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Western leaders are pressuring Moscow for a full and transparent investigation into the fatal shooting of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, a staunch opponent of President Vladimir Putin.

Nemtsov, 55, a deputy prime minister in the 1990s who later organized mass rallies against Putin in 2011 and 2012. Most recently, he accused Putin allies of profiteering from the development of the Sochi Winter Olympics infrastructure.

President Obama on Friday described Nemtsov as "a tireless advocate for his country" and asked Russia to launch "a prompt, impartial and transparent investigation."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said she "appreciates the courage of the former deputy prime minister, who repeatedly expressed publicly his criticism of government policy" and "calls on ... Putin to ensure that the murder is cleared up and the perpetrators brought to justice."

But German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier went further, implying that Nemtsov's death was a political assassination, a view shared by other leaders and human rights groups.

Putin condemned the murder and promised to personally oversee the investigation.

Murder of Boris Nemtsov shows that Russia slides down to darkness of terror against its own people

— Dalia Grybauskait (@Grybauskaite_LT) February 27, 2015

Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite tweeted: "[The] murder of Boris Nemtsov shows that Russia slides down to darkness of terror against its own people," Grybauskaite wrote on Twitter.

Amnesty International noted that the "cold-blooded murder" of Nemtsov must be added to an already long "list of unsolved political murders and attack in Russia, the investigations of which were under 'personal control' of senior Russian politicians."

"March of protest in Moscow also becomes march of mourning. Opposition and journalists must be protected!," Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom tweeted, referring to an upcoming anti-government march being organized by Nemtsov and his allies.

March of protest in Moscow also becomes march of mourning. Opposition and journalists must be protected!

— Margot Wallstrm (@margotwallstrom) February 28, 2015

Boris Nemtsov

Vladimir Putin

Russia

After a second round of talks, Cuban and American diplomats emerged upbeat about the potential to reestablish diplomatic ties between the long-estranged neighbors.

In a press conference following the talks, Roberta Jacobson, the diplomat leading the talks for the Americans, said: "Today we saw the kind of constructive exchange that advances us toward a more productive diplomatic relationship."

Her counterpart, Josefina Vidal, who is leading the talks for the Cubans said: "We are confident that there can be civilized relations and coexistence between Cuba and the United States and that we would be able to recognize and respect our difference so that as neighbors we can identify areas of mutual interest to cooperate for the benefit of our two countries, the region and world."

In diplomatic speak, those are some pretty positive words.

Coming into the meeting, two issues loomed large: Cuba's demand that the U.S. remove it from the State Department's State Sponsor of Terrorism list. And the U.S. demand that its diplomats in Havana have complete freedom of mobility, meeting whoever they want, whenever they want.

Vidal said that the U.S. had assured them they were working on reviewing the country's spot on the terrorism list.

"For Cuba it is a matter of sheer justice," she said. "Cuba strongly believes that it should have never been included in these limited list of countries and today there is no ground to justify the inclusion of our country on that list."

But, leaving an opening, she added that the removal of Cuba from the list is a "priority" but not a "precondition" for reopening embassies.

Jacobson said talks took on a "very cooperative spirit" and the two sides made "progress on a number" of issues.

Jacobson said one sign of how well the talks have gone is that right now there are about six other dialogues that are planned or happening. One of those talks, she said, involves opening up telecommunications on the island and the other, which Jacobson called the "most challenging but most important," is about human rights.

Jacobson added that she thought the U.S. embassy in Havana could be open as early as April, as the Summit of the Americas gets going in Panama.

"I certainly think that with the kind of cooperation that we had today I certainly leave those conversations today optimistic but committed and recognizing the work that still has to be done, but certainly not daunted by the idea that there is a desire to move forward as quickly as we can," Jacobson said.

Cuba

(This post last updated at 10:50 p.m. ET)

Boris Nemtsov, a former Russian deputy prime minister turned prominent critic of President Vladimir Putin, was shot dead today on a street in central Moscow, the Interior Ministry told the Interfax news agency.

The Russian-language news website Meduza reported that Nemtsov was walking with a woman near the Kremlin at the time of the attack. A spokesman told Interfax that at least seven shots were fired at Nemtsov from a passing car.

Police are investigating, Interfax said.

Nemtsov most recently had accused Putin allies of massively profiting from the government's development efforts ahead of the Sochi Winter Olympics, and butted heads with the Kremlin regarding the Ukraine, the Associated Press reports.

"Nemtsov assailed the government's inefficiency, rampant corruption and the Kremlin's Ukraine policy, which has strained relations between Russia and the West to a degree unseen since Cold War times.

"In an interview with the Sobesednik newspaper, Nemtsov said earlier this month that his 86-year old mother was afraid that Putin could have him killed for his opposition activities. Asked if he had such fears himself, he responded by saying: 'If I were afraid I wouldn't have led an opposition party.' "

Nemstov, 55, was the head of the opposition Republican Party of Russia-People's Freedom Party. He served as governor of the Novgorod region and as deputy prime minister in the 1990s. As NPR reported in 2007, in the 1990s Nemtsov "was an icon of democratic reform, a crusading minister anointed by former President Boris Yeltsin to be his political heir."

He later became an opposition leader and sharp critic of Putin.

Last year Nemtsov was among opposition leaders who gathered in Moscow to protest the government's crackdown on independent media and opposition groups. As NPR's Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson reported at the time Nemtsov likened the mood in Russia to "Germany of the 1930s when Adolf Hitler called anyone who disagreed with him a traitor."

"It's honestly like in the Hitler time," Nemtsov said at the time. "If you are against Putin, you are against Russia. If you are against Putin, you are American spy.

According Reuters, a spokesman for Putin said the president condemn the killing and said it may have been a contract killing. Putin has ordered an investigation.

Update at 7:33 p.m. ET. U.S. Condemns Murder:

In a statement released by the White House, President Obama condemned Nemtsov's murder and called on the Russians to launch a "prompt, impartial, and transparent investigation."

"Nemtsov was a tireless advocate for his country, seeking for his fellow Russian citizens the rights to which all people are entitled. I admired Nemtsov's courageous dedication to the struggle against corruption in Russia and appreciated his willingness to share his candid views with me when we met in Moscow in 2009," Obama said. "We offer our sincere condolences to Boris Efimovich's family, and to the Russian people, who have lost one of the most dedicated and eloquent defenders of their rights."

Boris Nemtsov

Russia

The Obama administration is creating new protections for Americans saving and investing for retirement, but industry groups say the new rules could hurt the very people the president says he wants to help

Reining In Financial Advisers May Help — But Americans Still Aren't Saving

3 min 30 sec

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Obama Wants Rules That Force Brokers To Put Clients' Interests First

If you're building a retirement nest egg, big fees are the dangerous predators looking to feast on it. The White House says too many financial advisers get hidden kickbacks or sales incentives to steer responsible Americans toward bad retirement investments with low returns and high fees.

"If your business model rests on taking advantage of bilking hard-working Americans out of their retirement money, then you shouldn't be in business," Obama said Monday. "That's pretty straightforward."

The White House is directing the U.S. Department of Labor to craft new rules that require retirement advisers to put consumers' best interests ahead of their financial gain. But some industry groups are sounding the alarm.

"A sledgehammer is not needed where a regular hammer would fix the problem," the Financial Services Roundtable said in a statement.

Tim Pawlenty, the group's president and CEO, has another metaphor at the ready.

"There's always a few bad apples," says Pawlenty, the former Minnesota governor. "We would encourage focusing on bad apples and removing them, instead of tipping over and smashing the whole apple cart."

"We don't want to get to a point where the red tape and bureaucracy and cost freezes lower income people from being able to take advantage of financial planning advice."

- Tim Pawlenty, Financial Services Roundtable

Pawlenty says that he hasn't seen details of the new rules yet, but that if the rules create burdensome regulation, financial planners might decide it's not worth working with people of modest means.

"We don't want to get to a point where the red tape and bureaucracy and cost freezes lower-income people from being able to take advantage of financial planning advice," he says.

