- National

- World

- Law

- Politics

- Health

- Science

- Climate

- Religion

- Culture

National

- Soft medium, hard truths - National Endowment for the Arts recognizes a Navajo quilter: 2024 Dec 9

- Bidders are back in court battling over the auction of Alex Jones' Infowars: 2024 Dec 9

- Police arrest 'person of interest' Luigi Mangione in United Healthcare CEO shooting: 2024 Dec 9

- Supreme Court rejects challenge to Boston's school admissions policy: 2024 Dec 9

- Supreme Court rejects challenge to Hawaii gun licensing rules -- for now: 2024 Dec 9

- The Eras era ends: A look back at Taylor Swift's record-breaking, 21-month tour: 2024 Dec 9

- Yes, the number of food recalls has been rising. Here's what you need to know: 2024 Dec 9

NATIONAL | MONDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2024 • 3:30 PM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Soft medium, hard truths - National Endowment for the Arts recognizes a Navajo quilter

By Adam Burke

Heard on All Things Considered

Susan Hudson's studio near Ignacio, Colorado, is often a chaotic mess of brightly colored fabrics and half-finished projects.

"I'm disorganized/organized," she said with a laugh. "I know where everything is. But I did clean up a little when I knew you were coming for a visit."

At the time, Hudson was finishing work on her latest show quilt, "Standing Strong In The Face of Genocide." Trimmed in black fabric, the four-paneled quilt showed a sequence of images focused on a single figure, like frames in a graphic novel.

In the first frame, a Native American boy in traditional clothing stands in front of what appears to be the whitewashed wooden siding of a building. The figure has black braids, leather and velvet clothing decorated in metal and bone, and oyster shell earrings. The light brown area of the figure's face is blank, with no features.

In the second frame, Hudson has sewn pieces of red fabric on the figure's pants, shaped like droplets of blood. In the third frame, the figure is slumped down, with a red smear on the wall behind him. The fourth panel has only Hudson's trademark cursive writing, like lines in a ledger book, dedicating the quilt to the Native children who did not capitulate to the administrators and federal officials who carried out federal Indian boarding school policies.

These frames tell the story of an execution-style killing of a Native American boy.

Indian boarding schools operated for decades across the US, beginning in the late 19th century, as part of an ongoing federal effort to separate Native youth from their families, culture, traditions, and language. Children were forbidden to speak their native language, to wear traditional clothes, and to practice their religion. Their hair was cut, and they were given European names.

In recent years, federal agencies in the US and Canada have begun investigating the tragic histories of boarding schools.

With "Standing Strong In The Face of Genocide," Hudson wanted to honor the children who refused to comply with these practices.

"We all know what happened to these kids who went to the boarding schools," Hudson said. "But what happened to the ones who said, 'hell no, we're not doing it'? When you have a defiant child, what do you do with them?"

The idea for this quilt came to Hudson in dreams and waking visions over the past few years.

"I would wake up crying," she said. "I could smell the blood, the sweat. I could hear the screams."

Initially, Hudson didn't know how she would represent the story in fabric. Eventually, she settled on taking the perspective of the person holding the gun and inviting the viewer to imagine the moral difficulty of the decision at hand.

"So you're standing here," Hudson said, gesturing toward the quilt where it hung on the wall. "You're looking at that kid who's defiant. You've got the gun. Are you going to shoot him or not? There were some people who didn't want to do it. But some said, 'Yes, we're killing a dirty Indian…How dare they buck the system!'"

Hudson travels to Indian markets across the US. Her show quilts often receive ribbons and awards at some of these shows. And each year, Hudson's show quilt finds a buyer.

"The quilts know where they're going to go," she said. "It'll go where it's supposed to go. Some of my quilts have gone to places I never thought they would go to."

By the end of the summer, "Standing Strong in the Face of Genocide," had found a buyer.

Hudson's quilts have been acquired by the Smithsonian's Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC, by the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona, and by a number of private collectors.

In September, Hudson was honored as one of 10 National Endowment for the Arts Heritage Fellows, at a ceremony at the Library of Congress.

A Long and Difficult Road

Long before they became tools of artistic liberation, needle and thread were sources of pain and suffering for Susan Hudson and her family, stretching back to her mother's enrollment at an Indian boarding school in the 1940s.

"She didn't learn to sew in the boarding schools. It was beaten into her," Hudson said. "If she wiggled or anything, she got hit. If her stitches weren't straight, tiny, and precise, she got hit."

The experience was so traumatic, that Hudson's mother never spoke of it to her daughter. But when Susan Hudson learned to sew from her mother as a 9-year-old girl, she felt the sharp edge of that trauma nonetheless.

"I got a taste of the brutality that she went through," Hudson recalled. "I hated sewing. I hated it. When I was in my 20's I finally asked her why and then she told me the story. She goes, 'I'm going to tell you once, and I'm never going to tell you again.'"

Still, Hudson kept sewing. As an adult and a single mother, she made shawls and star quilts and sold them at powwows.

"When I started making star quilts, it was mostly to survive," she said. "To buy food for my kids, to buy them shoes."

Then, around 15 years ago, an artist friend told Hudson he thought her quilts were boring and challenged her to make more original work. That friend was former US Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell, whom Hudson has known since she was a teenager. Campbell is a jeweler, and he was willing to share his knowledge of the art world with Hudson.

"I was pissed off at first," Hudson said. "After I shared a few choice words and calmed down, I realized Ben was right. That was the kick in the butt I needed. Those puzzle pieces came together, and I knew that I was chosen for this."

Hudson started to learn more about the artistic side of quilt-making. She realized, too, that her family history, as well as the visions from her most vivid dreams, were stories that could be told through her quilts.

Visions, dreams and history

Hudson's human figures have no facial features. At first glance, they seem like paper dolls, but every material detail has a story. Beadwork, leather, yarn, and fabric are arranged into richly detailed narrative scenes depicting some of the most traumatic chapters in Native American history. From the legacy of Indian boarding schools to the Navajo Long Walk, when people were forcibly removed from their homeland in the 1860s.

"Every one of us Natives, we're descendants from boarding school survivors," said Hudson.

One quilt, "Tears of Our Children, Tears for Our Children," depicts boarding school trauma. In one frame a row of children are dressed in colorful, traditional regalia. In another, their hair is cut, and they're wearing drab, institutional clothing. In the bottom frame, children sitting in wagons are guarded by cavalry soldiers with guns.

"The mothers were trying to get their children," Hudson said. "And the soldiers would shoot them if they tried to get their children. But this little girl represented my mother."

Emil Her Many Horses was immediately drawn to this quilt, when he first laid eyes on it at the Heard Indian Fair and Market in Phoenix, Arizona. He's a curator at the National Museum of the American Indian and a member of the Oglala Lakota nation.

"She was telling the story in a new medium–cotton fabric," said Her Many Horses. "And there's a lot of detail that she took the time to stitch into this quilt. And so I thought this would be something that would add to our permanent collection."

In addition to Hudson's family histories, Her Many Horses noticed the ledger art references in her work.

The Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona, has two of Hudson's quilts in its collection, including "The Beginning of the End," another quilt documenting Indian boarding school history.

"The details that Susan puts into these quilts are just amazing," said Diana Pardue, chief curator at the Heard Museum. "There's an incredible intricacy to the work. At first, your eye looks at the overall quilt, and then you start realizing there's a very complex story embedded in the artwork, and as you look closer, you learn something more."

Ironic award

Success with collectors and museums has led to more national recognition. When Hudson received word last Spring that she would be honored by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the irony was not lost on her.

"Congress is giving me this award because I make quilts showing the atrocities that Congress did to our people," Hudson said.

In September 2024, Susan Hudson stood on the stage of Coolidge Auditorium at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., to accept a medal from the NEA. In her speech that followed, Hudson's words pierced the silence of the theater.

"I should not be standing here receiving this award," she told the audience. "I should not be having to make these quilts to talk about the atrocities that happened to our people…. My descendants will remind your descendants of the things that happened to our people."

After a long pause, Hudson released some of the tension with a touch of humor.

"But I appreciate the award," she said with a smile. The audience roared with laughter and showered her with applause.

Through the soft medium of quiltmaking, Hudson has found a way to share hard truths–stories her family members would only speak of in whispers when she was growing up.

"You know everybody was talking about it quietly," she said "But no, I don't care, I'm going to talk about it because that's my story. That's my history. My family tree."

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5118388

NATIONAL | MONDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2024 • 2:31 PM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Bidders are back in court battling over the auction of Alex Jones' Infowars

By Tovia Smith

The fate of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' Infowars show could be decided as soon as today, as a federal bankruptcy judge hears arguments for and against selling the show to The Onion.

Jones calls the auction of his company a "mockery" and "rigged" in favor of The Onion, the satirical news site that was named the winning bidder. The losing bidder, First United American Companies, is a firm with business ties to Jones.

The Onion and the U.S. bankruptcy trustee who oversaw the auction, Christopher Murray, call the allegations "disingenuous and selfish," and nothing more than the "losing bidder's last-ditch effort to invalidate a fair and value-maximizing sale process."

At stake is whether Jones will be able to stay in his studio and continue his brand of conspiracy mongering with his existing audience and under his long-established Infowars name, or whether he will be forced out to rebuild his brand and audience elsewhere while The Onion turns Infowars into a satire of itself.

