What's new

Egypt's ousted President Mohammed Morsi has been sentenced to death on charges of breaking out of prison during the 2011 'Arab Spring' uprising that toppled strong-man Hosni Mubarak.

The sentence, handed down by an Egyptian court today, was broadcast and state television and comes as Morsi is already serving a 20-year term on charges relating to the killing of protesters in Cairo in 2012.

Morsi, who was deposed in 2013, led the non-banned Muslim Brotherhood. He appeared in court with 27 other defendants. The BBC says "Morsi's supporters from his Muslim Brotherhood movement have described the charges against him as 'farcical.'"

The Wall Street Journal reports that:

"The court's preliminary verdict is subject to review by the Grand Mufti, Egypt's highest religious authority, whose opinion isn't legally binding but is traditionally adopted by the court.

"A final verdict based his opinion will be delivered June 2."

As The Washington Post notes: "The death sentence marks a stunning turnaround for Egypt's first freely elected president, who was later deposed in a military coup led by then-defense minister and the country's current leader, Abdel Fattah al-Sissi."

Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi

Mohammed Morsi

Arab Spring

Muslim Brotherhood

Hosni Mubarak

Egypt

The bodies of all eight soldiers who were on a U.S. Marine helicopter when it crashed on an earthquake relief mission in Nepal have been recovered, Nepalese government and military sources said.

The bodies of six U.S. Marines and two Nepalese soldiers were recovered near the crash site in remote mountains northeast of Kathmandu.

The wreckage of the UH-1 Huey was found Friday after days of searching by Nepalese aircraft and U.S. satellites. The aircraft went missing Tuesday as it delivered aid to villages damaged in last month's earthquake, which killed more than 8,000.

While the cause of death has yet to be determined, "the bodies were all badly burned," said Lakshmi Prasad Dhakal, the Nepalese home ministry spokesman, quoted in The Wall Street Journal.

Lt. Gen. John Wissler, commander of the Marine-led joint task force, told reporters in Kathmandu on Friday that his team could not immediately identify the cause of the crash, the Associated Press reports.

"He described the crash as 'severe,' and said the recovery team at the site encountered extreme weather and difficult terrain," AP says.

A magnitude-7.3 earthquake on Tuesday, the day the helicopter disappeared, killed 117 people in the region. That followed the magnitude-7.8 temblor that shook the country April 25 and took more than 8,000 lives.

You just had a good look at your financial situation last month, when you did your tax return. Now you can check out the government's official financial reports on President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden.

Federal elected officials, candidates and high-level bureaucrats have to file annual financial disclosure statements. The Obamas and Bidens submitted their 2014 reports this week.

The numbers aren't terribly exciting, compared with financial disclosures by some members of the House and Senate. Most lawmakers are millionaires, although some others are in debt. The wealthiest, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., had assets of roughly $450 million in 2013.

Meanwhile, down Pennsylvania Avenue, the president continues to earn royalties of $15,001 to $50,000 on each of his books: Dreams From My Father, The Audacity of Hope and Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters. After-tax income from Of Thee I Sing goes to a scholarship fund for children of armed services members who were killed or disabled.

The Associated Press calculates that Barack and Michelle Obama's assets in 2014 ranged between $1.9 million and $6.9 million. Their biggest investment was in Treasury notes. Other investments are about as conservative. There's nothing more exciting — or potentially conflict-of-interest material — than an index fund. The Obamas have pre-paid 529 college accounts for daughters Sasha and Malia. Their Chicago home has a 30-year, 5.625-percent mortage, valued between $500,001 and $1 million.

Joe and Jill Biden reported assets of $277,000 to $1.1 million, the AP reported. Their biggest source of investment income: a rental property in Wilmington, Del., bringing in between $15,001 and $50,000 in 2014.

The Bidens got a better mortgage than the Obamas did: 30 years at 3.375 percent.

The Center for Urban Families says 300 people complete this employment training program each year. More than 200 are placed in jobs, including with major employers like Johns Hopkins University. The average wage for a graduate is $13 an hour.

"However, many of those we place two, and three and four times," says Tenille Patterson. "When you have someone that hasn't been consistently employed for two or three years, that first employment opportunity often doesn't stick."

The poverty and violence laid bare by Freddie Gray's death is a longstanding problem. And addressing it, a long term project.

Freddie Gray

job training

poverty

drug gangs

Baltimore

His mother named him Moses but the story of Moses Lasana over the last year unfolds more like the story of Job. Adversity follows tragedy only to be topped off with pain.

Last summer, Moses Lasana's girlfriend, who was nine months pregnant with his child, got Ebola and died. He has two sons; one of them also got sick and passed away. Then he came down with the disease.

In September, Moses Lasana was cured of Ebola. That should have been good news for the 30-year-old Liberian. But his suffering continues.

As he was preparing to leave an Ebola treatment unit, a friend warned him not to return to his rented room in the Virginia section of Monrovia. He'd been evicted and all of his belongings burned in the street. "I was not even there when everything was burned off," he told me.

So he moved in with his mother and grandmother in another part of the Liberian capital. There were already 20 people living in the small house on a sandy lot shaded by mango trees. Lasana slept in a room with the younger boys.

He was having pain in his back and his legs. He figured the aching would go away as his body recovered. But it didn't. In fact the pain got worse. It now moves around, he says, in ways that don't make sense to him.

"It come from the legs to the back, to the hands, fingers. That's the pain I'm feeling," he says.

Sometimes his left wrist swells up and he gets a shooting pain in his hand. He describes it as if a needle is being driven in to his palm.

Lasana used to do construction but hasn't worked since he left the Ebola treatment unit last fall. He says he can no longer grip a hammer or a saw.

His experience is not the norm for Ebola survivors. Most purge the virus from their bodies and slowly regain strength. But it's becoming clear that for some survivors, serious medical problems persist for months: joint pain, muscle pain, fatigue.

Monika Niemiec, is a physician at a clinic Doctors Without Borders has set up in Monrovia just for Ebola survivors. She says they see a wide array of medical issues: Joint pain, muscle pain, fatigue, menstrual irregularities in women, rashes.

i

Jaimama Konneh is an Ebola survivor. The two photos on the left are before Ebola. The one on the right is from after. She's had significant swelling in her jaw and says at times she can't close her mouth or swallow. She's also suffered headaches and for a while had trouble seeing out of her right eye. Jason Beaubien/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Jason Beaubien/NPR

Jaimama Konneh is an Ebola survivor. The two photos on the left are before Ebola. The one on the right is from after. She's had significant swelling in her jaw and says at times she can't close her mouth or swallow. She's also suffered headaches and for a while had trouble seeing out of her right eye.

Jason Beaubien/NPR

Many survivors come in with eye problems. Some have cloudy vision. Others have pain around the eye socket. And, she says, "a number of patients" whose visual complaints went untreated for several weeks ended up losing their sight.

This Doctors Without Borders clinic has seen nearly 200 Ebola survivors since January. The missionary medical charity SIM also treats what's coming to be called post-Ebola syndrome at a separate facility across town.

Niemiec says it's really too early to say what's causing these medical problems. Was it the Ebola virus? The treatment? Or are these underlying conditions that were present before the individual fell ill?

And how much of this is related to trauma? Survivors have not only stepped back from the brink of death, but most of them lost loved ones. Many haven't been able to resume their pre-Ebola lives.

Neimiec says the factors causing these medical conditions for Ebola surivors need a lot more study.

For Moses Lasana, his current situation remains bleak. Ebola took his girlfriend, his son, his home and his health. But the one routine he still has from his pre-Ebola life, is going to church every week. It gives him faith, he says, that things will get better.

ebola

Liberia

Eighteen year ago, Dean Karlan was a fresh, bright-eyed graduate student in economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He wanted to answer what seemed like a simple question:

"Does global aid work?" Karlan says.

Planet Money

What Happens When You Just Give Money To Poor People?

He was reading a bunch of studies on the topic. But none of them actually answered the question. "We were tearing our hair out reading these papers because it was frustrating," he says. "[We] never really felt like the papers were really satisfactory."

One problem was that no one was actually testing global aid programs — methodically — to see if they really changed people's lives permanently. "They haven't been taking the scientific method to problems of poverty," he says.

i

For very poor families, a little extra money from farming or raising livestock can make big differences, even by just giving families more hope. Courtesy of Michael Rizzo/CGAP hide caption

itoggle caption Courtesy of Michael Rizzo/CGAP

For very poor families, a little extra money from farming or raising livestock can make big differences, even by just giving families more hope.

Courtesy of Michael Rizzo/CGAP

Take for instance, a charity that gives a family a cow. The charity might check on the family a year later and say, "Wow! The family is doing so much better with this cow. Cows must, be the reason why."

But maybe it wasn't the cow that improved their lives. Maybe the family had a bumper crop that year, or property values went up in the neighborhood. Researchers really weren't doing those experiments, Karlan says.

So he and a bunch of his colleagues had a radical idea: Test aid with the same method doctors use to test drugs (that is, randomized control trials).

Goats and Soda

What You Need To Know Before Donating To Earthquake Relief For Nepal

The idea is quite simple. Give some families aid but others nothing. Then follow both groups, and see if the aid actually made a difference in the long run.

Karlan, who's now a professor at Yale University, says many people were skeptical. "I have many conversations with people who say, 'You want to do what? Why would you want to do that?' "

One issue is that some families go home empty handed, with no aid. So the idea seems unethical. But Karlan disagrees. "The whole point of this is to help more people," he says. "If we find out what works and what doesn't, in five years we can have a much bigger impact."

So Karlan and collaborators around the world, including those at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab at MIT and the nonprofit Innovations for Poverty Action, decided to try out the idea with one of the toughest problems out there: Helping families get out of extreme poverty.

Commentary

The Best Prescription For Improving The Poor's Health? Cold Hard Cash

An anti-poverty program in Bangladesh, called BRAC, looked like it was successful. It seemed to help nearly 400,000 families, living off of less than $1.25 each day. So Karlan and his colleagues wanted to test the program and see if it could work in other countries.

They teamed up with a network of researchers and nonprofits in six developing countries. They went to thousands of communities and found the poorest families.