But not all industry groups are so worried.

"There's a lot of overheated rhetoric," says Kevin Keller, the CEO of the Certified Financial Planner Board, a voluntary standards group that certifies financial planners.

He says he supports what the White House is trying to do. The new rules would create what's called a "fiduciary standard," which is a requirement to act in a clients' best interest.

Business

That Nest Egg Needs To Last As Long As You Do. So How Do You Start?

Some industry groups claim that the fiduciary standard will reduce the availability of financial advice for middle-class Americans, but Keller says that's not true. Still, everything depends on the actual language in the rules.

Kent Smetters, a Wharton School economist who served in the George W. Bush administration, says he supports the move by the White House. But he's also frustrated by existing regulations.

For example, he says, stock brokers already are held to a fiduciary standard, but have found loopholes, so brokers can still get commissions for steering people into bad investments with high fees.

"Literally, this is legal," Smetters says. "I could say to you, 'Chris, I have your best interests in mind, I think you should invest in this fund x, y, z.'

"That first half of the sentence, I really had your best interests in mind," he adds. "The second half of the sentence, I take off my fiduciary hat, and you don't know any better because after all you're going there for is advice. You don't have a clue. It's just screwing over middle-class households."

consumer protection

financial regulation

retirement

investing

The Obama administration is creating new protections for Americans saving and investing for retirement, but industry groups say the new rules could hurt the very people the president says he wants to help

Reining In Financial Advisers May Help — But Americans Still Aren't Saving

3 min 30 sec

Add to Playlist

Download

Obama Wants Rules That Force Brokers To Put Clients' Interests First

If you're building a retirement nest egg, big fees are the dangerous predators looking to feast on it. The White House says too many financial advisers get hidden kickbacks or sales incentives to steer responsible Americans toward bad retirement investments with low returns and high fees.

"If your business model rests on taking advantage of bilking hard-working Americans out of their retirement money, then you shouldn't be in business," Obama said Monday. "That's pretty straightforward."

The White House is directing the U.S. Department of Labor to craft new rules that require retirement advisers to put consumers' best interests ahead of their financial gain. But some industry groups are sounding the alarm.

"A sledgehammer is not needed where a regular hammer would fix the problem," the Financial Services Roundtable said in a statement.

Tim Pawlenty, the group's president and CEO, has another metaphor at the ready.

"There's always a few bad apples," says Pawlenty, the former Minnesota governor. "We would encourage focusing on bad apples and removing them, instead of tipping over and smashing the whole apple cart."

"We don't want to get to a point where the red tape and bureaucracy and cost freezes lower income people from being able to take advantage of financial planning advice."

- Tim Pawlenty, Financial Services Roundtable

Pawlenty says that he hasn't seen details of the new rules yet, but that if the rules create burdensome regulation, financial planners might decide it's not worth working with people of modest means.

"We don't want to get to a point where the red tape and bureaucracy and cost freezes lower-income people from being able to take advantage of financial planning advice," he says.

But not all industry groups are so worried.

"There's a lot of overheated rhetoric," says Kevin Keller, the CEO of the Certified Financial Planner Board, a voluntary standards group that certifies financial planners.

He says he supports what the White House is trying to do. The new rules would create what's called a "fiduciary standard," which is a requirement to act in a clients' best interest.

Business

That Nest Egg Needs To Last As Long As You Do. So How Do You Start?

Some industry groups claim that the fiduciary standard will reduce the availability of financial advice for middle-class Americans, but Keller says that's not true. Still, everything depends on the actual language in the rules.

Kent Smetters, a Wharton School economist who served in the George W. Bush administration, says he supports the move by the White House. But he's also frustrated by existing regulations.

For example, he says, stock brokers already are held to a fiduciary standard, but have found loopholes, so brokers can still get commissions for steering people into bad investments with high fees.

"Literally, this is legal," Smetters says. "I could say to you, 'Chris, I have your best interests in mind, I think you should invest in this fund x, y, z.'

"That first half of the sentence, I really had your best interests in mind," he adds. "The second half of the sentence, I take off my fiduciary hat, and you don't know any better because after all you're going there for is advice. You don't have a clue. It's just screwing over middle-class households."

consumer protection

financial regulation

retirement

investing

They hired a car and drove for ten hours over the most rutted dirt roads you can imagine, dodging motorbikes and pedestrians and overloaded cars all the way.

It was December. NPR producers John Poole and Sami Yenigun had come to see what happens to a village after Ebola has struck.

i

Twins Watta and Fatta Balyon pose for a picture outside their guardian Mamuedeh Kanneh's house. John W. Poole/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption John W. Poole/NPR

Twins Watta and Fatta Balyon pose for a picture outside their guardian Mamuedeh Kanneh's house.

John W. Poole/NPR

Barkedu is a beautiful place, green and forested. Tall hills start to rise near its border with Guinea. Cows and chickens roam around the village, which is built on the side of the Lofa River. A small stream runs through Barkedu, where people bath and wash their clothes.

The chief met Poole and Yenigun with a traditional gift – cola nuts, the kind used to give a caffeinated jolt to the original Coca-Cola, wrapped in a banana leaf.

The first Ebola case in Barkedu came in July. As the virus spread during the summer, the town was burying nearly a person a day. Some families were nearly wiped out. In all, 150 of the 6,000 villagers died.

But by December, Barkedu had been declared Ebola-free. NPR's team wanted to see how a village recovers after facing death every day. The chief, Moussa Kamara, said that despite the pastoral scene, things weren't back to normal.

"No! Life is not back to normal," he said emphatically. "It is not normal." If his neighbor lost family members and his neighbor is in mourning, "I'm not happy."

Poole and Yenigun talked to the villagers, took pictures, tried to capture the sights and sounds of a place struggling to find its balance after facing horrible tragedy.

ebola

Liberia

It's All Politics

Is A Ban On 'Ballot Selfies' Overkill?

From Pope Francis and President Obama to the kid down the block, we have, for better or worse, become a world full of selfie-takers.

But as ubiquitous as they are, there are some places where selfies remain controversial — like the voting booth. The legal battle rages over so-called "ballot selfies" in the state that holds the first presidential primary.

This may be a fight of the digital age, but according to New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner, it involves a very old American ideal — the sanctity of the secret ballot.

"If somebody wants to go out and say that they voted for this person or that person they can do it. They can do it, but that ballot is sacred," he says.

Gardner has been the state's top election official since 1976. To say he views ballot selfies with suspicion would be an understatement.

He backed a change in law last year that made New Hampshire the first state to ban them explicitly.

He says allowing people to show a marked ballot — actual proof how they voted — opens the door to voter coercion, or vote buying. He insists that anything that compromises privacy in the ballot booth is a step in a very, very dark direction.

"I have a copy of the last ballot that was used when Saddam Hussein was elected, and that ballot identified who the person was. Hitler did the same thing in Austria," Gardner says.

Brandon Ross, a libertarian-leaning patent lawyer, says, "I think if the secretary of state wants to bring up Hitler, I think they should just quit now. They lose. That's absurd."

Ross is one of three plaintiffs suing in federal court to strike down New Hampshire's ballot selfie ban. He says the state's law, which can fine people $1,000 for sharing an image of their ballot, goes way too far.

"It's like a picture you can a never show without breaking the law, it's just a banned photograph. That's wildly unconstitutional. It's a core part of our democratic process is being able to communicate who you vote for. This is 2015 now, people interact with social media constantly," he says.

Could any ballot selfie ban be enforceable?

"There is no way to do it comprehensively. Of course, there are many laws which are honored more in the breach than are actually enforced," says Jeff Hermes, an attorney with the Media Law Resource Center in New York. "Speeding laws are a great example of that."

New Hampshire's attorney general is investigating four voters for posting ballot selfies.

A report by the Digital Media Law Project found most states have some sort of prohibition against sharing marked ballots. Most have been on the books for years, and, as in New Hampshire, their aim was to fight corruption.