"We could be shut down today," Jones said Monday on Infowars. If that happens, he said he'll move to his back-up studios and website, AlexJones.Network, and will continue posting a live feed on his usual satellites and stations and on X.com. Jones is also contesting the sale of rights to his X account, emails, domain names and other intellectual property. X's lawyers have joined the fight, arguing that the company owns all X accounts so those cannot be sold as assets belonging to Jones, Infowars or its parent company, Free Speech Systems.

The sale of FSS is the culmination of two defamation suits brought by families whose loved ones were among the 26 children and educators murdered in the 2012 Sandy Hook School shooting in Newtown, Conn. They said Jones' continuous spewing of false conspiracy theories that the shooting never happened prompted his followers to harass and threaten them for years.

Juries in Connecticut and Texas awarded the families a total of nearly $1.5 billion in damages; a Connecticut appeals court last week upheld the bulk of the damages on appeal, but struck down $150 million from one specific claim that the court deemed legally flawed. That leaves the total Jones now owes the families at nearly $1.3 billion.

Allegations of a 'fatally flawed' process

The losing bidder, FUAC, bid $3.5 million in cash. The Onion offered half that amount in cash but added a sweetener: The Connecticut families would voluntarily turn over enough of their proceeds from the sale to boost the payout for other creditors enough to beat any other offer. According to the trustee, that arrangement could yield those other creditors up to twice as much as FUAC's offer.

Jones and FUAC cried foul, accusing the trustee of colluding with The Onion and the Connecticut families to ensure they would win. FUAC says the trustee succumbed to "pressure tactics" from the Connecticut families who only wanted to buy Infowars in order to bury it and punish Jones. It also says the trustee violated his own rules by replacing a plan for live bidding with a call for "best and final" sealed offers and by accepting the sweetener, which it says amounts to a "contingency" offer and a "floating bid" that aren't allowed under the rules.

"The sale process was fatally flawed in its execution," FUAC argued in court papers filed in advance of the hearing. "It was behind closed doors, cloaked in secrecy" and the sweetener "provides no actual value" because the families haven't yet collected a penny of it and Jones is still appealing the damages.

'A desperate attempt to manufacture controversy'

In an emergency motion Sunday night, the trustee moved to disqualify Jones' arguments because, among other things, they came in after a court deadline and because, the trustee says, they have no merit.

Jones is "trying to thwart a sale that is the best interest of the creditors," Murray argued in the filing. The "best and final offer" is a "customary strategy" that maximizes value to creditors, and no one objected until they found out they didn't win," Murray noted. He dismissed the objections as "a desperate attempt to manufacture controversy."

The Onion agreed the challenges were just an attempt to "distract and delay" the sale. The media company denied any wrongdoing or inequity in the process, and said the judge has broad discretion to do what he thinks is best for creditors.

"Despite all the noise, the court need only address a simple question that is whether the Trustee exercised his reasonable business judgement," argued lawyers for Global Tetrahedron, The Onion's parent company.

For their part, the Connecticut families are also asking the judge to confirm the sale. Despite FUAC's objections to what they claim is an unprecedented deal structure, the families' lawyers say what would be "truly unprecedented" would be for the court to "supplant the business judgement of the Trustee and deny the sale when not a single creditor opposes [it]."

Notably, Monday's arguments coincide with the most difficult time of year for these families, just days away from Dec. 14, when their children were brutally shot and killed at the Sandy Hook school.

That tragedy and what has seemed like endless legal wrangling may soon come to a head, almost exactly 12 years later.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/g-s1-37512

Related

- NPR

- NPR

- NPR

NATIONAL | UPDATED MONDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2024 • 6:19 PM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Police arrest 'person of interest' Luigi Mangione in United Healthcare CEO shooting

By Alana Wise

Police in Altoona, Pennsylvania, have detained 26-year-old Luigi Mangione in connection with the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Mangione faces a preliminary arraignment at the Blair County Courthouse on Monday evening.

At this time, Mangione is considered a "person of interest" in the case that launched a nationwide manhunt and sparked heated discussions about the state of for-profit health care in the United States.

Police say he was found with a ghost gun believed to have been used in the killing, as well as a fake ID and a handwritten, three-page document indicating his motivation. NYPD Chief Detective Joseph Kenny said the document in Mangione's possession indicated some "ill will toward corporate America."

Twitter

During the press conference featuring the NYPD police chief and embattled Mayor Eric Adams, police said an employee at a McDonald's in Altoona, Pennsylvania, recognized Mangione from photos made public by police and called local authorities.

Thompson was shot dead in Manhattan on Wednesday in what New York police called a "brazen, targeted murder." Corporal August Stickel of the Altoona Police Department said Mangione was arrested this morning at the fast food restaurant on "unrelated charges."

UnitedHealthcare said in a statement to NPR: "Our hope is today's apprehension brings some relief to Brian's family, friends, colleagues and the many others affected by this unspeakable tragedy. We thank law enforcement and will continue to work with them on this investigation. We ask that everyone respect the family's privacy as they mourn."

Thompson, who took charge of the health care enterprise in 2021, leaves behind a wife and two children.

Who is Luigi Mangione?

According to his LinkedIn profile, Mangione has worked as a data engineer at the car buying website TrueCar Inc. since 2020, and he most recently lived in Honolulu, Hawaii.

The 26-year-old fitness enthusiast had graduated as valedictorian of Baltimore's private Gilman School and went on to attend the University of Pennsylvania, where he received both bachelor's and master's degrees in computer science, with a focus on artificial intelligence.

Social media pages appearing to belong to Mangione paint a complicated picture of the Ivy League-educated techie, who showed interest in philosophy and high-minded literature.

In one online review by "Luigi Mangione" of the book Industrial Society and Its Future, the anti-technology essay penned by the "Unabomber," Ted Kaczynski, the reviewer wrote: "It's easy to quickly and thoughtless write this off as the manifesto of a lunatic, in order to avoid facing some of the uncomfortable problems it identifies. But it's simply impossible to ignore how prescient many of his predictions about modern society turned out."

Elsewhere on social media, Mangione discussed topics like artificial intelligence, his religious agnosticism and his belief that porn should be regulated "no less than alcohol, cigarettes, and travel."

On X, he retweeted messages decrying the "woke mind virus," and appeared supportive of Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, two tech billionaires who helped thrust Donald Trump and JD Vance to their 2024 election victory — views that seemingly put him at odds with the mythos of a Robin Hood-type figure on a rampage against the wealthy.

Public response to the shooting was mixed

In the aftermath of the shooting, some vocal critics of the U.S. health care system expressed that the shooter's actions could have been the inevitable outcome of a system that prioritizes profits over people's well-being.

On social media, images of the suspected gunman — mask down and smiling in surveillance camera footage — were circulated as the face of a modern-day folk hero who had taken action against a system perceived to be rife with corruption.

As praise poured in for the act of violent vigilantism, some companies removed the biographical information and photos of their executive leadership from their websites.

On a Facebook page appearing to belong to Mangione, comments since his identification as a person of interest ranged from laudatory to insulting.

"I want to donate to your defense fund," one poster wrote in support.

"Thank you for your service, king," said another.

Others expressed their desire to see Mangione locked away for life or facing the death penalty.

"He's done with. Lock away the key. Murder is illegal, mkay?" one critic wrote.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/g-s1-37509

Related

- NPR

- NPR

- NPR

- NPR

LAW | MONDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2024 • 1:48 PM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Supreme Court rejects challenge to Boston's school admissions policy

By Nina Totenberg

The Supreme Court has declined to review an elite public school admissions process based on zip codes. The court's action was the second time the justices declined to intervene in an admissions program based on geography since their 2023 ruling invalidating affirmative action in higher education.

Monday's case involved the 2021 overhaul of the admission criteria for Boston's three competitive "exam schools." Instead of relying on standardized tests, as the school committee had done in the past, the committee instead reserved seats for students with the highest GPA in each Boston neighborhood. The number of seats depended on the neighborhood's population of school-age children.

The Boston Parent Coalition for Academic Excellence, a nonprofit organization designed to promote "merit-based" admissions to Boston's exam schools, sued. They argued that this "zip code quota" was designed to reduce the number of Asian American and white students who were admitted. As proof of discrimination, the coalition pointed to instances of school committee members ridiculing Asian students' names and leaked text messages in which committee members expressed animus toward white residents of West Roxbury in Boston.

The First Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Coalition failed to successfully establish that the "zip code" system disproportionately harmed Asian American and white applicants because those groups still "earned more seats than their share of the applicant pool would suggest."

The coalition appealed to the Supreme Court, contending that the lower court ruling amounted to "racial balancing by proxy." But the justices refused to intervene.

Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented. Alito said the Boston policy was tantamount to "racial balancing by another name and is undoubtedly unconstitutional."

Full article: https://www.npr.org/g-s1-28924

LAW | MONDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2024 • 1:38 PM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Supreme Court rejects challenge to Hawaii gun licensing rules -- for now

By Nina Totenberg

The Supreme Court declined to intervene or overturn a Hawaii State Supreme Court decision that allowed the state to prosecute a man carrying a loaded pistol without a license.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito criticized the Hawaii court's ruling, but supported the U.S. Supreme Court's move on technical grounds. Thomas wrote that the court should hear an "appropriate" case to "make clear that Americans are always free to invoke the Second Amendment as a defense against unconstitutional firearms-licensing schemes."