Then they divided the families into two groups. They gave half the families nothing. And the other half a whole smorgasbord of aid for one to two years. They gave them:

Some livestock for making money, such as goats for milk, bees for honey, or Guinea pigs for selling. "Depending on the site, there were different things specifically appropriate for that context," Karlan says

Training about how to raise the livestock

Food or cash so they wouldn't eat the livestock

A savings account

Help with their health — both physical and mental

Karlan and his colleagues reported the results of the massive experiment in the journal Science this week.

So what did they find? Well, the strategy worked pretty well in five of the six countries they tried it in. Families who got the aid started making a little more money. And they had more food to eat.

"We see mental health go up. Happiness go up. We even saw things like female power increase," Karlan says.

But here's what sets this study apart from the rest: Families continued to make a bit more money even a year after the aid stopped.

"People were stuck. They give them this big push, and they seem to be on a sustained increased income level," says Justin Sandefur, an economist at the Center for Global Development in Washington, who wasn't involved in the study.

"What I found exiting and unique about this study is that the impact of the aid was durable and sustainable," he added.

The results suggest that the right kind of aid does help people in multiple places. It lifted the families up just a little bit so they could finally start inching out of extreme poverty.

But we shouldn't get too excited yet. These people are still very poor, says Sarah Baird, an economist at George Washington University.

The effect of the aid was actually quite small, she says. Families' incomes and food consumption together went up by only a small amount — about 5 percent, on average, when compared to the control group.

And it's still unknown how long this bump will last. The researchers looked at the change only a year after the aid stopped.

"Moving poverty is hard," Baird says. "The fact that they [Karlan and colleagues] were able to move it, and it was sustainable after a year, I think is important.

The findings are a leap forward, she says, because it shows charities and governments a basic strategy that often works.

And even a little bit of extra money can make a huge difference in these peoples' lives, she says. It can help them send their kids to school. Or even just give them a little more hope.

poverty

Economy

money

charity

Just a few months ago McDonald's was showing no love for kale.

In a TV ad promoting the beefiness of the Big Mac, the chain poked fun at the leafy green and other vegetarian fare: "You can't get juiciness like this from soy or quinoa," a low voice quips as the camera focuses on a juicy burger. "Nor will it ever be kale."

But the chain is now showing it some affection. McDonald's has announced that it's testing a new breakfast bowl that blends kale and spinach with turkey sausage and egg whites. McDonald's spokeswoman Lisa McComb says, the bowls are "freshly prepared."

The Salt

From Cartoon Chubster To Handsome Hipster: McDonald's Revamps Hamburglar

For now, the company is testing the $4 kale bowls in nine locations in southern California.

The Salt

Is It Time To Cool It On Kale Already?

So, why kale now? Well, the company promised earlier this month that it was on the path to becoming a "modern, progressive burger company." And there have been a string of significant changes to the menu from sourcing chickens raised without antibiotics to adding clementines to Kids Meals while in season. "We're always innovating on McDonald's food and drinks," one company spokesperson recently told BloombergBusiness.

But to a lot of observers, the company's flirtation with kale looks like a move to revive its sales, which have been sliding in the U.S., as we've reported.

"I think it is a bit of an about-face, but I think it's a measured about-face," says David Just, a professor of behavioral economics at Cornell University.

McDonald's is in a tricky spot, Just says. The chain does not want to alienate its hamburger-and-fries lovers. "You don't want to offend your main customer, right?" says Just.

i

Kale is not only loaded with nutrients, but it's become a emblem of a healthy lifestyle that's increasingly appealing to Americans ready to move away from processed, high-calorie food. Peet Sneekes/Flickr hide caption

itoggle caption Peet Sneekes/Flickr

Kale is not only loaded with nutrients, but it's become a emblem of a healthy lifestyle that's increasingly appealing to Americans ready to move away from processed, high-calorie food.

Peet Sneekes/Flickr

But, at the same time, he says, "They've got to recognize there are a lot of people who really don't see themselves as the mainline McDonald's customer at this point, and don't want that style of food."

McDonald's introduction of kale, then, could be an olive branch to the growing ranks of health-conscious eaters. And, as a buzz-worthy strategy for shaking up the menu, kale is a good bet.

The leafy green is not only loaded with nutrients, but it's become a emblem of a healthy lifestyle that's increasingly appealing to Americans who are ready to move away from processed, calorie-dense food.

A few years back, the Eat More Kale movement helped to amplify the rising tide of kale love among farmers-market goers. Think about it: No other green – not mustard greens or spinach — seems to have anything close to the star power of kale.

Now, it's unlikely that kale will ever be a top-seller at McDonald's. And that's OK, according to Columbia University's Drew Ramsey, a psychiatrist who launched National Kale Day several years back.

"At the end of the day, if kale is at McDonald's, more people are going to be exposed to it and more people are going to try it," Ramsay says. "And that's a good thing for health."

Ramsey has noticed that as people discover kale they're often pleasantly surprised: It's a little sweet and it's affordable. And it's his hope that people who try it while eating out will then start buying it to eat at home.

"Kale should be a staple of the diet," Ramsey says.

And, it seems, McDonald's will soon find out if the better-for-you halo that hovers over kale can bring a healthy glow to the Golden Arches.

mcdonalds

The latest robot sensation in Japan is so lifelike that when she was on the floor of a Tokyo department store recently, she was confused for a human being. The new humanoid's name is Aiko Chihira, and she was working in customer service, clad in a traditional silk kimono.

"She's 165 centimeters [5 feet 5 inches] tall ... and she's supposed to be 32 years old," Hitoshi Tokuda says. He's Toshiba Corp.'s head of new business development, who led the making of Chihira with a team of programmers.

"Her movement is done by 30-times-per-second data [transfers]," he says, and she's powered by 43 motors. So Chihira's movements — like bowing or blinking — look subtle and her silicone body looks more wax figure than R2-D2.

Even in Japan, where new releases of robots are common, she was a surprise for customers like Masayuki Yamamoto.

"It's stunning, seriously I never expected this would be real," Yamamoto says. "I thought, why on earth are all these people taking a picture of a receptionist? I looked at her carefully and I realized it was a robot."

When NPR visited Chihira, she fooled more than a few folks into thinking she's real.

That trick of getting a robot to look human, without winding up in the uncanny valley that scares children, is a difficult balance for designers. Toshiba's Tokuda says it was his team's biggest challenge.

"Eighty percent humanlike is very scary. So it has to be 90 percent or close, or very close to perfect," Tokuda says.

Chihira's lifelike enough to be a hit — drawing people like Chiho Gomi, who showed up not to shop — but to see the android.

"Of course I feel more comfortable with real people, but she's interesting," Gomi says.

All the interest in Chihira has Toshiba planning to give her some sisters. The Japanese birth rate for humans may be dropping, but this is still fertile ground for making robots.

Chie Kobayashi contributed to this story.

tokyo

Toshiba

robots

customer service

A film critic doesn't often have to review movies about film critics — probably a good thing — but sometimes, as with Hernn Guerschuny's postmodern rom-com El crtico (The Film Critic), there's nothing to be done. That's also a good thing, as it turns out.

El crtico centers on Victor (Rafael Spregelburd), a bearded curmudgeon who reviews films for an Argentine newspaper, and is a definite grouch when it comes to the kind of movies most people like. Car chases, explosions, comedies he can do without. Give him a classic from the French New Wave. In fact, he's pretentious enough that when he thinks to himself in voiceovers, he thinks in French. (Spanish, he says without evident irony, makes him sound artificial and judgmental.)

Judgmental, he certainly is. Settling down in a screening room, he's already conjuring up the snark he'll spout over coffee to his fellow critics, especially if the film in question is a romantic comedy. He loathes those, and happily shreds their cliches for his 16-year-old niece: the couple with chemistry, the casual encounters that are forced and ridiculous, the swelling strings when they look at each other, the fireworks when they kiss, the disagreements because of misunderstandings, the walks in the rain — could anything possibly be sillier?

i

Victor (Rafael Spregelburd) is pretentious enough that he thinks in French, even though he's from Argentina. Courtesy of Music Box Films hide caption

itoggle caption Courtesy of Music Box Films

Victor (Rafael Spregelburd) is pretentious enough that he thinks in French, even though he's from Argentina.

Courtesy of Music Box Films

And then, Victor meets Sophia (Dolores Fonzi) while looking for an apartment, and because she seems to want the apartment too, he has to keep running into her. And to his horror, his life starts turning into a romantic comedy. Before long, he's quoting Jerry Maguire to her, and when she leans in for a kiss ... fireworks!

That's not all (not by a long-shot, if you'll pardon that expression). Victor's whole world goes movie-meta: He's writing a screenplay, and putting scenes in it from the romance he's living. He discovers that he's being secretly filmed by a filmmaker he once trashed.

And he gets so distracted by all that, that he accidentally races into the middle of a big movie's location-shoot and messes it up. Critics often feel they're living, eating, and breathing movies when they see more than 300 a year; this guy actually is ... and watching him, I almost knew how he felt.

Full disclosure: El crtico is set in Buenos Aires and I have family in Buenos Aires, so I go there a lot. Victor watches films in a screening room that I've actually sat in. And while my Spanish isn't good enough for me to hobnob with critics there, I confess that I did sometimes snort as Victor does at romantic comedies.

And then, also like Victor, I had my comeuppance when I met the love of my life, and found myself choking up a few days later at a preview of The Princess Bride. So you will not hear me snorting at this romantic comedy, even though it's available not just on big screens but on video-on-demand, (something Victor would doubtless call a betrayal of all things cinematic).

El crtico (The Film Critic) strikes me as comically exaggerated, certainly, but not inaccurate. Let's call it a gentle wake-up call for reviewers who see themselves as movie gatekeepers rather than movie analysts. And — cue the strings — let's also call it an entirely winning romance.

After nearly a week of confusion over his position on Iraq, the Middle East, and the role of his brother as an adviser, Jeb Bush fully walked back his position that he would have gone to war in Iraq — even knowing what we know now.

"So here's the deal," Bush told an audience in Arizona, "if we're all supposed to answer hypothetical questions, knowing what we know now, I would not have engaged. I would not have gone into Iraq. That's not to say that the world is safer because Saddam Hussein is gone. It is significantly safer."