Gilles Bissonnette of the New Hampshire ACLU represents the people challenging New Hampshire's law. He says everybody should want clean elections, but banning selfies isn't the way to achieve them.

"The more tailored approach here would be to aggressively investigate and prosecute vote buying, and to aggressively investigate and prosecute vote bribery. But I think the question here is whether this law appropriately addresses those interests." Bissonnette says.

This case is scheduled for trial in federal court next month. In the meantime, bills to repeal the selfie prohibition are pending at the State House.

Action on either front could make the first state to impose a ballot selfie ban, the first state to get rid of one.

selfie

voting

New Hampshire

A major star who has absolutely nothing do to with movies is having his day in Los Angeles right now. It's the 19th century French painter douard Manet. Not exactly an Impressionist, Manet was revolutionary enough for the Impressionists to make him their hero.

Two L.A. museums are now featuring two major Manet works. Several museums in the area have Manets in their permanent collections. But these two — The Railway, on loan from Washington's National Gallery of Art , and Spring, which is worth about $65 million — are new in town, and getting the star treatment.

The Norton Simon Museum has The Railway on view for the first time on the West Coast. It's a large canvas — two figures — a young woman and a little girl, perhaps 6 or 7 — in front of the vertical wrought iron bars of a fence.

Curator Emily Beeny says critics ridiculed the picture in 1874; they said the work caricatured the woman and the girl as patients in a mental institution, animals in a zoo, or inmates in a prison.

As usual Manet, then 41, was being enigmatic. In The Railway there isn't a train in sight. You know it's there, though — from puffs of steam billowing behind those black bars at the Gare Saint-Lazare, the bustling new rail station near Manet's studio.

The child in his picture is fascinated by those white clouds of steam — with her back to us, you can see the soft baby fat along her upper arm and neck and a sweet white dress with a crisp blue taffeta sash, tied behind in a big bow — "Manet was very attentive to women's and girls' fashion," Beeny says.

"We can read whatever we want to into that look, and that's what made her such an amazing model and muse for Manet."

- Emily Beeny on Manet's model, Victorine Meurent

Sitting next to the child, facing us, with a book and a small dog in her lap, is a young woman in an up-to-the minute outfit. It's "a specific style of blue dress that was fashionable through the summer of 1872," Beeny explains.

Who is this nattily dressed lady? What is her relationship to the girl beside her? Sisters? Aunt and niece? Mother and child? Beeny suspects the older woman is a governess. She looks right at us with ... resignation? Annoyance? Boredom? "How long do I have to sit here while this kid stares at the steam!?"

"We can read whatever we want to into that look, and that's what made her such an amazing model and muse for Manet," Beeny says.

Years earlier, in her teens, Victorine Meurent posed for some of Manet's most revolutionary pictures. She was a prostitute, supine on a sofa, in Olympia. She picnicked with top-hatted men in The Luncheon on the Grass. No fine clothes for her then — in those paintings she was in the nude, and, as always, enigmatic. Beeny says that in practically every painting Manet made of Meurent, he paints her looking directly out at the viewer, with that indiscernible stare.

'The Perfect Encapsulation of Spring'

A different young woman is the star of the other painting now on view in L.A. — Manet's Spring, painted in 1881, for which the Getty paid $65 million. It's French actress Jeanne Demarsy, and this painting of her is "the perfect encapsulation of spring," says Timothy Potts, director of the Getty. "She is young and full of life and the sun is shining and the flowers are blooming. It says it all."

i

Spring, Manet's 1881 painting of actress Jeanne Demarsy, was recently sold to the Getty Museum for $65 million. Courtesy of J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles hide caption

itoggle caption Courtesy of J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Spring, Manet's 1881 painting of actress Jeanne Demarsy, was recently sold to the Getty Museum for $65 million.

Courtesy of J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Spring is light and bright — a young woman in profile, flowing cuffs on her flowered white dress, caramel colored gloves. Manet's brush flirts across the canvas, darting and dancing with color.

"It's painted at the very end of his life," Beeny explains, "in this sort of final reaching out to grab youth and beauty and all of the things that make life wonderful in the moment when he is in failing health. It's often difficult for him to paint, and so in the last years of his life he paints mostly beautiful girls and flowers."

It's a pretty picture — unusual for the artist. He'd been darker — saluting Diego Velzquez and Francisco Goya. Here, his only black is the ribbon tying his model's hat. Getty curator Scott Allan says Manet's use of the color was distinctive.

"The Impressionists famously sort of jettisoned black," Allan says. "Their shadows would be blue and purple. If you look at ... Renoirs there's no blacks to be seen. So it's one of Manet's signature elements."

Camille Pissarro once said Manet knew how to paint light with black. This late canvas shows off that knowledge — and it's priced accordingly. Spring recently brought in the highest amount for a Manet bought at auction.

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Two Manets, A Makeover And A Mystery

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Impressionists With Benefits? The Painting Partnership Of Degas And Cassatt

Monet in Normandy: The Making of Impressionism

Monet's Canvas Cathedrals: A Life Study Of Light

"It's a lot of money, I'm not denying that," says Potts. "It would be absolutely crazy if the price paid for this — the last great Manet in private hands — hadn't been a record, since nothing comparable has been on the market for nearly 100 years. This was the only chance. It was a hugely famous painting at its time and ever since, so there was never going to be a greater Manet than this on the market."

Loretta Lynch, President Obama's nominee for attorney general, cleared a major hurdle today to succeed Eric Holder as the country's top law enforcement officer. The Senate Judiciary Committee voted 12-8 to send the nomination to the full chamber, which is expected to confirm her nomination.

Three Republicans joined the panel's Democrats to vote "yes." Those opposed to her nomination cited President Obama's executive actions on immigration.

"We should not confirm someone to that position who intends to continue that unlawful policy," said Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala.

Sessions' fellow Republican on the panel, Orrin Hatch of Utah, who voted "yes," defended Lynch.

"The case against her nomination, as far as I can tell, essentially ignores her professional career and focuses solely on about six hours that she spent before this committee," he said.

At her confirmation hearings last month before the panel, Lynch said she believed Obama's executive actions on immigration were legal and constitutional.

NPR's Carrie Johnson tells our Newscast unit that the veteran prosecutor "waited more than 100 days and answered 897 written questions in her bid to become the country's top law enforcement officer.

"Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee praised Lynch for her poise and her background on fighting terrorism and protecting civil rights," Carrie said. "But many Republicans criticized her support for the White House action on immigration worried she would not be independent from the president."

Lynch, 55, is the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York.

Carrrie, who has been reporting on Lynch, profiled her last month. She said:

"Lynch is the lead federal prosecutor in a district that serves 8 million people. But outside of law enforcement circles, this daughter of a preacher is not widely known. Friends say that's because Lynch prefers to let her cases speak for themselves."

If confirmed by the full Senate, Lynch will be the first black woman to be attorney general.

loretta lynch

Attorney General

This week, a man was sentenced to die in Saudi Arabia because he renounced his faith in Islam; a Hindu leader in India made a new accusation against Mother Teresa; a mosque near Bethlehem in Israel was set on fire.

It's hardly news that religious differences lead to conflict, nor is it surprising that governments try to restrict religious practice or favor some religions over others. But a report from the Pew Research Center released Thursday shows the pervasiveness of religious intolerance around the world in 2013 — and finds that the targeting of Jews, in particular, has worsened over the past seven years.

About a quarter of all countries are dealing with high levels of religious hostilities within their borders, according to the annual report, and those countries are home to 3 out of 4 people on the planet.

China, India, Pakistan, Indonesia and Russia — all with big populations — are among the countries where the government either highly restricts religious practice or where there is a high degree of social harassment, including discrimination, vandalism against religious property and attacks on minorities.

The Pew report, which is based on data and reports from 2013, finds that Muslims and Christians face comparable levels of hostility, though Christians are harassed more often by governments, Muslims more often by individuals.

One group faces increased hostility: Jews. Each year since 2007, when Pew began these surveys, the targeting of Jews around the world has gotten worse.

