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One of the presentations at the TED Conference in Vancouver this week that had much of the tech elite oohing and ahhing was something called CLIP (no relation to Microsoft's reviled animated helper) or Continuous Liquid Interface Production.

It's a new way of 3-D manufacturing introduced by a company called Carbon3D. CEO and co-founder Joseph DeSimone says what we've been calling 3-D printing is actually 2D printing. It's like ink printing a line over and over again until a little structure emerges, except instead of ink it's, say, plastic. This type of printing is mostly useful for making prototypes, but not really a part that could withstand regular use.

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The CLIP technology, however, uses a puddle of liquid resin that has ultraviolet light and oxygen projected through it, essentially sculpting the liquid with the light, sort of like growing a crystal. The best way to understand this process is to imagine the scene from Terminator 2: Judgment Day, when from fluid metal, emerged T-1000, the AI soldier built by AI to exterminate humans. DeSimone points to that scene as inspiration and says they wondered, "How would you get something like that to work?"

What comes out of this printer comes quickly — up to 100 times faster than existing 3-D printers. In addition, the pieces it makes can be of commercial grade using a broad range of materials — and the shapes it makes are far more complex than something that could be made with, say, injection molding. You can make a tube filled with a lattice-like structure. That lace-like lattice can replace a solid structure, making objects lighter. This could be used for fabricating something like airplane seats, cutting the weight of the seat.

The printers should be for sale within the year, though Carbon3D has not yet announced pricing.

Kraft Foods is going through a rough patch.

This week, Kraft recalled nearly 2.5 million boxes of macaroni and cheese that were potentially contaminated with metal pieces.

Also, Kraft Singles, a pre-sliced processed cheese product, earned a nutritional seal from the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. The seal prompted outrage from nutritionists.

"I am really shocked that this would be the first thing that the academy would choose to endorse," children's nutrition advocate Casey Hinds told the New York Times.

The academy said the seal is not an endorsement, but recognition that Kraft supports its Kids Eat Right program. Kraft declined to comment.

Kraft is one of a number of processed food companies that are facing challenges from many directions.

The company specializes in cheeses, salad dressings and Oscar Mayer meats — things that are typically used to make sit-down meals. But sit-down meals are not what consumers are buying, says Jared Koerten, senior food analyst with market-research firm Euromonitor.

"When you look sort of at the broader U.S. food landscape, you're seeing a big shift toward snack foods," Koerten says. "Some people have called it the 'snackification of U.S. food.' "

Another challenge: a younger generation that prefers artisanal brands with a healthier image.

Koerten says the trend toward healthier foods is a challenge for all packaged products, which may still dominate supermarket shelves, but which are losing ground when it comes to social-media marketing. Some, like Campbell's Soup, are trying to adapt their brands toward more organic or healthy options, says Barry Weinstein a food-manufacturing consultant based in Fullerton, Calif.

"They're taking the Campbell's line, that's a brand that's been around for a long time, and they're just trying to update it and make it appeal to evolving consumer tastes," Weinstein says.

Weinstein helps independent food startups manufacture in small batches, and says his business has increased 30 or 40 percent since 2008. He says the big players are also buying into the new markets.

"I think Kraft and other larger firms are addressing this through acquisition," he says.

General Mills, for example, bought organic mac and cheese brand Annie's last year. Coca-Cola acquired Honest Tea four years ago.

But, Weinstein says, mainstream brands are still king, and although consumers are clearly more skeptical about processed foods, given the volume, he says the vast majority are safe to eat.

"You're talking about a situation where the lines are running [and] producing anywhere from 250 to 1,000 units per minute," he says.

He says the U.S. still has the safest food manufacturing in the world, and the fact that Kraft identified and recalled all that mac and cheese means the system worked.

"The thing about the sex scenes," she says, "they may be the only time where we really get to see Anna at her truest self. She's naked, right? The sex scenes with her lovers are aggressive and it's through that that we see her vulnerabilities — you know, we see where she's busted, what scares her a little bit."

What is perhaps most striking about Anna is her passivity: She rides trains instead of learning to drive; she is dependent on a mother-in-law she doesn't like; she slips into friendships she doesn't really care about; and she takes on lovers she doesn't love. But along the way she is making choices.

"She does have some sort of agency," Essbaum says. "I mean there is some opposite of active that isn't passive because even passivity comes with an agency. She allows these things to happen to her and even then it's not passive. It's just, you know, the smallest word: Yes, yes I will. You know, she acquiesces. That's an action."

At a certain point, Anna's husband insists she see a therapist. Jane Ciabattari, who wrote about the book for the BBC (and is an occasional NPR contributor), says these encounters give readers a way to empathize with Anna.

"Essbaum finds a way to bring you inside herself and into her fantasies and her dream life and the gradual unfolding of the reasons for the passivity," she says. "I would not have liked it if I hadn't found myself drawn into her interior life. I couldn't relate to Anna in the beginning, but I was drawn in."

For a first novelist, Essbaum is extraordinary because she is a poet. Her language is meticulous and resonant and daring.

- Jane Ciabattari, book critic

Ciabattari says the book also works because Essbaum brings a poet's sensibility to the writing of a novel. "For a first novelist, Essbaum is extraordinary because she is a poet. Her language is meticulous and resonant and daring."

The novel format came naturally to Essbaum. She had spent some time living outside Zurich, where Hausfrau is set, and when she got back to the U.S. and tried writing about the experience, she found that poetry couldn't contain all her thoughts.

"I tried to process the things that I remembered and the things that I saw and the places that I had been," she says, "and as I began to write them down, they didn't turn into poems — they turned into paragraphs."

Readers know that Anna's affairs aren't likely to end well, but Essbaum didn't set out to write a moralistic story. She says, "I worked for a long time trying not to write a book that had a bony finger from the sky pointing down and saying, you know, 'Don't do bad things because if you do these, terrible things will happen to you.' And I think what I have is Anna's own finger sort of pointing at herself. You know, it's not God, it's Anna who says, 'I have done this. I have caused these things to happen.'"

Esbaum says Anna in no way represents all housewives, but there is a lesson here: If you sleepwalk through your life, you are less likely to make wise choices.

Read an excerpt of Hausfrau

Prison is perhaps the last place anyone would expect to learn about investing and money management.

But at San Quentin Prison, Curtis Carroll's class is a hot item. The 36-year-old has gained a reputation for his stock-picking prowess. He's even earned the nickname "Wall Street."

"You know, growing up in the neighborhood everything was always associated with white prosperity, black not."

- Curtis Carroll

Carroll and prison officials have teamed up to create a financial education class for inmates. He starts off the class with a motivational speech.

"Financial education for me has been a lifesaver," he says. "And I have always been passionate about trying to make money. The problem with that money is it was focused in the wrong area — crime."

Carroll is serving up to life in prison for a murder he committed when he was 15. When he first entered, he was illiterate. Then one day Carroll grabbed what he thought was the sports page of a newspaper so his cellmate could read it to him. What he actually picked up was the business section. An older inmate asked Carroll if he knew anything about markets.

"I was like, 'The markets what?' " he says. "And he was like, 'Man, that's the stocks.' And I was really like, 'Man, nah.' "

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The inmate then told Carroll that's where white people keep their money.

"I was like, 'Whoa, white folks?' I mean anywhere white people make their money I want to be there," he says. "You know, growing up in the neighborhood everything was always associated with white prosperity, black not."

Carroll scraped together hundreds of dollars by cashing in unused postage stamps he acquired selling tobacco to prisoners. His first investment was in high-risk penny stocks, making just enough money to keep investing. The whole process motivated him to learn to read. Now, Carroll makes thousands of investments. He maintains notebooks filled with the daily stock price fluctuations of hundreds of companies.

Zak Williams, a graduate of Columbia Business School, says Carroll knows what he's talking about. He's one of several volunteers who assist Carroll with teaching the financial education class. But Williams also says Carroll's strategies are heavily based on short-term, high-risk investments. Instead, William emphasizes the long term.

"We need to take an approach that's enabling for an inmate to not have to take out a loan or a credit card line that might be considered predatory, high interest," Williams says. "We want to prevent that practice in favor of saving and responsibly investing."

San Quentin prison spokesman Sam Robinson says Carroll has learned a valuable life skill.

"Most of the skills that address rehabilitation inside of prisons have to do with vocational trades, anger management and victims-awareness type of education," he says.

The class also touches on the personal component. Prisoners are counseled about their emotional connection to money and the possible pitfalls. Rick Grimes, who is also serving a life sentence, says the lessons are valuable, teaching him to manage his money in prison and also invest money to give to his son.

"I can benefit by helping my family," Grimes says. "It still feels good to give back to my community even though I can't get out right now."

Many of the prisoners in this class will one day get out. And that feeling of being part of a community, and knowing how to manage their finances, could help make their re-entry more successful.

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The college basketball playoffs have turned March into a month when many of us become bracket watchers. There is another playoff taking place that you may not have heard of — an online campaign to choose a woman to put on the $20 bill.

If you look into your wallet, whether you're feeling flush, or not, there's one thing the bills you do find all have in common ... the faces of dead white men. Most are presidents: Washington, Lincoln and Jackson. A few, Hamilton and Franklin among them, famous for other reasons. But not one of the faces is female.

Some women in New York are trying to change that. They've started a campaign, Women On 20s, to build public interest and select a woman to replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill.

Jackson is the ideal candidate to drop from the currency, says Susan Ades Stone, who serves as spokeswoman for the campaign.

Ades Stone says the seventh president has a "checkered legacy," including driving Native Americans out of the southeast. And, she says, Jackson didn't even like paper money. "He happened to have been a fierce opponent of the central bank and of paper money. He believed that gold and silver coin was the only legitimate money."