The remarks come after Bush was asked earlier Monday on Fox, "Knowing what we know now," would he have authorized the war. "I would have," he answered. He then pivoted, contending that Hillary Clinton would have, too. Clinton voted to authorize the war as a senator, but has since called that vote a "mistake."

Bush tried again Wednesday on Sean Hannity's radio show, but his answer brought more confusion than clarity.

"I don't know," he said, when given the chance to re-state whether he would have authorized the war. He dismissed the question as a "hypothetical."

Bush's new position also comes after much of the rest of the GOP presidential field piled on with several candidates taking the opportunity to say they would not have authorized the war.

Last weekend, Bush told donors behind closed doors that he relied on his brother's advice on Middle East policy. His campaign insisted he was talking about Israel policy.

Here's more of what he had to say today, still revealing a hawkish world view in favor of engagement:

"That's not to say that there was a courageous effort to bring about a surge that created stability in Iraq. All of that is true. And that is not to say that the men and women that have served in uniform and many others that went to Iraq to serve, they did so, they did so honorably. But, we've answered the question now, so now going forward, what's the role of America going forward. Are we going to pull back now and be defeatists and pessimistic or are we going to engage in a way that creates a more peaceful and secure world. That is what 2016's about.

"Not about 2000, not about 1992, not about 1980, but about the future. And I hope that you want leaders that are going to be forthright in their views that will express those views with compassion and conviction and do so so that there's a clear understanding for America's role in the world."

2016 Presidential Race

Jeb Bush

Republicans

Scientists think they may finally be resolving a decades-old cold case as to what is killing galaxies: they're being strangled.

Astronomers have long known that galaxies fall into two main categories – those that spawn new stars (like our own Milky Way) and those that don't.

One hypothesis is the light elements hydrogen and helium are slowly choked off, essentially closing the tap on the fuel needed to form stars. A second hypothesis is that those same star-forming gases are stripped away, perhaps by the gravitational pull of another nearby galaxy.

Publishing in Nature this week, Yingjie Peng, an astronomer at the University of Cambridge in England, says his team compared 3,905 star-forming galaxies with 22,618 galaxies that had shut-down star formation. They determined that the vast majority of the star-formers contained less of the heavier elements – forged by dying stars as they fuse hydrogen and helium into everything up to and including iron — than those galaxies not forming new stars.

Science magazine notes: "This is just the pattern expected if infalling gas sustains their star-forming careers, because this gas has little iron and therefore dilutes a galaxy's iron abundance; once the gas stops falling in, the iron abundance rises as exploding stars forge the element. The study finds that about 4 billion years elapse between when the gas stops falling in and when stars stop forming. In the Milky Way's case, lots of gas is raining onto it, so our galactic home won't go from sizzle to fizzle any time soon."

"This is the first conclusive evidence that galaxies are being strangled to death," Peng was quoted by Discovery News as saying.

Peng and his team say that strangulation accounts for how 95 percent of galaxies, including ours, will die, but in the case of particularly massive galaxies, "the evidence was not conclusive for either the strangulation or sudden-removal theories, Peng said," according to Space.com.

Space.com says:

"Although the researchers have found that most galaxies die via strangulation, they still need to better understand the mechanism that causes the strangulation, Peng said. One possibility is that nearby galaxies may help deplete a star-forming galaxy's gas supply, Peng added.

"The team's investigation analyzed relatively nearby galaxies, and the next step will be to look at more distant galaxies, which provide a picture of what the universe looked like when it was young. This further research will enable researchers to establish a more complete picture of how galaxies form and evolve, Peng said."

galaxies

space

Santa Monica, Calif., is cracking down on Airbnb and the rest of the short-term rental industry. Tuesday night, the Santa Monica City Council adopted its home-sharing ordinance, which bans the rental of an entire unit for less than 30 days and requires those who take part in allowable home-sharing to obtain a business license from the city and pay a 14% hotel tax. The law takes effect June 15. The city says proceeds from the hotel tax will help pay for enforcement officers and an analyst to find illegal rentals online.

The ordinance makes a clear distinction between what Santa Monica officials term "home-sharing" and "vacation rentals." Home-sharing requires the primary resident of the space to live "on-site during the visitor's stay." Vacation rentals, as defined by Santa Monica are any rentals 30 days or less in which the guest "enjoys the exclusive private use of the unit." The new ordinance deems vacation rentals illegal if the property is only approved for permanent residence.

Around 100 protesters organized by Airbnb gathered outside Santa Monica City Hall Tuesday afternoon before the vote, according to the Los Angeles Times. Arlene Rosenblatt, a Santa Monica homeowner who lists her apartment on Airbnb told the paper, "It's such a blessing for us to have this money... We need to have these regulations changed."

But in an interview with NPR, Santa Monica Mayor Kevin McKeown said vacation rentals aren't good for his city. "When a landlord or other property owner takes a unit off the housing market and uses it for vacation rental, there is no permanent resident on the site, we've lost that part of the fabric of our community," McKeown said. "And the people who are coming to stay are not directly supervised, so they, being on vacation may, in total innocence, may be coming and going at two or three in the morning. They may be not aware of the noise they're making for the neighbors. The neighbors aren't sure who the people are. You end up with somebody you don't know who has the keys to the building, to the parking garage. You don't who they're going to bring in with them. And you don't have that connection."

McKeown said some 1,700 units in Santa Monica — which has a population of just over 90,000 people — were being used for short term rentals, and only a few hundred of those were home-shares, where the permanent tenant remained in the space during a short term rental. McKeown said the new measure will "restore the residential fabric of our neighborhoods," and return 1,000 housing units to the housing market.

In a statement to NPR, Airbnb said, "This proposal fails to provide clear, fair rules for home sharing. We will continue to highlight the importance of fair rules with leaders in Santa Monica and throughout Southern California."

A company spokesperson also told NPR that reports of short-term renters disrespecting neighborhoods are rare. "We give hosts the tools they need to only welcome respectful travelers. The average age of an Airbnb guest in Santa Monica is 37. Isolated anecdotes are rare, but if issues arise, we work with our community to try and resolve them."

Santa Monica isn't the only city to push back against Airbnb and others in the short-term rental industry. We previously reported that New York's attorney general found that almost three-quarters of New York City bookings break the law, and that the state is owed $33 million in hotel taxes. An increasing number of cities across the country are starting to institute hotel taxes on Airbnb rentals. The pushback has even gone international, with Spain fining Airbnb $40,000 and threatening to block its website.

In California at least, Santa Monica's latest regulations are harsher than others. San Francisco, for instance, has allowed residential rentals of less than 30 days, with some "caveats," as the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

But Santa Monica Mayor Kevin McKeown said he stands by his city's decision. McKeown said he hears the complaints, even those about homeowners needing the extra money an Airbnb rental can provide. But he said, "there's lots of ways to make extra money by running an illegal business, and we don't condone any of them."

In recent years, Twitter has become the go-to destination for news junkies. Now, Facebook is entering a deal with nine news organizations, including The New York Times, NBC News and Buzzfeed, to run some of their in-depth articles, photos and videos inside Facebook. No need to leave the app! The move gives the social media giant a whole lot more content — and power.

It's called "Instant Articles," and for now it's only available on iPhones. The point is to create an experience that is seamless. Today roughly a billion people will visit Facebook to chat and see what their friends are reading or streaming. If you try to click on a short documentary about bees from National Geographic, for example, the loading bar gets in the way.

Facebook declined an interview but released a promotional video in which chief product officer Chris Cox explains: "One of the huge issues we see is how long it can take for those articles and news to load."

With the new tool, it loads instantly inside the app. The viewer doesn't leave Facebook's platform.

Facebook Aims To Weed Fakes From Your News Feed

Facebook Apologizes For Manipulation; Data Research Likely To Go On

The Two-Way

Facebook Unveils Big Changes To Your News Feed

Mobile Strategy

Years ago, Facebook would never have marketed itself as a news site. It was fun and social.

Now, it's got brainy partners like The Atlantic. The magazine's editor-in-chief, James Bennet, says things over at Facebook have changed. "They say they have an interest in promoting significant consequential work, and I take them at their word," he says.

Perhaps more important, Facebook knows how to make ad money on smartphones. (Industry insiders often say the company is "killing it" in mobile, giving formidable competitors like Google a run for their money.)

Coming into the deal, The Atlantic is going to accept Facebook's help with selling ads and then share the revenue. The companies have not agreed on the exact split, but The Atlantic expects it will get the majority of the revenue.

The New York Times and National Geographic say they're not taking that help, so they'll get to keep 100 percent of the money from ads they sell on Facebook.

Bennet hasn't closely followed the details of competitors' arrangements with Facebook and says the diversity in approaches is interesting. "I'm sure we could have chosen that option if we'd wanted to. We were comfortable with this approach," he says.

Distribution Of Power

NPR says in a statement that it's currently talking to Facebook about this new program.

Besides the money, The Atlantic's Bennet expects the deal will also get him more eyeballs. And he's not worried about leaning too hard on the Silicon Valley giant and then suddenly losing editorial control.

"Look, it's not hard to conjure dystopian visions of possible futures," Bennet says.

Vivian Schiller, a media consultant who used to be NPR's CEO, counters: "This is not a theoretical concern. This is a real concern. It's happened in the past, and certain organizations that had certain practices that they built in order to rise higher to the top on Facebook's site then turned out to be losers."

In Silicon Valley, there's a well-known story about Zynga, the company that made the game Farmville. Zynga thought it was riding high on Facebook. Then the algorithm that organizes the news feed changed — and Zynga lost a ton of traffic and money.

In this deal with news giants, Facebook keeps sole control of its news feed algorithm. While the company posts updates to changes, it doesn't have a legal obligation to explain those changes.

"Guessing which direction Facebook is going to go and adjusting your entire organization around that is an incredibly risky proposition," Schiller says.

Yet despite those cautious words, she says it's "absolutely necessary" for news publishers to enter these kinds of deals — because now is the time to experiment.

While Facebook focuses on distributing content — not creating it — the company recently published a paper in Science describing how people around the world increasingly get their news from social media.

Facebook

Amtrak was formed in the 1970s out of the ashes of several bankrupt rail lines, including the Penn Central. Its has been criticized for poor service, and shaky finances, but its safety record has been good.