European Jews, in particular, encounter intolerance, says Peter Henne, the lead Pew researcher on the report.

"There's a pretty marked harassment of Jews in Europe," he says. "They're harassed in 76 percent of countries in Europe, which is higher than the number of countries in which they're harassed in other regions."

The United States does not get off the hook. The Pew report ranks the U.S. as having a "moderate" level of religious harassment, on par with such countries as France, Slovakia and Mongolia.

"In terms of what we see in the United States, there are some issues with land use, churches or mosques trying to build or expand their site and being blocked by local governments," Henne says. "There are some tensions in prisons — limits on prisoners' ability to convert or to use things like tobacco in religious ceremonies."

Overall, the level of religious harassment in 2013 is about the same as it was the year before, according to Pew. But with only seven years of data, it's hard to see any historical trend.

religion

Pew Research Center

Utopia of Rules, then, sets about convincing readers that the world is quite different from how they normally see it, and that there's an urgent need for change. If the first venture sounds academic and the second suffused with radical politics, you're getting a sense of the book: Graeber, the author of Debt: The First 5000 Years, is an anthropologist at the London School of Economics. And while Utopia of Rules stays accessible to the general public, it's still a book where Baudrillard and bell hooks make appearances; a book that discusses things like "the very grounds of political being" and the need for "general theory of interpretative labor."

Graeber is also an anarchist and one of the leading forces behind Occupy Wall Street (he's been credited with coining the phrase "we are the 99%"). That ideological stance underlies Utopia of Rules's political project: To wake the left from its slumber and remind it of its anti-bureaucratic origins, and to explore how (or if) people can upend governments without erecting more labyrinthine structures in their place.

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That project is itself serpentine. Graeber takes us on tours through the history of philosophy, meditations on etymology and linguistics, and digressions into topics like fantasy novels and science fiction films, all of which are extended enough to make you wonder whether he's packed enough bread crumbs to get us back to the trail.

Full credit to Graeber, though: When he eventually gets to a point, it's almost always insightful, thought-provoking, and, as befits the roundabout way he got there, unexpected. The section on science fiction eventually gives way to Graeber's denunciation of an academic and scientific environment mired in bureaucracy — he quotes a physicist who notes mournfully that "original ideas are the kiss of death for a proposal; because they have not yet been proved to work." That, Graeber writes, "pretty much answers the question of why we don't have teleportation devices or anti-gravity shoes."

It's not entirely clear to me how serious Graber intends to be with that conclusion, but the compelling general idea behind it is part of what keeps Utopia of Rules engaging. The book makes a great companion to Cubed, Nikil Saval's recent look at the evolution of offices, which tracked what Graeber describes as the "tension of the free play of human creativity against the rules it is constantly generating" through its expression in office design and management practices.

Utopia of Rules focuses more on the political implications and, of course, Graeber's own political prescriptions. But agreeing with those prescriptions is by no means a requirement for entry. On the contrary, Graeber wants us to unshackle ourselves from the limits imposed by bureaucracy, precisely so we can actually get down to openly and creatively arguing about our collective future. In other words, yelling at the book is not just part of the pleasure of reading it. It's part of the point.

Tomas Hachard is an assistant editor at Guernica Magazine and a film and book critic for NPR and The LA Review of Books.

Read an excerpt of The Utopia of Rules

After a decade of debate, the federal government is poised to change how it regulates Internet access, to make it more like telephone service and other public utilities.

The Federal Communications Commission is set to vote Thursday on broad new rules to enforce the principle of net neutrality — the idea that Internet providers should treat all traffic on their networks equally.

For the first time, the rules would apply fully to wireless broadband as well — and some big wireless companies are pushing back.

Net neutrality advocates argue that there's only one Internet, so the same set of rules should apply whether you're getting online at home, on your phone or any other mobile device you want.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler agrees. Earlier this month, he told NPR that "it is very important that these rules cover wireless, if for no other reason than 55 percent of Internet traffic today goes over wireless devices. And that's only going to go up."

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The FCC is taking a very different approach from the last time it tried to enforce net neutrality, back in 2010. Those rules — later overturned in court — would have allowed wireless carriers to discriminate against websites or applications in order to prevent congestion on their networks.

Brent Skorup, a research fellow in technology policy at George Mason University's Mercatus Center, says that's "a recognition that wireless is different" from the wires that carry data into homes and businesses.

He says wireless bandwidth is scarce — and wireless companies have to make sure that no one is hogging that bandwidth. Skorup say the new rules would force those companies to prove to the FCC that their management practices are "reasonable."

"It puts them through this gauntlet of approval, whereas previously, a wireless carrier could just put out a new service," Skorup says. "And now it'll be, 'Does this comply with these half-dozen principles?' or whatever the rules say."

Big wireless companies agree the new rules would make it harder to manage congestion on their networks. But not all wireless carriers are on the same page here. Sprint and T-Mobile have publicly said they're not opposed to the new rules. And public interest groups say that's proof that wireless is really not so different from the rest of the Internet.

"If there are indeed reasons that wireless needs to be treated differently, then they can make the case for that," says Craig Aaron, president of the D.C.-based nonprofit Free Press. "But in most cases, it shouldn't be up to your Internet service provider to pick and choose for you which websites are going to work, which apps are going to work."

But there's something net neutrality advocates dislike about the proposed rules, too — and it's related to what policy wonks call "zero-rating." Basically, that means your wireless provider promises not to count one app or group of apps against your monthly data cap.

T-Mobile's "Music Freedom" plan, which lets subscribers stream all the music they want without data charges, is one example. That may sound like a good deal for consumers — who doesn't like free data? But critics say there's a problem.

"I think zero-rating is the next big threat to innovation and free speech online," says Barbara van Schewick, a professor at Stanford Law School. She says the problem with some zero-rating plans is that they create an un-level playing field — where wireless companies can favor their own video services, for example, or strike business deals that favor other big companies.

"That distorts competition, interferes with user choice," she says. "And that's exactly what network neutrality is designed to protect."

Van Schewick wants the FCC to take a hard line and ban some forms of zero-rating. But FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai says the commission shouldn't take a stand on zero-rating at all. He says consumers should get to choose any kind of wireless plans they want.

"My bottom line: If you like your current service plan, you should be able to keep your current service plan," Pai says. "The FCC shouldn't take it away from you."

That's not what the commission plans to do. FCC officials say they'll decide what kind of zero-rating is allowed on a case-by-case basis. This may sound like a bureaucratic detail, but it's a big deal for wireless companies. In court filings, Verizon said it's one reason why the company sued to block the FCC's last set of net neutrality rules.

It's a good bet the wireless industry will be taking the commission to court over its new rules, as well. Last month, the president of the industry trade group told Congress that wireless providers "will have no choice but to look to the courts" if the FCC moves ahead with its proposed rules.

internet traffic

Silicon Valley

Regulation

Net neutrality

FCC

Internet

Police in Toronto are asking for the public's help to solve the riddle of a mysterious tunnel discovered more than a month ago. Investigations have so far been unable to determine who built the tunnel or its purpose, but its discovery has fueled security concerns ahead of the Pan American and Parapan Am Games in Canada this summer.

During a news conference Tuesday, Toronto Deputy Police Chief Mark Saunders said the hand-dug tunnel is about 33 feet long and contained a gas-powered generator, moisture-resistant light bulbs, and food and beverage containers.

Saunders said the tunnel appeared to be well-constructed and that there were still tools inside, along with a wheelbarrow and a pulley system, when it was found. Police also found a rosary and a Remembrance Day poppy nailed to a wall.

But Saunders said the tunnel doesn't appear to go anywhere. There are questions about whether it was just unfinished or was it meant to be a single chamber.

There's also speculation about why it was built in the first place — was it for criminal purposes, such as drug smuggling or terrorism? Saunders told the news conference that it wasn't against the law to dig a hole.