And putting a woman on the 20 also has a nice symmetry, Ades Stone says. The 100th anniversary of women's suffrage is coming up in 2020. There are 15 women on the first-round ballot, ranging from Susan B. Anthony to Rosa Parks to Rachel Carson. Ades Stone says people will choose three candidates in the first round "which we're calling the primaries. And then the top three vote-getters will go on to a final round."

The winner of the balloting will then be presented to the president "as the people's choice."

As it happens, President Obama once suggested he might just support putting a woman on the currency. During a speech in Kansas City last July he told of receiving a letter from a young girl. Obama said she "wrote to ask me why aren't there any women on our currency, and then she gave me like a long list of possible women to put on our dollar bills and quarters and stuff. Which I thought was a pretty good pretty good idea."

Ades Stone says organizers of the Women On 20s campaign hope to get 100,000 votes by the end of March before moving on to the next round of balloting. And she says the change is overdue. "There hasn't been a change of the portraits since 1929 and we were such a different country than we were then. We're a more diverse country, we're more inclusive and our money should reflect that. Our money says something about us as a society and it's time to bring our money into the 21st century."

Or, as their website suggests, a woman's place ... is on the money.

The college basketball playoffs have turned March into a month when many of us become bracket watchers. There is another playoff taking place that you may not have heard of — an online campaign to choose a woman to put on the $20 bill.

If you look into your wallet, whether you're feeling flush, or not, there's one thing the bills you do find all have in common ... the faces of dead white men. Most are presidents: Washington, Lincoln and Jackson. A few, Hamilton and Franklin among them, famous for other reasons. But not one of the faces is female.

Some women in New York are trying to change that. They've started a campaign, Women On 20s, to build public interest and select a woman to replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill.

Jackson is the ideal candidate to drop from the currency, says Susan Ades Stone, who serves as spokeswoman for the campaign.

Ades Stone says the seventh president has a "checkered legacy," including driving Native Americans out of the southeast. And, she says, Jackson didn't even like paper money. "He happened to have been a fierce opponent of the central bank and of paper money. He believed that gold and silver coin was the only legitimate money."

And putting a woman on the 20 also has a nice symmetry, Ades Stone says. The 100th anniversary of women's suffrage is coming up in 2020. There are 15 women on the first-round ballot, ranging from Susan B. Anthony to Rosa Parks to Rachel Carson. Ades Stone says people will choose three candidates in the first round "which we're calling the primaries. And then the top three vote-getters will go on to a final round."

The winner of the balloting will then be presented to the president "as the people's choice."

As it happens, President Obama once suggested he might just support putting a woman on the currency. During a speech in Kansas City last July he told of receiving a letter from a young girl. Obama said she "wrote to ask me why aren't there any women on our currency, and then she gave me like a long list of possible women to put on our dollar bills and quarters and stuff. Which I thought was a pretty good pretty good idea."

Ades Stone says organizers of the Women On 20s campaign hope to get 100,000 votes by the end of March before moving on to the next round of balloting. And she says the change is overdue. "There hasn't been a change of the portraits since 1929 and we were such a different country than we were then. We're a more diverse country, we're more inclusive and our money should reflect that. Our money says something about us as a society and it's time to bring our money into the 21st century."

Or, as their website suggests, a woman's place ... is on the money.

President Obama may be having some postcode envy.

As members of the press corps poured into the Oval Office in the White House to get pictures of Obama and Prince Charles, Obama whispered to Charles, "I think it's fair to say that the American people are quite fond of the royal family."

He went on: "They like them much better than they like their own politicians."

Prince Charles, laughing, gave the only polite answer he could in return: "I don't believe that."

Charles, who is on a four-day trip to the U.S. with wife Camilla, may not believe it, but Obama might be right.

The president's job-approval rating stands in the mid-to-high 40s — 46 percent in the latest CNN/ORC, NBC/WSJ, and McClatchy Marist polls. (Congressional approval is even worse — only 16% of likely U.S. voters think Congress is doing a good or excellent job, per Gallup.)

But the Queen's popularity in the U.S. was around 82% — a 15-year high — according to a 2012 CNN/ORC poll. And in the U.K, 90 percent of Brits said they were satisfied with the way the Queen was doing her job, according to a 2012 Ipsos/Mori poll.

Of course, any time someone is viewed outside of a political lens, they're always seen more favorably. Just look at Hillary Clinton's ratings as secretary of state versus as a candidate.

But if TV ratings are any indication of popularity, President Obama can be consoled there. Only 23 million Americans watched the royal wedding in 2011. But nearly 32 million Americans did tune into Obama's State of the Union address in January — even though it was his lowest-rated one yet.

And despite what started as a troubled relationship back in the 1700s, the royal family seems to today love America right back.

This trip is Prince Charles's 19th to the United States. Speaking to the president, he also praised his "nice" trip to Mount Vernon Tuesday.

"Because, you know, I went there 45 years ago — in 1970," the prince said, "so it was fantastic. It is very special there."

British royals

White House

One year ago, the U.S. and Europe started imposing sanctions against Russia to punish it for seizing part of Ukraine. At the time, many British analysts feared the sanctions would hurt London, due to England's close economic ties to Russia.

A year later, with Russia's economy in recession, London is thriving. And this may not be despite the crisis in Russia; London may be doing well partly because Moscow's economic turmoil.

"There is a paradox, if you like, that the worse the ruble gets, the worse the Moscow market looks, the more attractive London appears," says Yolande Barnes, director of world research at Savills, a real estate company. "The attraction for Russians, therefore, is the underlying stability, transparency, and ease of doing business" in the U.K.

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But in March 2014, hand-wringing as the sanctions took effect was widespread.

"The true cost of sanctions, if Russia is hit hard, could hurt the U.K. much more than people think," said analyst Joshua Raymond on the British financial news website Cityindex.

"These sanctions are possible, but they're going to hurt us more than they hurt them," an analyst named Ruben Lee told the BBC's Today program.

Those assessments were pretty typical of the news coverage at the time.

A top national security adviser, Hugh Powell, was photographed walking into 10 Downing Street — the prime minister's residence — with a private briefing paper.

"U.K. should not support, for now, trade sanctions ... or close London's financial center to Russians," the document read.

Now, the ruble has lost about half its value from a year ago. And in London?

"The U.K. saw its fastest growth since the financial crisis last year, and we think that momentum is going to be more or less maintained in 2015," says economist Scott Corfe of the Centre for Economics and Business Research.

"Unemployment has been falling rapidly," Corfe says, "So I think overall it's a pretty positive picture for the U.K."

On a Monday morning in the fashionable Kensington neighborhood, construction trucks rumble outside of a new luxury apartment complex scheduled to open in September. The building overlooks one of London's famous parks, a short walk from Kensington Palace.

Katya Zenkovich runs the Russian desk at a real estate company called Knight Frank. She describes this building as the height of luxury: "Fully serviced concierge, valet parking, gym, spa, and it's also been designed by one of the top British architects. So it ticks off a lot of boxes."

The cheapest units cost more than $3 million, and Zenkovich expects Russians to buy up more than 10 percent of the building.

"The uncertainty that is in Russia at the moment drives a lot of families to think about a residence outside of Russia," she says.

Houses along Kensington Palace Gardens in London, which is known as one of Britain's most expensive streets. Oli Scarff/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Oli Scarff/Getty Images

Most billionaires and oligarchs bought their London mansions years ago. Now, says Zenkovich, many millionaire 30- and 40-somethings are looking to bring their families over from Moscow.

"There is a substantial increase in the number of people who have bought, but the average sale price has decreased," she says.

A Russian fortune in rubles does not go nearly as far as it used to. But many wealthy Russians keep their money in other currencies, which points to one more way that London is benefiting from this crisis.

"An extremely important element of the whole story is the network of offshore financial centers that have grown out of, essentially, the former British Empire," says Anastasia Nesvetailova, an economist at London's City University.

Nesvetailova says British bankers provide professional services for tax shelters all over the world: the British Virgin Islands, the Isle of Man, Guernsey, Jersey and more.

"The U.K. is selling to Russia what the U.K. does best. That is, offshore financial havens and financial services," she says.

There are, of course, other reasons that London is booming while Russia slumps. Oil prices have reamined low, which hurts exporters like Russia. The value of the euro is lower than it has been in years, while the pound is strong.

And, as analyst Yolande Barnes puts it, "London's economy is happily dependent on very many different and disparate factors."

In other words, the behavior of a few wealthy Russians would never have been more than a ripple in London's economy anyway.

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In an interview with NPR's Morning Edition, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, fresh from victory in parliamentary elections this week, seeks to clarify remarks he made on the campaign trail that appeared to write-off any possibility of a Palestinian state on his watch.

"What I said was that under the present circumstances, today, it is unachievable." Netanyahu tells Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep in an interview to be aired on Friday. "I said that the conditions have to change."

The conversation with NPR comes on the heels of a win for Netanyahu's Likud Party, which came out ahead in a closely fought but decisive poll on Tuesday, propelling the center-right leader to a fourth term as prime minister.

"I don't want a one-state solution. But I certainly don't want a zero-state solution, where Israel's very existence would be jeopardized," Netanyahu tells NPR.

In a separate interview on Morning Edition, Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat accuses Netanyahu of "exporting fear" to Israelis and of being disingenuous about a Palestinian state.

"In my opinion, this man was never a two-stater," Erekat tells Steve.

Erekat, who is also a member of the Palestinian parliament, also warned of possible violence if Israel continued did not change its stance on settlements in Palestinian territories.