In 2017, Christopher Wilson was hiking in the West Maui Mountains when he was stopped by the property owner, turned over to the police, and informed he was trespassing. While speaking with the police, Wilson informed them that he was carrying a loaded pistol. After his arrest, the state of Hawaii brought criminal charges against him for carrying a handgun without a license.

In 2022, after the Supreme Court issued a broad gun-rights decision, Wilson again challenged the gun charge, claiming that under the Supreme Court's decision, carrying a firearm for self-defense was protected by the Second Amendment right to bear arms.

The trial court dismissed the charges, but Hawaii's Supreme Court, in a scathing decision, reversed, criticizing the U.S. Supreme Court's recent decisions—decisions that the state court said show "how the court handpicks history to make its own rules."

But Wilson countered that the state court was making its own rules by refusing to abide by Supreme Court precedent.

Thomas, writing Monday, said: "Had the Hawaii Supreme Court followed its duty to consider the merits of Wilson's defense, the licensing scheme's unconstitutionality should have been apparent."

He noted that Wilson could ask the Supreme Court to review the case again — a view echoed by Justice Neil Gorsuch.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/g-s1-28922

MUSIC NEWS | MONDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2024 • 1:20 PM EST | VIEW ON NPR

The Eras era ends: A look back at Taylor Swift's record-breaking, 21-month tour

By Rachel Treisman

Taylor Swift's Eras Tour came to a close Sunday night, capping off nearly two years of sparkly outfits, friendship bracelets and record-breaking sales.

The tour, an autobiographical journey through Swift's extensive discography, started in Arizona in March 2023. Over the next 630-plus days, Swift performed 149 shows — each more than three hours long — in over 50 cities across five continents.

The show's 10 acts span the distinct eras of Swift's career, each defined with its own color scheme, costume and stage design, plus two ever-changing "surprise songs" during the acoustic portion of the night.

A steady stream of surprises, setlist changes and special guests held fans' attention for the duration of the tour, with many tuning into livestreams and following dedicated fan accounts on social media.

And, of course, people watched in person.

Much has been written about "Swiftonomics," or how the tour boosted local economies across the U.S. and around the world. Fans traveled hundreds or even thousands of miles, sometimes for more than one show, spending money on lodging, food and costumes along the way.

Their enthusiasm made history.

The tour set attendance records at scores of iconic stadiums, from Pittsburgh to São Paulo. Swift also set records for the most shows by a female artist at multiple venues, from Chicago to Mexico City to Lisbon to London — where she headlined a record eight shows at Wembley Stadium.

Eras set an all-time record when it grossed $1 billion last December — the first tour to ever cross the 10-digit threshold — according to the concert trade publication Pollstar. And that was with one year still to go.

This week, after her final shows in Vancouver, the singer's production company confirmed the tour's total ticket sales for the first time, telling the New York Times that it had brought in a whopping more than $2 billion.

That's not including the secondary market of ticket sellers (remember when a botched Ticketmaster rollout prompted a Senate hearing and class-action lawsuit against the company?).

And it doesn't account for other profits from the tour, including sales from merchandise ($200 million in 2023 alone) and tickets to Swift's concert film, which became the highest-grossing concert film of all time (more than $261.6 million globally) after its October 2023 release. Swift also released a $40 coffee-table book with pictures and reflections from the tour in late November, which sold nearly 1 million copies in its first week.

On her final night onstage in Vancouver on Sunday, Swift described the tour as "the most thrilling chapter of my entire life to date" and credited her fans. Swifties started their own special set of Eras Tour traditions, like trading homemade friendship bracelets in the crowd and chanting and clapping at specific cues with archer-like precision.

"Making friends and bringing joy to each other, that is I think the lasting legacy of this tour, is the fact that you have created such a space of joy and togetherness and love. You're why this is so special," Swift said. "And you supporting me for as long as you have is why I get to take these lovely walks down memory every single night because you cared about every era of my entire life that I've been making music, so thank you."

The Eras Tour by the numbers:

- Swift performed 149 shows between March 2023 and December 2024.

- The tour traveled to 51 cities across 21 countries.

- A typical Eras show featured 44-46 songs and ran for 3 hours and 15 minutes.

- Swift spent a total of roughly 25 hours performing her 10-minute version of "All Too Well."

- A total of 10,168,008 people purchased $2,077,618,725 in tickets — averaging about $204 per seat, Swift's company told the NYT.

- Eighteen opening acts warmed up the crowd for Swift, including Sabrina Carpenter, Paramore and Phoebe Bridgers. Fifteen special guests, mostly musicians, joined her onstage in occasional surprise appearances.

- Swift wore more than 60 outfits throughout the tour and more than 250 custom pairs of shoes by designer Christian Louboutin.

- Swift's biggest crowd (of both the tour and her entire career) was 96,000 people at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in Australia in February.

- In July 2023, Seattle fans danced so hard that they created the seismic equivalent of a 2.3 magnitude earthquake.

Meanwhile, during the tour:

- Swift was Spotify's most-streamed artist for two years in a row, driving 26.6 billion global streams in 2024 alone.

- Time magazine named Swift its 2023 Person of the Year.

- Swift released three albums while on tour: She re-recorded "Taylor's Version" of Speak Now and 1989 in 2023, and released The Tortured Poets Department in April 2024 (which also yielded four music videos).

- That's in addition to her concert film, book and vinyl.

- Swift canceled her Vienna concerts after a terrorist plot to attack them was foiled, and postponed her second Brazil show due to heat after a fan died during the first one.

- Swift endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, driving more than 400,000 visitors to a voting registration website and prompting blowback from President-elect Donald Trump.

- The U.S. Department of Justice filed a civil antitrust suit against Live Nation Entertainment and its subsidiary, Ticketmaster, alleging it created a monopoly on live ticket event prices — a step that satisfied many disappointed Swifties.

- Swift stopped dating actor Joe Alwyn and started dating Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce (and attending his games, where she made "seemingly ranch" an overnight sensation). Swift somehow made it to Las Vegas from Tokyo overnight to see — and be seen — when the Chiefs won the 2023 Superbowl.

- Their very public relationship has won delighted fans, driven up female NFL viewership and stadium ticket prices and even inspired a Hallmark holiday movie.

What's next?

- Some possible downtime for Swift, who will turn 35 on Dec. 13.

- Fans eagerly await her last two re-recorded albums: her self-titled 2006 debut, and 2017's Reputation.

- The singer was nominated for six Grammys, including album, song and record of the year. The awards show is scheduled for Feb. 2.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5222234

Related

- NPR

- NPR

- NPR

- NPR

FOOD | MONDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2024 • 7:00 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Yes, the number of food recalls has been rising. Here's what you need to know

By Bill Chappell, Allison Aubrey

It's been a year of high-profile food recalls. A deadly listeria outbreak led to a massive recall of Boar's Head deli meat. Contaminated onions on McDonald's Quarter Pounders and organic carrots were linked to E. coli outbreaks. And in late November, federal authorities launched an investigation into cucumbers contaminated with salmonella.

"I think that this most recent spate of outbreaks and recalls has made the average American consumer more anxious about food safety," says Darin Detwiler, a longtime food safety advocate and professor at Northeastern University.

Even before the Boar's Head recall, a Gallup poll in July found Americans' confidence in the government to ensure a safe U.S. food supply had sunk to a record low.

"While 57% express at least a fair amount of confidence in the government to keep food safe," the organization said, "28% of Americans do not have much confidence and 14% have 'none at all.'"

Here's a guide to the situation, and tips on keeping your food safe.

Are there more recalls than before?

Food recalls fell sharply during the COVID-19 pandemic. But the numbers have been rising again: The Food and Drug Administration, which reports food and cosmetics recalls together, says 1,908 such products were recalled in the fiscal year that ended in September. That's the highest since 2019, when 2,046 food and cosmetic products were recalled.

Not every recall signals an outbreak — some are due to undeclared allergens like nuts or eggs, or a machine part, like a piece of plastic, getting into food at a processing facility. An "outbreak" means two or more people have been sickened by the same illness.

"Typically, on average, fresh produce accounts for roughly half of all the number of outbreaks that we have in the U.S.," says Amanda Deering, associate professor of food science at Purdue University.

And now more than ever, it seems consumers want to know where their food comes from.

"Ten years ago it was a different thing," Deering says. "People weren't so wanting to have that information. Right now, they go looking for it."

Do recalls mean our food safety system is working?

The U.S. has two main food safety regulators: the Department of Agriculture, which is responsible for meat, poultry and eggs; and the FDA, which essentially handles everything else. Each agency follows its own inspection regimen and protocols. Other agencies, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Environmental Protection Agency, are also involved in food safety.

Asked why there seem to be more recalls this year, Deering says U.S. food surveillance has gotten more granular — and communication about problems is more effective.

As recently as 10 years ago, Deering says, declaring a food-related outbreak with only six cases "would have been almost unheard of."

But in recent years, scientists at the CDC and labs across the country have gotten better at detecting and tracing the source of foodborne illness outbreaks. Using the Pulse Net data-sharing system, and a newer technology known as whole genome sequencing, scientists can sequence the DNA from bacteria to help investigators see the scope of an outbreak and find its source.

"Whole genome sequencing has really changed the game," explains Martin Bucknavage, a food scientist at Penn State University. Investigators are able to get a detailed genetic fingerprint of the bacteria causing an outbreak.

