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Being where scientists are pulling 800,000-year-old ice up out of a glacier and you can chip it off and drink it in your whiskey. Where there are fossils from 300 million years ago when Antarctica was still in the northern hemisphere and there were forests and jungles. Or there's a place where the neutrinos traveling from 10 million light years away, from other galaxies, are falling into this ice cube trap they created, and exploding in blue light.

To be up close, and see and taste and touch, vast ancient history or faraway places was to be confronted with a sense of time that I've never felt or had that kind of scale. It was so humbling.

On the sun never setting

The 24 hours of sunlight is, I think, actually just as upsetting in a different way than 24 hours of darkness. It's sort of the feeling that you sometimes have if you're really nervous or have drunk too much coffee, and you're both exhausted, yet unable to shut down.

On what Antarctica gives us as humans

I think what Antarctica gave me is also what poetry gives me, and it's space and time not to be so busy, anxious, solipsistic, self-consumed, that we don't see how tiny and infinitesimal our own life is, and yet how tied it is to everything that came before, everything that will come, and everything that's around us.

Read an excerpt of We Mammals in Hospitable Times

Football injuries have long been seen by some as a badge of honor. A broken sternum, a busted knee, a pierced kidney: all evidence of tenacity on the field.

But the emerging science around head injuries in football — and the long-term effects of repeated concussions – is forcing players, team owners and football fans to come to grips with the idea that the sport they love may be extracting a much higher price than anyone knew.

"It wasn't scary until some of the prominent players — guys that I knew, some of the guys that I played against — started to have this problem."

- Dwight Hicks, actor and Super Bowl champion in 1981 and 1985

X's and O's (A Football Love Story) premieres this month at California's Berkeley Repertory Theater, exploring the tension between these medical discoveries and the insatiable demand from fans to see a hard hit.

"I had a ruptured tendon in this finger. I broke my hand. Rotator cuff, shoulder injuries — but I never missed a game because of an injury," says Dwight Hicks, a former safety for the Super Bowl champion San Francisco 49ers, who plays a retired football player in X's and O's.

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Dwight Hicks (#22) psychs up before a 1985 game, flanked by San Francisco 49er teammates. Now a lead actor in X's and O's (A Football Love Story), Hicks played nine seasons in the NFL. David Madison/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption David Madison/Getty Images

Dwight Hicks (#22) psychs up before a 1985 game, flanked by San Francisco 49er teammates. Now a lead actor in X's and O's (A Football Love Story), Hicks played nine seasons in the NFL.

David Madison/Getty Images

It wasn't until the early 2000s, Hicks says, that he realized there might be another injury he needed to worry about. That's when more and more retired players began reporting symptoms of early onset Alzheimer's. Others showed the personality changes, rage and depression that can be signs of a type of brain deterioration called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, first diagnosed in boxers in the 1960s.

"It wasn't scary," Hicks says, "until some of the prominent players — guys that I knew, some of the guys that I played against — started to have this problem."

Violence A Worry From Football's Start

Playwrights KJ Sanchez and Jenny Mercein say the growing number of affected players thrust football into an identity crisis — and not its first.

"Through every generation, we knew, we knew what the risks were," Sanchez says. There have been repeated "intense conversations about the violence of the game, the brutality of the game, and the safety of the players."

Throughout the play, there are breaks in the narrative where the cast marks some of the game's historic moments and controversies.

In 1869, Rutgers and Princeton played the first college football game. In 1905, 19 students died while playing football, spurring Harvard's president at the time, Charles Elliott, to call for an end to the sport. One academic called it "more brutalizing than prizefighting, cockfighting, or bullfighting. The rules of action are hateful. ... Football today is a boy-killing, education-prostituting, gladiatorial sport."

But Teddy Roosevelt, then president of the United States, saw things differently.

Sports

Can That Mouth Guard Really Prevent A Concussion?

"The bruising nature of football instills manly virtues and builds strong bodies, when with each passing day America risks becoming less rugged and virile," X's and O's quotes Roosevelt as saying. "Surely we can minimize the danger without having to play the game on too ladylike a basis."

"Through every generation, we knew. We knew what the risks were."

- KJ Sanchez, writer, "X's And O's (A Football Love Story)"

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In 1915, American sporting legend Jim Thorpe signed with the Canton Bulldogs, an Ohio powerhouse in the early days of professional football. Heritage Auctions/Wikimedia hide caption

itoggle caption Heritage Auctions/Wikimedia

In 1915, American sporting legend Jim Thorpe signed with the Canton Bulldogs, an Ohio powerhouse in the early days of professional football.

Heritage Auctions/Wikimedia

Over the years, the protective gear players wear has improved, in an effort to make the game safer. But Sanchez says making better helmets is part of what led to the progressive brain injuries seen today.

She wrote a team physician into X's and O's to explain how recent research has shown that smaller, subconcussive hits contribute to lasting trauma.

"The brain, it's almost like a yolk inside of an eggshell," says the doctor-character (played by Marilee Talkington) as she paces the stage in a white lab coat. Even with a good helmet, "the yolk is still going to hit on one side of the shell and then the opposite side of the shell."

Are Fans Responsible?

X's and O's isn't a one-note bashing of football — Sanchez considers herself a fan.

And her co-writer, Jenny Mercein, grew up watching her father Chuck Mercein play pro ball; he was a running back for Vince Lombardi's Super Bowl champion Green Bay Packers, and also played for the Redskins, Giants and Jets.

Sanchez and Jenny Mercein say they began developing the idea for the theatrical work after a pivotal milestone in the debate about head injury: the suicide in 2012 of former San Diego Charger and 12-time Pro Bowl linebacker Junior Seau, whose brain was diagnosed after his death as showing the cumulative effects of chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

Shots - Health News

High Schools Seek A Safer Path Back From Concussion

Michel Martin, Going There

Rising Football Star: Prepare For The Worst, Pray For The Best

The playwrights wondered whether, as fans, they had some responsibility to the players — and to the future of football itself.

"We started to talk about how many conflicted feelings we had about loving the game, now understanding the significance of the damage that the game does," Sanchez said.

X's and O's leaves it to a group of fans at a bar to work through this internal debate.

"Me and my dad watched every game together," one fan says. "And to this day, I put on a game, it's like we're back together again." Another adds: "It's like ballet. There's a beauty and a grace to it."

They ponder how long football will last if fans decide to boycott the game, or if parents stop letting their kids play out of fear of head injuries.

"If football goes away ...," another fan says, faltering. "My family, we don't go to church. We're not much for theater or concerts. Football is our way of being part of something bigger. I have to admit I'd be lonely."

The characters question recent rule changes in the game, how violent the game needs to be to be entertaining — and what they really get out of that violence.

"I think I watch it, not for the moment when the guy gets knocked down, but for the moment when he gets back up," the fan says. "I think I need to remember we can get back up."

Sanchez says she hopes to take the play to colleges and high schools. She wants to start conversations like these in the community, especially among young people who will decide whether to play or not — and how much of their future they want to bet on football.

A version of this post originally appeared in KQED's State of Health blog.

concussion

traumatic brain injury

Football

NFL

The number of measles cases from the outbreak linked to Disneyland has now risen to at least 98. But measles remains extremely rare in the United States.

The rest of the world hasn't been so fortunate. Last year roughly 250,000 people came down with measles; more than half of them died.

Currently the Philippines is experiencing a major measles outbreak that sickened 57,000 people in 2014. China had twice that many cases, although they were more geographically spread out. Major outbreaks were also recorded in Angola, Brazil, Ethiopia, Indonesia and Vietnam.

Measles causes an intense fever, coughing, watery eyes and a signature full-body rash. The disease is rarely fatal in developed nations with modern health care systems but can cause brain damage and permanent hearing loss.

Once the virus starts spreading among kids who haven't been immunized, it's very difficult to stop.