Netanyahu, he said "is seeking to have the status quo of one state, two systems and this will lead straight into violence and bloodshed. And that's what we should avoid," he says.

"I am warning; I am not threatening," he says. "I don't want my son to be a suicide bomber. I don't want my son to be killed."

The interview with Netanyahu comes amid strained relations with the White House after the Israeli leader accepted an invitation to address Congress, where he aired his differences with the Obama administration's approach to negotiations to end Iran's nuclear program.

Netanyahu tells Steve that he wants to make it clear "that I am the prime minister of all Israeli citizens." But he insists that no movement is possible unless the Palestinian Authority is "ready to break the pact with Hamas."

Asked about the composition of his emerging post-election coalition, Netanyahu says he's "starting with the decision that the voters have made, which is very clearly to seek a coalition with the parties of what are called the National Camp."

Asked how long it might take, the Israeli prime minister says: "A few weeks, but you'll have to be patient with us. It's like Noah's Ark, 40 days and 40 nights."

Saeb Erekat

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Palestinian Authority

Australia has near 100 percent turnout in its elections. How do the Aussies do it? They, like 25 other countries, require people to vote.

President Obama wondered aloud Wednesday whether it was time for the United States to consider a similar move.

"In Australia and some other countries, there's mandatory voting," Obama said at an economic event in Cleveland. "It would be transformative if everybody voted — that would counteract money more than anything."

Of course, this is something that is unlikely to ever happen in this country. In addition to the pushback from conservatives it would face, it also cuts against the grain of the American idea of being free not to do things, including vote.

What's more, in these other countries, the enforcement mechanisms run the gamut — from fines to even jail time.

In Belgium, if you don't vote, you might not be able to get a public-sector job. In Bolivia, you won't get paid. And in Italy, you might even not be able to get a day care placement for your child.

There's a political reason Democrats in the U.S. would flirt with the idea. Despite President Obama's winning two presidential elections with at least 51 percent of the vote — the first time that's happened in this country since Eisenhower — midterms have been a different story for the president's party.

Why? The very groups that bolstered Obama's victories — young voters, minorities, and unmarried women — are the same ones that tend to turn out in lower numbers in midterms.

In fact, with the 2014 Democratic losses, Obama now has the distinction of his party losing the most House seats since Harry Truman — 76.

"If everybody voted," Obama maintained, "then it would completely change the political map in this country."

That is true. If the U.S. embraced mandatory voting, it would put get-out-the-vote operations out of business, pollsters wouldn't have to weight for past voting trends, and it would be relatively easy to tell what the outcome of an upcoming election would be, based on demography.

And, right now, that favors Democrats.

Another benefit: The cliche "It all comes down to turnout" would finally be retired from the the pundit lexicon.

But this is America, not Australia, so it will all very likely still, well, come down to turnout.

Elections

Democrats

Barack Obama

Perhaps nowhere is the growth of the Chinese middle-class more visible than at top tourist destinations, which these days are teeming with Chinese travelers. The Chinese are traveling abroad in numbers never seen before, and it's felt strongly in South Korea, which finds itself scrambling to keep up with an estimated 4 million Chinese tourists a year.

In Myeongdong, Seoul's bustling, pedestrian-only main street for shopping, the common sounds you hear — besides blaring pop music from storefronts — are of a language foreign to Koreans: Mandarin Chinese.

A number of Chinese tourists say they're from Hangzhou, in southeastern China, and that they came to Korea for one main reason.

"Shopping. Shopping," says tourist Li Li-jun.

She goes on to explain Korea's skincare and makeup products are a huge draw, as she and her fellow Chinese travelers consider them luxury items they can get for a steal in Seoul.

Whether it's for skincare or other wares, the popularity of South Korea as a Chinese tourist destination has rocketed in recent years.

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In 2014, Chinese residents visited South Korea more than any other foreign country, according to the Chinese National Tourism Administration. And they are spending in huge numbers anywhere they go. The World Bank's numbers show Chinese travelers spent $100 billion overseas in 2012, doubling what they spent just two years before that.

South Korean businesses want those tourism dollars, so companies here, particularly makeup companies, are sending their salesfolk back to school.

Chinese hagwons, or private cram schools, are filling up with skincare salespeople, whose bosses are paying for them to learn how to cater to Chinese customers through language.

Soh Bor-am, a Korean, teaches eight one-hour classes of Mandarin per day.

"My mother used to say that even if you're selling hotok, which is a kind of cake in Namdaemun markets, you have to know how to sell it in Chinese. And I find it very surprising that no matter which level of society you're in, no matter what your job is, you're expected to know this language," Soh says.

Nowadays, she only expects the demand for Chinese language classes to grow.

"Korea has a tendency to rely on other countries, and Korea gets influenced by other countries. So if before it was Japan, now it's moving to China," says Soh.

That's a reality of business and commerce across the globe. Catering to Chinese travelers means making money, and those traveling Chinese masses are only starting to swell.

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South Korea

One day after a shocking attack in Tunis killed at least 20 foreign tourists and rattled Tunisians, authorities are looking for anyone involved in gunmen's brazen assault of the National Bardo Museum. Tunisia's president says his country is "in a merciless war against terrorism."

The death toll in the attack has steadily risen since Wednesday. Tunisia's health ministry now says 23 people died, including a police officer. Two gunmen were killed after they wreaked havoc on the museum, targeting tourists who had only recently arrived at the museum on buses from cruise ships docked in Tunis. At least 40 people were wounded.

The victims reportedly include visitors from Japan, Italy, Colombia, France, Spain, Poland, and Australia. Three people — including a couple who were traveling from Spain — had been missing until this morning, when they finally were accounted for.

In Tunis, Wassel Bouzid, who witnessed the attack after he finished taking a tour group through the museum, tells NPR's Leila Fadel that he was smoking a cigarette in the parking lot when he noticed that a young man in a blue jacket was pulling out a gun.

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"From the beginning, I thought it was a game," he says. "I thought he was one of the guests playing with his friends."

When the man opened fire, Bouzid ran. He said the gunfire continued for "around 6-7 minutes... nonstop."

Two people from Bouzid's group were killed on the bus. Saying it's hard to find words to explain how he feels, Bouzid tells Leila, "This is not Tunisia. This is not our country."

"People started running when they heard gunshots," assault survivor Noriko Yuki tells NHK News of Japan. "I fell, and was shot. Bullets hit my ear, arm, and neck."

The network reports, "The Japanese government said on Thursday it has confirmed that three Japanese are among the dead, and three others were wounded."

On Morning Edition today, Leila reports that the timing and location of the attack — at the start of the tourist season, and in a complex that houses both Tunisia's parliament and a museum devoted to regional antiquities and Islamic history — is seen as proof that the attackers were targeting both Tunisia's economy and its identity as a young democracy.

Prime Minister Habib Essid says that one of the assailants, Yassine Laabidi, had previously been known to Tunisia's intelligence service, but not for "anything special." Investigators are now trying to learn more about Laabidy and the other slain gunman, Hatem Khachnaoui. No groups have claimed responsibility for the attack.

Tunisia

There comes a day in every car owner's life when she knows, it's time. For Carolyn Ballard of Atlanta, that was on a hot day last July, while driving her SUV with misfiring cylinders.

"I drove to the dealership with the car literally chugging along," she says. "I mean, in traffic on the interstate. I was just sweating, thinking I've just got to get to the dealership so I can get rid of this, before I put any more money into it."

Ballard wanted a late model Honda Accord that she'd seen on the dealership's website. By the time she got there, it was gone. But there were plenty of new Accords.

"I don't know what the average marriage lasts in the U.S. today. Might be less than the average car loan."

- Honda Executive Vice President John Mendel

"I said 'if you can get my payments under $250 a month I will consider taking this car,'" she says.

No problem. Ballard got a loan from Wells Fargo at a rate of 2.5 percent. But for 74 months. That's six years.

Six-year car loans used to be in the minority. They're now the norm and loans of seven or eight years are even becoming popular. New car sales in the U.S. are booming and longer car loans are playing a role. Nearly a third of new loans are now 74 months or longer.

But some worry the trend will hurt the auto industry in the future. Others worry it's hurting consumers right now. Ed Kim, an analyst with AutoPacific, says one thing driving the trend is the cars themselves.

"Consumers are demanding a lot more technology in their vehicles, infotainment technologies," he says. "There's also a lot more safety features that are in vehicles right now. Emissions and efficiency technology that are in vehicles right now, that are making vehicles cost a lot more."

But Kim says the main reason is many consumers haven't recovered from the recession. So that new car payment has to be stretched out over more years.

Economy

Increase In Subprime Car Loans Could Lead To Trouble

News

Auto Loan Surge Fuels Fears Of Another Subprime Crisis

Melinda Zabritski isn't too worried for consumers. She's with Experian Automotive, a subsidiary of the credit rating agency Experian. She says longer car loans often make sense, especially for people on a tight budget.

"Well if we all had the luxury to take a 36- or 48-month term, but the bottom line is you know the average consumer just can't afford that," she says.

That reasoning drives consumer advocate Mike Sante nuts. He's with Interest.com and says people on a budget are precisely the ones who shouldn't be taking out long loans.

"They're a way to get people into cars that are more expensive than they should really be buying," he says. "It's these kinds of decisions that you make, that will truly determine how much money you have later in life."

Sante argues that people should pay off their cars within four years, which can mean buying a less expensive or used car.

While it's relatively easy to get a long loan at certain automakers, Honda is trying to buck that trend. After all, the equity that owners still have in their vehicles come trade-in time is a big selling point for Honda. Long loans destroy that equity.