More than 31 million passengers rode Amtrak in fiscal year 2013, the last for which figures are available. In the Northeast Corridor in fact, more than 2,000 trains operate daily on Amtrak's rails, between commuter lines and Amtrak trains. And far more passengers ride Amtrak between Washington, New York and Boston than fly.

Amtrak is really three different systems, said Brookings Institution transportation expert Robert Puentes: "the Northeast Corridor, which is the most efficient and effective of the whole network, the short-distance corridors which generally operate within one state, and the long-distance routes which literally span the continental United States."

It's only in the busy Northeast Corridor that Amtrak passenger fares actually cover operating expenses. State subsidies help pay for some of the other routes, and Congress funds the rest. Former Amtrak President David Gunn said from its earliest days there were some unrealistic expectations of Amtrak's finances. He said the Department of Transportation "had this fantasy that it was somehow — where the freight railroads were getting rid of it because it was a deficit operation — somehow it was going to become a profitable carrier. That never happened."

Still, Gunn said Amtrak for the most part, does work. "It hasn't been properly funded, and it hasn't had real support from many administrations." Yet, "it's been able to put together a pretty impressive operation."

Gunn said the railroad has been modernizing its fleet, rebuilding older cars and purchasing some new locomotives. The locomotive involved in Tuesday night's crash was one of those.

But there are many more infrastructure-related improvements needed, said Puentes.

"The electrical system needs upgrading, there are tunnels that serve as pinch points that are over a century old in some cases. So there's been quite a bit of documentation showing how we need to invest in the Northeast Corridor because it is a very efficient route that does compete very well with other modes of transportation."

The last major accident on the railroad occurred in 1987, when a freight train ran into an Amtrak passenger train near Baltimore, killing 16.

Congress wants to cut Amtrak's funding. A House panel has proposed reducing the rail systems appropriation from $1.39 billion to $1.14 billion. Democrats on the panel tried, but failed to restore the funding Wednesday.

Former NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross he has said all he wants to say about Brian Williams, the man who succeeded him in the anchor's chair and who is serving a six-month suspension for exaggerating his experiences in the Iraq War.

Here's the exchange:

Gross: I just want to start by saying my understanding is you've said all you care to say about Brian Williams, true?

Brokaw: True.

Gross: OK. So let's just move on.

Excerpt of Tom Brokaw on "Fresh Air"

1:41

Playlist

Transcript

Much has been made of Brokaw's relationship with Williams. As NPR's David Folkenflik said on All Things Considered in February, the relationship between the two men has "been cool and evolving to frosty."

On Monday, Brokaw, who is promoting his new book, told Fox News' Sean Hannity that much of what has been said about his relationship with Williams is wrong.

"I read things attributed to me or what my state of mind is — completely wrong, almost all of them," he said. "I hope that this can get worked out to the advantage of everybody, but we've got to let the process play out."

Brokaw added that Williams was preparing his response to the scandal that resulted in his suspension from NBC in February.

In his interview with Fresh Air, Gross also asked Brokaw about an unrelated issue: the occasional slur in his speech. Here's that exchange:

"Gross: I'm going to ask this next question as someone who has been known to have an occasional stammer that I have to deal with on the air. You have a kind of slur in your speech sometimes —

"Brokaw: Yeah, I have an 'L' issue and I think ... over the years [it has] diminished a lot. I was unaware of it until I left South Dakota and then I go back and listen to other people in South Dakota and it's not uncommon. In our family we had chronic hearing loss and I really think that it came out of that, that I didn't hear it the right way at the right time.

"I had a brother who had a really severe hearing loss and as a result his speech pattern is even more pronounced although it has been a lot better now. I also grew up in working class neighborhoods where we didn't have speech therapists even though I was known as a kid who was talking all the time on the television and radio all the time, it didn't really come up until I left South Dakota and I had a wonderful speech coach in Omaha who kind of got me started in the right direction and I've worked on it over the years but when I get tired is when it shows up most of all.

"Gross: Has it ever been an obstacle in your career?

"Brokaw: I don't think so. It has come up in the past but I think people by and large didn't think that it was so acute that it was a distraction.

"Gross: When you say you worked on it, what did you do?

"Brokaw: I just did exercises, you know, tongue placement and reciting various verses. You can take a word like 'million' and you can substitute 'd's for the 'l's, 'middion,' and if you just use the same thing then 'million' comes out correctly."

You can listen to the full interview here.

Brian Williams

Tom Brokaw

Terry Gross

Fresh Air

Emergency officials in Nepal say at least 76 people have died in Tuesday's earthquake, which hit as the small country is still coping with a prior quake that killed more than 8,000. A U.S. Marine helicopter that had been aiding relief efforts remains missing.

On April 25, a magnitude-7.8 temblor devastated swaths of Nepal. The most recent quake was measured at 7.3, followed by a 6.3 quake half an hour later. Today, aftershocks continued to strike, including at least two that hit shortly after noon, each around magnitude-5.

i

A family sits inside a tent at Kathmandu's golf course Wednesday, a day after a strong earthquake hit the area. Jonas Gratzer/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Jonas Gratzer/Getty Images

A family sits inside a tent at Kathmandu's golf course Wednesday, a day after a strong earthquake hit the area.

Jonas Gratzer/Getty Images

The American UH-1Y Huey helicopter went missing Tuesday morning local time in a remote mountainous region near Charikot, Nepal, where it had been delivering humanitarian aid. Six Marines and two Nepali soldiers were aboard. Unconfirmed reports suggested the aircraft might have been having fuel problems.

The search for the helicopter has included at least nine flights by two Hueys from Marine Light Attack Helicopter Squadron 469 and two Ospreys from Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 262, according to a release from the U.S. joint task force in Nepal.

From New Delhi, NPR's Julie McCarthy reports:

"The Nepali military has launched a ground search and an official said the American helicopter may have gone down in a riverbed there.

"Pentagon officials were quoted saying there was no indication of a crash. But the area is described as among the worst-hit by two powerful earthquakes that struck Nepal.

"Damage from the second quake yesterday is still being assessed. Thousands woke this morning in the open having once again resorted to sleeping outside their quake-shaken homes."

Source: USGS

Credit: Alyson Hurt/NPR

earthquakes

Nepal

Marines

In the late 1990s you could have taken what hospitals charged to administer inpatient chemotherapy and bought a Ford Escort econobox. Today, average charges for chemo, not even counting the price of the anti-cancer drugs, are enough to pay for a Lexus GX sport-utility vehicle.

Hospital prices have risen nearly three times as much as overall inflation since Ronald Reagan was president. Health payers have tried HMOs, accountable care organizations and other innovations in efforts to control them, with little effect.

A small benefits consulting firm called ELAP Services is causing a commotion by suggesting an alternative: Refuse to pay.

When hospitals send invoices with charges that seem to bear no relationship to their costs, the Pennsylvania firm tells its clients, generally medium-sized employers, to just say no.

Instead, employers pay hospitals a much lower amount for their services, based on ELAP's analysis of what is reasonable after analyzing the hospitals' own financial filings.

"This is the best form of true health care reform that I've come across."

- Eric Hartter, chief financial officer, Huffines Auto Dealerships

For facilities on the receiving end of ELAP's unusual strategy, this is a disruption of business as usual, to say the least. Hospitals are unhappy, but have failed to make headway against it in court.

"It was a leap of faith" when Huffines Auto Dealerships signed on to the ELAP plan a few years ago, says Eric Hartter, chief financial officer for the Texas firm. Now he says: "This is the best form of true health care reform that I've come across."

Huffines, which provides coverage to 300 employees and their families, first worked with ELAP on charges for an employee's back surgery. The worker had spent three days in a Dallas hospital. The bill was $600,000, Hartter said.

Like many businesses, the dealership pays worker health costs directly. At the time it was working with a claims administrator that set up a traditional "preferred provider" network with agreed-upon hospital discounts.

The administrator looked at the bill and said, "'Don't worry. By the time we apply the discounts and everything else it'll be down to about $300,000,' " Hartter recalled. "I said, 'What's the difference? That doesn't make me feel any better.' "

Shots - Health News

Attention, Shoppers: Prices For 70 Health Care Procedures Now Online!

So he had ELAP analyze the bill. The firm estimated costs for the treatment based on the hospital's financial reports filed with Medicare. Then it added a cushion so the hospital could make a modest profit.

"We wrote a check to the hospital for $28,900 and we never heard from them again," Hartter says.

Now Huffines and ELAP, which launched this service in 2007, treat every big hospital bill the same way. It has saved so much money for the dealership that the amount that the company and its workers pay for health costs has stayed unchanged for six years, Hartter says. And benefits remained the same.

More than 200 employers that provide health coverage to about 115,000 workers and dependents have hired ELAP, the company says. Company CEO Steve Kelly says he is aware of only one other smaller benefits consultant with the same approach.

Normally customers who don't pay bills get hassled or sued. This sometimes happens to ELAP clients and their workers. Hospitals send patients huge invoices for what the employer refused to pay. They hire collection agents and threaten credit scores.

"We wrote a check to the hospital for $28,900 and we never heard from them again."

- Eric Hartter

ELAP fights back with lawyers and several arguments: How can hospitals justifiably charge employers and their workers so much more than they accept from Medicare, the government program for seniors? How can hospitals bill $30 for a gauze pad? How can patients consent to prices they will never see until after they've been discharged?

The American Hospital Association and the Federation of American Hospitals did not respond to requests for comment about ELAP.

ELAP is not merely a medical-bill auditor, like many other companies that comb hospital statements for errors. It sets the reimbursement, telling hospitals what clients will pay.

"Overwhelmingly, the providers just accept the payment" and leave patients alone, Kelly said. A federal district judge in Georgia decided a 2012 case against a hospital and in favor of ELAP and its furniture chain client.

Most patients being dunned by hospitals are unlikely to meet with the same success on their own, lacking backup from ELAP and its legal firepower.

Shots - Health News

High-Deductible Health Plans Cut Costs, At Least For Now

Under ELAP's main model, neither employers nor their claims administrators sign contracts with hospitals. Employers detail the reimbursement process in documents establishing how the plan covers workers. That gives it legal weight, ELAP has argued in court. ELAP agrees to handle all hospital bills for an employer and to defend workers from collections in return for a percentage fee tied to total hospital charges.