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A Vietnamese boy is treated for measles in a state-run hospital in April 2014. AFP/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption AFP/Getty Images

A Vietnamese boy is treated for measles in a state-run hospital in April 2014.

AFP/Getty Images

"The measles virus is probably the most contagious infectious disease known to mankind," says Stephen Cochi, a senior adviser with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's global immunization division.

Cochi's team tracks flare-ups of measles around the world. He says the current outbreak in the Philippines was sparked by Typhoon Haiyan, which battered the island nation late in 2013, killing more than 6,000 and hampering vaccination efforts. Cases started to multiply first in the storm-ravaged parts of the country.

"Then the virus spread to metro Manila and then other parts of the Philippines," he says. "That virus ... from the Philippines has spread all over the world, to the Middle East, to other parts of Asia, to the United States and Europe."

Some of the people who've caught measles in the current Southern California outbreak have the same strain of the virus that's circulating in the Philippines. The CDC has not yet pinpointed the origin of the first case at Disneyland.

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These are the 15 countries with the highest number of cases. The U.S. ranks lower but is listed for comparison. *EU number is from European Center for Disease Prevention and Control and is the number of reported cases October 2013 to September 2014. All other data are from cases reported to WHO in 2014 hide caption

itoggle caption *EU number is from European Center for Disease Prevention and Control and is the number of reported cases October 2013 to September 2014. All other data are from cases reported to WHO in 2014

These are the 15 countries with the highest number of cases. The U.S. ranks lower but is listed for comparison.

*EU number is from European Center for Disease Prevention and Control and is the number of reported cases October 2013 to September 2014. All other data are from cases reported to WHO in 2014

From his experience tracking previous measles outbreaks in the U.S., Cochi says the source was probably an American.

"It's really traveling Americans who are unvaccinated, then return to the United States with the measles virus, that are causing most of the measles in the U.S. currently," he says.

Cochi adds that someone infected with measles may be contagious for 24 to 48 hours before feeling sick. So a returning traveler could spread the disease and not even know it. And because measles is circulating all over the world, a traveler could pick it up almost anywhere. Even the European Union recorded several thousand cases last year.

Part of the reason measles drives public health officials crazy is that it's a people problem. Humans are its only host. As long as the virus can find new unvaccinated populations, it can reproduce, survive and spread. But if immunization rates were boosted around the world, measles wouldn't be able to keep jumping to new hosts. Then the disease would disappear.

Shots - Health News

Rise In Measles Cases Marks A 'Wake-Up Call' For U.S.

One of the groups working to achieve that high immunity around the globe is the International Medical Corps.

Paul Robinson with the group says actually immunizing a child against measles is easy and cheap. Their biggest challenge is reaching children after disasters and in war-torn countries.

"The children under 5 are very vulnerable to measles," Robinson says. They're the primary target of vaccination campaigns. "It takes just a few days to get them vaccinated but it also takes a very short time for the virus to kill them."

Prior to the widespread use of measles vaccines in the 1980s, there were more than 4 million cases around the globe every year. That number has been cut significantly to roughly a quarter of a million. But measles is still out there, and as Cochi at the CDC points out, the virus is just a plane ride away from the United States.

vaccinations

measles

Moscow has awarded a $3 billion contract to build a bridge linking Russia with the newly annexed Crimean peninsula to a close friend of President Vladimir Putin.

The bridge that would join Russia and Crimea across the Kerch Strait will be constructed by the SGM Group, majority owned by Arkady Rotenberg, which the BBC describes as "a childhood friend and judo partner of the Russian president." Further, Rotenberg, 63, "was among the first Russian businessmen to be put under Western sanctions over the Ukraine crisis," Reuters says.

SGM, which specializes in building pipelines, has no previous experience at building bridges, the news agency notes. The company was assembled in 2008 from several units sold by state-owned gas producer Gazprom, Reuters says.

According to the Kremlin announcement of the deal, the bridge is set for completion no later than Dec. 2018.

The Moscow Times reported in March that it will be Russia's most costly bridge. The project, it said, was estimated in March at a cost of 50 billion rubles, but by June the estimated cost had tripled.

However, the BBC says "it is still unclear where on the Kerch Strait the structure will be erected, meaning the span could be anything from 4km to 15km (2.5 to 9 miles)."

Chenjerai Kumanyika, a professor at Clemson University and aspiring public radio journalist, sparked a challenging conversation with his commentary about the "whiteness" of public radio voices. We hosted a Twitter chat about his essay, and invited listeners and public radio professionals to share their thoughts using #PubRadioVoice,.

Moderated by our lead blogger Gene Demby, #PubRadioVoice explored whether the journalists on NPR truly represent the "public" in public radio.

Gene started by asking our diverse panel — professionals from across the public radio system — how listeners respond to their voices.

What's the most common listener response to ur voice? #pubradiovoice @catchatweetdown @nprAudie @Maxiewcpn @CelesteHeadlee (2/2)

— Gene Demby (@GeeDee215) January 29, 2015

All the time: “Oh,YOU’RE Joshua Johnson! Love ur work! Never would’ve guessed that you're bl--“ =covers mouth, grimaces= #PubRadioVoice

— Joshua Johnson (@jejohnson322) January 30, 2015

4) #pubradiovoice Sitting in host chair for first time I channeled white voice from Midwest and lost my own. I had to fight my own brain!

— Lulu Garcia-Navarro (@lourdesgnavarro) January 30, 2015

people usually don't react to my voice they react to their google image search :) #pubradiovoice

— audie cornish (@nprAudie) January 29, 2015

Many shared their perspectives on public radio diversity, whether there's a lack of voices from people of color (POC) and the ways that could affect content and audiences.

#pubradiovoice What concerned me also was so many who said they didn't hear their real voices and so turned away from public media.

— Maria Hinojosa (@Maria_Hinojosa) January 29, 2015

@catchatweetdown #PubRadioVoice The sad truth is public radio does not see POC as the audience, but rather as interesting subject matter

— Ms. Wright (@msonemic) January 29, 2015

When one way of speaking is dominant over the other, nuance is lost and identities are compromised. #pubradiovoice

— Morgan Jerkins (@MorganTheScribe) January 30, 2015

Some listeners and panelists embraced the idea of hearing a standard, broadcast vocal style, but think that diversity should still be a goal. For them, diversity must go hand-in-hand with professionalism.

There's value in changing your voice for clarity, to remove personality & put focus on story. But that's different... (1/2) #PubRadioVoice

— Celeste Headlee (@CelesteHeadlee) January 29, 2015

...from removing individual markers to make a voice sound like everyone else. (2/2) #PubRadioVoice

— Celeste Headlee (@CelesteHeadlee) January 29, 2015

Can't say I agree with tonight's story - articulation isn't synonymous with cultural insensitivity. #pubradiovoice

— Adam Brooks (@adam1bomb) January 29, 2015

@SaleemChat I enjoy hearing diverse voices. I also do want to be able to understand. I think #PubRadioVoice requires clarity, in many cases.

— Jeremy Carlson (@eyesofjeremy) January 30, 2015

Others felt the issue goes beyond race, and that public radio diversity should embrace regional, cultural and gender differences. For many, the solution begins with opening the system to new ideas and voices.

What about diversifying the voices providing expert commentary, especially for STEM stories? @npr is more than hosts #pubradiovoice

— Emilio M. Bruna (@BrunaLab) January 30, 2015

If an org is telling you they believe in diversity, but don't invest in it, what's that belief worth? #pubradiovoice.