Honda Executive Vice President John Mendel says loans beyond five years are just too long to pay off a car.

"I don't know what the average marriage lasts in the U.S. today," he says. "[It] might be less than the average car loan."

Mendel hopes his competitors start using more discipline. But that may be wishful thinking. When interest rates go up, a new car will become even more expensive, which will likely push more consumers into longer loans.

car loans

CAR

Honda

There comes a day in every car owner's life when she knows, it's time. For Carolyn Ballard of Atlanta, that was on a hot day last July, while driving her SUV with misfiring cylinders.

"I drove to the dealership with the car literally chugging along," she says. "I mean, in traffic on the interstate. I was just sweating, thinking I've just got to get to the dealership so I can get rid of this, before I put any more money into it."

Ballard wanted a late model Honda Accord that she'd seen on the dealership's website. By the time she got there, it was gone. But there were plenty of new Accords.

"I don't know what the average marriage lasts in the U.S. today. Might be less than the average car loan."

- Honda Executive Vice President John Mendel

"I said 'if you can get my payments under $250 a month I will consider taking this car,'" she says.

No problem. Ballard got a loan from Wells Fargo at a rate of 2.5 percent. But for 74 months. That's six years.

Six-year car loans used to be in the minority. They're now the norm and loans of seven or eight years are even becoming popular. New car sales in the U.S. are booming and longer car loans are playing a role. Nearly a third of new loans are now 74 months or longer.

But some worry the trend will hurt the auto industry in the future. Others worry it's hurting consumers right now. Ed Kim, an analyst with AutoPacific, says one thing driving the trend is the cars themselves.

"Consumers are demanding a lot more technology in their vehicles, infotainment technologies," he says. "There's also a lot more safety features that are in vehicles right now. Emissions and efficiency technology that are in vehicles right now, that are making vehicles cost a lot more."

But Kim says the main reason is many consumers haven't recovered from the recession. So that new car payment has to be stretched out over more years.

Economy

Increase In Subprime Car Loans Could Lead To Trouble

News

Auto Loan Surge Fuels Fears Of Another Subprime Crisis

Melinda Zabritski isn't too worried for consumers. She's with Experian Automotive, a subsidiary of the credit rating agency Experian. She says longer car loans often make sense, especially for people on a tight budget.

"Well if we all had the luxury to take a 36- or 48-month term, but the bottom line is you know the average consumer just can't afford that," she says.

That reasoning drives consumer advocate Mike Sante nuts. He's with Interest.com and says people on a budget are precisely the ones who shouldn't be taking out long loans.

"They're a way to get people into cars that are more expensive than they should really be buying," he says. "It's these kinds of decisions that you make, that will truly determine how much money you have later in life."

Sante argues that people should pay off their cars within four years, which can mean buying a less expensive or used car.

While it's relatively easy to get a long loan at certain automakers, Honda is trying to buck that trend. After all, the equity that owners still have in their vehicles come trade-in time is a big selling point for Honda. Long loans destroy that equity.

Honda Executive Vice President John Mendel says loans beyond five years are just too long to pay off a car.

"I don't know what the average marriage lasts in the U.S. today," he says. "[It] might be less than the average car loan."

Mendel hopes his competitors start using more discipline. But that may be wishful thinking. When interest rates go up, a new car will become even more expensive, which will likely push more consumers into longer loans.

car loans

CAR

Honda

Barack Obama let down his graying presidential hair a little bit on Wednesday. He also joked about coloring it.

Speaking to the City Club of Cleveland, Obama seemed to be in a reflective mood. During the question-and-answer period, he was asked by a seventh-grader what advice he would give to himself now, if he could go back to his first day in office.

"Maybe I should have told myself to start dying my hair now," Obama said. "Before people noticed, because by a year in, it was too late."

Obama also suggested he should have moved more quickly to close the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, before political resistance mounted. And he should have done more to explain the depth and duration of the oncoming recession.

"I think I might have done a better job in preparing people so they kind of knew what was coming," Obama said. "That would have helped explain why we needed to pass the Recovery Act, or why we needed to invest in the auto industry."

It's All Politics

Why Federal Budgets Aren't What You Think They Are

U.S.

Why Defense Hawks Are Rejecting House Republicans' Budget

It's All Politics

House GOP Budget Sets Stage For Showdown With The President

Many of those decisions remain controversial six years later, even as the economic recovery is well underway.

"At every step that we've taken over the past six years we were told our goals were misguided; they were too ambitious; that my administration's policies would crush jobs and explode deficits, and destroy the economy forever," Obama said. "Remember that?"

He argues that strong job growth, falling energy prices and shrinking federal deficits should have quieted his critics. But they haven't.

"Sometimes we don't do the instant replay, we don't run the tape back and then we end up having the same argument going forward," Obama said.

Indeed, the old arguments are in full force this week in Washington, as the new Republican-majority Congress tries to put its stamp on federal tax and spending policies. House and Senate budget committees unveiled draft budgets that would sharply curtail federal spending and repeal the president's signature health care law.

"This balanced budget delivers to hard-working taxpayers a more effective, efficient and accountable government which supports Americans when it must and gets out of the way when it should," said Sen. Mike Enzi , R-Wyo., chairman of the Senate Budget Committee.

The House budget plan calls for even deeper spending cuts. It would also replace Medicare with a voucher-type system for future retirees.

The president called that a broken record.

"We know now that the gloom-and-doom predictions that justified this budget three, four, five years ago were wrong. Despite the economic progress, despite the mountains of new evidence, their approach hasn't changed," Obama said.

In a lighter moment, Obama was asked about his bracket for the NCAA basketball tournament. He's picked top-seeded Kentucky to win, but confessed his other predictions are not as well-informed as they might be.

"I haven't won since my first year in office," Obama joked. "Clearly, I'm not spending as much time watching college basketball as I once did."

federal budget

President Obama

The Royal Mint in the U.K. has unveiled a new 1-pound coin that it says will be the world's most counterfeit-proof coin.

The 12-sided coin, which is set to be released by 2017, will still feature a likeness of Queen Elizabeth II on one side. But the "tails side" will have a new design representing the four symbols of the U.K.: an English rose, a leek for Wales, a Scottish thistle and shamrock for Northern Ireland. They emerge from a single stem within a crown.

The new design was created by a 15-year-old schoolboy, David Pierce, who beat out more than 6,000 competitors. Other U.K.-themed entries included cups of tea, maps and a Rolling Stones logo.

The Independent says the new design is a break in tradition from the round, brass-colored coin that has been used for more than 30 years.

Besides a new look, the Royal Mint says the pound coin has a number of features to make it the most secure coin in the world. That includes the 12 sides, bi-metallic construction of two colors, and anti-counterfeiting technology that can be authenticated by high-speed, automated detection.

The Royal Mint estimates that about 3 percent of the 1-pound coins in circulation are counterfeit, a number that can rise as high as 6 percent in some parts of the U.K.

The Independent says the decision to replace the 1-pound coin came after police broke up an international smuggling ring that had flooded Britain with at least 30 million pounds (roughly $45 million) worth of fake coins.

counterfeiting

royal mint

U.K.

money

France is considering banning the use of anorexic models in the fashion industry.

Legislation debated Tuesday in France's parliament would require modeling agencies to get medical certificates from models to prove that they have a body mass index of at least 18. And models would have to get routine checkups. Agencies that violate the law would be subject to fines of up to 75,000 euros ($80,968) and even prison time.

Websites and online forums that glorify anorexia and other eating disorders also would be banned.

The changes were proposed by Socialist lawmaker and neurologist Olivier Vran and added as amendments to the health bill before parliament. France24 quotes Vran as saying that "between 30,000 and 40,000 people" in France, most of them teenagers, suffer from anorexia.

French Health Minister Marisol Touraine said this week that she supports the amendments.

The body mass index is a measurement of body fat based on height and weight. A BMI of less than 18.5 is considered underweight. A BMI of 25-29.9 is considered overweight.

This isn't the first time eating disorders in the modeling world have made headlines in France. French model Isabelle Caro, who suffered from anorexia, sparked controversy when she posed nude in 2007 for a campaign to raise awareness about the eating disorder. She died in 2010 at the age of 28.

As NPR's Sylvia Poggioli reported in 2006, organizers of the Madrid Fashion Week in September were the first to ban underweight models.

If the health measure passes, France would join Spain, Italy and Israel as countries with laws against the use of extremely thin models.

eating disorders

models

BMI

France

Attorney General Eric Holder joked Wednesday that given nearly six months of Senate delays in confirming his successor at the Justice Department, "it's almost as if the Republicans in Congress have discovered a new fondness for me."

"I'm feeling love there that I haven't felt for some time. And where was all this affection the last six years?" the attorney general asked, to laughter, in brief remarks at the Center for American Progress in Washington.

Holder has endured a rocky relationship with lawmakers during his tenure. In 2012, he became first attorney general to be held in contempt by the GOP-controlled House of Representatives over his refusal to turn over documents in the 'Fast and Furious' gun-trafficking scandal.

But even though he announced his intention to resign in September 2014, Senate leaders have slow-walked the confirmation process for his would-be replacement, Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch.

The White House this week said Lynch, who had twice been confirmed to other top law enforcement posts with no negative votes, had waited 130 days for the full Senate to take action on her nomination to be the country's chief law enforcement officer — longer than the previous five attorney general nominees, combined.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has said he will work to move ahead with a human trafficking bill before scheduling a floor vote for Lynch. Since the Senate next week may consider budget issues, and then take a two-week break, action on the attorney general nomination may wait until mid-April. If she's approved, Lynch would be the first African-American woman to run the Justice Department. Lynch herself is relatively non-controversial, but she's suffered in part because of conservative displeasure about President Obama's executive action on immigration.