There is no hospital network. Employees may use almost any facility. Payments are made later based on ELAP's analysis.

That may change, Kelly says. Often it makes sense even for medium-sized employers to contract directly with hospitals to treat their workers, he said. That way prices are clear.

But for now, ELAP clients such as Huffines and IBT Industrial Solutions are giving hospitals a different dose of medicine.

Shots - Health News

'America's Bitter Pill' Makes Case For Why Health Care Law 'Won't Work'

At IBT, a Kansas distributor of bearings and motors, "runaway health costs were starting to threaten the long-term viability of our company," says chief financial officer Greg Drown. After reading "Bitter Pill," a Time magazine piece critical of health-care costs, IBT executives decided to try something else.

They hired ELAP, which was "not a simple or risk-free move," cautions Drown.

About one IBT worker in five using a hospital gets "balance billed" for amounts the employer refuses to pay, Drown says. That can take months to resolve even with ELAP's legal support. But ELAP's program cut health costs by about one quarter, he says.

Recently managers at a big medical system in metro Kansas City "finally figured out we were doing something a little bit different," sent "a nasty letter" and followed up with a call, he said.

The hospital executive on the phone "was very condescending and thought I was stupid and had been duped by a predatory consultant and had been sold a, quote, crappy plan," Drown said.

Drown listened. He told the man he would consult with his colleagues and reply.

"I called him back a week or two later and left him a rather detailed voicemail that said, 'We're not changing anything. We're staying where we are.' And the guy never called me back."

employers

health care costs

Health Care

small business

Just days after grabbing international attention for reportedly testing a submarine-fired ballistic missile, North Korea executed its defense chief on the order of dictator Kim Jong Un. That's according to South Korea's spy agency, which briefed Seoul's lawmakers on the development Wednesday.

The execution reportedly took place in public, with hundreds of onlookers watching as Hyon Yong Chol was killed by firing squad, using anti-aircraft guns. The reported offense? Falling asleep during a meeting and showing disrespect to Kim.

Hyon has represented North Korea in meetings abroad, most recently with a trip to Russia in April. Kim has yet to leave the country since coming to power following his father's death in 2011.

This move is the latest in a series of leadership changes — and purges — since the younger Kim has taken charge. South Korea's spies said 15 officials were executed last month. And in a notable move shortly after becoming North Korea's absolute ruler, Kim ordered the execution of his uncle, who had amassed loyalty among North Korea's top brass during the leadership of Kim's father, Kim Jong Il.

"You have to prevent any coalition from forming against you ... deter others from challenging you through this violence," said Daniel Pinkston, Seoul-based Northeast Asia deputy project director for the International Crisis Group. "That's really the horrible nature, the violent nature of a dictatorship. But if you're unwilling to do that, others will and they will push you out of the leadership."

Kim Jong Un

North Korea

Puerto Rico used to produce some of the best coffee in the world — but that was more than a century ago.

Today, Puerto Rico's coffee crop is just a fraction of what it was then, and little is exported. But there's a movement on the island to improve quality and rebuild Puerto Rico's coffee industry.

The U.S. territory is still America's leading coffee producer, ahead of Hawaii, the only other part of the country where it's grown in any sizable amount. (As The Salt has reported, there is some experimental commercial coffee farming in California.) Puerto Rico produced some 10 million pounds of coffee last year. Much of it is grown in places like Elena Biamon's farm near Jajuya, a town in the island's mountainous interior.

Her farm, Finca Gripias, is 2,000 feet up, within sight of the island's highest peak and the world-famous Arecibo observatory. There are just five acres devoted to coffee and other crops. But getting there requires a hike — it's on the side of a mountain.

i

The view from Elena Biamon's coffee farm, Finca Gripias. Coffee has been grown on these hillsides for more than 150 years. Biamon and her husband, Miguel Sastre, bought the farm several years ago and now grow organic specialty coffee. Greg Allen/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Greg Allen/NPR

The view from Elena Biamon's coffee farm, Finca Gripias. Coffee has been grown on these hillsides for more than 150 years. Biamon and her husband, Miguel Sastre, bought the farm several years ago and now grow organic specialty coffee.

Greg Allen/NPR

Butterflies flit across our path. There's a waterfall nearby. On the hillside, coffee bushes are interspersed with banana and orange trees. The cover provided by the taller trees is important.

Like an increasing number of farmers in Puerto Rico, Biamon is raising what's known as specialty coffee: It's of a higher quality, requiring more shade than coffee for the commercial market.

i

Elena Biamon and her husband, Miguel Sastre, have invested in this depulper and other equipment to process the coffee they grow. Greg Allen/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Greg Allen/NPR

Elena Biamon and her husband, Miguel Sastre, have invested in this depulper and other equipment to process the coffee they grow.

Greg Allen/NPR

In one section, Biamon points out where she's planted trees to provide more shade for coffee plants currently receiving full sun. For many years, she notes, the Puerto Rican agriculture department encouraged farmers to boost their yield by getting rid of shade trees that provided cover for coffee bushes. "It takes a long time to grow these hardwood trees," she says.

Coffee has been grown on these hillsides for more than 150 years. Biamon and her husband, Miguel Sastre, purchased the farm several years ago and now produce their coffee organically.

Sastre is a marine biologist who grew up around coffee, on the very land he now owns. His great-grandfather farmed here. His father finally sold the land and got out of the coffee business in 1968. Sastre says, "My father, he told me, 'Don't get into farming because it is very difficult.' "

i

Finca Gripias dries its coffee beans in solar driers designed and built by owner Miguel Sastre. Greg Allen/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Greg Allen/NPR

Finca Gripias dries its coffee beans in solar driers designed and built by owner Miguel Sastre.

Greg Allen/NPR

For decades, coffee production declined in Puerto Rico. With small farms and scarce labor, the island struggled to compete with commercial producers in Mexico, Colombia and Brazil.

Biamon and Sastre are part of a new breed now getting involved in Puerto Rican coffee. Biamon says, "More and more people are really into specialty coffee. And they're conscious of having a good coffee quality."

Last year coffee production actually increased in Puerto Rico. The island's agriculture department is using incentives to boost production, paying for everything from equipment to farm labor.

In Utuado, a town in the heart of the coffee region, the University of Puerto Rico has created a program to help farmers improve the quality of their product.

Yaniria Sanchez de Leon is a soil scientist and one of a team of researchers working to develop varieties and techniques that will help farmers produce specialty coffee, which commands higher prices.

Sanchez says an important part of the project is educating farmers and consumers to recognize the value of good coffee — "so that we can focus," she says, "on selling quality rather than quantity. And that if the price is a little higher, people understand why it's higher."

i

Alfredo Rodriguez, a Puerto Rican coffee farmer and certified taster, teaches a class on the art of cupping — how to taste and discern the quality of coffee. Marisa Penaloza/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Marisa Penaloza/NPR

Alfredo Rodriguez, a Puerto Rican coffee farmer and certified taster, teaches a class on the art of cupping — how to taste and discern the quality of coffee.

Marisa Penaloza/NPR

To judge a coffee's quality, you have to taste it. In a special lab at the University of Puerto Rico, Alfredo Rodriguez teaches "cupping" — learning to taste and grade the quality of coffee. To really taste a coffee, Rodriguez says, you have to slurp it. In the industry, it's called aspiration. "Aspiration is important," he says, "because you have to try to distribute the coffee all over your mouth."

Rodriguez is a grower with 60 acres of coffee in Maricao, on Puerto Rico's western edge. He's also a certified taster and cupping instructor, one of just 32 in the world, he says. His students learn how to identify and describe the characteristics of good coffee.

"Is it sweet, is it not sweet?" he explains to us. "Does it have a defect? The flavor is intense or is pale, low? All those type of things are what we're looking for in the cupping."

The Salt

Coffee Is The New Wine. Here's How You Taste It

In his classes, Rodriguez has taught doctors, lawyers, engineers, recently even an airline pilot. They're professionals who are now beginning second careers in the industry. Producers must learn to identify quality to raise good coffee — and to know when they're doing something wrong, Rodriguez says, so they can fix it. That way, he says, " they can get better scores for the coffee and better value for their coffee."

Like wine and chocolate, Rodriguez says, there's a romance to coffee. And it's attracting new ideas and new energy to one of Puerto Rico's oldest industries.

coffee farming

coffee

Puerto Rico

Two world records for art sold at auction were set Monday night in the New York offices of Christie's.

i

Spanish painter Pablo Picasso is photographed in 1955, the year he completed his Women of Algiers series, in his villa, La Californie, in Cannes, France. George Stroud/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption George Stroud/Getty Images

Spanish painter Pablo Picasso is photographed in 1955, the year he completed his Women of Algiers series, in his villa, La Californie, in Cannes, France.

George Stroud/Getty Images

Pablo Picasso's Women of Algiers (Version O) sold to an anonymous bidder for $179.4 million, the most ever for a painting.

Alberto Giacometti's Pointing Man set a record for sculpture sold at auction when an anonymous buyer paid $141.3 million.

The Associated Press explained the extraordinary prices:

"Experts say the high sale prices were driven by artworks' investment value and by wealthy collectors seeking out the very best works.

"'I don't really see an end to it, unless interest rates drop sharply, which I don't see happening in the near future,' dealer Richard Feigen said.

"Impressionist and modern artworks continue to corner the market because 'they are beautiful, accessible and a proven value,' added Sarah Lichtman, a professor of design history and curatorial studies at The New School.

"'I think we will continue to see the financiers seeking these works out as they would a blue chip company that pays reliable dividends for years to come,' she said."

Simon Says

Buried By Picasso, The Man Beneath 'The Blue Room' Tells A Story

The curated collection was called Looking Forward to the Past by Christie's, which explained the choice of title on its website:

i

A guard stands beside Alberto Giacometti's life-size bronze sculpture Pointing Man after it sold for more than $141 million Monday, earning it the title of most expensive sculpture sold at auction — a title it took from another Giacometti sculpture sold for more than $100 million in 2010. Kathy Willens/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Kathy Willens/AP

A guard stands beside Alberto Giacometti's life-size bronze sculpture Pointing Man after it sold for more than $141 million Monday, earning it the title of most expensive sculpture sold at auction — a title it took from another Giacometti sculpture sold for more than $100 million in 2010.