— Al Letson (@Al_Letson) January 30, 2015

There are lots of reasons for diversity: one is the news/public service requirement of having multiple perspectives. #pubradiovoice

— Jesse Thorn (@JesseThorn) January 29, 2015

Finally, many asked where public media should go from here, and how diversifying public radio could go beyond hashtags. Most agreed that adding new voices is only a part of the solution. What also matters is diversity of coverage, commentary and perspectives.

also gotta admit i care more about the voices of the people I interview. I strive to make that pool more diverse. #PubRadioVoice

— audie cornish (@nprAudie) January 30, 2015

Man my piece just scratched the surface. So many voices styles missing. So much cultural wisdom embedded in ways of talking #pubradiovoice

— Chenjerai Kumanyika (@catchatweetdown) January 29, 2015

@jrprimm @jay_allison @nprnews we need thoughtful, multi-sided pieces to remind us how to *listen*...We're losing that gift. #PubRadioVoice

— Brian Mickelson (@BrianMickelson) January 30, 2015

And just for fun, we asked: "What is NPR's typical voice?" Like Kumanyika's commentary mentioned, many people likened the standard vocal delivery on NPR as warm milk, tea or coffee. Some even shared pictures.

I have a warm tea voice #pubradiovoice pic.twitter.com/a61yQPti5h

— Chenjerai Kumanyika (@catchatweetdown) January 29, 2015

Warm coffee voice #pubradiovoice #tmm pic.twitter.com/X0BaV6BRhc

— A.C. Valdez (@ACVTweets) January 29, 2015

Imagine going to a small, off-Broadway theater for a one-person show that relies heavily on audience participation — and it's all about depression and suicide. That might sound like a theatrical nightmare, but the show in question — Every Brilliant Thing, currently playing at the Barrow Street Theatre — is also very funny and has been getting rave reviews.

"Normally, I loathe that kind of thing," says Ben Brantley, the chief drama critic for The New York Times.

He says he never would have seen this show if he didn't have to, but he's glad he did. "I've never seen a production of that nature that makes you feel so comfortable from the very beginning. It walks such a fine line between overly sentimental and overly bleak, but I think it gets the balance just right."

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Donahoe spends 20 minutes before each performance chatting with the audience and handing out slips of paper that each contain something his character thinks will help cheer up his mother. Matthew Murphy/Courtesy of O&M Co. hide caption

itoggle caption Matthew Murphy/Courtesy of O&M Co.

Donahoe spends 20 minutes before each performance chatting with the audience and handing out slips of paper that each contain something his character thinks will help cheer up his mother.

Matthew Murphy/Courtesy of O&M Co.

Part of what makes that balance work is British comedian Jonny Donahoe. He spends 20 minutes before each performance walking through the audience, chatting and handing out small slips of paper, which he eventually asks audience members to read from. Each slip of paper contains one of the brilliant, life-affirming things his character thinks of to help cheer up his suicidal mother — like "ice cream" or "water fights." As the play progresses, the papers' messages start to reflect his own personal narrative.

In those first 20 minutes, Donahoe also gets a sense of who might be willing to be brought onstage and who might not. He says, "That's the casting process. ... There are people who feel very uncomfortable doing it and I can see that and that's absolutely fine; there's no obligation for them to do anything they don't want to. There are some people who are incredibly keen — too keen. I've got to avoid them as well."

Every Brilliant Thing began as a short story by Duncan Macmillan, who adapted it for the stage with help from Donahoe and director George Perrin. Macmillan says they tried various approaches with the material, but decided upon a setting where the audience faces each other and has to participate.

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"It felt like when suicidal depression or suicide was appearing in theater or in film or in TV, it was oversimplified, it was glamorized to some extent, it was fetishized, or it was stigmatized," Macmillan says. "There didn't seem to be any voices sort of talking about the complex realities of it."

Still, Donahoe says he tries to bring a light touch and a sense of humor. "I think that's just the best way you can deal with it, not just in a show, but as a human being," he says. "I mean, you are going to, whoever you are, at some point experience mental health issues, whether that is because you suffer from them yourself or your partner does or your parents. But it's too common for it to pass you by."

And Donahoe doesn't only get audience members to read from slips of paper during the hour-long show; he also asks them to play a veterinarian, a school counselor, his father and his romantic partner, Sam. Macmillan describes it as a very inclusive process.

"Jonny says he always just tries to cast the most loveable person in the room as Sam, and sometimes he feels like the person he meets in the first 20 minutes who's the most loveable is a woman and sometimes it's a man," he explains. "And we got very excited by that. And we got excited by having mixed race relationships and different age gaps and all sorts of things."

"I was incredibly moved and it was a little embarrassing. ... You're totally exposed to everyone else in the audience. And there I am trying to keep a poker face and I have tears running down my face, but I'm not ashamed of them."

- New York Times critic Ben Brantley

On a recent Friday evening, Sam was played by Brittany Burke, a college freshman. She had a great time. "I loved it," she says. "It was incredible. It made me think more than anything I've seen in a long time, and I really appreciated that."

Keith Darcy, who lectures about business ethics, found himself toasting the couple as the groom's father. After the show, Darcy told me his own mother committed suicide. "While I could feel the humor of it, I could also feel the pain of it," he says. "And I was deeply touched by it."

And that's what makes the play so powerful, according to the New York Times' Ben Brantley. "I was incredibly moved and it was a little embarrassing," he says. "That was the only way in which I felt uncomfortable, in that the house lights never go down. So, of course, you're totally exposed to everyone else in the audience. And there I am trying to keep a poker face and I have tears running down my face, but I'm not ashamed of them."

I cried, too.

China's education minister has told universities to stop using textbooks that promote Western values in a move seen as part of a larger ideological crackdown, reports NPR's Frank Langfitt from Shanghai.

At an educational forum, Yuan Guiren said universities should also forbid criticism of China's leaders and the country's political system, according to Xinhua.

Frank says the edict comes as the government disrupts virtual private networks – or VPNs – which help people access foreign websites that China's internet cops have already blocked.

He says that earlier this week, an annual Human Rights Watch Report criticized China for tightening already limited free speech in the media and on the Internet as well as for jailing rights activists, lawyers and critics.

Also, as the BBC reports, restrictions on academics appear to have tightened in recent months.

"In December, law professor Zhang Xuehong said he was sacked by the East China University of Political Science and Law in Shanghai after refusing to apologise for writing articles criticising the government.

"His dismissal followed the expulsion of outspoken economist and free speech advocate Xia Yeliang from Peking University in October.

"Mr Xia was a signatory to a high-profile document calling for democratic reforms, Charter 08."

The news agency also noted that prominent Uighur academic Ilham Tohti, who has urged Beijing to open a dialogue with the Uighur minority in Xinjiang province, was jailed for life on charges of separatism last year.

China

Censorship

For decades, the Catholic Church has been dogged by scandals involving money. The Vatican — a sovereign country — controls its own finances through the Vatican Bank. It developed as a cross between the Federal Reserve and an offshore bank. In a new history, God's Bankers, Gerald Posner explains that its roots go back to the mid-19th century.

God's Bankers

A History of Money and Power at the Vatican

by Gerald Posner

Hardcover, 732 pages | purchase

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"They had 15,000 square miles of what was central Italy with thousands of subjects," Posner tells NPR's Renee Montagne. "They levied taxes and paid for this lavish lifestyle — with 700 servants and a big and growing bureaucracy around them. Then, in 1870, Italy's nationalists have a revolution they throw the Pope out they get rid of the papal states. The Vatican goes from being an empire — an earthly empire — to a little postage stamp size of property called Vatican City."

By World War II, the church had sizeable investments and created the Vatican Bank in order to hide its financial dealings with the Nazis from the U.S. and Britain.

"I was surprised to the extent to which the Vatican was deeply embedded with German companies," Posner says. "They bundled together life insurance policies of Jewish refugees who had been sent to Auschwitz and other death camps. They escheted these policies early on — meaning they took the cash value of them."

Later, when the surviving children or grandchildren of the victims tried to collect on the insurance policies, they were refused. "These insurance companies would refuse to pay out saying: 'Show us a death certificate,' which they knew was impossible," Posner explains. "They would keep the money."

In God's Bankers, Posner sheds light on what he calls "the blood money" that came into the church.