Sen. Richard Durbin, a high ranking Illinois Democrat, took to the Senate floor Wednesday morning under a poster of Loretta Lynch to complain that "no one laid a glove on her" during her eight-hour-long hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Durbin said "there's no good reason" for the lengthy delays and said she's been "asked to sit in the back of the bus when it comes to the Senate calendar."

Through spokesman Brian Fallon, Holder reiterated his commitment to stay in office until the Senate moves on his successor. "In case it's lost on GOP, Holder is staying til Lynch confirmed. The longer Senate delays, the longer he is AG," Fallon tweeted.

Attorney General

People don't always like what they see when they Google themselves. Sometimes they have posted things they later regret — like unflattering or compromising photos or comments. And it can be maddening when third parties have published personal or inaccurate material about you online.

In Europe, residents can ask corporations like Google to delete those unflattering posts, photos and other online material from online search results. And under the right circumstances, those entities must comply.

Proponents say the "right to be forgotten" strikes a fair balance between personal privacy and free speech, and gives individuals the ability to control their own life in a world where more and more personal data is collected, bought and sold by third parties.

Critics argue that this right amounts to censorship that cannot be justified in free and democratic societies. The removal of such material in search results, they argue, allows for the suppression of information that the public has a right to know.

At the latest event from Intelligence Squared U.S., two teams tackled these questions while debating the motion, "The U.S. Should Adopt The 'Right To Be Forgotten' Online."

Before the debate at the Kaufman Music Center in New York, 36 percent of the audience agreed with the motion, "The U.S. Should Adopt The 'Right To Be Forgotten' Online," while 26 percent were opposed and 38 percent were undecided. After the debate, 35 percent voted in favor and 56 percent voted against, making the team arguing against the motion the winner of the debate.

Those debating:

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FOR THE MOTION

Paul F. Nemitz is the director for fundamental rights and union citizenship of the European Commission's Directorate General for Justice and Consumers. The free movement of people in Europe, data protection and children's rights are also key responsibilities of his directorate. Before joining DG Justice, Nemitz held posts in the Legal Service of the European Commission, the Cabinet of the Commissioner for Development Cooperation and the Directorates General for Trade, Transport and Maritime Affairs. In addition to broad experience as agent of the commission in litigation before the European Courts, he has published extensively on EU law. Nemitz studied law at Hamburg University and obtained a Master of Comparative Law from George Washington University Law School, where he was a Fulbright grantee.

Eric Posner is the Kirkland and Ellis Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago. His current research interests include financial regulation, international law and constitutional law. His books include The Twilight of International Human Rights, Economic Foundations of International Law (with Alan Sykes), The Perils of Global Legalism and The Limits of International Law (with Jack Goldsmith). He is of counsel at Boies, Schiller & Flexner, and writes a column for Slate on legal issues. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the American Law Institute.

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The European Commission's Paul Nemitz (left), with teammate Eric Posner, says individuals should have the right to control what others know about them. Samuel Lahoz/Intelligence Squared U.S. hide caption

itoggle caption Samuel Lahoz/Intelligence Squared U.S.

The European Commission's Paul Nemitz (left), with teammate Eric Posner, says individuals should have the right to control what others know about them.

Samuel Lahoz/Intelligence Squared U.S.

AGAINST THE MOTION

Andrew McLaughlin is currently CEO of Digg and Instapaper and a partner at Betaworks. From 2009-11, he was a member of Obama's senior White House staff. While serving as deputy chief technology officer of the U.S., he was responsible for advising the president on Internet, technology and innovation policy. Previously, he was director of global public policy at Google, leading the company's work on issues like freedom of expression and censorship, surveillance and law enforcement, privacy and Internet regulation. McLaughlin held fellowships at Stanford's Center for Internet & Society, Princeton's Center for IT Policy and Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. He helped launch and manage ICANN, the Internet's technical coordinating organization, and has worked on Internet and telecom law reform projects in a number of developing countries. After clerking on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit, he started his career as a lawyer in D.C., where he focused on appellate and constitutional litigation.

Jonathan Zittrain is the George Bemis Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the Kennedy School of Government, co-founder and faculty director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society and professor of computer science at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. His research interests include battles for control of digital property and content, cryptography, electronic privacy, the roles of intermediaries within Internet architecture and human computing. He performed the first large-scale tests of Internet filtering in China and Saudi Arabia and, as part of the OpenNet Initiative, co-edited a series of studies of Internet filtering by national governments. He holds board positions at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Scientific American, and was a trustee of the Internet Society, a forum fellow of the World Economic Forum and a distinguished scholar-in-residence at the FCC, where he chaired the Open Internet Advisory Committee. He is the author of The Future of the Internet — And How to Stop It.

online privacy

Internet privacy

European Union

ReclaimPrivacy

Privacy

Internet

As its freshman season ends tonight, Fox's hip-hop family drama Empire has emerged as that rarest of birds in the broadcast TV industry: a show where the viewership is always going up.

When the series debuted January 7, it drew a respectable 9.8 million viewers, according to the Nielsen company. But then the show about a family-run music empire achieved something few others have ever managed; it increased its audience every week, growing to 14.9 million viewers on March 4.

Anchored by powerful performances from Oscar nominees Taraji P. Henson and Terrence Howard, Empire features unapologetically black characters operating in a mostly-black world. So it shouldn't be surprising that, among the show's average 11.6 million viewers per week, Nielsen says 7.5-million of them are African-American.

But that's where the other controversy about Empire emerges. Because some critics say the show has earned its success by trafficking in "badly written dialogue and ham-fisted stereotypes."

Pundit Boyce Watkins denounced the "ghetto-fied hood drama"" as "coonery" he refused to support. One commentary on GlobalSocial Media News Service asked "do we need to go back to the times when 'pimps, whores, drug dealers and gangsters' were glorified?"

Still, much as I like to call out stereotyping in media, I think these critics are off-base. Empire is much more than a collection of horrifying black stereotypes, and it moves further away from such narrow characterizations with every episode.

To understand why this is so, you have to look at how stereotypes are typically deployed in today's TV shows and how Empire plays with them – along with other non-white-centered series such as ABC's Fresh Off the Boat and Black-ish.

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Taraji P. Henson stars as Cookie Lyon on "Empire." Chuck Hodes/Fox TV hide caption

itoggle caption Chuck Hodes/Fox TV

Taraji P. Henson stars as Cookie Lyon on "Empire."

Chuck Hodes/Fox TV

The biggest backlash centers on Henson's character, Cookie Lyon, an in-your-face matriarch who spent 17 years in prison. She took the rap for a drug deal gone bad so that her husband, Howard's drug dealer-turned hip-hop mogul named Lucious Lyon, could build his career and their company, Empire Entertainment.

For some, Cookie is the embodiment of all the stereotypes black women face on TV. Dressed flamboyantly with floor-length furs, color-coded nails and eyelashes big as manhole covers, she's quick to anger and ready to throw down at a moment's notice – beating her youngest adult son with a broom when he disrespects her, while lovingly using the three-letter f-word to refer to her gay son.

Still, that sometimes-twisted motherly love is what helps keep Cookie from being an empty stereotype, according to Darnell Hunt, an expert on media and race who leads UCLA's Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies.

"Exploring a character's humanity sidesteps a lot of pitfalls of stereotyping," says Hunt, a professor of sociology who co-authors the Bunche Center's annual report on TV and film diversity. He says scenes that show Cookie defending her gay son from his father's homophobia, her sharp intelligence and her struggle with continued romantic feelings toward Lucious help create a more fully rounded character.

This is something I also saw way back when HBO's The Sopranos was popular. Some Italian-American groups complained about the glorification of yet another Italian mobster figure; and they had a point. But the humanization of Tony Soprano and his family also helped move the characters beyond stereotypes to tell a broader story.

Code Switch

The Success Of Fox's 'Empire' Reveals A Few Do's And Don'ts For TV

Television

Fox's 'Empire' Sets 'Dynasty'-Style Soap Opera To A Hip-Hop Beat

Monkey See

'Empire': A World Of Unbuttoned Shirts And Dishy Music Stories

In Empire's case, it helps that the show has fleshed out some characters that were empty stereotypes when the show began. Early on, Empire presented Cookie and Lucious' eldest son, Wharton-educated Andre Lyon, as the picture of a clean-cut black sellout, with a white wife and few connections to black culture.

But in recent episodes, as Andre has struggled with bipolar disorder, we have seen him move from a cardboard villain to something more complex, with a wife who has stuck by him through his past mental issues in a way that deflates misconceptions about the emptiness of an interracial marriage.

Carole Bell, an assistant professor at Northeastern University who studies media, politics and identity, said many of the new shows on network television that feature non-white characters – including ABC's Black-ish and Asian American-centered Fresh Off the Boat – begin with more stereotypical characterizations that have broadened as the shows progress.

"I don't think Cookie is just a stereotype, but the character does reinforce some aspects of the stereotype," Bell says. "All these shows delve into a rich, specific ethnic culture, but they often start with the stereotypes. What makes all of these shows work is they have many elements – the characters aren't tokens, they're multidimensional, they're at the center of the plots. And the more diversity you have in characters, the more latitude you have; no one show has to represent all black people."

There are some simple ways to decode whether characters are empty stereotypes. Are they defined by their race or is race just a part of who they are? Do the characters of color sacrifice their own well-being regularly for the aid or comfort of white characters? Do they act out stereotypical pathologies for no logical reason? Are they isolated, with no other family, friends or lovers of color in a mostly white world?