Investigators use whole genome sequencing to match organisms (such as salmonella and E.coli) isolated from sick people to find related cases. They also ask those affected what they've eaten, with the aim of identifying a common food. Then, they try to trace the bacteria in the sick people back to the suspected food.

In the recent E. coli outbreak linked to McDonald's onions, Bucknavage says investigators did not find the exact E. coli strain in the onions. But based on the strength of investigative findings, the onions were identified as the probable source.

How can consumers make sure their food is safe?

"Don't take any chances," says Linda Harris a food scientist at the University of California, Davis. If a product is recalled, "throw it away," she says.

Harris says there are day-to-day food handling habits that can help limit the risk of foodborne illness. With meat and cooked foods, heat can kill bacteria such as salmonella, E. coli and listeria.

Fresh, raw vegetables and fruit are a different issue, says Purdue University's Deering.

Rinsing under running water can help remove microorganisms from the surface of fresh produce. Foods with a hard, smooth surface, such as cucumbers, are easier to rinse off.

"You can apply some pressure with your hands as you're rinsing, which will increase the amount of microorganisms you can wash away," Harris says. There's no need to use soap or other wash solutions.

It's also helpful to dry with a clean towel to "remove the last bits of water and any microorganisms that are in those water droplets," she says.

Some people rinse produce with a vinegar or lemon solution. But Harris advises against soaking your produce in a bowl. If there is bacteria on one piece or part of the produce, soaking it may contaminate the water and everything else in the bowl.

Bacteria such as salmonella don't typically multiply on the surface of a fruit or vegetable with a hard peel, such as a cucumber. But once they're sliced, bacteria have a chance to multiply.

"If you cut something that's fresh, the knife edge can push the contamination from the surface to the flesh," says food scientist Don Schaffner of Rutgers University. That's why it's important to keep produce cold to reduce the likelihood of contamination.

His No. 1 tip for consumers? "Once you cut it open, it must be refrigerated," he says.

Citing the cucumber recall, Schaffner says people may wonder about peeling off the wax coating. Research shows peeling can remove much of the contamination, but some can still be transferred to the cucumber flesh, so it's not a guarantee. "You can't eliminate [the risk], but you can reduce it," Schaffner says.

As for listeria, the CDC says that while infections are rare, people who are in at-risk groups such as the immunocompromised or are pregnant should avoid foods like unpasteurized soft cheeses such as queso fresco and brie, or premade deli salads.

In general, experts also recommend steps such as washing your hands and making sure foods that need to be refrigerated don't sit out too long.

What kind of pathogens trigger recalls?

The CDC says 31 pathogens — bacteria, viruses and parasites — have been commonly linked to foodborne hospitalizations and deaths in the U.S. Young kids, older adults and people with compromised immune systems are at particular risk.

Three bacteria cause the most hospitalizations and deaths each year:

Salmonella

Salmonella bacteria live in the intestines of people and animals. It's also "the biggest cause of hospitalization and death in our food system," Sarah Sorscher, director of regulatory affairs at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, told NPR's 1A program in September.

Every year, salmonella causes "about 1.35 million illnesses, 26,500 hospitalizations, and 420 deaths" in the U.S., according to a CDC estimate.

Common symptoms include diarrhea, fever and stomach cramps. They often start hours or days after ingestion but can also be delayed for weeks after the initial infection. While people usually feel better after four to seven days, some strains can cause severe illness and infect the nervous system.

"In rare cases, infection may spread from the intestines to the bloodstream, or to other parts of the body," the CDC says. "These patients should be treated promptly with antibiotics."

Listeria monocytogenes

"We do see listeria with produce at times, but listeria is naturally found in the soil, so that's not a huge stretch," Deering says. Listeria can be found in items like deli meat because it can grow under refrigeration temperatures, she says. "Listeria isn't great at it, but it can grow."

Just one or two listeria cells in a package of lunchmeat — with its often months-long shelf life — can grow to levels of illness under refrigeration, she notes.

The main symptoms are diarrhea and vomiting, which can be mild compared to other pathogens listed here. But some people can also develop an invasive illness beyond the intestine with a fever and flu-like symptoms — and, for a pregnant person, there can be heightened risk to the baby.

People infected with listeria might not be aware of it for weeks, a delay that makes it harder to identify and clamp down on an outbreak.

E. coli

Escherichia coli bacteria are germs that live in the intestines and feces. Not all of them are dangerous: The CDC says they "help us digest food, produce vitamins, and protect us from harmful germs."

But six types of E. coli cause diarrhea. And one type known as STEC — Shiga toxin-producing E. coli — can make people very sick. Unlike other types of E. coli, STEC is more likely to hit people in high-income countries; it particularly affects children younger than 5 and adults over 65. The CDC says STEC "can trigger a serious health condition called hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS). HUS can lead to kidney failure, permanent health problems, and even death."

Other pathogens routinely tracked by U.S. agencies include the cyclospora parasite and norovirus; and bacteria such as Campylobacter, Vibrio, Yersinia and Shigella.

How has food regulation changed?

Important shifts have often come in response to tragic outbreaks. A deadly E. coli outbreak linked to Jack in the Box hamburgers in 1993 changed the way meat was regulated, for instance. Soon afterward, the Food Safety and Inspection Service declared dangerous E.coli to be an adulterant in ground beef and set up a testing program for it, according to the USDA.

"If it's an adulterant, it means that if the product has that bacteria, it can't be sold to consumers," Sorscher said in September. "It has to be diverted."

Also, regulators have historically lacked authority. Until 2011, for instance, the FDA didn't have the power to issue mandatory recalls. That changed with the Food Safety Modernization Act, which addressed concerns such as imported foods not meeting U.S. standards.

When outbreaks do occur, advanced technology helps experts determine what went wrong. But Detwiler, Sorscher and others say the U.S. needs more systemic changes to prevent outbreaks in the first place.

"The fact that we're identifying more outbreaks doesn't mean the system is 'working,'" Detwiler says, noting the human toll of outbreaks. "True progress will come when we stop seeing outbreaks and recalls as routine events, and when we address the root causes of contamination."

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5215713

Related

- NPR

- NPR

- NPR

- NPR

- NPR

- NPR

- NPR

World

- In Lebanon, villagers on the border watch Syria's revolution with unease: 2024 Dec 9

- A gang leader in Haiti is accused of massacring over 100 people: 2024 Dec 9

- How Syria's revolution could reshape the Middle East: 2024 Dec 9

- Rebels seized control of Syrian capital. And, Trump's 1st post-election TV interview: 2024 Dec 9

- For the first time in decades, an Assad is not in control of Syria: 2024 Dec 9

- South Korea's Justice Ministry imposes travel ban on President Yoon over martial law: 2024 Dec 9

- Russia targets Ukraine's energy grid as winter sets in. Here's how one plant copes: 2024 Dec 9

MIDDLE EAST CRISIS — EXPLAINED | MONDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2024 • 2:35 PM EST | VIEW ON NPR

In Lebanon, villagers on the border watch Syria's revolution with unease

By Ayman Oghanna, Jawad Rizkallah, Lauren Frayer

YOUNINE, Lebanon, near the border with Syria — Over the snowcapped mountains along the Lebanon-Syria border, the wind carries a sharp chill, blowing cigarette smoke from Rafaat Nasrallah's hand as he gestures toward the horizon.

"We are at the border," he says, "our roads lead to Syria, because for us Syria is my country as well as Lebanon."

Nasrallah's Christian village sits between two wars. One, in Lebanon, where a fragile ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel is barely taking hold. Another, in Syria, where rebel Islamist insurgents have swept across the country, defeated government forces and toppled the dictatorial regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Nasrallah, a Lebanese Christian, had feared that the Syrian rebel advances would flood Lebanon with more refugees, weapons and terrorists. But today, his fears have not been realized.

Lebanon already hosts the highest number of refugees per capita worldwide, according to the United Nations, with government estimates indicating approximately 1.5 million Syrian refugees residing in the country since 2012. The influx has put a strain on Lebanon's resources and infrastructure.

But now many Syrians are heading home, jubilant. They carry mattresses on the roofs of their cars, sing chants of freedom and wave the revolutionary flag, some improvised from scraps of cardboard. Their return to Syria, after years of displacement, injects an unexpected moment of hope after years of violence.

"The situation is not scary," Nasrallah says. "There is no bloodshed or executions. If it stays like this, contained in Syria, we are not concerned. But, if the groups want to come to Lebanon, we will be prepared."

A revolution in Syria is almost complete after more than a decade of civil war. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) — a jihadist group once linked to al-Qaida — has stormed across the country in recent days, capturing Idlib, Aleppo, Homs and Damascus in less than two weeks.

The group's rapid advance threatens to displace thousands of Syrians loyal to the ousted regime and sever a supply chain from Iran to Syria, where Tehran supported Assad's regime, and to Lebanon, where the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah is based. The surprise HTS offensive met little resistance from the Syrian military, which melted away from many regime-held areas in the face of the spectacular rebel juggernaut.

For Nasrallah, the border beyond his village of Ras Baalbek is more than a line on a map. It's a place of memory and pain. Looking toward Syria, he recalls crossing the hills as a boy to attend Boy Scouts there.

But after the Syrian war erupted in 2011, it began threatening Lebanese like him. Sunni Muslim rebels infiltrated Lebanon, clashing with Lebanese soldiers and Hezbollah, abducting locals and setting off suicide bombs. To protect his community, his predominantly Christian village forged an alliance with Hezbollah, a Shia Muslim paramilitary force.