Interview Highlights

On the Vatican being "equal opportunity profiteers"

It wasn't as though they did business with the Germans because they wanted the Germans to win. They did business with everyone because they called themselves neutral and decided that somebody would win at the end of the war, and they were going to keep their business connections open to everybody. Then, when they saw the war was going against the Germans, they started to hide the connections and after the war they said, "we didn't do anything wrong."

On how the Church knew what the Nazi were doing but were "frozen by indecision and fear"

"They abdicated their moral position as the head of the world's largest religion, especially at a time that they continue to make money with the people committing the murder."

- Author Gerald Posner

The bank officials and those who ran the bank knew very little because, in part, all they wanted to know was what was happening in terms of the war effort and what was happening in terms of business and profits. But on the church end, there's no doubt that they had churches, local churches in all of the countries that were the ground zeros for the killing zones. The local priests who were not in favor of the slaughter still reported back to their bishops what was happening on the ground. That came in in daily reports and they had unfortunately a very clear sense of what was happening early on. They were just frozen by indecision and fear. They were afraid that if they spoke out, the Nazis might in fact move against Catholics in Germany and even move against the Pope and take him back to Germany as a prisoner. But that fear meant that they abdicated their moral position as the head of the world's largest religion, especially at a time that they continue to make money with the people committing the murder.

On the Vatican being anti-Communist and their participation in the Solidarity movement in Poland in the 1908s

One of the reasons the Vatican was frozen in fear against the Nazis and had made their alignment with the Fascists in the first place, was that they feared the Bolsheviks more. When John Paul II came in — the first Polish pope, the first non-Italian pope in more than 450 years — and there's still a communist government in Poland ... he formed an alliance with Ronald Reagan. The head of the CIA used to be going over regularly to the Vatican to give him briefings.

I describe a new incident in this book in which Italian intelligence agents, they take $3.5 million in gold ingots from a Swiss bank. They put it into the side panels and a false bottom on an SUV and a priest drives it back into Gdansk from Italy so it can feed the resistance against the communists in Poland. So there was a real alliance between American intelligence, the right wingers, and the Vatican on this meeting of minds against communism.

On the "cocaine cowboy days" at the Vatican Bank

The thing about the Vatican Bank that makes it different in my view is that it's essentially an offshore bank in the middle of a foreign country — so that once that bank was formed it meant that somebody sitting over in Italy who had a lot of money, all they had to do was find a priest or cleric inside Vatican city to take their money in suitcases of cash across the street — just wait for the red light to turn green — walk it over on a cart, deposit it in the Vatican bank and it no longer could be taxed, it no longer could be followed by Italian authorities, it couldn't be followed for a drug investigation.

More On The Vatican Bank

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Vatican Bank Investigated For Alleged Money Laundering Sept. 21, 2010

So what does that result in? It results in the Vatican Bank being one of the top banks in the world for money laundering — a haven often for these business executives involved in scandals in Italy. ... Just in the last decade we learn that the Vatican Bank had an account for [Giulio] Andreotti, who was the seven-time prime minister of Italy, the most powerful post-war politician in Italian history. He had a secret bank account through which over $50 million passed at a certain time, most of which was doled out for political favors to friends.

That was what the Vatican Bank had come to be, and it's what I call its "cocaine cowboy" days, the equivalent of — I live in Miami, the crazy period here was the 1980s when the cocaine cowboys sort of ran the roost. The Vatican Bank has had its cocaine cowboy days. The real question is now whether the new sheriff has arrived in town — is that Sheriff Francis and can he really bring them to heal or not?

On whether Pope Francis has managed to make reforms to the Vatican Bank

I've been impressed by him. He has changed the structure so that it won't have the ability to be at the center of those scandals. And he's brought in some outsiders. They've closed hundreds of accounts that have been open that were tied to people that shouldn't have had them. They are abiding by the rules set by the Europeans for financial transparency because they use the euro so it's a different era. What could upend it? He needs to be there long enough that these changes can't be reversed by a new pope who gets in and can be pushed around by the strong dominant bureaucrats.

It allows Snapchat users to access content (called "editions"), consisting of video, photography and text, from 11 media companies (or 12 if you count Snapchat's own editorial team).

In typical Snapchat style, these editions are refreshed every 24 hours. That said, in most ways Discover is markedly different from what we've come to expect from Snapchat.

The videos can be long, the text-and-photo posts similar to what you might expect on any other mobile news app. The difference is that instead of posting all the stories written that day, each organization picks around six or seven to be featured in a given edition.

Within a given edition swiping to the right takes the user through the content, while swiping up lets the user view the full video or text piece. The venture is ad-supported, but in a surprisingly non-invasive way. The user is able to skip paid content much in the same way as editorial content.

Want to watch a two-minute video of a jaguar attacking a crocodile? Check out National Geographic's edition. Or perhaps you'd like to see a photo essay of Hollywood celebrities on vacation? People magazine has got you covered. And all this without having to leave the confines of the Snapchat app. Other companies currently participating include The Food Network, ESPN and VICE.

Discover is many things — mobile native, attractively designed and, assuming you're on Snapchat, easy and immediate. For Snapchat, Discover is a way to integrate advertising and monetize its business model. For media companies, Discover is a way to, as a recent Wired article put it, "hook a new, younger audience that doesn't often connect with traditional media."

There is one thing that Discover is not, however. As the company declared at the launch: "This is not social media."

This isn't a question of semantics. It is a firm position on the question above: Who knows best? According to Discover, editorial teams know best. As the Snapchat team writes:

"Social media companies tell us what to read based on what's most recent or most popular. We see it differently. We count on editors and artists, not clicks and shares, to determine what's important."

National Geographic's Discover edition for Jan. 29 features this dramatic video. Snapchat hide caption

itoggle caption Snapchat

For Snapchat's key demographic, the 13- to 25 year-old set, this is a departure from the conventional wisdom of the social media age they've grown up in. On social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter or even Reddit, measuring the impact of a story in "likes," shares and upvotes creates a second layer of gatekeepers. It puts power in the hands of news consumers to decide what they want to look at, and when.

With Discover, Snapchat steps away from social and returns to a traditional method of delivery — straight from the editorial team of a news organization into the hands of consumers, without a social media filter. But will social-savvy millennials take kindly to this? Do teens trust CNN, The Daily Mail or People to deliver information they care about? And perhaps most importantly, will they come to think of Snapchat as the place to get that information?

Early reviews are mixed. Some praise Snapchat for its innovation, while others find Discover a redundant addition to what media companies are already doing with their own mobile apps. Joshua Benton, writing in NiemanLab, says that Discover "feels like a significant moment both for mobile news and for efforts to reach younger readers."

Your celeb FOMO fix is now on Snapchat. Snapchat hide caption

itoggle caption Snapchat

A commenter on a TechCrunch article about the platform is similarly positive: "If I could use this to see the news instead of having to turn on the TV or go to my computer then I'll use it [every day]." But another commenter on the same feed isn't as impressed by Discover because "the best curators are not media outlets, but your social network."

One commenter on a similar article in The Verge, doesn't understand the utility of Discover: "Anybody who wants real ESPN content is just going to use the ESPN app where they can get the content they actually want."

Snapchat hopes users will integrate Discover into their daily Snapchat experience. As the team declares, "each channel brings you something unique — a wonderful daily surprise!" And of course once you're done browsing through what Yahoo! News has to offer today, you can still send that silly, disappearing selfie.

Tajha Chappellet-Lanier is the social media intern at NPR.

Snapchat Discover

snapchat

social media

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., labeled as "low-life scum" anti-war protesters who chanted, "Arrest Henry Kissinger for war crimes."

Kissinger, 91, and other former secretaries of state in both Republican and Democratic administrations were at the Senate Armed Services Committee, which McCain chairs, for a hearing on global security challenges.

A small group of protesters held banners calling Kissinger a "war criminal" and urged his arrest for U.S. actions when he served in the Nixon administration in Chile, Vietnam, East Timor, Cambodia and Laos.

McCain ordered Capitol police to remove the protesters.

"Get out of here, you low-life scum," he said.