Kathy Willens/AP

"All of the works offered in Looking Forward to the Past were selected for their connection to a central theme of artistic innovation inspired by the past. The exhibition generated a tremendous response from both clients and the public. 15,000 visitors have viewed the pre-sale exhibition at Christie's Rockefeller Center galleries over the last 10 days, and this evening's sale saw participation from a diverse group of clients representing 35 different countries."

i

Claude Monet's The Houses of Parliament, At Sunset was part of a series of at least 19 paintings Monet began during stays in London in 1899 and 1900, all from the same perspective, but in different weather and at different times of day. Tim Ireland/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Tim Ireland/AP

Claude Monet's The Houses of Parliament, At Sunset was part of a series of at least 19 paintings Monet began during stays in London in 1899 and 1900, all from the same perspective, but in different weather and at different times of day.

Tim Ireland/AP

Other noteworthy works at the auction included Claude Monet's The Houses of Parliament, At Sunset, which fetched $40.5 million; and Mark Rothko's No. 36 (Black Stripe), which also sold for $40.5 million.

i

A visitor views at Christie's London showroom No. 36 (Black Stripe), a 1958 painting by Mark Rothko. Dominic Lipinski/PA Photos/Landov hide caption

itoggle caption Dominic Lipinski/PA Photos/Landov

A visitor views at Christie's London showroom No. 36 (Black Stripe), a 1958 painting by Mark Rothko.

Dominic Lipinski/PA Photos/Landov

auctions

Christie's

sculpture

Pablo Picasso

painting

Five years after the Affordable Care Act passed, the law's provision allowing the expansion of Medicaid coverage to more people is still causing huge fights in state legislatures.

Twenty-four states and the District of Columbia said yes to Medicaid expansion when the law went into effect. Since then, just six more have signed on. States that say yes get billions of additional federal dollars, but many Republican lawmakers are loathe to say yes to the Obama administration.

The expansion enables adults with incomes up to 138% of the poverty level to receive Medicaid. The federal government picks up the whole tab for their care through 2016, then tapers its support down to 90% of the costs.

Shots - Health News

Medicaid's Western Push Hits Montana

Politics

Red States Move To Expand Medicaid Under Obamacare

The fight's come to Florida and also out west, where four Republican-majority states took up Medicaid expansion this year. Wyoming said no. Alaska and Utah are still wrestling. Montana said yes.

Montana lawmakers have been stewing over Medicaid expansion since they said no to it in 2013, the last time they met. When they reconvened in January, Americans for Prosperity, a group backed by David and Charles Koch, staffed up in the state and targeted moderate Republicans, organizing anti-expansion town hall meetings in their districts.

But AFP didn't invite targeted lawmakers themselves, leading to a backlash. Many voters saw AFP's tactics as meddling by outsiders, and some AFP meetings were disrupted.

Lawmakers affiliated with the Tea Party in the Montana House fought hard against Medicaid expansion. They killed a proposal by Democrats, and then nearly derailed a Republican-sponsored compromise. The House had to bend its rules to even bring the bill to the floor for a vote. But in the end, 20 Republicans crossed party lines and voted with all the Democrats to pass it.

Still, at the bill's signing ceremony, state Sen. Ed Buttrey, a Republican who sponsored the bill, said, "This is not Medicaid expansion."

Buttrey says Republicans won important concessions from Democrats to make Montana's bill more palatable to conservatives. People will have to pay small premiums, and the bill also sets up job training and education programs. Buttrey insisted that Montana isn't just doing the bidding of the White House.

"I'll say it again, and I hope the media will report this exciting and unique story," he said. "This is not Medicaid expansion."

Shots - Health News

Alaska's Governor Eager To Expand Medicaid

Montana's approach is now on its way to the federal government, which will have the last word on whether it's legal under the Affordable Care Act.

In Alaska, Gov. Bill Walker, a former Republican who is now independent, has made Medicaid expansion a top priority.

But Republicans leading Alaska's state House and Senate blocked expansion during the legislative session that just wrapped up.

One of them was state Sen. Pete Kelly. "I think everyone agrees that Medicaid is broken," he says. "To put more money into it, to bring more people into it, that's certainly not going to help its brokenness."

But 65 percent of Alaskans favor Medicaid expansion. Supporters testified in large numbers at legislative committee hearings and attended rallies. In one, organized by an interfaith church group, Lutheran pastor Julia Seymour turned the crowd into a choir. She led them in singing, "Medicaid expansion, I'm going to let it shine" to the tune of This Little Light Of Mine.

Even though the measure didn't pass this session, Seymour says she's more determined than ever to make sure all Alaskans have access to health insurance.

"The Bible tells us that faith, hope and love go on and do not end. And I'm keeping the faith and I am hopeful, but my love for some of the leaders is waning now and then," she says.

As soon as the regular session ended, Gov. Walker called lawmakers into special session but legislative leaders decided to take a recess.

The state is currently facing a massive budget deficit because of the plunge in oil prices. And Walker says even in better financial times, Alaska doesn't usually decline more than a billion federal dollars.

"If that was a road project or if that was some infrastructure project, we would be all over that," he says. "This is health care."

Walker has proposed expanding Medicaid on his own if lawmakers don't act, but it's not clear he has the authority. About 40,000 people would qualify for Medicaid if the state expands it and about 30 percent of this group are Alaska Native.

This story is part of a partnership with NPR, Montana Public Radio, Alaska Public Media and Kaiser Health News.

legislatures

Affordable Care Act

Montana

Medicaid

Alaska

When Hillary Clinton's campaign was looking for a place for her to make an announcement this week about immigration policy, it chose Rancho High School in Las Vegas.

Clinton visited this school in 2007, when she was running for president the first time. Barack Obama visited the campus twice during that campaign season. The backdrop wasn't a coincidence.

Rancho High School's population is 70 percent Hispanic, and it has a proud history of political involvement.

i

Democratic presidential candidate and former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks with student Betsaida Frausto on May 5 at Rancho High School in Las Vegas. Clinton said that any immigration reform would need to include a path to "full and equal citizenship." Ethan Miller/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Ethan Miller/Getty Images

Democratic presidential candidate and former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks with student Betsaida Frausto on May 5 at Rancho High School in Las Vegas. Clinton said that any immigration reform would need to include a path to "full and equal citizenship."

Ethan Miller/Getty Images

Right now, two former students are competing for a congressional seat. Others serve in the Nevada State Legislature. One of the teachers, Isaac Barrone, is on the North Las Vegas City Council.

"I don't think it's out of character to say that a school — Rancho High School — it's kind of the pulse and the center of the Latino community," Barrone says.

Barrone is an advisor to the school's largest and most socially engaged club, the Hispanic Student Union. Teacher Reuben DeSilva is the other advisor.

"There's symbolism at this high school," DeSilva says. "You come to Rancho High School, you are actually showing that you care about the community."

As classes let out on a recent afternoon, teenagers fill the hallways. The student body is remarkably diverse. Only about 10 percent of students are white, and two-thirds of those on campus are classified as economically disadvantaged.

Fewer than half go on to college. Betsaida Frausto, a junior with a GPA in the stratosphere, plans to be among those who do.

It's All Politics

Clinton Charms DREAMers On Immigration

"It is special," Frauster says. "It's amazing, in my experience. If I had to choose to go to another school and Rancho was an impossibility, I don't know what I'd do."

Frausto is what's known as a DREAMer. She came to the country illegally as a child, but she dreams of going to Yale and becoming a doctor. First, she hopes to be elected treasurer of the Hispanic Student Union.

When local politicians need people to knock on doors around election time, they turn to the students in the club. Frausto volunteered for a congressional campaign last fall.

"We canvassed to get our voice out, to allow others to hear our story and make sure people know that voting is the way to go," she says.

DeSilva says he's amazed at how engaged the students are.

"They could say no," he says. "It's usually on a Saturday, but they'll go out there. Even to me, it baffles me sometimes. I'm like, 'You know, you could be sleeping in,' and they'll knock on doors and work. It's pretty astounding to see just how willing they are to actually get out."

Another politician visit helped put Rancho High School on the map. In October 2010, Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle visited Rancho's Hispanic Student Union and told the kids they looked Asian. Some were recording on their cell phones.

"I don't know that all of you are Latino," Angle said. "Some of you look a little more Asian to me."

The statement went viral.

Club member Brandon Willis, who is African-American, says he loves the Hispanic Student Union.

"Everyone's like, 'Why are you in HSU? You're not even Hispanic," Willis says. "Why would I not be in HSU? It's awesome!"

Willis wants to be president of the United States, and he's serious about it. He says his teachers at Rancho High School convinced him it's possible.

"I want to change the world for the better," he says. "The way I see it, to change the system, you have to be part of the system and then change it from the inside."

We're debuting our weekly "Politics Rewind" today – what we learned this week in politics, why it mattered and where it fits in. Here are five things we noticed this week:

1. Oh, brother! Jeb Bush is not doing a great job separating himself from George W

If you're the former Florida governor trying to distance yourself from your brother, former President George W. Bush, and his controversial actions in Iraq, pretty much the last thing you needed to do was tell a crowd he's one of your top foreign policy advisers. Yet that's exactly what the likely 2016 hopeful did behind closed doors, according to a CNN report. The Bush team insists he was talking strictly about Israel. And while there are parts of his brother's coalition that the younger Bush certainly needs, if the headline is "Jeb: George W. Bush is a top foreign policy adviser" — it's not a good day.

2. Diversity won't save Carly Fiorina and Ben Carson

The GOP presidential field not only doubled in size this week but also got its first female candidate and first African-American candidate. For a party that badly needs to shake its "white male" image, both are positive signs, but that doesn't mean either is likely to win the nomination. Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO, is in single digits in polling and faces a severe lack of name ID. Carson, a famed pediatric neurosurgeon, has a loyal and fervent following, but he has yet to prove he can build the type of sustaining campaign that can capitalize on that — while also staying away from gaffes that could sink him. Republicans' best hope for a nonwhite presidential nominee is still Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.