According to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, it was a conservation officer who first discovered the tunnel. He noticed a large mound of dirt in a wooded area by tennis courts at York University, which is one venue for the games, on the north side of Toronto. He found that a piece of wood was covering a hole, and there was a ladder leading down into a chamber. The conservationist called the police.

Police have been investigating for more than a month but haven't come up with any answers. So on Tuesday they appealed to the public for help. According to the Toronto Sun, that's also when local leaders also found about the tunnel. The newspaper says neither Toronto's mayor, John Tory, nor Ontario's Public Safety Minister, Yasir Naqvi, knew about the mysterious tunnel until the police announced it.

Naqvi says he does not believe the tunnel represents a security threat to the games in July and August, but that he will be receiving updates from the police going forward.

Canada

security

His opposite in every way is the book's other focus: Delilah Bard, an amoral Grey London pickpocket scrabbling to survive in poverty, but with all the freedom she wants, and a few more emotional connections than she'd like. Lila and Kell don't even meet until more than a quarter of the way through the book.

Up to that point, Schwab isn't just world-building, she's four-worlds-at-once building. In particular, she has to establish her peculiar and subtle rules of magic, equal parts manipulation of blood, will, and subtler factors like respect. (At one point, Kell accomplishes a difficult magical task essentially by begging the stones of a wall to cooperate.) But more significantly, she spends time with Kell, Lila, Holland, and their separate worlds, in no particular rush to tie them all together.

Her characters make the book. Just as Kell has layers, Lila is a satisfyingly rich invention: Single-minded, selfish, often unsympathetic, Lila would rather be a swashbucking pirate queen than a hero's arm-candy. Kell and Lila are as much rivals as allies, and when a dangerous smuggled artifact threatens all the remaining Londons, she's refreshingly interested in stealing it rather than destroying it. The plot comes late, but it comes naturally and easily, born out of the tensions between Holland's compulsions, Kell's reluctant sense of duty, and Lila's ambition.

Schwab also wrote the 2013 superhero deconstruction novel Vicious, and she writes young-adult and mid-grade fiction as Victoria Schwab. A Darker Shade Of Magic reads with the ease of a young-adult novel, with short paragraphs, quick-moving prose, and plenty of action. But it's grimmer even than the current bout of post-Hunger Games YA. Likeable characters die, badly. Torture, for pleasure or gain, happens frequently. The villains are monstrous, and the stakes are high, threatening all the worlds. But the stakes feel higher because Schwab takes the time to make a world worth getting lost in. Darker Shade Of Magic resolves its plot thoroughly, but still feels like it could be the seed of a lengthy series. With so many worlds on the map, there's plenty left to discover.

Tasha Robinson is a senior editor at The Dissolve.

Read an excerpt of A Darker Shade of Magic

The Los Angeles area is another step closer to hosting an NFL team, after the Inglewood, Calif., city council approved a proposal for an 80,000-seat NFL stadium. The development plan includes St. Louis Rams owner Stan Kroenke.

The unanimous vote Tuesday night came after "a consultant compared stadium noise in surrounding neighborhoods to that of bird calls," member station KPCC's Ben Bergman reports.

The Inglewood deal doesn't have a team attached — but it's widely believed that Kroenke wants to move the Rams out of St. Louis, where he's been locked in a dispute over revamping the team's current stadium, the Edward Jones Dome.

These are busy times for stadium-planners in and around Los Angeles. Last Friday, the San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders announced they might share a new stadium in Carson, just south of Los Angeles. Both of those teams are also negotiating for new stadiums in their host cities.

The proposals are expensive: the Inglewood proposal would cost around $2 billion, and the Carson plan would cost $1.7 billion.

Both the Raiders-Chargers proposal and the one backed by Kroenke could bring the NFL back to the L.A. area soon after the 2015 season — a proposition that has put local governments on high alert.

"Like Peyton Manning running the hurry-up offense, both Carson and Inglewood have been trying to move as fast as possible to get stadiums built," Ben reports from KPCC.

He adds, 'Hundreds of fans packed the city council meeting, many decked out in jerseys and even horned hats bearing the Rams logo, the football team that left L.A. two decades ago."

Before any NFL team moves to the Los Angeles area, at least three-quarters of the league's team owners would have to approve the deal.

"I'd say the chances of there being a team playing in L.A. in 2016 is less than 50-50," sports economist Victor Matheson recently told Morning Edition.

Noting that the NFL's revenue-sharing arrangement spreads profits around regardless of market size, Matheson noted that the Rams, Raiders, and Chargers simply want new stadiums — in whatever city they can get them financed and built.

Los Angeles

NFL

For years in the military courtroom at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, there's been a subject no one could talk about: torture.

Now that's changed.

This latest chapter began when the military commission at Guantanamo held a hearing earlier this month in the case of five men accused of plotting the Sept. 11 attacks — a case that's been stuck for nearly three years in pre-trial wrangling.

It was the first time the court had met since a summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on the CIA's interrogation and detention of suspected terrorists was made public late last year.

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What many call "the torture report" is no longer a government secret, so lawyers for the defendants can now talk in court about what was done to their clients.

The change was readily apparent to observers who've followed this capital case.

The Two-Way

4 Guantanamo Detainees Transferred To Oman, 1 To Estonia

Year after year in the Guantanamo courtroom, defendant Mustafa al-Hawsawi had always sat on a chair with an extra seat cushion. Reporters and others sitting a few feet away in the gallery wondered why the extra cushion.

The answer came when al-Hawsawi's lawyer rose to inform the military judge that his client suffers from chronic bleeding. Defense attorney Walter Ruiz, who's a commander in the Navy Reserve, said his client had been held by the CIA and subjected to what he called "sodomy."

"In particular, I was referring to the Senate Intelligence report which recounts the practice of excessive force in rectal examination," Ruiz said later, outside the court. "That recounts the fact that there was no medical necessity noted for some of these procedures."

That information can be found on page 100 of the Senate report, and Ruiz says it has allowed him to talk for the first time about previously classified events in open court.

"I couldn't have told you that before the Senate Intelligence report was released," Ruiz says in an interview. "There are other matters that I can't tell you as we sit, that I am aware of, but they haven't been publicly released and declassified."

Report Lends Credence To Defense

But there are now many matters that Ruiz and other defense lawyers can discuss in court, thanks to the Senate report's release. By all accounts, that's made a big difference. James Harrington, an attorney who represents alleged Sept. 11 plotter Ramzi bin al-Shibh, says the report lends credence the defense team.

"It gives much more authority to the arguments that we're making, it's just not us making up things to try and convince somebody of something," says Harrington. "Now we have an independent source, and obviously a very high source that verifies the things that we would want to say."

In this photo of a sketch by court artist Janet Hamlin, (top to bottom) Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Walid bin Attash, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Ammar al-Baluchi, and Mustafa al-Hawsawi attend a hearing at the U.S. Military Commissions court for war crimes at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in Jan. 2009. Janet Hamlin/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Janet Hamlin/AP

One of the things Harrington and the other seasoned death penalty lawyers in the Guantanamo war court most want to say — and that's backed up by the Senate report — is that their clients were brutally interrogated, contrary to American law, while being held by the CIA.

The aim is to keep them from being executed.

"As their lawyers, we're required by the U.S. Supreme Court to offer everything, anything that would make an argument for a lesser sentence — for a life sentence, in other words," says David Nevin, lead attorney for accused Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times while in CIA custody, according to the Senate report.

"And the details of what happened to them is crucial evidence in that respect," Nevin adds. "It's mitigation."

Much Remains Classified

Still, not everything in what the Senate Intelligence Committee released is public. Parts of the executive summary were blacked out by the CIA and remain classified. The names of countries where the CIA operated secret prisons known as "black sites" are all suppressed. Instead, those places have been given the names of colors: blue, violet and cobalt.

James Connell, a lawyer for Sept. 11 defendant Ammar al-Baluchi, says that's frustrating "because it discusses the use of enhanced interrogation techniques against Mr. al-Baluchi, but it doesn't tell us what they were, or where they occurred."