You can watch what happened here.

Henry Kissinger

Sen. John McCain

When President Obama meets with House Democrats tonight during their retreat in Philadelphia, officials say he'll lay out the details of his budget proposal, which will include reversal of large cuts to federal spending instituted in 2013, reports NPR's Mara Liasson.

Those spending cuts, known as the sequester, hit both the defense and domestic budgets and were the result of congressional gamesmanship when the parties couldn't agree on spending priorities.

The president officially will release his fiscal 2016 budget to the public on Monday; White House officials say it also will include boosted spending on education, infrastructure and the military, offset by closing tax loopholes used by the wealthy.

Congressional Republicans are unlikely to accept those proposals, Mara reports.

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Responding to Obama's State of the Union address earlier this month, Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, said her party would support tax reform, "to lower rates — and create jobs, not pay for more government spending." She also said the Republican caucus would pursue a balanced budget.

A White House official, in prepared remarks sent to the media Wednesday night, said Obama hopes to work with Republicans to build on 2013's bipartisan budget agreement.

"The president believes we should end the era of manufactured crises and mindless austerity," the statement read.

The stuffed-full "cromnibus" budget bill rushed through the lame-duck Senate in December funds the government through the end of the fiscal year in September.

sequester

federal budget

austerity

Barack Obama

After the insurance exchanges set up under the Affordable Care Act first went live in late 2013, Lori Lomas started combing the website of Covered California on a hunt for good deals for her clients. Lomas is an agent at Feather Financial, in the Sierra Nevada mountain town of Quincy, California; she's been selling health policies in rural communities for more than 20 years.

Areas Where Blue Shield Of California Stopped Selling Policies To Individuals In 2014

Notes

This map does not include zip codes inside forest/park areas. You can look up specific zip codes via Capital Public Radio.

Source: California Department of Managed Health Care

Credit: Alyson Hurt/NPR

But in 2013, she noticed a troubling change that surprised her: For many clients, insurance options decreased.

"I just started running quotes for people," Lomas says, "and began realizing that in [some] zip codes, the only thing that shows up is Anthem [Anthem Blue Cross]."

In addition to Anthem, Blue Shield of California used to sell policies to individuals in every county in the states, according to the Department of Managed Health Care, one of California's two teams of health insurance regulators. But by 2014's open enrollment period, Blue Shield had pulled out of 250 zip codes throughout the state, including four entire counties: Alpine, Monterey, Sutter, and Yuba.

Shots - Health News

Limited Insurance Choices Frustrate Patients In California

The gaps are particularly felt in the top third of the state, where thousands of residents now have only one choice of insurer if they want to buy a health policy on the exchange.

That's in contrast, Lomas says, to other spots, like the San Francisco Bay Area, where she's also been helping clients find policies on the state exchange. "I'd do it for them," she says, "and, wow, there are six insurance companies or seven insurance companies. I think that was when I first realized how, truly, we were getting the shaft up here."

"Competition in the marketplace is a good thing, in that it does keep companies, in some sense, honest."

- Shana Alex Charles, director of health insurance studies, UCLA Center for Health Policy Research

Blue Shield of California declined an interview with NPR. But in a written statement, the company reported that it's not selling in certain areas of California because it could not find enough health providers willing to accept a level of payment that would keep premiums low. According to the statement, the company also is not selling in areas where there is no contracted hospital within 15 miles.

Because of the broad changes in the individual health insurance market under the Affordable Care Act, "there is no accurate apples-to-apples comparison between the individual market in 2013 and the individual market in 2014 and beyond," Blue Shield said, adding that "coverage areas were designed to meet regulatory guidance and with patient access to care in mind."

Blue Shield of California is acting within the law, says Shana Alex Charles, director of health insurance studies at UCLA's Center for Health Policy Research. She says Blue Shield could have offered to pay health care providers more. But, at the same time, she adds, insurance companies can't be forced to operate at a loss.

Shots - Health News

Two Doctors Weigh Whether To Accept Obamacare Plans

"There's no public charge that says they have to be in those zip codes," she says. "If they determine that it's not within their company's best interests to remain there and sell their product there, then they won't be there."

That's generally allowed under the federal health law — plans don't have to sell throughout an entire state, for example. Consumer advocates say there is often a lack of doctors in rural areas, and agree that insurers shouldn't sell plans where there isn't a good network. But UCLA's Charles says consumers lose when there are not many insurers to choose from.

"Competition breeds choice," she says, "and people that are competing against each other, work to keep the consumer as happy as possible, so that the consumer will chose them. Competition in the marketplace is a good thing, in that it does keep companies, in some sense, honest."

Two other companies — Assurant Health and Moda Health — are selling health policies in Northern California, but not on the state exchange. So if consumers choose to buy those plans, they can't get the subsidies offered under the federal health law.

Assurant Health says it sells individual policies in every California zip code, and covers out-of-state care. Moda Health just started selling individual policies in California for 2015.

This story is part of NPR's reporting partnership with Capital Public Radio and Kaiser Health News.

health insurers

CAlifornia

Affordable Care Act

With wages still stuck for many Americans, the big drop in gas prices is the equivalent of an unexpected cash bonus for the nation's drivers.

The average American household is expected to save $750 this year from lower gas prices, according to the Energy Department.

But Thomas Kinnaman, an economist at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pa., says it's instructive to look beyond the word "average."

"It's not that we're not all average families, we're not average drivers," he says. "We have very different driving habits."

Residents of the least densely populated areas of the U.S. — in rural Montana or Texas, for example — typically drive more than four times as much as people who live in cities such as New York or San Francisco. Those drivers stand to gain a lot more from the lower prices.

i

Jed Brown drives 100 miles each day to work between Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Cheaper gas is making his commute more manageable, but he doesn't expect the low prices to last. Uri Berliner/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Uri Berliner/NPR

Jed Brown drives 100 miles each day to work between Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Cheaper gas is making his commute more manageable, but he doesn't expect the low prices to last.

Uri Berliner/NPR

Kinnaman says that in rural Pennsylvania, where he teaches and where NPR recently interviewed drivers about gas prices, the average person typically drives twice as much as someone living in a suburb of Washington, New York or Philadelphia.

"I drive 46 miles each way, up through two snow belts, to get to work," says Sue Beates, a curator at the Drake Well Museum in Titusville, Pa. Paying close attention to energy prices is part of Beates' job — the museum is dedicated to the history of the oil industry.

But it's outside of working hours when those prices mean most for Beates. Because so many household costs are fixed, when gas was nearly $4 a gallon, she says, it affected what she could put in her cart at the supermarket.

"When you're paying mortgage, car payments, utilities, that fuel cost makes a huge difference," she says. "And the only place to cut back would be food."

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Beates says the big drop in gas prices means she eats meat more often, instead of rice and beans.

Regina and Lawrence Wilson of Lewisburg, Pa., are enjoying an unexpected lift from cheap gas as well. Their Chrysler 300 isn't a fuel-sipper, and they say they're saving about $40 a week from when gas prices were at their peak. Regina Wilson says now she can splurge on a pair of shoes for herself or buy presents for her grandchildren.

The savings are a big deal because the Wilsons don't have cash to spare. Lawrence Wilson says he's been shoveling snow for the local housing authority and doing the occasional restaurant job; Regina used to be a home health aide until she got sick. Now she drives to the doctor nearly 20 miles away three times a week.

"So now, I put $10 gas in this car, it'd get me at least, almost, to half a tank," she says. "And I could get to the doctor, and I could get back home, and still have gas left to go do a little food shopping if I want."

Jed Brown, a network engineer for a federal contractor, drives about 100 miles every workday on his commute from his home in Chambersburg, Pa., to Martinsburg, W.V. He drives one hour each way on Interstate 81, crossing three states, and listens to video game podcasts in the car to keep himself entertained.

Gas prices are a topic at work, he says: "Everyone's talking about how great it is. ... I think people are happy about it."