But even the best portrayals of non-white characters can feature the double-edged sword of advancing some stereotypes while defeating others.

Hunt recalls how NBC's The Cosby Show tried to "re-code" black culture on TV, focusing on the upper middle class Huxtable family in stark contrast to comedies like Sanford and Son, What's Happening!! and Good Times which presented black characters almost exclusively in poor neighborhoods.

But, Hunt says, some people also used the success of Cosby's characters to argue that racism and institutional inequities weren't holding black people back anymore, feeding into the politics of blaming poorer African-Americans for not working hard enough to succeed the way the Huxtables had.

And there are other criticisms for Empire; most notably, that darker-skinned characters, especially among the women, are assistants and servants to the lighter skinned characters. So darker-skinned actors like Derek Luke and Gabourey Sidibe play, respectively, Lucious' head of security and executive assistant, while lighter-skinned actors such as Henson and Howard play the power brokers.

It's an example of how, in a world where network TV is growing more ethnically diverse with more shows about more different kinds of non-white characters than ever before, questions of how those characters connect to long-running stereotypes become more complex.

"Often, you have to ask, are you reinforcing the dominant views of society or are you critiquing them?" Hunt says, noting that, for some shows, the answer to both his questions might be a "yes." "That's a difficult topic, sometimes."

This past January, the Republican-led Kentucky Senate did what it does just about every year: It passed a statewide right-to-work bill.

Keeping with tradition, when the bill arrived at the Democratic-controlled House, it died.

For decades, Democrats have rejected efforts to allow employees in unionized companies the freedom to choose whether to join a union.

Now, the battle has shifted from the statehouse to individual counties.

In December, Warren County became the first county in the nation to pass a local right-to-work ordinance, according to the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation.

The county's Judge-Executive Mike Buchanon said at the meeting the absence of a right-to-work law has cost jobs.

"I know of one that we lost to — Cartersville, Ga. — that was a big prospect," he says. "They were coming here and we're getting ready to go to their board of directors to get it approved. And then someone brought up that we weren't right-to-work. We all of a sudden got an email that said 'We're rethinking this now.' "

The Warren County ordinance passed with one dissenting vote. The reason was summed up in two letters: GM.

Warren County is home to a General Motors manufacturing plant — the only one that produces the Corvette. It's a closed shop, meaning employees must pay union dues in order to work there.

"General Motors employs about 800 people and the economic impact is seen throughout the community," says Eldon Renaud, president of the local United Autoworkers Union. "If you can't support the organization that's supporting you, it's gonna fall apart."

He's a huge right-to-work critic and argues these kind of laws are a "race to the bottom."

"Look at those states that are right-to-work," he says. "Look at Mississippi, look at Alabama. I mean, some of the worst education, highest poverty. What happens is that as they reduce the union labor, less and less people are making a decent wage."

Actually, since World War II, income and job growth have increased faster in right-to-work states.

The Two-Way

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker Signs Right-To-Work Bill

Business

Targeting Unions: Right-To-Work Movement Bolstered By Wisconsin

Economists also point out that Mississippi and Alabama are not heavily taxed. So there's less money to spend on education and social services.

Eleven Kentucky counties have passed local right-to-work laws since last year, including several along the Tennessee border, which is a right-to-work state.

Jim Waters heads the Bluegrass Institute, a Kentucky-based think tank that advocates for smaller government. He says the state is losing business.

"We're not saying that a right-to-work law is going to fix all of our economic problems in Kentucky, but what we're saying is that it's an important tool in the state's economic toolbox," he says.

Meanwhile, several labor unions including some from out of state, have filed a federal lawsuit to stop Kentucky's local right-to-work movement.

right to work

Kentucky

When utility companies burn coal to make electricity — and it generated 39 percent of U.S. energy in 2013 — it leaves behind ash that can contain arsenic, selenium, boron and many other toxic substances.

For decades, that ash simply has been buried in pits near the power plants and covered with water. Now, in North Carolina, it's become a multibillion dollar problem. After a massive spill into the Dan River last year, the state ordered Duke Energy to clean up more than 100 million tons of stored coal ash, and the company has drawn up a plan that involves transporting it to two abandoned clay mines in Lee County.

Local residents in Lee County are protesting the plan to put a coal-ash landfill in their community. Dave DeWitt/WUNC hide caption

itoggle caption Dave DeWitt/WUNC

But the local community and some environmental activists are fighting that proposal.

Lynn Petty, a retired postal worker here, trudges through knee-high grass surrounding the Mt. Calvary Baptist Church in Sanford, about 40 miles southeast of Raleigh. Behind the modest brick sanctuary, his ancestors are buried in the Carolina clay.

"Water comes down to here, won't soak in, makes a hole," Petty says. "Look, see what I'm saying — my daddy is buried right there, so I'm always here. I know this."

The nonabsorbent quality of the clay in the area is one reason Duke Energy and its contractor bought the Cherokee Clay and Brick mine across the road, and another in the next county over.

The plan is to dig up about 10 million tons of coal ash at 14 of the most critical sites across the state and bring it here on trucks and rail cars to a dry, lined landfill. The clay, they say, adds another layer of protection against leaks.

Petty just inherited 30 acres within sight of the mine, and he's afraid the coal-ash means he will never get to pass the land to his children.

"To me it's a socioeconomic discrimination at the highest, because they brought all of this in, dumped it on a poor, black neighborhood, when you got the governor and all these people staying in these big homes in cities like Raleigh and Charlotte," he says. "But they bring it here to a little poor country place like this and dump it on us."

Duke Energy is the largest electric utility company in the country. After the spill last year that coated 70 miles of the Dan River in coal-ash slurry, the North Carolina General Assembly passed a first-ever statewide law requiring a coal-ash cleanup effort. That will start with identifying the most dangerous sites and devising long-term storage plans.

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Amy Adams, North Carolina campaign coordinator with Appalachian Voices, shows her hand covered with wet coal ash taken from the Dan River, which swirls in the background in February 2014. The Duke Energy spill coated 70 miles of the river with toxic sludge containing arsenic, selenium, and boron. Gerry Broome/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Gerry Broome/AP

Amy Adams, North Carolina campaign coordinator with Appalachian Voices, shows her hand covered with wet coal ash taken from the Dan River, which swirls in the background in February 2014. The Duke Energy spill coated 70 miles of the river with toxic sludge containing arsenic, selenium, and boron.

Gerry Broome/AP

Jeff Brooks, a spokesman with Duke Energy, says the two abandoned clay mines are crucial to that.

"We've only got five years to move these high-priority sites, completely close these sites, and so we have to begin to move ash now," Brooks says. "If we don't start with real applications that are available today, we'll never make that timeline."

Grassroots environmental groups and local residents are fighting back, saying the coal ash will harm drinking water, real estate values and economic development. They have held rallies and put pressure on local elected officials to file a lawsuit.

"You know Duke is smart — they got a lot of engineers that work for them," says Therese Vick of the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League. "This is a cheap and dirty, almost old-fashioned, solution. And you're just moving a problem from one place to the other."

But that opinion is not universal among environmental groups. Frank Holleman, a senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, is no friend to Duke Energy — he sued the utility and the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources over coal ash. But he says the company's solution is better than the status quo.

"An old mine site which has already been disturbed could be a good place, and clay, water goes through it less easily than regular soil, so it can be even an extra protection," he says. "So that kind of approach can be a good approach."

i

Mark Bishopric, a managing partner of Three Rivers Outfitters, paddles past the Duke Energy Dan River Steam Station in February 2014. Tens of thousands of tons of coal ash leaked into the river from a retaining pond below the steam station. John D. Simmons/MCT /Landov hide caption

itoggle caption John D. Simmons/MCT /Landov

Mark Bishopric, a managing partner of Three Rivers Outfitters, paddles past the Duke Energy Dan River Steam Station in February 2014. Tens of thousands of tons of coal ash leaked into the river from a retaining pond below the steam station.

John D. Simmons/MCT /Landov

Holleman says speed is the key, because leaving the coal ash in place isn't an option. By Duke Energy's own estimates, about 3 million gallons a day of tainted water seeps out of coal ash pits and into the state's rivers, lakes, and drinking water.

Concerns Linger For N.C. Residents After Coal Ash Spill

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"In effect we're having a spill every day in North Carolina," Holleman says. "All 14 of these sites are leaking — some of them staggeringly."

Duke Energy says it could start moving coal ash 60 days after the permits are approved by the state.

fossil fuel

coal

pollution

This past January, the Republican-led Kentucky Senate did what it does just about every year: It passed a statewide right-to-work bill.

Keeping with tradition, when the bill arrived at the Democratic-controlled House, it died.

For decades, Democrats have rejected efforts to allow employees in unionized companies the freedom to choose whether to join a union.

Now, the battle has shifted from the statehouse to individual counties.

In December, Warren County became the first county in the nation to pass a local right-to-work ordinance, according to the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation.

The county's Judge-Executive Mike Buchanon said at the meeting the absence of a right-to-work law has cost jobs.

"I know of one that we lost to — Cartersville, Ga. — that was a big prospect," he says. "They were coming here and we're getting ready to go to their board of directors to get it approved. And then someone brought up that we weren't right-to-work. We all of a sudden got an email that said 'We're rethinking this now.' "

The Warren County ordinance passed with one dissenting vote. The reason was summed up in two letters: GM.

Warren County is home to a General Motors manufacturing plant — the only one that produces the Corvette. It's a closed shop, meaning employees must pay union dues in order to work there.

"General Motors employs about 800 people and the economic impact is seen throughout the community," says Eldon Renaud, president of the local United Autoworkers Union. "If you can't support the organization that's supporting you, it's gonna fall apart."