The task of making more of the Senate report available for the defense rests largely in the hands of Army Brig. Gen. Mark Martins, chief prosecutor of the military commissions. And to the surprise of some, Martins considers the release of the Senate report a positive development.

"It is in accordance with things we have sought," says Martins. "I believe, as things will pan out, that it will unlock aspects of discovery and of the observability of the proceedings by the public."

So far, though, the public has not been able to observe much. Many motions filed by the defense remain classified. Defense lawyers say the entire 6,000-plus-page report prepared by the Senate should also be released.

Martins insists he, too, wants the full report. But he also warns there will be no blank check to mine secret government data. And as in most U.S. courts, in Guantanamo, the prosecution gets to screen the evidence.

"So the prosecution is going to decide what in that report is helpful to us. and then give it to us," says defense attorney Ruiz. "We'll be litigating in the dark."

Ruiz does not hold much hope the full Senate report will be declassified, since the Senate Intelligence Committee is now controlled by Republicans who've opposed the CIA probe from the start.

Still, the report's summary alone already has opened a new conversation in Guantanamo's war court.

Advocates for women arrested on prostitution charges want the justice system to adopt a different approach. They say instead of being locked up, many prostitutes should actually be considered victims of human trafficking. And they're starting to offer those women a way to clean up the criminal records left behind.

One of them lives in a dark apartment not far from Dallas. Inside, a 24-year-old woman pushes up her sleeve to show off a tattoo of a lotus flower. The deep purple ink covers up an older mark.

"If you look closely, you can still see the diamonds," says the woman, whom NPR is not identifying. "So it said M and a P because that's what his name was, and it had a chain of diamonds around it."

M.P. was her pimp. That earlier tattoo: a brand, to show the world she belonged to him. She has another mark on her back, from a different pimp.

"Once they put their name on me, I was their property," she adds.

The woman says she spent her teenage years forced into prostitution. It was brutal.

"My skull has been cracked, all of my ribs, front, have been broken. Black eyes, you know, regular getting beat up," she says.

Those injuries have healed. But she was a convicted prostitute. And that criminal record was harder to get rid of.

"You know, it's not ever going to be forgotten," she says. "I'm not ever going to forget what I've done and what I've gone through. But, at the same time, I don't want it thrown in my face every time I'm trying to seek employment. I don't want to have to explain myself every time."

Recently, with the help of volunteer lawyers and a little-known law, the woman with the flower tattoo convinced a Maryland judge to help, to wipe away her conviction on prostitution charges.

It's a process known as vacatur. And it's now an option in 20 states for people who can persuade a judge that someone forced or coerced them into selling their bodies.

Jessica Emerson is a lawyer who helped the 24-year-old clear her record.

"This is justice," Emerson says. "It's finally giving these individuals their lives back."

Emerson is leading the way in Maryland, where the vacatur law has been on the books for years but, she says, used just twice.

"If you are not addressing their criminal record, you are sending them back out into the world with a bulls eye on their back," Emerson says. "Because the second they go and try to get a job, the second they try to apply for safe housing, they're going to have a roadblock."

And the pimps use that to their advantage, says Bradley Myles. He leads the Polaris Project, a nonprofit that fights human trafficking.

"Traffickers use the criminalization of a victim as another way to gain power over that victim and remind them of the hopelessness of their road back," Myles says.

Back in Texas, the young woman with the lotus tattoo explains how it all began. She says she was raped by a stranger when she was just 11 years old. For the next two years, she acted out: running away and fighting with her parents. Then one day, she was walking to a friend's house, and a man in a Mercedes waved her over to his car.

"If you are not addressing their criminal record, you are sending them back out into the world with a bulls eye on their back."

- Lawyer Jessica Emerson

"He took me to get my nails done, he took me shopping, I got my hair done, and we partied," she recalls. "And he gave me a pill which was Ecstasy. And then he started giving me more pills, then forcing the pills on me, and told me that I wasn't going to be going home."

Eventually, the girl and her pimp were arrested. But police told her mom she might never get back on track.

"I just kept running away and every time I ran away I'd end up in another pimp's arms," the woman with the tattoo says.

Then, four years ago, a police detective arrived at her hotel room near Baltimore, Md., part of a sting operation targeting pimps and prostitutes working near the airport. It wasn't her first arrest. But it was, she says, the first time a police officer treated her like a person.

"He told me that he saw something in my eyes and started asking me about my life," she says, "and I started telling him."

That man is Detective Dan Dickey in Anne Arundel County, Md. He's a member of a federal task force that finds and prosecutes sex trafficking.

"We actually came across this case by just doing surveillance on a local hotel," Dickey says.

After the arrest, he recalls, "I went and visited her, had a conversation with her, and then actually called [a person at] one of our nonprofits that we work with and told her, 'this girl's in jail, she's willing to hear what you have to say.'"

Someone from that local group talked with the young woman. They gave her a place to stay after she got out of jail and connected her with the help she needed to get away from her pimp for good.

Eventually she moved back to Texas, to be near her family. She had a baby boy last year. Now she's trying to get back into school.

"I want to provide my son with a good life," she says. "It might not be the most extravagant. I don't want to be rich. I just want to live a better life than I have lived."

Taking prostitution charges off her permanent record was a big step in that direction.

You might even be able to tell the temperature of the water just by listening to how it pours. Humans are surprisingly good at this: Marketers at the company Condiment Junkie tested people to see whether they could tell the difference between the pour of a hot drink and a cold one. Amazingly, 96 percent of people could correctly discern the difference.

Add Milk (Or Don't)

Adding milk to tea can lessen the effect of tannins. Milk's many proteins fold themselves around the tannins, sequestering them and destroying the bitter taste.

The Salt

Health Benefits Of Tea: Milking It Or Not

But there's a well-documented debate about the benefits of adding milk to the cup before or after the tea has been poured. Andrew Stapey, a chemical engineer at Loughborough University in Leicestershire, England, argues that milk should always be added beforehand. That way, the milk heats evenly. He says pouring in the milk after the tea causes the proteins in the milk to unfold unevenly, contributing to the skin you get on the top of the brew.

However, Miodownik says he's tried to replicate this effect, but no informal taste tester has ever been able to perceive a difference.

Enjoy

So while the barista at your local shop may roll her eyes at the fussiness of your tea order, a perfect sip comes from careful chemistry. Just don't be surprised if you end up having to make it yourself.

i

Meredith Rizzo/NPR

Meredith Rizzo/NPR

Tea Tuesdays is an occasional series exploring the science, history, culture and economics of this ancient brewed beverage. This is the first story in the series.

Tea Tuesdays

food chemistry

food science

milk

Tea bag

European finance ministers have approved Greece's proposed economic reforms and agreed to extend financial assistance to the country by four months.

In a statement, the Eurogroup said it would begin "national procedures" – including parliamentary votes in some member states – to give the deal a final approval.

"We call on the Greek authorities to further develop and broaden the list of reform measures, based on the current arrangement, in close coordination with the institutions in order to allow for a speedy and successful conclusion of the review," the statement said.

Reporter Teri Schultz tells our Newscast unit the Greek plan would keep Athens' budget under control, as required by international creditors, while spending more on social programs, as desired by Greek voters. Teri says Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis pledged to improve tax collection and to fight fraud, and promised that expenditures on the country's "humanitarian crisis" will not harm Greece's bottom line. You can read a full list of Greece's proposals here.

Pierre Moscovici, the European Commissioner for Economic Affairs, said the deal had "averted an immediate crisis." But, he added, "It does not mean we approve those reforms, it means the approach is serious enough for further discussion."

Greece was badly hurt by the global recession and needed an international bailout to stay afloat. But many of the conditions, including austerity, imposed by its creditors — the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund – were deeply unpopular in Greece, and resulted last month in the election of the far-left Syriza Party, which was elected on strong anti-austerity rhetoric. That led to speculation that Greece could stop using the euro as its currency.

Jeroen Dijsselbloom, the head of the Eurogroup, said today's developments should end that speculation.