And while he enjoys the savings — they're making his long commute more manageable — Brown doesn't expect cheap gas to last.

"It'll go back up," he says. "I hope it will just go back to where it was, and it won't go over."

Forecasters are predicting that gas prices will remain low throughout 2015. A gallon now sells for less than $2 in more than half the states, according to GasBuddy.com.

But if history is a guide, Jed Brown is right not to count on those low prices for the long haul.

trucking industry

fuel consumption

savings

oil prices

gas prices

driving

During her first day of confirmation hearings for attorney general, nominee Loretta Lynch gave answers that seemed in line with President Obama. But then she was asked about marijuana, and whether she supports legalizing it.

"Senator, I do not," Lynch told Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., when he asked if she supported making pot legal.

The moment stood in contrast to other exchanges between Lynch and members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, as she defended Obama's right to take executive action on immigration rules and aligned herself with the president's view on U.S. interrogation programs, saying, "Waterboarding is torture."

Sessions asked Lynch about marijuana during the afternoon portion of her hearing. And he noted that the head of the Drug Enforcement Agency also disagrees with the idea of legalizing marijuana.

The senator then read aloud a quote from President Obama from last January, in which he told The New Yorker, "I smoked pot as a kid, and I view it as a bad habit and a vice, not very different from the cigarettes that I smoked as a young person up through a big chunk of my adult life. I don't think it is more dangerous than alcohol."

When Sessions asked Lynch if she agreed with that assessment, she said, "Well senator, I certainly don't hold that view, and don't agree with that view of marijuana as a substance. I certainly think that the president was speaking from his personal experience and personal opinion – neither of which I am able to share."

She added, "Not only do I not support legalization of marijuana – it is not the position of the Department of Justice currently, to support the legalization, nor would it be the position should I become confirmed as attorney general."

As The Hill reports, "Obama said in a YouTube interview last week that the federal government is 'not going to spend a lot of resources' enforcing marijuana laws."

Today, Lynch also fielded questions about a range of issues, from America's large prison population and the use of veterans' courts to stalker apps and the Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger. Her confirmation hearing will resume Thursday.

As NPR's Ailsa Chang reported this morning, "Republicans expect to go hard at Lynch about the constitutionality of the president's executive action on immigration. They'll also press her about political decision-making at the IRS, and ask her about the limits of prosecutorial discretion."

Department of Justice

loretta lynch

More than half a century ago, there was a best-selling book — and then a movie — titled The Ugly American. The title was a twist, because the plot featured attractive Americans who were, however, boorish and haughty, acting most unattractively when they were sent abroad to represent the country at a time (post World War II) when the United States had never been richer or more powerful.

Meanwhile, a plain, almost homely lower-level staffer who was assigned to work out in the boondocks was selfless and courteous, and popular with the local people. That was the title's irony — that the ugly American was, in fact, the hero.

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If there is any word that describes the National Football League recently, it is "ugly." You're probably familiar with the mean blemishes that have come to light — Spygate, Bountygate, bullying, concussions, stinginess, rampant domestic violence, and on and on. Withal, the arrogance and condescension that the league displays is unprecedented in American sport.

And yet the NFL has never been more popular or more powerful.

Despite a hopelessly inept commissioner, nothing that embarrasses the NFL seems to dent its success. The latest brouhaha — the widespread feeling that one of the teams that will play in the Super Bowl deflated its way to the championship game — will probably only add to the audience. It's not a stretch of an analogy to say that the imperial NFL is to sport in the United States today, as the mighty United States was once to the world.

By contrast, tennis is a sport, like golf or boxing, that's only on the fringes of the big time, and if you're tennis' 112 in the world you're — well, you're in the boondocks.

Last week — while NFL footballs somehow ended up being deflated, to the benefit of the smug New England Patriots — an American named Tim Smyczek somehow took the magnificent Rafael Nadal right to the fifth-set limit at a grand slam, the Australian Open. This was Smyczek's moment of a lifetime, but when Nadal served at a crucial point, someone in the crowd screamed, and the serve went awry.

What did the 112th player in the world do? He signaled to the umpire that his opponent, the great Nadal, should get help, another chance, another first serve. Nadal promptly won the do-over with a terrific serve, and soon enough, the match, and Smyczek's one hope for glory was gone. But, you see, he simply thought he had to be fair, or victory wouldn't be worth the candle.

So we shall all watch the Super Bowl Sunday, as America puts its favorite game on display, while the glamorous NFL preens and postures, invulnerable to its violent sins and excesses. But, if you will, think for a moment about Tim Smyczek ... the loser American.

deflategate

tennis

Football

NFL

If you want a sobering look at the scale of wildlife trafficking, just visit the National Eagle and Wildlife Repository on the outskirts of Denver. In the middle of a national reserve is a cavernous warehouse stuffed with the remains of 1.5 million animals, whole and in parts.

They range from taxidermied polar bears to tiny sea horses turned into key chains. An area devoted to elephants is framed by a pair of enormous tusks.

"You can see right there those are elephant feet," says Coleen Schaefer, who heads the repository. "People either make those into trash cans or foot stools."

In 2013, more than 20,000 elephants were slaughtered, and last year the repository crushed 6 tons of confiscated ivory.

Some poached wildlife is used for fashion or medicine. Schaefer says some of the animals serve as trophies.

"This is probably the saddest item we have," she says. "This is a tiger fetus that was carved out of its mother and then stuffed and placed on a shelf."

Looking around this enormous warehouse, you get a sense of how difficult it is to curb wildlife trafficking. Row after row, shelf after shelf, there are heads and the skins of cheetahs, leopards, jaguars, lions and tigers.

i

Naimah Aziz, an inspector with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, searches for illegally trafficked wildlife items passing through the cargo area at New York's JFK airport. Here she holds the horns of an argali, an endangered mountain sheep from Central Asia. Jackie Northam/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Jackie Northam/NPR

Naimah Aziz, an inspector with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, searches for illegally trafficked wildlife items passing through the cargo area at New York's JFK airport. Here she holds the horns of an argali, an endangered mountain sheep from Central Asia.

Jackie Northam/NPR

The Obama administration is now trying to tackle wildlife trafficking by incorporating rules into the Trans-Pacific Partnership, known as the TPP. This is the massive multilateral trade agreement currently being negotiated among a dozen Asia-Pacific nations, including the United States.

Potential Trade Sanctions

Michael Froman, the U.S. trade representative, says if it passes, countries found to be involved in illegal wildlife trafficking could face trade sanctions.

"What we're doing through the Trans-Pacific Partnership is first of all making sure environmental issues are central to the agreement, including things like wildlife trafficking, and then making them fully enforceable just like any other provision of the trade agreement," he says.

The U.S. is also trying to make this part of a trade deal with the European Union.

But Leigh Henry, senior policy adviser for the World Wildlife Fund, says the Asia-Pacific trade deal is key because much of the demand for the endangered wildlife comes from Asian countries negotiating the TPP.

"Vietnam is huge. They are the primary consumer of rhino horn that's driving this increase in rhino poaching in South Africa," Henry says, adding that Malaysia is a huge transit route for the illegal wildlife trade.

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Coleen Schaefer, the head of the National Eagle and Wildlife repository on the outskirts of Denver, shows off rhino parts that were confiscated. Jackie Northam/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Jackie Northam/NPR

Coleen Schaefer, the head of the National Eagle and Wildlife repository on the outskirts of Denver, shows off rhino parts that were confiscated.

Jackie Northam/NPR

Henry says when it comes to fighting wildlife trafficking, international law has no teeth. She hopes the TPP will change that.

But Henry knows tradition is powerful in many Asian nations, where endangered wildlife is used to make aphrodesiacs, or supposed cures for everything from cancer to stomach ailments.

Henry says Asia's wealth has created a class that wants to display its money and success.

"If you can go out and party all night and turn around the next morning and provide your friends and colleagues with rhino horn to combat your hangover, it shows success," she says. "It shows that you have the money to spend on this incredibly expensive luxury item."