He's a huge right-to-work critic and argues these kind of laws are a "race to the bottom."

"Look at those states that are right-to-work," he says. "Look at Mississippi, look at Alabama. I mean, some of the worst education, highest poverty. What happens is that as they reduce the union labor, less and less people are making a decent wage."

Actually, since World War II, income and job growth have increased faster in right-to-work states.

The Two-Way

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker Signs Right-To-Work Bill

Business

Targeting Unions: Right-To-Work Movement Bolstered By Wisconsin

Economists also point out that Mississippi and Alabama are not heavily taxed. So there's less money to spend on education and social services.

Eleven Kentucky counties have passed local right-to-work laws since last year, including several along the Tennessee border, which is a right-to-work state.

Jim Waters heads the Bluegrass Institute, a Kentucky-based think tank that advocates for smaller government. He says the state is losing business.

"We're not saying that a right-to-work law is going to fix all of our economic problems in Kentucky, but what we're saying is that it's an important tool in the state's economic toolbox," he says.

Meanwhile, several labor unions including some from out of state, have filed a federal lawsuit to stop Kentucky's local right-to-work movement.

right to work

Kentucky

Members of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), which includes more than 4,000 ministers and the 1.8 million members of their congregations, approved new language Tuesday that allows its churches to perform same-sex marriages.

In a statement, the Covenant Network of Presbyterians said the change would become effective June 21.

"With today's presbytery votes, a majority of the 171 presbyteries of the Presbyterian Church (USA) have approved an amendment to the church's Book of Order that describes marriage as 'a unique relationship between two people, traditionally a man and a woman.'

"The change aligns the church's constitution with a reality that has long been true: Both same-gender and opposite-gender couples have been living in relationships that demonstrate covenant faithfulness, shared discipleship, and mutual love."

Individual churches may still refuse to perform gay marriage ceremonies if preferred. While the a New Jersey presbytery became the 87th to approve the language today, providing a majority, the New York Times reports that 41 have opposed it and one was tied.

"The church, with about 1.8 million members, is the largest of the nation's Presbyterian denominations, but it has been losing congregations and individual members as it has moved to the left theologically over the past several years. There was a wave of departures in and after 2011, when the presbyteries ratified a decision to ordain gays and lesbians as pastors, elders and deacons, and that may have cleared the way for Tuesday's vote.

"With many conservative Presbyterians who were active in the church now gone, as well as the larger cultural shift toward acceptance of same-sex marriage, the decisive vote moved quickly toward approval, according to those on both sides of the divide."

Conservative Presbyterian groups encouraged members to keep the debate going and to redirect donations away from the national organization, the Associated Press reports.

Presbyterian church

same sex marriage

Spanish investigators announced Tuesday that they believe they've found the remains of author Miguel de Cervantes.

Considered a pillar of Spanish literature, and one of the world's most important writers, Cervantes published Don Quixote in two parts, in 1605 and 1615. The novel narrates the adventures of a delusional man who has read so many stories about chivalry, he decides to become a knight himself. Don Quixote's idealistic and impractical ventures gave birth to the adjective "quixotic."

Cervantes had asked to be buried in a convent in Madrid, where he died in 1616. Investigators had been digging there for the last decade, searching for his remains.

The Convent of the Barefoot Trinitarians was rebuilt in the late 17th century and his remains were lost.

Searchers believe they have found his remains under the crypt of the convent's church, at a depth of about 50 inches, in a box that contained the bones of 10 adults and five children.

Investigators warn that it might be impossible to verify that the remains belong to Cervantes, and that there is no DNA proof yet, although tests are being conducted. However, Reuters reports, they believe it is him. "Everything coincides to lead us to believe that Cervantes is there," a forensics expert, Francisco Etxeberria, said at a news conference in Madrid.

One possible clue indicating that the remains belong to Miguel de Cervantes: the letters M C marked on the coffin.

The find could be a huge tourist boost for Madrid. Mayor Ana Botella says authorities are looking into opening the site for visitors.

Don Quixote is referred to by many as the first modern novel. But Cervantes himself missed out on literary recognition during his difficult life. He was a soldier, and was at one point captured by Moorish pirates, who held him captive for five years. The church where he was buried helped pay the ransom for his release.

In 1616, Hernando Arias de Saavedra, the governor of the Spanish province that included Buenos Aires, banned the population from drinking a green herbal drink called yerba mate.

The governor had seen the region's indigenous Guaran people carrying this drink with them everywhere they went. It was a filthy vice, the Spanish had decided. And it was spreading like wildfire among the Spanish colonists — as far away as what is now Bolivia, Chile and Peru.

"All Spaniards, men and women, and all Indians, drink these dusts in hot water," one dismayed Jesuit priest wrote, lamenting, "And when they don't have with what to buy it, they give away their underpants and their blankets ... When they stop drinking it they fade away and say they cannot live."

That passion for mate (unlike the governor) is still very much alive and well today in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile and southern Brazil, where it is known as chimarro (pronounced she-ma-how).

Indeed, in 2013, mate was officially declared a "national infusion" of Argentina, where an estimated 250,000 tons of herb are consumed every year. Paraguay has a National Terer Day (terer is a drink made with yerba mate, but it's drunk cold). The brew is now a common sight in health stores and specialized coffee shops in the U.S.

Technically, mate is not a tea, but rather, an infusion. "Tea" refers to a drink made from the leaves of the evergreen Asian shrub camellia sinensis, whereas the leaves in mate come from Ilex paraguariensis, a shrub with small greenish-white flowers that grew especially abundant in Paraguay.

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(Left) A bombilla, the metal drinking straw with a strainer at one end that's used to sip yerba mate. (Right) Mate leaves. Ryan Kellman/Meredith Rizzo/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Ryan Kellman/Meredith Rizzo/NPR

(Left) A bombilla, the metal drinking straw with a strainer at one end that's used to sip yerba mate. (Right) Mate leaves.

Ryan Kellman/Meredith Rizzo/NPR

"The Guaran people put mate in small calabashes and drank it as a cold infusion, through hollow straws," historian Luca Glvez recounts in her book De La Tierra Sin Mal Al Paraso: Jesuitas Y Guaranies. "They also chewed on it to have more energy on their walks, a tradition which has disappeared."

I've heard variations on this Guaran legend of how mate came to be: The moon had been told by the sun about all the joys of the jungle that she could not see in the darkness of the night — the birds, the leaves, the flowers. She got very curious, and one day came down to earth in the form of a young woman. She went exploring, and was almost attacked by a yaguaret (a jaguar), but a Guarani hunter saved her. The moon was so grateful, she gave the Guarani people the gift of mate.

So how did this ancient drink go from prohibited brew to beloved South American pastime? Thank the Jesuits.

According to Glvez, the missionaries may have been critical of Ilex paraguariensis, but they also began cultivating it toward the end of the 17th century, believing it was perhaps not only good for health, but also a good substitute for alcoholic drinks.

Turns out, the Jesuits had a green thumb: Mate soon became the most profitable industry on the missions, and it was sold from Buenos Aires to Peru. It even came to be known in certain circles as "the Jesuit tea." In 1747 one Jesuit priest wrote: "it is the herb of Paraguay, which here and in Chile, and in much of Peru, is what chocolate is to Spain, and even more common, for it is used by the rich, the poor and the slaves."

Another Jesuit who loves drinking mate? Pope Francis. "What's that bowl-pipe thing he carries around and frequently takes a hit off?" Gawker wondered aloud a few years ago. "It's a mate cup with a silver straw. And it's how you drink the caffeine-loaded 'national infusion' of Francis' homeland, Argentina."

Pope Francis sips his mate as he arrives for his general audience at St. Peter's Square in December. Alberto Pizzoli/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Alberto Pizzoli/AFP/Getty Images

Mate is woven into the very fabric of the region's culture. In The Voyage Of The Beagle, Charles Darwin writes about the comfort of a warm sip: "When it was dark, we made a fire beneath a little arbor of bamboos, fried our charqui (or dried slips of beef), took our mate, and were quite comfortable."

One of the first tango-like songs to be penned, in 1857, is called "Tom mate, che" ("Drink mate che), by Spanish musician Santiago Ramos. He sings: "A girl said, when she saw me, this porteo kills me. Drink mate, che, drink mate. Here on the River Plate, we don't do chocolate." (A porteo is a person from Buenos Aires.)

Brazilian poet and musician Jayme Caetano Braun used the drink to describe aging: "V chupando despacito/Que triste matear solito/Quando a velhice nos bate." (Sucking slowly/ how sad to drink mate alone/ when old age hits us.)

There's a whole art to preparing a hot mate. Here's how I was taught. First, you have to get a good container for the brew. Cups made of bone are particularly gorgeous. I love the traditional way of drinking it, in a dried calabash gourd. Otherwise, I go for wooden cups. Plastic or metal cups are no-nos for me — you lose that great aged-wood flavor.

A lot of gourds are passed from generation to generation and have a sentimental value (I have my grandfather's gourd at home). But if you buy a gourd made of wood, calabash or cow bone, you must prep it. I was taught to give it a wash and fill it with wet yerba. Leave the leaves there for a day, then rinse and repeat a few times.

As for the mate itself, I've seen it sold in small packages at trendy health-food chains, but it just won't give you that many servings. Go to a South American specialty store and buy a few pounds for a few bucks. You'll thank me for it.

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My yerba mate gourd. Ryan Kellman/Meredith Rizzo/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Ryan Kellman/Meredith Rizzo/NPR

My yerba mate gourd.