"I'd make a deal with the devil if it meant protecting my village," he says. "But Hezbollah is not the devil. They're our neighbors, the kids we grew up going to school with."

That alliance came at a cost. The road leading to his village is lined with craters from Israeli strikes. Hezbollah uses this border to ferry weapons from Iran, across Syria and into Lebanon. Those supply lines are what Israel has been targeting.

The scars of more than a year of war between Israel and Hezbollah can be seen throughout Lebanon.

In the nearby village of Younine, Fatima Salah picks through the rubble of what was once her family home while reciting a verse from the Quran. Just last month, an Israeli airstrike reduced the house to a tangle of bricks, mangled metal and broken children's toys.

Israel says its operation in Lebanon targets Hezbollah fighters and military infrastructure.

Ten of Salah's cousins were killed in the attack, she says. The youngest, Haider, was only 1 and a half years old.

"It's just twisted metal," she says, picking up a piece of shrapnel from the rubble.

Yet, as she mourns, Salah now sees Syrians stream across the border returning to the homes, while other Syrians are coming into Lebanon.

"Those who are against the Assad government are returning to Syria, but others are getting displaced. The [Assad] supporters are now coming to Lebanon and we are receiving some of them in our village," she says.

For Salah, Syria and Israel are two fronts in a wider war. On the same day that Israel and Hezbollah agreed to a ceasefire and a phased withdrawal of Israeli troops from Lebanon, Syrian rebels started making advances against Assad's forces on the other side of this border.

The timing of the insurgent assault inside Syria has fueled speculation in Lebanon — that Israel and the U.S. were behind the rebel advances, seeking to weaken Assad, Iran, and Hezbollah, who Salah sees as her protector. The U.S. has designated HTS as a terrorist organization and maintains a policy of not supporting the group. A former Israeli military commander did confirm that his country armed some anti-Assad rebel factions.

"The day it stopped over here, it started over there. It's not a coincidence. It's the same war," Salah says. Speaking of the Sunni groups such as HTS, she says: "They are next to us, they are on our borders … Aleppo, Hama, Damascus, and then us."

Her fear is real. A decade ago, the same rebels who recently took over cities in Syria crossed into Lebanon just behind her house. They were part of Jabhat al-Nusra, HTS' predecessor.

The insurgents unleashed a reign of terror in some areas, sending a message to Hezbollah, whose fighters were battling alongside Assad's forces in Syria. These incursions drew Lebanon deeper into the Syrian conflict, forcing the Lebanese Army and Hezbollah to respond with military operations to reclaim these areas.

For people like Ali Zgheib, the consequences of this violence are personal. An international law student, Zgheib balances his academic pursuits with his family's tradition of shepherding. Like his father and grandfather before him, he herds sheep along the Lebanon-Syria border — a terrain that has become a fault line in a wider regional war.

"My mom is Syrian," he says, from the city of Homs, which is now under the control of rebel forces.

"We're terrified," Zgheib admits. His fears come from two directions: the ongoing Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon, which have persisted despite a ceasefire, and the Sunni rebels now in control in much of Syria, where Zgheib crossed into regularly to sell his sheep in local markets.

"If these two wars come together," he says, his voice heavy with unease, "it'll happen right here. And there will be no ceasefire anymore."

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5221662

Related

- NPR

THE AMERICAS | MONDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2024 • 1:18 PM EST | VIEW ON NPR

A gang leader in Haiti is accused of massacring over 100 people

By The Associated Press

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — A gang leader who controls a key port in Haiti's capital is accused of massacring older people and Vodou religious leaders in his community to avenge his son's death, according to the government and human rights organizations that estimate more than 100 killed.

Reports on the number of dead in Port-au-Prince can vary wildly in a country where such killings often occur in gang-controlled, largely inaccessible areas.

Haiti's government in a statement Monday acknowledged the massacre, saying over 100 were killed in the Cité Soleil neighborhood, and promised to bring to justice those responsible for "this unspeakable carnage."

Volker Türk, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, told journalists on Monday that at least 184 people were killed by a powerful gang leader. It wasn't clear where his office had obtained that number, and a spokesperson did not return a request for comment.

The U.N. secretary-general's office said 127 of the dead were older people.

Haitian watchdogs also estimated more than 100 were killed, at times citing community residents.

The Cooperative for Peace and Development, a local rights group, said in a statement Sunday its monitoring unit found that around 20 older people were killed. But it noted that unidentified residents in the community controlled by gang leader Micanor Altès, also known as Monel Felix and Wa Mikanò, claimed there were more than 100 victims.

The National Human Rights Defense Network, another local rights group, said at least 110 people were killed between Friday and Saturday. The group and its executive director, Pierre Espérance, did not say where it obtained that information, and Espérance did not return requests for comment.

The murky information was a worrying sign in a country in the grip of widespread gang violence.

"The fact that we have so many doubts about what happened days after the massacre is a signal that clearly indicates the level of control (gangs) have on the population," said Diego Da Rin, an analyst with the International Crisis Group.

The accused gang leader controls the coastal communities of Wharf Jérémie, La Saline and Fort Dimanche and was known for robbery, extortion and hijacking of goods and trucks, according to a U.N. report earlier this year.

"Micanor was not known for being as brutal as other gang leaders," Da Rin said. "Not until now."

The gang leader could not be reached for comment and has not posted on social media. A spokesman for Haiti's National Police did not return a message for comment.

The National Human Rights Defense Network said the massacre occurred because the gang leader's child was severely ill, prompting him to seek advice from a Vodou priest. After his son died, he accused older people in the community "of practicing witchcraft and harming the child."

The Cooperative for Peace and Development said that according to information circulating in the community, Micanor accused people in the neighborhood for causing his son's illness.

"He decided to cruelly punish all elderly people and (Vodou) practitioners who, in his imagination, would be capable of casting a bad spell on his son," the group said.

It said gunmen rounded up well-known community leaders and took them to the gang leader's stronghold, where they were executed. Also killed were motorcycle drivers who tried to save some victims.

The group also noted that there's a ban on people leaving the community "in order to continue to identify (Vodou) practitioners and the elderly with the aim of carrying out the silent killing."

Da Rin noted that usually killings in Haiti are documented and posted on social media, though they can be difficult to verify. "In this case, there was not even a message on WhatsApp or a video on TikTok, which is very unusual," he said.

The Cooperative for Peace and Development said Micanor has previously targeted Vodou practitioners, killing a dozen older women and Vodou leaders "wrongly accused of witchcraft" in recent years.

It's not unusual for Haitians to seek medical and other advice from Vodou priests known as "oungans." The religion that mixes Catholicism with animist beliefs was at the root of the revolution that led Haiti to become the world's first free Black republic in 1804.

The massacre in Port-au-Prince comes two months after over 70 people were killed in the central town of Pont-Sondé, where gangs are vying to control more territory.

Such killings have overwhelmed Haiti's National Police and a U.N.-backed mission led by Kenyan police that lacks funds and personnel, with the U.S. and other countries pushing for a U.N. peacekeeping mission.

"The crisis in Haiti has reached catastrophic levels with allied criminal groups intensifying large-scale, coordinated attacks on the population and key state infrastructure," Human Rights Watch said Monday as it called for a U.N. mission.

It noted that "many Haitians live with the constant fear of being killed, raped, kidnapped, or forcibly recruited even as they struggle every day to find adequate food, water, and health care to survive."

More than 4,500 people have been reported killed in Haiti this year, according to the U.N.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5222566

Related

- NPR

MIDDLE EAST CRISIS — EXPLAINED | MONDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2024 • 1:03 PM EST | VIEW ON NPR

How Syria's revolution could reshape the Middle East

By Greg Myre

The swift downfall of Bashar al-Assad is reverberating in Syria and throughout the Middle East.

Some changes are already apparent. Syrians who fled the country's vicious civil war years ago are lining up at border crossings to return home. The gates are swinging open at the country's notorious prisons, freeing thousands. Syrians are speaking freely after decades of repressive rule.

Many more developments are still to come. Here's a preliminary look at what the upheaval could mean for a range of countries that have interests in Syria.

United States

The U.S. military carried out an unusually large airstrike Sunday on Islamic State bases in central Syria. The U.S. says this was done because a group of Islamic State fighters gathered to train, perhaps hoping to take advantage of the turmoil in Syria. The U.S. hit some 75 targets with a variety of aircraft, including massive B-52 bombers.

U.S. forces have been battling the Islamic State in Syria for a decade and largedly defeated the group five years ago. About 900 U.S. troops remain to prevent a resurgence of the extremist organization. Most of the Americans are in remote northeastern Syria, with others in the far south.

President Biden said Sunday the U.S. would maintain this military presence. He called Assad's ouster both a moment of risk and opportunity, adding that the U.S. would work with Syrians as they try to put together a new government.

However, President-elect Trump is striking a different tone. He took to social media over the weekend and said Syria is not a U.S. problem, the U.S. should not get involved, and should just let events play out.

But the U.S. is already involved. Those U.S. troops are not just fighting the Islamic State, they've also been protecting vulnerable Syrian civilians.

Mouaz Moustafa, with the Syrian Emergency Task Force, an American aid group, said the U.S. forces have supplied humanitarian assistance to displaced civilians in a barren area on Syria's southern border.