Rhino horns reportedly fetch more than $30,000 a pound — more than their weight in gold. Enforcement is difficult in areas where poverty and corruption are common.

The U.S. is trying to better coordinate with international law enforcement agencies and hopes to beef up customs and borders patrol, and the number of fish and wildlife inspectors, if the TPP agreement is signed.

A Flood Of Packages

Thousands of packages of every shape and size arrive daily in the international mail room at New York's JFK airport. Naimah Aziz, an inspector with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, says illegal wildlife is often bought online and is shipped by mail. There's so much coming in on any given day it's easy to skip detection.

"There's a lot of packages and they move through here really fast," Aziz says. "Sometimes mail comes in the morning and it's out in the afternoon. You gotta be fast."

Aziz is one of 11 Fish and Wildlife inspectors monitoring JFK, LaGuardia airport, and Port Elizabeth, New Jersey, where cargo ships dock. She says there are certain things to look for — a package that's leaking could be caviar or a freshly skinned animal.

A package traveling from South Africa to Austin, Texas, attracts her attention. The paperwork says it's a carpet. But when she opens it up, she finds five zebra skins.

"No one really needs five zebra skins," she says.

As she surveys the stacks of packages surrounding her, Aziz says any help in slowing the tide of illegal wildlife would be most welcome. Even if it comes from a most unlikely of places — an Asia-Pacific trade deal.

wildlife

What do the villagers of India think of the Obama visit? To find out, our intrepid village correspondent (and creator of the "Village Way" video for Goats and Soda) interviewed four residents of villages in the rural parts of Tamil Nadu, a state in South India.

Meet the villagers:

Simpson: The 25-year-old came back to his native village of Ayartharmam after earning a bachelor's degree in theology and religious studies. Simpson speaks English and is passionate about his rural home. He loves sports and reading.

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Manju: A softspoken girl of 16 and an orphan, she works as a domestic helper in the village of Kondayampatti and lives with her employer. Manju studied until the seventh grade and enjoys drawing.

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In The Village: Wilbur Goes Home

Elizabeth: A survivor of domestic abuse, 32-year-old Elizabeth (who asked that her real name not be used) is a strong-willed single mother of four who works hard to support her family. Elizabeth loves to sing and dance! Her native village is Perayuru.

Alagarsamy: Alone in his old age with no family, Alagarsamy, 73, works as a watchman in the village of Kalikudi. He enjoys reading newspapers and keeping a journal every day. He reads and speaks English fluently.

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Simpson, 25, worries that India will be "enslaved in debt" because of the U.S. megaloans. Wilbur Sargunaraj for NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Wilbur Sargunaraj for NPR

Simpson, 25, worries that India will be "enslaved in debt" because of the U.S. megaloans.

Wilbur Sargunaraj for NPR

What are your thoughts about President Obama?

Simpson: He is better than Mr. Bush, I think! I also salute him that he takes a stern stance on terrorism. I am confused why he is black when America is white.

Manju: I don't know who he is ... but I am happy that I know now after you told me.

Elizabeth: I have read about him in a newspaper. I think he is bringing America up and helping the black community in the country.

Alagarsamy: I'm not so much interested in the political affairs of America. I saw pictures of Obama during the Republic Day Parade.

i

Elizabeth, a single mother of four, says her village has "lots of electricity." What she'd like is better bus service. Wilbur Sargunaraj for NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Wilbur Sargunaraj for NPR

Elizabeth, a single mother of four, says her village has "lots of electricity." What she'd like is better bus service.

Wilbur Sargunaraj for NPR

What do you think of Obama's promise to loan money to India to improve living conditions?

Simpson: I think he is trying to capture the hearts of the people of India, but only to make us enslaved in debt.

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Alagarsamy thinks Obama should help set up local industries in India's villages. Wilbur Sargunaraj for NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Wilbur Sargunaraj for NPR

Alagarsamy thinks Obama should help set up local industries in India's villages.

Wilbur Sargunaraj for NPR

Manju: I am not sure! I really don't follow politics.

Elizabeth: I feel that Obama is going to do something good for India.

Alagarsamy: Many people were coming to do business in India before this visit with Obama. The Obama [promise of loans] is putting some conditions on India.

If you had a chance to talk to Prime Minister Modi or Obama, what would you ask them for?

Simpson: Modi, please give us the freedom to be ourselves with our backgrounds and religion. Mr. Obama, there are so many more poor countries than India in the world, why are you specifically focusing on India? Already India is in debt. I am not sure that this loan of 4 billion USD will help us.

Manju: I would ask both people to build us schools.

Alagarsamy: I would ask both of them to help in regards to more employment of the people in Indian companies.

Elizabeth: Modi, please close all the wine shops that make men drunk and abusive. Please offer protection for ladies across India. I am still suffering because of this. Obama, what do you feel about the growth of India and what are you going to do for my country?

Obama spoke about bringing electricity to all of India. Is that the most important thing you need? What other things should the U.S. help India get for its citizens?

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Simpson: Yes electricity is important but more than this I think proper sanitation is very important. Just recently in a nearby village close to ours around 18 people died of dengue fever because of poor and pathetic conditions. Hospitals would be great around the village as people have to travel far distances to get there.

Manju: I am in need of a house as I don't have parents and need water and as I said before I need a proper school to go to. [Note from Wilbur: "Having your own house is a big deal in India."]

Elizabeth: I feel there is lots of electricity in the village. What I need is proper transportation as the villages are not connected well by bus.

Alagarsamy: Electricity is a big question in Tamil Nadu for so many years, so yes it is important. But I think Obama should help set up local industries in the village. There have been many government plans in the village to help us and most have them have failed.

i

Manju, 16, is an orphan who works as a domestic helper. Her message to Obama: "I need a proper school to go to." Wilbur Sargunaraj for NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Wilbur Sargunaraj for NPR

Manju, 16, is an orphan who works as a domestic helper. Her message to Obama: "I need a proper school to go to."

Wilbur Sargunaraj for NPR

Obama has said America will help build India's infrastructure. Do you care about roads, ports, broadband connections?

Simpson: In the village, broadband connections or beautiful roads are not most important. I see education being very important. But if you are going to make us roads, make them proper and first class like you would in America!

Manju: I have a desire to know how to use Internet so it would be great to have Internet connections and schools set up so I can learn this skill.

Elizabeth: Yes this is very important for India's growth. In the village, tar roads, schools and hospitals would be wonderful. I don't use the Internet so that is not an issue.

Alagarsamy: What is a broadband connection? I like reading headlines on the newspapers.

If Obama came to your village, what would you show him and what would you offer him to eat or drink?

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Our correspondent Wilbur Sargunaraj, clad in his trademark lunghi pants, poses with sports-loving Simpson. Leelvathi Rajendran for NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Leelvathi Rajendran for NPR

Our correspondent Wilbur Sargunaraj, clad in his trademark lunghi pants, poses with sports-loving Simpson.

Leelvathi Rajendran for NPR

Simpson: I would show him the famous Sriviliputur Aandal temple and give him the famous palcova sweets [a cake made with condensed milk] and Tirunelveli Halwa! [a flour/sugar/nut butter combo].

Manju: I would take him around the village and show him the coconut plantation. To drink I will give him tender coconut.

Elizabeth: I would go to Madurai city and buy the famous jasmine flowers and present them to him. I would give him a traditional Tamil Nadu style lunch on a banana leaf with payasam [a South Asian rice pudding dessert made of vermicelli, milk and sugar].

Alagarsamy: My village is a very rural and backward area so he may not be interested. Maybe I would show him village farming! I would give him tea and vada [a deep-fried snack that looks like a doughnut].

India

Obama

Eakin filed a lawsuit against the federal government in 2009.

After years of motions and filings, the Pentagon finally exhumed that group grave and matched Kelder's remains with his family's DNA. Pentagon officials had no other comment.