"It's simply not on the table," he said. "My target is to maintain the eurozone intact, resilient to work together and to stick together."

Mario Draghi, the head of the European Central Bank, said Greece's proposals were a "valid starting point" for discussions. But IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde was more skeptical in a letter to Dijsselbloom.

"In quite a few areas ... including perhaps the most important ones, the letter is not conveying clear assurances that the Government intends to undertake the reforms envisaged in the Memorandum on Economic and Financial Policies," she said.

eurozone

Europe

Greece

In a claim that's meeting with skepticism in Kiev, Russian-backed separatists say they've started to withdraw heavy weapons in eastern Ukraine, as required by a recent cease-fire. Ukraine's military says separatist attacks are ongoing.

The development comes after Russia's President Vladimir Putin said he thinks a war with Ukraine would be "apocalyptic" — but that the area is now on a path to stability, after the recent Minsk agreement.

"I believe such (an) apocalyptic scenario is unlikely, and hope that it will never get to that point," Putin said, according to CNN.

From Moscow, NPR's Corey Flintoff reports:

"A separatist military spokesman told reporters that heavy weapons would be pulled back about 30 miles from the front line. If it's true, the move could be a step toward implementing a cease fire agreement that was supposed to take effect nearly ten days ago.

"The Ukrainian military says separatist and Russian forces continue to attack government positions, especially near the southern port city of Mariupol. The Ukrainian side said Monday that it would not withdraw weapons until the separatists and Russians stopped shooting.

"The separatists deny that they are violating the cease fire.

"International monitors say they have not been able to monitor the truce in critical areas."

Ukraine

Russia

Despite Benjamin Disraeli's historical prominence, Mary Anne steals the spotlight in this marital biography. Flirtatious and flashy, a lover of diamonds, lace, and gossip, Mary Anne was born even lower down the 19th-century pecking order than Disraeli. Her father was a mere sailor, and so Mary Anne first got a leg up the old-fashioned way — through an early marriage to a staid older man whose most appealing feature was that he owned an ironworks. She first forged her skills as a political spouse with this husband, who ran for a seat in Parliament. When he won, Mary Anne threw a Liberace-worthy dinner party at their home in London: On the dining table, Hay tells us, "she contrived a show-stopping table decoration: a windmill, complete with turning sails, perched above a stream in which swam gold and silver fish."

After husband No. 1 died, leaving Mary Anne a 47-year-old wealthy widow, she married Disraeli, then a debt-ridden dandy of 35. Among other rumors swirling about him in London society, it was said that Disraeli indulged in the pleasures of "Eastern love" (that is, homosexuality) with, among others, fellow novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton, the man who gave us literature's most melodramatic opening line: "It was a dark and stormy night." But what may have started out as a marriage of convenience for Disraeli soon morphed into romance, as evidenced by some excruciating, dopey love poems. In one, a besotted Disraeli wrote to Mary Anne that he wished he "were the flea / That is biting your knee."

Critics' Lists: Summer 2010

Summer Titles That Will Take You Back In Time

Hay makes the intriguing point that Disraeli was "among the first generation of politicians who needed to appeal to a middle-class electorate," and so he understood the attraction of "selling" the inside story of his unlikely-but-happy marriage to voters. If so, we have Disraeli to thank for the subsequent century and a half of campaign-trail narratives about normative wedded bliss, cute complaints about snoring and stinkiness in the bedroom, and non-stop Brady Bunch family ecstasy. Ironically, the vivacious Mary Anne would probably be considered too much of a loose canon today: She loved to bedeck herself in bling, making her a favorite with the crowds, though the aristocracy, including Queen Victoria, thought her "vulgar." The other big takeaway from Hay's rich dual biography is less amusing: Victorian wives, no matter how seemingly secure their positions, were at the mercy of their husbands. The aforementioned Bulwer-Lytton arranged to have his troublesome wife abducted and committed to a madhouse, and Disraeli secretly made use of Mary Anne's money and property as collateral on his debts. No wonder when a rude acquaintance asked Disraeli what kept him with his much older wife, Disraeli reportedly replied, "Gratitude."

I feel very lucky to be Ojibwe. We're a very large tribe. We're scattered all over the United States — all the way from Michigan to North Dakota and all points in between and from as far south as almost Chicago to as far north as Hudson Bay. I mean, I think the land area that comprises Ojibwe country is probably the largest cultural area, native cultural area, in North America. ...

It's great being a part of a big tribe like that. There's so much diversity in our tribe. People who grow up in these remote, fly-in reserves in Northern Ontario, reachable only by float plane, to people who grew up in Mille Lacs Reservation in Minnesota an hour-and-a-half from Minneapolis going to Vikings games. We have lawyers and trappers and homemakers, I mean, there's so much diversity just in my tribe. I revel in that — I love that.

On his grandfather's suicide

I returned to my family's village on the day that my grandfather committed suicide. He was an 83-year-old veteran of World War II and he endured and survived so much and it came as such a shock that he would kill himself, that he would shoot himself in the head — so painful. What I don't talk about in the book [Rez Life] is that in the last decade or so of his life he and I had become very, very close. This was an unexpected blooming of our relationship; I had never thought that would happen while I was growing up. It wouldn't have seemed possible. When I lost him, it was incredibly painful. My grandmother asked me to eulogize him at his funeral and that was easy to agree to, but she also asked me to go up to his house, and to his bedroom and clean it up, clean up the mess he had made when he shot himself. I agreed to do that, too. That proved both liberating and difficult in ways I couldn't have imagined. Nothing prepared me in life, really, to clean up my grandfather's blood and his brain. I don't know how else to put it.

On not letting his grandfather's suicide define his life

I had to think really hard about what his life meant. I was challenged. Cleaning up after his suicide pushed me in ways I didn't expect. It would've been so easy that in the midst of that chore to just see my grandfather's life as this tragic thing, this pitiful tragic thing. And cleaning up his room and removing his furniture and his clothes and ripping out the carpet — it was as though I was digging for something else. I was trying to dig past his death; I was trying to dig past the tragedy of his death and trying to find something else. And I found something else down there — and what I found was I was able to reject the version of his life that told it as a tragedy. I rejected the temptation to define his life by the split-second it took for that bullet to travel through his head, to put it very literally. I found it possible to remember that he had lived 83 years in the only place that mattered to him, surrounded by the only people that mattered to him. ... When I really tried, I could see that his life was a life of surplus and beauty and bounty. I don't think that I would've gotten there if I had not been face to face with his end.

On his mother teaching him about Ojibwe culture

She took us to ceremonies, which was not something that a lot of parents at that time were doing. But she took us whether we wanted to go or not, so we were around traditional people, so [we] were comfortable around traditional people. ... She also made us do all sorts of stuff which I loathed. ... She made us go ricing — harvesting wild rice in canoes. I hated it. It was itchy and hot and there were rice worms, which bit you, and spiders, and I just wanted to be playing Army with my friends, or whatever. ...

Book Reviews

A Few Wise Moves Lift 'Prudence' From Melodrama To Something More

Then in the fall, we'd go hunting. I didn't care much about hunting. ... I said, "This is boring. I'm sitting in a swamp, watching more swamp. I don't want to do this; I don't want to be here."

In the spring, we'd tap maple trees and boil the sap down and make maple syrup and maple sugar. I couldn't stand it, the smell gave me headaches. She made us do this all the time.

I teased her about it later. I must've been in college, I said, "Oh Mom, you used to make us do all this stuff and it used to annoy me so much." She said, "Well, I always felt that you should grow up and be and do anything you want to do, any place in the world. But [when] push comes to shove, if you came back here, you could live off the land and you would know how our people have done it for centuries. You will have it. ... That's my gift to you as a parent."

Read an excerpt of Prudence

U.S. and Iranian negotiators huddled in a venerable lakefront luxury hotel in Geneva on Monday, trying to close the gaps in their positions on what the future of Iran's nuclear program should be and when sanctions against Iran might be lifted.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Iran's foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, led their respective delegations — which featured new faces, in the latest sign that the talks are advancing.