"If you spoke to any of these people and you asked them about the United States military, and you asked them about the relationship between the two, those Syrians love the American military," Moustafa said.

Iran

Assad's downfall is the latest in a series of major setbacks for Tehran. Persian Iran has spent the past four decades developing Arab partners and proxies in the region, collectively known as the "axis of resistance." But in the past year, they've been tumbling like dominos.

Iran was critical to Assad as he battled to stay in power during the country's civil war that erupted in 2011. Iran's Revolutionary Guards maintained a strong presence in Syria until pulling out last week, just ahead of rebel advances. Iran also used Syria as a bridge to ship weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

But now Assad is gone, Hezbollah has been greatly weakened by its war with Israel, and another Iranian proxy, Hamas in Gaza, has been devastated by its own war with Israel.

"Losing Syria will deal a huge blow to Iran and its proxies in the region. And that's why I think right now the leaders in Tehran must be feeling quite anxious," said Gonul Tol, with the Middle East Institute in Washington. "This is a moment where Iran's regional strategy has been dealt a huge blow, and at a time when the regime at home is being questioned by millions of Iranians."

Russia

Syria was Russia's main partner in the region for decades. When the Syrian rebels were threatening Assad's government in 2015, the Russian air force heavily bombed rebel areas and helped secure Assad's hold on power.

Russia's President Vladimir Putin said this showed Russia's commitment to supporting its allies.

But Russia is now preoccupied with the war in Ukraine and carried out only a few airstrikes as Assad's regime collapsed, demonstrating it was not able or willing to provide significant support.

Russia places great value on the naval base and the air base it has on Syria's Mediterranean coast. They are Russia's only military bases in the Middle East, and now they are very much at risk. Russia's previous bombing campaigns inflicted heavy punishment on the rebels — and Syrian civilians — and they may not be inclined to let Russia keep that military presence.

In addition, Russia has granted asylum to Assad and his family, which could be a point of contention with a new Syrian government.

Israel

Israel was always at odds with Assad, but considered him the devil they knew. Israel acknowledged that Assad kept the frontier with Israel largely calm, even when the wider region was aflame.

Israel will now face a Syria that's highly unpredictable and where Islamist groups could assume a prominent role. For the past year, Israel has been fighting one such group to its south — Hamas in Gaza — and another to its north — Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel is wary of a similar group in Syria.

Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 Mideast war and later annexed the strategic territory. Israel's continued hold on the Golan Heights is certain to remain a major point of friction, regardless of who emerges in power in Damascus.

Turkey

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has multiple aims in Syria and is well positioned to play a leading role in its future.

For starters, he would like to shape a new government in Syria to his liking, said the Middle East Institute's Gonul Tol, author of Erdogan's War: A Strongman's Struggle at Home and in Syria.

"Turkey can become the kingmaker," said Tol. "Turkey will stand to benefit both domestically and regionally from a new and, potentially, a very friendly government in Damascus."

The Turkish leader would also like to see more than 3 million Syrian refugees in Turkey head home. Some have already begun doing so. In addition, Turkish construction companies are well placed to rebuild Syria, ravaged by more than a decade of war.

However, Erdogan's ambitions will depend on Syria restoring relative stability. Under Erdogan, the Turkish military has often operated in Syria against various Kurdish groups that Erdogan views as a potential threats to his rule. If Erdogan chooses to operate against Kurdish factions in Syria, that could undermine efforts to rebuild Syria.

Transcript

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

President Biden said Sunday the U.S. is prepared to work with Syrians as they try to create a new government.

LEILA FADEL, HOST:

Yeah, President-elect Trump is sounding a different note.

MARTIN: To hear more on this, NPR's Greg Myre is with us. Good morning, Greg.

GREG MYRE, BYLINE: Hi, Michel.

MARTIN: First, the U.S. carried out numerous airstrikes in Syria. What can you tell us about that?

MYRE: Yeah, this was really big, Michel. The U.S. military carried out this very large airstrike on Islamic State bases in central Syria. The U.S. says this was done because a sizable group of Islamic State fighters gathered to train, perhaps hoping to take advantage of the turmoil in Syria. So the U.S. says it hit some 75 targets. The U.S. forces entered Syria to fight the Islamic State a decade ago and defeated the group. About 900 U.S. troops remain in the country to prevent a resurgence. Now, President Biden said the U.S. would maintain this presence in Syria. He called Bashar al-Assad's ouster both a moment of risk and opportunity and said the U.S. will work with Syrians as they try to put together a new government.

MARTIN: But what about Hayʼat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS? That is the group that is now believed to be in power in Syria. They're still designated as a terrorist group by the U.S., aren't they?

MYRE: That's right. This group, HTS, has been on the U.S. list of terrorist organizations for more than a decade. That means the U.S. can't work with them directly right now. But the group is sounding more moderate, and they say they will work with all other Syrians. Now, Biden says the group is saying the right thing, but the U.S. will be closely watching their actions.

MARTIN: So that's what President Biden is saying. President-elect Trump is striking a different tone. Tell us more about that. And what should we expect from him?

MYRE: Yeah, Trump was on social media over the weekend. He said Syria is not a U.S. problem. The U.S. shouldn't get involved, should just let it play out. But that may be easier said than done because, as we've noted, the U.S. is already pretty deeply involved. And the U.S. troops there are not just fighting the Islamic State. They're also protecting civilians. Mouaz Moustafa is with the Syrian Emergency Task Force, an American aid group. He spoke about these displaced civilians in a barren area on Syria's southern border. He says they depend heavily on the U.S. military and have developed very close ties.

MOUAZ MOUSTAFA: If you spoke to any of these people and you asked them about the United States military, and you asked them about the relationship between the two, those Syrians love the American military.

MARTIN: So Iran and Russia were both big backers of Bashar al-Assad. What does this mean for them?

MYRE: Well, this was really the latest in a series of major setbacks for both of them, and Iran in particular. Iran had close relations with Assad. It used Syria as a bridge to ship its weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon. But now Assad is gone. Hezbollah has been devastated by its war with Israel. The same is true for another Iranian proxy, Hamas in Gaza. I spoke with Gonul Tol with the Middle East Institute in Washington and asked her where this leaves Iran.

GONUL TOL: Losing Syria will deal a huge blow to Iran and its proxies in the region. And that's why I think right now the leaders in Tehran must be feeling quite anxious.

MARTIN: And what about Russia?

MYRE: A huge loss for Russia as well. This was Russia's main partner in the region for decades, but Russia was preoccupied with the war in Ukraine. It carried out a few strikes in recent days. Clearly, it was not able or willing to provide significant support.

MARTIN: That is NPR's Greg Myre. Greg, thank you.

MYRE: Sure thing.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/g-s1-37457

Related

- NPR

UP FIRST NEWSLETTER | MONDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2024 • 8:08 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Rebels seized control of Syrian capital. And, Trump's 1st post-election TV interview

By Brittney Melton

Good morning. You're reading the Up First newsletter. Subscribe here to get it delivered to your inbox, and listen to the Up First podcast for all the news you need to start your day.

Today's top stories

Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad fled to Moscow yesterday as rebels seized control of  Damascus, Syria's capital. Today, people in the country woke up for the first time in decades without being ruled by the Assad regime. The Assad family came to power in 1970.

- 🎧 Syrians broke out in intense celebrations after news spread of the regime's collapse. The fall of Assad's regime comes after 54 years of dictatorship and 13 years of civil war, NPR's Ruth Sherlock tells Up First. Syrians have accessed the Assad family palace, which they had never seen before. The opulence of the Assad home shows the lavishness in which they lived compared to the country's people. The civil war plunged over 90% of the population into poverty. Under a brutal dictatorship, thousands of people have disappeared into Sednaya prison in Damascus. The huge complex was synonymous with torture and terror for many Syrians. Some 100,000 detainees are unaccounted for.

- 📸 See photos from the fall of Damascus here.

President Biden yesterday said that the U.S. is prepared to work with Syrians as they work to create a new government. Biden has called Assad's ousting a moment of risk and opportunity. Meanwhile, President-elect Donald Trump took to social media to express a different tone. He said that Syria is not a U.S. problem and the nation should not get involved and instead just let it play out.

- 🎧 The rebel group HTS, which is now in power in Syria, has been on the list of terrorist groups since 2012. This means that the U.S. can't work with the group directly. Biden says HTS is saying the right thing, but the U.S. will be watching its actions, NPR's Greg Myre says. Though Trump doesn't want the U.S. involved, it is easier said than done as U.S. troops are in the country not only fighting ISIS but protecting civilians.

Trump sat down on NBC News' Meet The Press with Kristen Welker for his first network television interview since winning the election. The president-elect provided more insight into how he plans to govern, praised the power of tariffs, said he doesn't intend to cut off access to abortion pills and stated that mass deportations have to be done.

- 🎧 In the interview, Trump spoke in soft tones and talked about unity, saying that would be the theme of his inaugural address, NPR's Tamara Keith says. When the House Jan. 6 Committee came up, he said that its members should go to jail, but it was not entirely clear what he believed they should go to jail for. He talked about his desire to end birthright citizenship on day one of his term and then conceded that it may require a constitutional amendment. Trump said he plans to start mass deportations by deporting criminals but would eventually move beyond that. For mixed-status families, he suggested sending American citizen children away with their undocumented parents to avoid family separations.