But, the Joint POW-MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) — the U.S. agency tasked with finding, identifying, and returning such remains — says it rarely digs up the graves of unknown soldiers.

The NPR/ProPublica investigation last year found that's because the agency is slow, risk averse and has used outdated science.

JPAC officials maintain the reason the process is so slow is because they take great care to not just make a positive identification — which is easy now with DNA testing — but to identify and return as full a set of remains as possible, so families can have closure.

Still, John Eakin says it took a lawsuit and years of back and forth with JPAC to finally get Bud Kelder identified.

But the case is not over yet. Kelder's remains were scattered with the remains of many others. Their families want answers, too.

Since the NPR/ProPublica investigation, the Pentagon has launched a major overhaul of JPAC. Also, the longtime director of JPAC's central identification lab will eventually be replaced by a Navy captain with DNA expertise.

POW-MIA

POW camps

World War II

A few days ago, I entertained myself for a few minutes watching ESPN's Stephen A. Smith lose his cool — this time, over an "incompetent" NFL for not interviewing Patriots quarterback Tom Brady regarding the team's deflated football controversy.

But what made this moment noteworthy, was where I was watching Smith; not on a TV connected to a cable box, but on my iPad. Thanks to Sling TV.

Sling TV is a streaming service cooked up by the satellite TV company Dish Network to give anyone online access to a small clutch of cable channels for a $20 monthly fee. The company will start offering subscriptions to a select group of volunteers who signed up through its website this week; within a few weeks, Dish plans to open it up to the general public.

"All you need is a credit card and a broadband connection," thundered Dish CEO Joe Clayton, speaking at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this month. "It's aimed squarely at the millennial audience — those 18 to 35-year-olds, who represent a market virtually untouched by the pay TV industry today."

Television

New Streaming Services Are Changing TV — And Viewers, Too

The Growth Of Streaming TV

Clayton was almost giddy in describing Sling TV, an online service that doesn't require a Dish membership or cable subscription. You can watch it from mobile devices, laptops and some streaming TV gadgets like the Roku.

The presence of channels like ESPN and ESPN2 is important. Access to live sports is the biggest advantage cable companies have had in convincing subscribers to keep their service in the wake of rising prices.

Dish gave critics early access to Sling TV last week, so I gave it a spin, downloading the app to my iPad and to a Roku 3 streaming device on my home TV.

The results were impressive.

The basic service features 12 channels, including ESPN, TNT, CNN and the Disney Channel. The app allows you to watch the channels live, see what's coming up and access a few movies on demand.

It's a simple design providing access to channels you mostly had to buy a cable or satellite subscription to see before now.

A few channels, like HGTV and The Food Network, have a "start over" feature allowing you to watch a show from the beginning no matter when you come to it. An extra $5 a month buys a kids TV package or a news and information package; Dish says a bigger sports TV package and video on demand features are also on the way.

There are some drawbacks. The service doesn't have broadcast networks like CBS, NBC or ABC, some of the programming information was incorrect on the channels I browsed and the channel selection is limited by design — so the only news services are CNN, HLN and Bloomberg, for example — no Fox News or MSNBC.

Some of these limitations are likely about corporate alliances. CNN, HLN, TNT and TBS are entities of Turner Broadcasting, which is participating in the service. Other companies, such as Fox and NBC, don't seem to be part of the lineups yet.

And while most channels also stream their commercials on Sling TV, ESPN and ESPN2 play funky instrumental music with a message promising the shows will be right back; presumably because their advertisers haven't yet paid for access to Sling TVs eyeballs.

Dish is careful to say this service targets millennials who have broadband Internet connections but don't buy cable TV. That's probably to avoid upsetting cable companies, which have always insisted they can't offer smaller chunks of channels at a lower price.

But Sling TV's channels — Disney, TNT, CNN — seem less youth-oriented and more likely to appeal to "cord-cutting" TV fans of all ages, especially those looking to drop a hefty cable bill and already watching lots of television online.

Simple, effective and relatively cheap, Sling TV offers a small taste of cable TV for those who don't want to buy the whole smorgasbord.

It might also help push a reluctant cable industry into letting people more closely choose which channels they pay for.

dish network

cable tv

ESPN

Mr. Bean is selling his car.

No, not the lime green British Leyland Mini that was the prop for so many of the character's antics. We're talking about the purple McLaren F1 'supercar' owned by the actor who plays Mr. Bean, Rowan Atkinson. It's the same car that Atkinson famously wrapped around a tree in 2011.

The 59-year-old Atkinson is selling the vehicle, which can reach 240mph, The Telegraph says. It's expected to fetch offers of around $15 million.

and is expected to attract offers around the 10 million mark.

Atkinson, who also starred in The Blackadder series, bought the car nearly 20 years ago, "for the quality of the thinking that went into its design," he tells the Telegraph.

"[Now] it has become a thing of value, it is time for it to be enjoyed by someone else," he said. It's also possible that the crash four years ago also may have set Atkinson back a bit: the repair bill was reportedly $1.4 million (luckily the actor himself wasn't seriously injured). Auto Evolution reports that it took four weeks just to calculate the repair costs and another year to get the work done.

The BBC's Top Gear called it "a ruddy expensive fix."

Atkinson, a performance car aficionado and amateur race-car driver, also crashed another cars recently – a 1964 powder-blue Ford Falcon Sprint. It happened last year when a fellow competitor in the Shelby Cup at Goodwood Revival lost control ahead of him and spun off the track. Atkinson was unable to swerve out of the way and hit the car head-on.

Cars

Britain

actors

At least nine people are dead in the Egyptian capital following clashes between police and Islamist protesters marking the fourth anniversary of 2011 uprising that ousted then-President Hosni Mubarak.

The Associated Press said nine people had been killed, but Reuters and ITV News put the figure at 11. Both agencies cited unnamed security officials.

The AP says another 13 people were injured in clashes in the Matariyah area of the capital.

Reuters notes:

"The anniversary is a test of whether Islamists and liberal activists facing one of Egypt's toughest crackdowns have the resolve to challenge the U.S.-backed government once again.

"Security forces have been stamping out dissent in Egypt since then-army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi ousted elected president Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood in July 2013 after mass protests against his rule."

Arab Spring

Hosni Mubarak

Egypt

Greeks citizens cast ballots today in an election that is being closely watched, as the outcome could decide whether the troubled country stays the course on a European Union austerity plan.

In 2010, as Greece was on the verge of a default on its sovereign debt, Athens agreed to unpopular austerity measures in exchange for billions of euros from its fellow European Union countries and the International Monetary Fund. The measures have cut salaries and pensions. Even so, public debt has climbed from 146 percent of GDP in 2010 to more than 175 percent of GDP last year — the second-highest in the world, Reuters notes.

As Joanna Kakissis, reporting for NPR from Athens, says: "More than a quarter of Greeks are unemployed. Four years of austerity ... have crushed the economy. Greeks are now poised to elect Syriza, a leftist party that calls austerity 'fiscal waterboarding.'"

As The Associated Press reports:

"The Syriza party led by Alexis Tsipras has remained firmly ahead of conservative Prime Minister Antonis Samaras' New Democracy party in opinion polls throughout the election campaign, which was called two years ahead of schedule.

"But those polls also have shown that a significant portion of voters remained undecided until the last minute, and suggest that Syriza might struggle to win enough parliamentary seats to form a government on its own."

The Guardian adds:

"Final opinion polls on Friday showed Syriza, which has pledged to overturn austerity and renegotiate Greece's debt mountain, with a lead of between four and seven percentage points over its main rival New Democracy, with one poll putting the radical leftist party 10 points clear.

"But while it seems clear Alexis Tsipras's barnstorming alliance of Maoists, Marxists, Trotskyists, Socialists, Eurocommunists and Greens will comfortably see off the conservatives of the prime minister, Antonio Samaras, they are far from certain to win the 151 seats they need to govern alone."

Eurozone bailout

European Union

Greece