3. Clinton herself still hasn't explained questionable foundation financing, but it's not hurting her — yet

The Democratic presidential front-runner's campaign reached a whole new level on Tuesday with the official release of the controversial book Clinton Cash. Debuting an entire section of the campaign website called "The Briefing" to tamp down claims that foreign donations to the family foundation influenced her time at the State Department, her team largely bypassed the traditional media channels and took the message directly to voters. It's a smart strategy that works for now, but it still doesn't mean Clinton herself won't have to answer questions herself about those finances at some point.

Amid the revelations about the foundation's finances and her use of a private email server while at the State Department, her polling numbers have been mixed. Since March, Clinton's unfavorable rating has risen 6 percentage points while those who said she was honest and straightforward has dropped 13 points in a year, according to an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released this week. But a CBS News/New York Times poll showed 65 percent say she has strong leadership qualities, an uptick from a year ago, and a 48 percent plurality still says she is honest and trustworthy. Both polls showed her continuing to best potential GOP opponents.

4. Christie still doesn't have a path

It's been a long, long time since there was any good news for the New Jersey governor. He's seen his onetime bright future rapidly fade amid the "Bridgegate" scandal, and he's close to being entirely written off as a serious GOP presidential candidate. No number proved that more than 3 — the percentage Christie took in the WMUR Granite State Poll this week in New Hampshire. That's down from 9 percent in February. He's hoping to rebound with visits and town halls this weekend and next week. But his self-imposed deadline of end of June to make a decision is approaching, and the trials of his two former allies in the bridge-closing scandal are set to begin at the beginning of July. Those aren't two headlines you want simultaneously.

5. Not all polls are created equal

The polls got it wrong — again! In the U.K., and Israel before that, pre-election national surveys missed the eventual outcome of those countries' elections. We've had our own high-profile examples in this country — the 2000 Florida election. Exit polls in 2004. Hillary Clinton and the 2008 New Hampshire primary. Eric Cantor. But don't confuse those polls abroad with polls in the U.S. If you ask the experts, they'll tell you polling in this country is and has been, for the most part, very accurate.

"It's like saying some restaurants are terrible. Well, some are," said Evans Witt, CEO of Princeton Survey Research Associates. "I think what happened in Great Britain was astonishing." In the U.S., though, "basically, well-done polls are good," Witt said, adding, "There are big cultural differences in polling between Great Britain and us."

Some key ones: The U.K. has seen major political shifts. It had been predominantly a two-party system, and that's not the case anymore. It's more of a multiparty system with lots of regional variation, making it difficult for pollsters to adjust. The problem in Israel, on the other hand, is there is almost no disclosure of polling methodology.

That doesn't mean U.S. polling doesn't have its issues. There are methodologies being used, like online surveys, that are not time tested, for example, and there's a proliferation of less expensive automated polling, which isn't allowed to call cellphones. "Are they bad?" Witt asked, "The answer is, 'Well, we don't know.' ... In this country, we're doing pretty well, we have a lot of bad polls, but we've always had a lot of bad polls." The difference now, though, is with an explosion of multimedia platforms, almost any pollster can get a poll out there. "They can be wrong," Witt said, "but the biggest problem is people overinterpret polls."

By the way, sometimes the polls get it surprisingly right. In Alberta, Canada, this week pundits didn't believe the polls showing a swing to the left. But, in the end, they got it right. "The industry as a whole needs to redeem itself, and I think they did here," pollster Frank Graves of Ekos Research said Wednesday.

It's been more than 20 years since passage of the landmark Family and Medical Leave Act, which allows workers to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid time off for medical or family reasons without losing their jobs.

Some workers' advocates and politicians say it's time to plug a big hole in the law by requiring that workers get paid while they're on leave. But the change faces stiff opposition from some small business and other groups that argue that it would be too expensive and an unnecessary government intrusion.

Saying the reality for many families is that both parents must work, President Obama has pushed for paid family leave, calling it an "economic necessity" in his State of the Union address. He proposed $2.2 billion in next year's federal budget to help five states get paid leave programs up and running, and an additional $35 million for states to conduct planning and startup activities.

The Two-Way

Obama Shifts Federal Sick-Leave Rules, Urges Congress To Follow

Meanwhile, Democrats have reintroduced the Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act that would create a national paid leave program to cover two-thirds of people's wages for up to 60 days a year. With Republicans in control of Congress, however, there's little chance it will pass.

Supporters say that many workers can't afford to take unpaid leave and others aren't eligible for leaves because they work for small employers. The law allows workers to take time off to care for a newborn or adopted child, or if they or family members have a serious health condition. But it doesn't apply to companies with fewer than 50 workers, and workers have to have worked for at least a year and logged at least 1,250 hours in the previous year to qualify for the benefit.

Only 13 percent of workers had access to paid family leave in 2013, according to the Department of Labor's 2014 national compensation survey. Meanwhile, 59 percent of workers were eligible for unpaid leave under the FMLA in 2012.

Four states have implemented paid family leave programs, and their experience may provide guidance for a national paid family leave law.

Three of them — California, New Jersey and Rhode Island — fund the programs entirely by withholding employee wages. The programs are administered by states' unemployment insurance agencies in conjunction with temporary disability insurance programs, according to human resources consultant Mercer. (Washington state has a paid leave program on the books, but it has never been implemented because legislators haven't approved funding.)

The Baby Project

Parental Leave: The Swedes Are The Most Generous

California's program is well established after more than a decade. It allows workers up to six weeks of leave annually at 55 percent of their weekly pay, up to a cap of $1,104 weekly in 2015.

When Allison Guevara's children, now aged 5 and 2, were born, she twice took paid time off from her half-time job as a field representative for the American Federation of Teachers-affiliated union that represents librarians and lecturers at the University of California.

Guevara, 36, says that getting just 55 percent of her salary might have been problematic, but she was able to negotiate with her employer to use accrued vacation and sick time to make up the other 45 percent of her pay.

Altogether, she took off at least three months with pay for each baby. Her husband, who works for the city of Santa Cruz, was not so lucky. The law typically doesn't apply to public sector employees.

"The time off was very necessary," says Guevara. In addition to bonding with her kids, "breastfeeding was very difficult with my first one, it took eight weeks to get that going."

Guevara stumbled upon the information about her paid leave options by accident. That's not surprising. A survey conducted last fall for the California Center for Research on Women and Families found that just 36 percent of Californians knew about the state's paid leave program, a decline from three years earlier when 43 percent said they knew about the law.

Goats and Soda

New Dads In Togo Are Guaranteed Something That U.S. Dads Aren't

"Those who know about it are those who disproportionately work for employers who already do it," says Vicki Shabo, a vice president at the National Partnership for Women and Families. "That leaves out many lower-paid workers."

California employers are generally positive about the paid family leave law, according to a study prepared for the U.S. Department of Labor last year. Ninety percent of employers in a 2010 survey said the law had either a positive effect on productivity, profit and morale, or it had no effect.

California, New Jersey and Rhode Island have built their programs around existing short-term paid disability program infrastructures; only five states have such disability programs in place, says Catherine Stamm, a senior consultant at Mercer.

"It's not as difficult or momentous for these employers," Stamm says.

Under the Democrats' bill, workers and employers would split the cost of the program, which would be administered by the Social Security administration.

But that's a problem for small business owners, says Jack Mozloom, national media director for the National Federation of Independent Business, a trade group. Many of their members have fewer than 10 employees, Mozloom says, and if someone's out on leave, it's likely that they have to hire a temporary worker or pay someone overtime to do the job.

Financing a paid leave program would "represent a real expense that some of them cannot absorb," he says. "When it's mandated, it puts them in a hole."

family leave

CAlifornia

Health Insurance

The past year has been a bleak one in global affairs: The relentless carnage in Syria. Russia's annexation of Crimea. The Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

Is there anything to applaud?

The coordinated international pressure on Iran, which has led to detailed negotiations on the country's nuclear program, was one of the few bright spots, according to the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations and 25 other international policy institutes that teamed up to produce a global report card on how the global community performed collectively last year.

Nuclear non-proliferation worldwide received the highest grade, a B-, out of 10 categories ranked by the institutes.

"The unprecedented sanctions regime against Iran demonstrated that resolved, unified international action on the economic front can bring about significant diplomatic achievements," said Amos Yadlin, a former Israeli military commander who now heads the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. "2014 gave a good demonstration that nuclear proliferation can be effectively prevented."

Of course, even this development has its opponents. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the most outspoken critic of the negotiations that the U.S. and other world powers have been conducting with the Iranians. The negotiators reached a framework deal in April and are trying to work out a comprehensive agreement by June 30.

A Failure To Halt Conflicts

On most other fronts, global cooperation was rated middling to poor. Eight categories received grades in the C range, including the global economy, climate change and international terrorism.

Pulling up the rear was world's inability to prevent or end major internal conflicts. That got a D.

No major wars ended last year and the United Nations is currently conducting 16 peacekeeping operations around the globe.

"The international community and the U.N. have failed in our responsibility to protect citizens from intrastate violent conflict. The worst example is, of course, Syria," said Michael Fullilove, executive director of Australia's Lowy Institute for International Policy.

To drive home that point, the number of refugees worldwide topped 50 million last year, reaching the highest level since World War II.

The policy institutes said there are opportunities to make this year a much better one for international cooperation.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership, designed to increase trade among a dozen countries in the Americas and Asia, could provide significant long-term benefits to some of the world's largest and most dynamic economies, according to its supporters. The U.S. and the European Union also have a major trade deal in the works.

"The good news is that despite the continuing global economic crisis in many parts of the world, protectionism has not spiked," said Rohinton Medhora of Canada's Center for International Governance Innovation.

On trade and other issues, the policy institutes appeared to be in general agreement. But many world leaders face a much tougher time in building consensus.

President Obama, for example, may have solid backing from these institutes as he pushes for the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal. But the president is facing opposition among some fellow Democrats who feel that the result will be a loss of American jobs in manufacturing and other industries.

The Council of Foreign Relations and the other institutes released the report card Tuesday at a gathering in Washington.

Shanghai is one of the world's most vertical cities, a metropolis where 50-story buildings are routine. At night, the cityscape is so cinematic, it has been featured in both James Bond and Mission Impossible films.