Life advice

Anyone can be photogenic with practice. It is a skill that can be trained like any other, according to posing coach David Suh. Stephanie Yeboah, model and author of Fattily Ever After: A Black Fat Girl's Guide to Living Life Unapologetically, never saw her body type in fashion magazines as a teen. She used to avoid the camera, but now she doesn't shy away from serving looks. Suh and Yeboah share poses and movements to help you get comfortable in front of a camera.

- 📸 Start by deciding how you want to look in the photos. Pick three words to describe the vibe you want to channel during the photo session.

- 📸 Posing requires balance. You need to hold the pose long enough for the camera to capture the image.

- 📸 You can do warm-up exercises to help you ease into your poses. One warm-up example is standing in a military position. It might not be comfortable, but it can help center your balance.

Read the complete list of tips to achieve confidence-boosting poses.

Picture show

The bells of Notre Dame Cathedral rang for the first time Saturday in Paris since a fire damaged the landmark in 2019. The ceremony to mark the cathedral's return to religious services featured guests such as French President Emmanuel Macron, Trump, first lady Jill Biden, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the U.K.'s Prince William. The ceremony began with Paris Archbishop Laurent Ulrich knocking three times on the cathedral's door with his staff, which is made from one of the burned beams of the cathedral's roof.

- 📷 See photos from Notre Dame Cathedral's first service since the devastating fire.

3 things to know before you go

1. Rapper Jay-Z has been accused of drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl in 2000, allegedly along with Sean "Diddy" Combs, according to a civil lawsuit filed in federal court yesterday.

2. The U.S. Department of Agriculture issued a federal order requiring testing of the country's milk supply due to increasing concerns about bird flu. Since March, the virus has spread to over 710 dairy herds across 15 states.

3. Workers at Volkswagen, Germany's largest employer, are on strike over the company's plans to cut wages, lay off employees and close factories in Germany.

This newsletter was edited by Suzanne Nuyen.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/g-s1-37455

MIDDLE EAST | MONDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2024 • 7:10 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

For the first time in decades, an Assad is not in control of Syria

By Leila Fadel, Sarah Ventre

Heard on Morning Edition

Transcript

LEILA FADEL, HOST:

Syrians inside and outside of the country woke today with euphoria and hope after the ouster of former dictator Bashar al-Assad, who fled to Moscow. A New York activist, Marcelle Shehwaro, who fled Syria years ago, joined others to mark this historic moment.

MARCELLE SHEHWARO: The ultimate dream is if I buried in Aleppo. So what's happening now gave me a dream even beyond what I thought possible, is that I can go and live there.

FADEL: But that excitement about a new Syria comes with uncertainty about what the future holds. Will the rebel forces, led by an Islamist group once linked to ISIS, protect and respect all Syrians in a diverse society, as they say they will? Mahmoud Meslat is part of that opposition in the diaspora. He leads the Syrian Democratic Council and joins me now from Ohio. Good morning, and thank you for being on the program.

MAHMOUD MESLAT: Good morning, and thank you for having me.

FADEL: I want to start with just what you're feeling, as a Syrian, about a Syria without Assad rule for the first time in more than half a century.

MESLAT: Well, it's a historic moment. We are celebrating this new day in Syria. Syria is entering a new chapter in its history. The tide has turned, and the oppressive regime that shamed for decades of suffering has ended. Thank God, like, you know, for the new dawn. Thank God for our people, that they can come together to celebrate the freedom, to celebrate the democracy, to celebrate a new future for our Syria. We don't have to fear anybody anymore. Syria is in the path of democracy. And that is what's important - to come together in these coming days.

FADEL: It's been so moving to see those who lived under this brutal repression or had to flee Syria feel hope for the first time in so long. And, of course, that's paired with the grief over the hundreds of thousands who've been killed. But what about the concerns about the future? Has Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS - the group that led this rebel advance - changed as it says it has? And how do groups like yours plan on working with them and other rebel groups for a future free Syria?

MESLAT: Well, there is a lot of challenges ahead. But I am very sure that these days, we celebrate and we have better days than what we used to have, like, you know, during the regime era. Let's wait and see their action. I think action is stronger than words. They promise for change, and the dark ideology and radicalism is not - there is no room for that in our new Syria, in our future.

Syria has a rich history. Syria is a secular country, and we have different background. We have a lot of communities that - they are worries. But if you look at Syria, it is a land of faith and history, secular to both Muslims and Christians. Syria is the land of St. Paul. Syria is a home of John the Baptist. And we have a great history and civilization, but we have to come together. We have to defend all of those old ideology. But we look at it positively.

FADEL: Yeah.

MESLAT: Let's see. It's still in the early stage.

FADEL: And how do you see a united Syria in the future? As you note, the opposition is as diverse as Syria itself, but it has had a history of infighting. So when you think about it in this hopeful view, what would it look like? How would your group, for example, work with others?

MESLAT: Well, I think our only option - to get together, Syrian-Syrian dialogue, respect each other and open, like, dialogue among all Syrians are essential. We must look beyond our division or ethnicity to - or religion to see, like, each other simply as Syrian and talk as Syrian, and we speak in one language. This is our country, and we have duty toward our own people. They suffer for a long time. It's time to - for unity. It's time to put a plan, a roadmap for the future. It's time for reform.

It's time, like, you know, to make sure our people are satisfied and make sure that we have, like, a good, like, relation with our neighbors. It's time to defeat Iran, like, you know, and get them out of our, like, country. It's time that we defeat ISIS. It's time to defeat all those radicals. It's time to have a good relationship with our own brothers. It's a new Syria. We are very optimistic.

FADEL: And what about Assad? What do you want to see happen to him? Should he and others face trial for their crimes by a Syrian court?

MESLAT: When it comes to Assad, I don't believe in revenge. This is the way. But I think, like, I believe in law and order. I think he should be trialed in Syria. I think he's a war criminal. Syrian people suffered a lot during his ruling and his father's ruling. But I'm not a person who believe, like, revenge. I always believe, like, in justice. And they should bring him to justice in front of the Syrian people.

FADEL: Right now, there are a lot of external forces at play, as well, and the power has shifted. The U.S. is striking. Israeli forces have crossed into Syria. Turkey backs certain groups, as does the U.S. Meanwhile, Iran and Russia's influence withers. What kind of relationship do you want to see with these countries in a new Syria, and will their influence be beneficial or detrimental?

MESLAT: I think our main goal now and moving forward is to not only, like, maintain peace and stability, but also to unify our people. I want to make sure that our neighbors are safe and we have a good relationship with them. I want to make sure to open, like, through diplomacy, like, a lot of channel with our neighbors. Include Turkey. Include Israel. I want to make sure that we reach out to our own brothers - Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Egypt - and have a good relationship.

I want to make sure to see Syria back involved in the international community and become part of the international community. Yeah. And we want to live under one flag, under one Syria, unifying Syria and unifying our people, too. This is a historic moment, my friend. I mean, we are very optimistic that we can do that.

FADEL: Will you be returning? And when was the last time you were there?

MESLAT: I just came back from there. I came to celebrate holiday, my family in the U.S.

FADEL: Yeah.

MESLAT: So I came just for a visit for, like, a couple weeks. But...

FADEL: Oh, wow.

MESLAT: ...I'm telling you - since I came, we are just celebrating. I mean, even my own kids in college, everybody, but also my neighbors here. I have great American neighbors, like, you know, celebrating with me, and I see them even crying, you know, just telling us, like, we care about you guys. That's how great the American people. They stood with us when we needed them. And I will be back. I will be back probably, like, in a few days.

FADEL: Mahmoud Meslat is president of the Syrian Democratic Council. Thank you.

MESLAT: Thank you very much.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5220191

WORLD | MONDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2024 • 5:08 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

South Korea's Justice Ministry imposes travel ban on President Yoon over martial law

By The Associated Press

SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea's Justice Ministry on Monday imposed an overseas travel ban on President Yoon Suk Yeol as authorities investigate allegations of rebellion and other charges in connection with his short-lived declaration of martial law last week.

Yoon's martial law decree last Tuesday, which brought special forces troops into Seoul streets, plunged South Korea into political turmoil and caused worry among its key diplomatic partners and neighbors. On Saturday, Yoon avoided an opposition-led bid to impeach him, with most governing party lawmakers boycotting a parliamentary vote. But the opposition parties vowed to submit a new impeachment motion against him this week.

Bae Sang-up, a Justice Ministry official, told a parliamentary hearing that it banned Yoon from leaving the country following requests by police, prosecutors and an anti-corruption agency as they expand their probes into the circumstances surrounding Yoon's power grab.

On Monday, a senior National Police Agency officer told local reporters in a background briefing that police can also detain Yoon if conditions are met. The contents of the briefing were shared with The Associated Press.

While a sitting South Korean president has immunity from prosecution while in office, that does not extend to allegations of rebellion or treason. This means that Yoon can be questioned and detained by police over his martial law decree, but many observers doubt that police will forcefully detain him or search his office because of the potential for clashes with his presidential security service.

In the case of former President Park Geun-hye, who was thrown out of office in 2017 after being impeached by parliament over a corruption scandal, prosecutors failed to search her office and ended up receiving documents outside the compound because presidential officials turned them away.

After refusing to meet with prosecutors while in office, Park underwent questioning by them and was arrested after the Constitutional Court approved her impeachment and ruled to dismiss her as president in March 2017.

