads, bitter chocolate for eating as well as baking. A new cookbook, Bitter, may inspire you.

And just when you thought we'd run out of Asian cuisines, Filipino food starts trending. Pancit may someday overtake upscale ramen.

Nduja, from the French andouille, is the new kid at the Italian table. This spicy, spreadable Calabrian sausage is showing up on pizza, bruschetti and pasta.

In New York, Brooklynites are finding their inner Eastern European with new farm-to-table Jewish delis — we're talking gefilte fish as a craft food. Craft, by the way, is the new artisanal.

Speaking of nutritional powerhouses, we need to get beyond "ick" and embrace eating bugs. Cricket flour is already showing up in protein bars. Insects are gluten free, high in protein and emit fewer greenhouse gases than cattle.

Maybe they'll like cricket cuisine in Peoria, because New York is no longer restaurant Mecca. Many chefs are packing their knives and heading for smaller cities. Today, everyone everywhere has a sophisticated palate, helping fine dining continue its decline. You don't need a white tablecloth to eat crickets.

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