This year, Shanghai Tower, the world's second-tallest building, will open and put an exclamation point on Shanghai's futuristic skyline. The structure, which measures 2,073 feet, is loaded with symbolism.

i

Jun Xia, an architect and Shanghai native, gazes up at a circular opening in the roof of Shanghai Tower. The architects hope to create "a vertical urban community" with the new building. Frank Langfitt/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Frank Langfitt/NPR

Jun Xia, an architect and Shanghai native, gazes up at a circular opening in the roof of Shanghai Tower. The architects hope to create "a vertical urban community" with the new building.

Frank Langfitt/NPR

It rises out of Shanghai's riverside financial district, which as recently as the 1990s was a mix of warehouses and open fields, even home to a dairy farm. The tower twists and tapers like a glass and steel geyser hurtling toward the sky — illustrating both Shanghai's and China's ambitions.

The building is so tall, only the Burj Khalifa (2,717 feet) in Dubai is taller, that the views can be disorienting. From an observation deck on the 120th floor, visitors can stare down about 600 feet to a neighboring skyscraper, the Jinmao Tower. By comparison, the Jinmao, which opened in 1999 and resembles a pagoda, is taller than the Empire State Building.

On a clear day, you can see more than 30 miles from Shanghai Tower to the East China Sea, says Jun Xia, a Shanghai native and regional design director for Gensler, the American firm that designed the building.

To prevent the building from swaying in heavy winds, workers used a crane to stack steel plates and build a 1,200-ton, tuned-mass damper near the top of the tower. The damper is computerized and surrounded by pistons, which push it in the direction of strong winds to counterbalance their force. Without a damper, the top of the building could sway as much as 5 feet during typhoons, says Daniel Winey, Gensler's managing principal for the Asia-Pacific region.

i

It's estimated 20,000 to 30,000 people will pass through Shanghai Tower each day. Shen Zhonghai/Gensler hide caption

itoggle caption Shen Zhonghai/Gensler

It's estimated 20,000 to 30,000 people will pass through Shanghai Tower each day.

Shen Zhonghai/Gensler

"If you don't have something like this in a building of this height, you can actually get nauseous," says Winey.

Beyond its height, what distinguishes the structure is its design.

Shanghai Tower is a building within a building. The interior — where offices and a hotel will be located — is a cylinder wrapped in a skin of glass and steel, which creates a series of atriums that run up the sides of the structure. An atrium on the eighth floor is a dozen stories tall and has palm trees, granite benches and a panoramic view of the city.

"It creates what we call a vertical, urban community," says Xia.

Once the building is completely open, 20,000 to 30,000 people will pass through each day, says Winey. People can have lunch, grab a coffee or hold meetings in the atriums, called sky lobbies. Winey says the sky lobbies should offer enough amenities that some people won't feel compelled to leave the building during the workday, which will save on elevator rides and electricity.

"It's really more a study in urbanism than anything else," says Winey. "It's taking the ideas of Shanghai, where you have all these little parks and neighborhoods, and (turning it) from a horizontal plane to a vertical plane."

Related NPR Stories

The Two-Way

WATCH: A Death-Defying Climb To The Top Of Shanghai Tower

Author Interviews

How The World's Tallest Skyscrapers Work

Parallels

China Builds Museums, But Filling Them Is Another Story

Parallels

China Unveils Massive Building — With Fake Beach, Fake Sun

Parallels

People's Republic Of Uber: Making Friends, Chauffeuring People In China

In all, there are 21 sky lobbies — that's not a typo — which are mostly public space that can't be rented out to make money. Winey says these sorts of design elements ensure a building like this would never be constructed in the United States, because the return on investment would be a long way off.

"From an economic standpoint, it would never pencil out," he says. "I don't think there would be any U.S. developers who would make that kind of investment."

Shanghai Tower, though, isn't a conventional investment. It was built for about $3 billion by the Shanghai Tower Construction and Development Co., a state-owned enterprise. The company declined an interview request from NPR.

The structure, which is ultimately owned by the city, is more than a building. It's a statement, an anchor for Shanghai's showcase skyline and a symbol of China's economic rise. From the government's perspective, given the message it's trying to send to Chinese people and the world, the money is probably worth it.

Shanghai Tower's reign as the world's second-tallest building, though, won't last long. Ping An Financial Center in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen will surpass it when it opens next year.

Yang Zhuo contributed to this article.

urban design

architecture

China

The possibility of humans colonizing outer space may seem like the stuff of science fiction, but British astronomer Chris Impey says that if the U.S. were pumping more money into the space program, the sci-fi fantasy would be well on its way to reality.

i

Astronomer Chris Impey is a professor at the University of Arizona. W.W. Norton and Co. hide caption

itoggle caption W.W. Norton and Co.

Astronomer Chris Impey is a professor at the University of Arizona.

W.W. Norton and Co.

"I think we might actually be living on the moon and Mars," Impey tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "Maybe not many of us, but we might have our first bases there. We'd have robust commercial space activity or people routinely in orbit. America wouldn't have had a hiatus of four years and counting when we couldn't get astronauts into space. It would be probably quite different."

Impey says the possibility of humans living in space is very real. And if — or when — it happens, the space settlers will face conditions that may cause them to become an entirely new species.

"They'll evolve physiologically quite quickly, because if the gravity is less — as it would be on Mars or the moon — then they will change," Impey says. "Their physical bodies will change even while they're alive. And then if they have children and grandchildren — then they'll change even more."

Impey is a faculty member at the University of Arizona and the author of Beyond: Our Future in Space. In his previous book, Humble Before the Void, Impey recounted his journey to Northern India to teach a program designed to introduce science into the Tibetan Buddhist monastic tradition.

Interview Highlights

Beyond

Our Future in Space

by Chris Impey

Hardcover, 321 pages | purchase

Purchase Featured Book

TitleBeyondSubtitleOur Future in SpaceAuthorChris Impey

Your purchase helps support NPR Programming. How?

Amazon

iBooks

Independent Booksellers

Nonfiction

Science & Health

More on this book:

NPR reviews, interviews and more

Read an excerpt

On what's left of the NASA space program

It's actually still pretty good. I think the perception of NASA — [that] we're in a bad space in our activities — is a little exaggerated. NASA's budget isn't growing, but it's also not declining. So, they're investing in new technologies; we're going to get a new heavy launch capability in a couple of years. The space station is active and doing scientific experiments. We're launching satellites; there's a heavy entourage of spacecraft going through the solar system and exploring there. It's not quite as bad as some people make out.

On China's involvement in the space race

They've grown their space activity at the rate of their economy, which has been 10 percent a year for a decade and maybe slimming down a bit. But that's compared to our flat-line budget for NASA. So they've got a doubling of their activity in less than a decade. They're looking to build their own space station, and it might be up there at a time when the International Space Station is de-orbited and burned up in the atmosphere. They're looking to go to the moon; they're looking to have a Mars rover, and they're actually — unlike the one of the stereotypes that they're just sort of copying our technology — they're actually innovating. They have very young engineers in their space program — very keen, very well trained, very ambitious.

On the concern that China will claim the moon

The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 supposedly prohibits any country or government from claiming ownership of the moon or an asteroid or Mars. It leaves a loophole for individuals or corporations because it just didn't anticipate that. So, in principle, they can't really do that. Even where Apollo and the astronauts landed is not really a U.S. preserve, which has led to some interesting issues as commercial entities try and go back to the moon and perhaps send their rovers trampling across the astronauts' footsteps and the lunar rover tracks. So the Chinese can't really claim ownership of it. But, the resources? They can harvest the resources of the moon or mars and, really, there's no rule against that.

On sex in space

The astronauts — NASA and the Russians — continually deny the heavy rumor mill that says it's already happened. The astronauts are well trained and not supposed to do that, but, yes, when the public is up there, they're going to do what they normally do on the earth. ...

"... there'd also be ways in which Newton's third law of action and reaction interfere with the normal methods of sex that you might use on earth. I'd just assume it's going to be an adventure, and people will be creative and they'll find new ways to enjoy themselves."

- Chris Impey

Your body is not functioning normally when all your capillaries and your muscles are designed to deal with the tug of gravity and you won't have that. But there'd also be ways in which Newton's third law — of action and reaction — interfere with the normal methods of sex that you might use on Earth. I'd just assume it's going to be an adventure, and people will be creative and they'll find new ways to enjoy themselves.

On creating a space elevator

The space elevator is of course a cool idea out of science fiction, and Arthur C. Clarke most famously asked when we would have our space elevators. And he said, "Fifty years after people stop laughing." And I think people are about to stop laughing. ...

Just imagine you're holding a cable or a rope — a finite length piece of rope — and you're just spinning. You're just spinning it around, and it will go straight out away from you by the centrifugal force. Well, the moon and the Earth are spinning too, so if you have a cable going into the air sufficiently high, then it will be suspended by the force caused by the spinning object that you're standing on. And it will just appear to go straight up into the air — right out into space — and hover there.

On the Dalai Lama's openness to science

The Dalai Lama, he said, famously ... that if modern science is found to disagree with a basic tenet of Buddhism, then Buddhism will change. And it's really hard to imagine those words coming out of the mouths of some religious leaders. That's an extraordinary openness to the inquiry that's at the heart of science.

On life in other universes

I like the idea that we're not it. I like the idea that the universe — the boundless possibility of 20 billion habitable worlds — has led to things that we can barely imagine. I think it's fun because it means your science is not self-contained and finite; it means that you have to really go way out of the box, even to imagine what astrobiology elsewhere might be like.

Related NPR Stories

The Two-Way

'Definite Evidence' Of Alien Life Within 20-30 Years, NASA Chief Scientist Says

The Salt

The Space Station Gets A Coffee Bar

Parallels

China Sets Ambitious Agenda In 'Asian Space Race'

The Two-Way

'Definite Evidence' Of Alien Life Within 20-30 Years, NASA Chief Scientist Says

Correction May 11, 2015

A previous Web version of this story suggested that astronomer Chris Impey blames sharp budget cuts by NASA in the past four years for the slowdown in successful human efforts to colonize outer space. Impey actually said: "NASA's budget isn't growing, but it's also not declining."

space

NASA