The Iranian contingent featured far fewer reporters and added delegates such as Hossein Fereydoon, a key adviser to President Hassan Rouhani (and Rouhani's brother) and Atomic Energy Organization chief Ali Akhbar Salehi. The U.S. added Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz.

The two sides are trying to achieve a framework agreement by next month, and have given themselves until the end of June to flesh out that framework into a comprehensive deal.

Broadly speaking, the U.S. and its five negotiating partners — Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China — are pressing Tehran to shrink its ability to produce nuclear fuel by enriching uranium, and to dispose of much of the fuel it does produce in order to ease international fears that Iran could covertly refine the fuel to weapons-grade level.

For its part, Iran is demanding an early and permanent lifting of the key sanctions strangling its economy, rather than temporary suspensions or phased-in sanctions relief targeted to Iranian nuclear concessions.

Critics of this nuclear diplomacy are stepping up their attacks. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his cabinet Sunday that "it's astonishing that even after the recent IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] report determined that Iran is continuing to hide the military components of its nuclear program, the nuclear talks ... are proceeding."

Iranian leader Rouhani said Monday that Netanyahu's claims are "sheer lies," according to the Islamic Republic News Agency.

In fact, the IAEA's latest report does not conclude that Iran is hiding military components of its program, as Netanyahu alleged. The agency does say it has longstanding questions about past research and other activities that Iran has yet to explain.

Rouhani's "sheer lies" response, however, side-stepped Netanyahu's claim about military aspects and focused instead on Iran's homegrown uranium enrichment program, which grew by leaps and bounds after nuclear talks collapsed a decade ago.

Criticism of the nuclear talks is expected to ratchet up when Netanyahu travels to Washington to address Congress on March 3 despite the White House's objections. The Israeli leader has made plain his intention to blast any deal with Iran.

Congressional Democrats have said they won't vote on any new Iran legislation before March 24. If negotiators can hammer out a framework agreement laying out the major points of a final deal before then, the White House might be able to persuade Congress not to pass legislation that might jeopardize the talks while there's still a chance of success.

In any event, all negotiating teams say there's no interest in extending the talks past July 1. However, it's worth noting that similar claims were made as previous deadlines approached.

iran nuclear talks

Hassan Rouhani

Secretary of State John Kerry

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Iran

Noting deadly attacks by Russian-backed separatists who have renewed a push near the southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine says it can't withdraw heavy weapons from the front lines, as required by a week-old cease-fire.

"Ukraine's military says two government soldiers were killed and about 10 wounded in the past 24 hours," NPR's Corey Flintoff reports from Moscow. "A government spokesman say its positions were hit by shelling 27 times in the past day. Meanwhile, of course, the separatists are claiming that the government initiates the attacks."

The observance of the cease-fire that took effect in Ukraine last Sunday remains a subject of debate. Days after it began, separatists fighters surrounded the town of Debaltseve, a railroad hub. Now Ukraine worries that in Mariupol, another strategic area is being targeted.

Despite the cease-fire, "shelling from the Russian side has continued along the Mariupol front," the Kyiv Post reports, "and Ukraine's military expect the Azov Sea port city of 500,000 people will be the target of a major Russian assault within the next weeks."

In some areas, the clash has quieted down. Over the weekend, the two sides performed a prisoner exchange; another is tentatively planned for March. But even as they urge an end to the fighting, the U.S. and its European allies say new sanctions could be announced against Russia if the cease-fire fails.

"Tensions are high in Ukraine, where tens of thousands of people rallied in Kyiv over the weekend," Corey reports. "They were commemorating the deaths of scores of people who were killed by sniper fire at demonstrations a year ago, and the ouster Ukraine's former president."

Late Sunday, two people died in eastern Ukraine, after a bomb went off at a pro-Kiev rally.

Ukraine

Russia

At a camp for displaced people in northern Iraq, you pass rows of tents to reach the clinic run by the International Medical Corps. They have medicines to treat all kinds of problems: diabetes shots, vaccines, heart pills.

But it's harder to cure what's afflicting this woman.

"The pain inside of me is so deep," she says. "I just cry every day."

Militants from the group that calls itself the Islamic State kidnapped the woman's adult son in June, and she doesn't know his fate.

Her husband expresses the loss in more destructive ways.

I've totally changed. I'm not like normal people any more. I don't expect to be fixed.

- A 29-year-old man who watched extremists cover his friend in kerosene and set him on fire

"I've become mentally ill," he says. "When my wife tries to talk to me, I just lash out. I hit her."

People in Iraq have lived with war for more than a decade. But aid workers say the ISIS practice of public beheading and other brutal forms of mass violence is creating new levels of psychological trauma among the Iraqi people.

During one afternoon in Baharka camp clinic, a parade of people came sharing their stories of trauma. We're not using the names of these patients, because they still have family in areas controlled by ISIS, and they fear for their relatives' safety.

One man says ISIS extremists forced him to dig his own grave with a shovel. Another describes watching militants cover his friend in kerosene and set him on fire.

"I've totally changed," says the 29-year-old man. "I'm not like normal people any more. I don't expect to be fixed."

Overcoming Stigma, Overwhelming Numbers

It's the job of Stacy Lamon to try to fix him. Lamon is director of mental health for Iraq with the International Medical Corps.

i

Only a tiny fraction of the people at Baharka camp who need counseling and other help are receiving it. Ari Shapiro/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Ari Shapiro/NPR

Only a tiny fraction of the people at Baharka camp who need counseling and other help are receiving it.

Ari Shapiro/NPR

"I wish I had a vaccination, that I could give people a quick shot and they'd be better," Lamon says. "It doesn't work that way."

The mental health staff at this camp gives their patients counseling, and sometimes pills.

Dr. Omed Khadir Taha, one of the psychiatrists here, says he also has to tackle the stigma that goes along with mental health problems in Iraq.

"They cannot express, you know," Taha says. "Sometimes they perceive that as just a kind of weakness."

This is slow, arduous work. And only a tiny fraction of those who need help are getting it, says Lamon.

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"There [are] 3,000 people in this camp, and this is one of the smaller camps," he says. "And of the 3,000 there's only a very small portion that are being treated."

He says Iraq could be looking at a traumatized generation. But some patients give the staff reason to hope.

Imagining A Day With Less Pain

One man at the camp watched his 7-year-old son killed in front of him.

The man scrolls through images on his phone — his son, as a newborn, as a toddler. The boy is adorable, all smiles.

The man says he looks at these more times each day than he can count.

Before, he says, he was more than 90 percent in pain. Now, he says, it's decreased to 50 percent.

He is only beginning to recover.

But when asked, he says he can imagine a day when his pain diminishes even more — Inshallah, or God willing, he says.

At the end of the day, we leave the camp, and pass by this man again.

He doesn't notice us. He's sitting by himself, staring at the pictures on his phone.

Islamic State

Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant

Islamic State of Iraq and Syria

mental health

Iraq

A ferry carrying more than 100 passengers capsized in Bangladesh after being hit by a cargo vessel, killing more than 30 people. At least 50 others have been rescued, officials said.

However, the death toll from the accident, which occurred about 25 miles northwest of the capital, Dhaka, was expected to rise.

The Associated Press says 31 are confirmed dead, while Reuters says 33 bodies have been recovered. Bdnews24.com, a Bangladesh news website, says 37 bodies have been found, including women and children, "with many others unaccounted for."

According to Reuters:

"The ... bodies retrieved so far from the water include a baby, Tripura said. Police have seized the trawler and arrested two of its crew, he said.

"Another police team, assisted by firemen and the Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority, is trying to salvage the ferry, he said."

The AP reports: "The ferry was struck by the cargo vessel at the Daulatdia-Paturia crossing on the Padma River on Sunday afternoon, said fire department official Shahzadi Begum."

Bdnews24.com says the master of the cargo vessel has been arrested "along with two others" in connection with the disaster.

ferry disaster

Bangladesh