Ryan Kellman/Meredith Rizzo/NPR

Now that you have your herb, and you've cured the gourd, you are ready to drink a nice hot mate. Fill the gourd about halfway with the dry tea leaves. Next, cover the gourd with your hand or a piece of paper and shake it just a little, so that the powdered leaves rise to the top and you don't end up drinking them.

There are a lot of different methods to prep mate, but here's what I was taught: Heat water until it is about to break into a boil. Tilt the gourd and pour in the water so that only half of your leaves get wet.

That wet section is where you are going to stick your bombilla, a metal straw with a strainer at one end. Once the bombilla is in, pour more water into that wet little pouch, then start sucking on the metal straw.

How To Make Yerba Mate

After adding the tea leaves, 1. Cover the gourd with your hand, tilt and lightly shake out the dust. 2. Pour the hot water so only half your mate leaves get wet. 3. Insert the bombilla into damp area. 4. Add water to the depression created by the spoon.

Source: NPR

Credit: Ryan Kellman/Meredith Rizzo

I know a lot of purists who look with disdain upon those who add sugar to the drink. But there are so many great ways to prep and flavor mate. I sometimes toast orange and lemon peels, then add them to the gourd. A friend of my father's used to pour hot milk instead of water. I've heard of people pouring alcohol or coffee into their mate. That's a little much, if you ask me, because mate already has plenty of caffeine.

A lot has been said about the health benefits of mate. My grandpa swore by it, and he lived until almost 100. But he also went dancing every weekend, which probably did more to keep him young.

The drink is popularly used to lose weight, a virtue which is debated. One study found that a mix of mate and other herbs administered to overweight patients helped them feel full faster. And while research suggests mate contains plenty of vitamins, antioxidants and minerals, don't go guzzling it by the gallon. Some studies have also hinted at a link between heavy consumption and an increased risk in oral and lung cancers — especially in smokers.

"When it comes to teas or herbals that might have medicinal properties, it's not a regulated thing," Katherine Zerasky, a registered dietitian with the Mayo Clinic, tells The Salt. "[Drink] it in moderation, and within the context of a healthy diet."

And don't forget to keep it social. The beauty of mate is that you share it with friends and family: Pour yourself some hot water, drink until the gourd is dry, then pass it along to the next person.

yerba mate

Tea Tuesdays

mate

foodways

South America

Four key European allies have broken ranks with the U.S. to join a major new development bank created by China. Germany, France, and Italy today agreed to join the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. Last week, the U.K., one of America's staunchest allies, became the first Western nation to join the new bank.

The Obama administration opposes the AIIB, due to open later this year, and has pressured allies such as South Korea, Japan and Australia not to join the new bank. The administration says there's no need for another international lending institution.

But Fred Bergsten, a senior fellow with the Peterson Institute for International Economics, says there's a huge demand for infrastructural investment in much of Asia.

"The lack of infrastructure - roads, airports, ports, power facilities - are among biggest barriers to development throughout Asia," he says.

Bergsten says roughly $8 trillion dollars of infrastructure investment will be needed over the next decade, and that the AIIB will help fill that gap. It's believed China is prepared to put up half of the initial $100 billion budget, probably giving it veto power, much the same as the U.S. has with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Ever since China floated the idea of a new development institution about two years ago, Washington has been against it. The administration says it has concerns about transparency, environmental safeguards and procurement practices. Bergsten says there's a larger issue at stake.

"I think the fact that it is China and this is part of the broader competition for global leadership, economic leadership, broader political leadership, that is I think a central part of this equation," he says.

Matthew Goodman, a senior adviser on Asian economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says the Europeans have an incentive to deepen their economic ties with China. But he says their decision to join the new development bank is a blow to the Obama administration.

"I do think it's a setback for the U.S. It's obviously never a happy thing for the U.S. when its closest allies break away from it and do something that isn't prepared to do itself," he says.

The four European nations issued statements essentially saying they want to work with international partners to help shape and ensure the bank follows the best standards and practices. Goodman says it's better to do that beforehand.

" I think ... you don't have much leverage once you've joined. So if you're going to join, you want to have all your questions and concerns answered before you go in," he says.

Still, it's believed the Europeans move will open the door for more Western countries to join — except, Goodman says, the U.S., where Congress would be unlikely to approve the use of American capital for a Chinese-led bank.

China says countries have until March 31st to decide if they want to become founding members.

Asia

infrastructure

U.S.

development

China

Europe

When the venture capital firm that funded Google and Amazon fired Ellen Pao in 2012, it said it let her go because she didn't have what it takes.

Pao disagreed — and sued her former employer, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, for gender bias and retaliation. The trial, now underway in San Francisco, is providing a rare look into allegations of sex discrimination and the world of venture capital.

In court, Pao's attorneys have presented performance reviews that describe Pao as too quiet, too aggressive and lacking people skills. But they've also shown the jury reviews of male colleagues who received similar feedback — but the male colleagues were promoted.

"I don't know Ellen Pao — maybe she's impossible. But [her complaint] does track a common pattern of gender bias."

- Joan Williams, director, Center for WorkLife Law

"What Ellen Pao is saying is that she got caught between being seen as too masculine to be likeable, or too feminine to be competent," says Joan Williams, a professor at University of California, Hastings College of the Law who specializes in women's issues in the workplace.

"I don't know Ellen Pao — maybe she's impossible," Williams says. "But yes, this does track a common pattern of gender bias." And it's especially common in two industries, Williams says: "Tech and finance. And that's the particular microclimate we're dealing with here."

It's a microclimate where women at her Silicon Valley venture firm were treated differently, Pao says. They were excluded from all-male events and denied seats on company boards, she's said in court filings. She also says that a male co-worker with whom she had an affair retaliated against her, and that the company failed to act.

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Sheryl Sandberg: The Word 'Bossy' Should Be Banned

Williams says these kinds of complaints are "old-fashioned stuff" when it comes to gender discrimination in the workplace.

Kleiner Perkins actually has more female partners than the average venture firm. No representative of the company would speak for this story, but Kleiner executive John Doerr testified in court that he thinks companies with women make better decisions.

Phil Sanderson, chair of the Western Association of Venture Capitalists, says a successful investor is good at two things: "Bringing in leads, investing in them and making money. And the second is working well in a collaborative environment with your partners," he says.

The venture firm claims that Pao couldn't do that.

"These are really top people — men and women," says Kay Lucas, an employment attorney in San Francisco who has represented women with discrimination claims like Pao's. "I have known some of them. I think this particular industry is such a highly competitive industry. ... Frankly, I think a whole bunch of them are probably difficult people.

"But I have to say, it's very often that the women are then forced to leave ... once they raise the issue," she continues. "This is my, frankly, great beef with Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In. Because when they lean in, they get retaliated against, and they often are forced out of the company. Maybe not terminated, but, 'You're not a good fit,' or whatever."

Before leaving Kleiner Perkins, Pao filed a formal gender discrimination complaint that alleged much of what she's suing the company for now. The firm hired an independent investigator to look into it, who found no bias. If the jury disagrees after the trial, expected to continue until late March, Pao stands to win up to $16 million in damages.

gender discrimination

venture capital

discrimination against women

workplace discrimination

Silicon Valley

gender gap

sex discrimination

women

bias

gender

Answering pointed questions about new claims of misconduct by his agents, Secret Service Director Joseph Clancy says he had a "good stern talk" with his staff about why he wasn't told sooner about an incident in which two senior agents who were apparently drunk drove a government vehicle through an area at the White House complex where their colleagues were investigating a suspicious package.

The agents in question were not given field sobriety tests, Clancy said. He later added that as the investigation continues, the agents have been placed in non-supervisory positions. The recent scandal erupted after an anonymous email claimed that two agents drove slowly into an orange traffic barrel after they attended a reception.

The culture of the Secret Service, something that's been blamed for other recent incidents, also came up in the budget hearing held by the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security.

Discussing the various ways agents cope with the stresses of their work, Clancy said, "We do have an element that goes to alcohol."

Clancy said that after discussing why he hadn't been told of the reported misconduct, he instructed his staff "to ensure that these events, and any event of misconduct or operational errors have to be relayed up the chain.

He added, "I will that it's going to take time to change maybe some of this culture. There's no excuse for this information not to come up the chain."

Those remarks didn't keep Appropriations Committee Chairman Rep. Harold Rogers, R-Ky., from demanding a further explanation from Clancy. When the Secret Service director mentioned the ongoing inspector general investigation, Rogers interrupted him to say, "I don't care about the office of the inspector general — God love them and good luck to them."

Pointing a finger at Clancy, Rogers said, "You're in charge. This is an administrative problem you've got, among other things."

Clancy responded, "First of all, you're right, Mr. Chairman."

"There will be accountability," he said, later adding, "This is my first test."

Clancy said he will be comparing the inspector general's report to Secret Service logs and records from that night.

And he said that part of the challenge is establishing a culture of trust at the troubled agency, to encourage people to report problems up the command chain.

"I've got to work to earn that trust, and I'm going to do that through my actions," he said.

"Well, your actions, in my judgment, should be punishment," Rogers replied. "Termination. Firing people who have subordinated their command."

Clancy said that he hasn't spoken with the agent who was in charge of the White House complex that night, out of concern that he might influence or distort the investigation.

Rogers said he is "disappointed" that Clancy had not conducted his own "vigorous tough investigation" into the incident.

"To say you're not investigating because you want the inspector general of the department to investigate is hogwash," Rogers stated. "What do you think?"

Clancy responded by citing a recent case in which a witness told different versions of their account to different agencies, including the Secret Service.

"I'm frustrated," Clancy said, using a word he repeated often during his testimony. "I'm very frustrated that we didn't know about this."

joseph clancy

Secret Service