The main opposition Democratic Party called Yoon's martial law imposition "unconstitutional, illegal rebellion or a coup." It has filed complaints with police against at least nine people, including Yoon and his former defense minister, over the rebellion allegations.

South Korean prosecutors on Sunday detained former Defense Minister Kim Yong Hyun, who allegedly recommended that Yoon declare martial law. He became the first person detained in the martial law case.

The Defense Ministry last week separately suspended three top military commanders over their alleged involvement in imposing martial law. They were among those facing the opposition-raised rebellion allegations.

On Saturday, Yoon issued an apology over the martial law decree, saying he won't shirk legal or political responsibility for the declaration. He said he would leave it to his party to chart a course through the country's political turmoil, "including matters related to my term in office."

Since taking office in 2022 for a single five-year term, Yoon, a conservative, has been on a near-constant collision course with his liberal rivals who control parliament. The liberals have introduced a slew of motions seeking to impeach some of his top officials and launched a fierce political offensive against Yoon over a spate of scandals involving him and his wife.

In his martial law announcement on Tuesday night, Yoon called parliament a "den of criminals" bogging down state affairs and vowed to eliminate "shameless North Korea followers and anti-state forces."

Yoon's martial law decree lasted only six hours because the National Assembly voted it down, forcing Yoon's Cabinet to lift it before daybreak Wednesday. Some members of Yoon's governing People Power Party cast ballots against Yoon's decree, but the party later decided to oppose his impeachment.

Experts say Yoon's party fears losing the presidency to liberals in a by-election if he is impeached and ousted, as they did after Park was removed from office.

PPP leader Han Dong-hun said Sunday his party will push for Yoon's early and orderly exit from office in a way that minimizes social confusion, but he didn't say when that would happen. He also said Yoon will not be involved in state affairs, including foreign policy.

Critics say Han likely wants to buy time to help his party restore public confidence. His comments on sidelining Yoon from state affairs have also sparked widespread concern and criticism that it violates the constitution.

During a Monday briefing, the Defense Ministry said Yoon maintains control of the military, a power the constitution explicitly reserves for the president.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5222183

Related

- NPR

- NPR

- NPR

UKRAINE INVASION — EXPLAINED | MONDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2024 • 5:00 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Russia targets Ukraine's energy grid as winter sets in. Here's how one plant copes

By Joanna Kakissis

Editor's note: This story is part of a series on Ukraine's energy industry under attack. Click here for a photo essay from Ukrainian coal country.

AT A UKRAINIAN POWER PLANT — Donning hard hats and thick uniforms, Lesia and Nadia sweep pulverized concrete out of a dark, broken room inside the thermal power plant where they've worked for years.

The women normally would be operating the conveyor belt that delivers coal, Ukraine's primary fuel source, to the plant's furnace. Instead they are clearing the conveyor belt's remains after a Russian missile attack earlier this year.

"I did not think this would ever be a dangerous job," Nadia says.

"We love our work," Lesia adds, "but we have a constant feeling of fear."

Lesia remembers the day of the attack, how everyone ran to the bomb shelter as the air raid siren blared.

"We stayed there a long time, like three hours," she says. "We hoped the missile would hit somewhere else. But it came right at our plant. We heard the explosions from the shelter."

For months now, she and her colleagues have returned to the plant every day to fix it and help keep the lights and heat on as winter sets in.

A new reality

This plant is owned by DTEK, Ukraine's largest private energy supplier. It says Russia has attacked its facilities nearly 200 times since the Russian invasion in February 2022. Much of the company's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed.

The company requested that NPR not disclose either the plant's location or the last names of workers to avoid giving Russian forces any information that might help target the energy company workers and facilities.

Russian strikes on Ukraine's energy grid have been so frequent this year that they have knocked out more than half of Ukraine's energy-generating capacity. On Nov. 28, after Russia's 11th mass attack on Ukraine's energy infrastructure this year, Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened to strike again with a new ballistic missile that has nuclear capabilities.

To cope with the attacks, Ukraine has turned to emergency imports of electricity from neighboring countries and enacted rolling blackouts. Homes and businesses have backup generators on hand.

In Ukraine's capital, Kyiv, Yevhen Hutman, a 40-year-old investment analyst for startups, says most people are prepared for power outages.

"Nobody wants this tough winter," he says. "We have our power banks. We have all the stuff we need to, for example, work from home. But yeah, it's tiring."

Anastasiia Shalukina, a 25-year-old nonprofit worker, has backup power at home and carries a tourniquet when she goes out due to frequent attacks.

"When I'm going abroad, when I hear fireworks," she says, "I [get] a panic attack."

"We had to get used to it"

The power plant NPR is visiting has already been attacked several times, according to plant manager Oleksandr.

"There was a lot of panic the first time," he says. "We are civilians, we aren't trained to deal with this. After the first couple of strikes, though, it became clear that this was not going to end, and we had to get used to it."

Oleksandr walks us through the vast grounds of the plant on a chilly, rainy day. Everyone is busy repairing something or clearing parts of buildings damaged by Russian strikes. There are teams on cranes, and crews on the muddy ground.

Vasyl, another manager, who is in charge of repairs, sidesteps a pile of crushed bricks and says that his team had only been trained for routine maintenance.

"Now they mainly fix or replace equipment damaged by missiles," he says. "Boilers, turbines, generators, and also equipment that provides fuel supply. All this needs to be restored."

His staff, he says, is learning as they go, following safety precautions in case something collapses.

Nearby, another crew in heavy protective gear is repairing the plant's outdoor switchyard, which connects the station to the transmission network. The crew's leader, Andriy, asks NPR's team to stay back to avoid getting electrocuted.

"We restored and replaced all those wires there," he says, pointing. "You can see the new ones. Everything was damaged when the missile exploded overhead."

Aided by allies

This scene is playing out at power plants all over Ukraine. Energy officials say the damage likely would have been much worse if Ukraine didn't have support from allies like the European Union and the United States.

In October, EU lawmakers approved loaning Ukraine 35 billion euros ($38 billion), financed by interest from frozen Russian central bank assets. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that one of his top priorities was to rebuild Ukraine's energy network.

The EU and the U.S. have also donated air defense systems that shoot down Russian drones and missiles.

Meanwhile, Ukrenergo, Ukraine's state-run energy company, has used materials like concrete and rebar supplied by the U.S. Agency for International Development to build shelters shielding the most critical energy equipment. USAID Administrator Samantha Power, who has traveled to Ukraine several times since Russia's 2022 invasion, examined one of these structures during a visit in October.

"What we have learned over this very difficult wartime period is that there is no panacea for Putin's brutality, no inoculation," she told NPR then.

"But if something slips past air defense, if the Ukrainians are not able to shoot down a drone or a missile, this type of physical protection — the concrete, the rebar, the mesh — has made a profound difference in keeping energy online," she added.

It's not clear the U.S. will continue supporting Ukraine once the Trump administration takes office. President Biden is trying to push through as much Ukraine aid as possible before his term ends.

In a September report by the Paris-based International Energy Agency, Ukraine had already lost about 70% of its thermal generation capacity since this spring due to Russian strikes or occupation. (The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which generated about a quarter of Ukraine's electricity supply before Russia's 2022 invasion, is under Russian control.) DiXi, a Ukrainian energy analytics group, predicts blackouts could last up to 20 hours a day if this winter is especially harsh.

A Sisyphean task

Meanwhile, the EU and U.S. recently earmarked a combined $112 million in energy equipment and building for DTEK, the private Ukrainian power company. The aid is supposed to help Ukraine continue to weather Russian strikes on energy infrastructure, the most recent of which was on Nov. 17.

"No country in modern times has faced such an onslaught against its energy system," DTEK CEO Maksym Timchenko said in a statement. "But with the help of our partners we continue to stand strong against Russia's energy terror."

Across Ukraine, workers continue the seemingly Sisyphean task of repairing power plants after each Russian attack.

At the DTEK plant visited by NPR, shattered windows are patched up with tarp. Buildings are scorched, with holes caused by missile shrapnel. Crews instead are focused only on fixing the equipment the plant needs to operate.

Petro, an amiable, bearded mechanic, is working with a team replacing the pipes pumping out coal waste.

"We have to finish before the frost, sooner even," he says. "As soon as possible."

At least before the next Russian strike.

Producers Hanna Palamarenko and Volodymyr Solohub contributed to this report.

Transcript

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

In Ukraine, at least a million people were left without power today after another Russian bombardment of the already damaged energy grid. Russian leader Vladimir Putin said it was a comprehensive strike in response to Ukraine's use of U.S.-made long-range missiles inside Russia. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Russia used highly destructive cluster munitions in its overnight attack. In Kyiv, producers Hanna Palamarenko and Volodymyr Solohub found that people have gotten used to days like this one.

YEVEN HUTMAN: We have this big missile attacks every day, every week, every month.

SHAPIRO: Yeven Hutman (ph) says it may sound fatalistic, but his feelings are just not as sharp about this attack as they were for the first ones nearly three years ago now.

HUTMAN: Nobody wants this tough winter, but we are all prepared in some way. Of course, we have our power banks. We have all the stuff that we need to - for example, to work from home and other things. But yeah, it's tiring.

ANASTASIA SHALUKINA: The guys on the front line - they feel worse, so we have nothing to complain about, and it's reality.

SHAPIRO: Anastasia Shalukina (ph) says she has decent Wi-Fi and some backup power at home. Although, when she goes out, she carries a tourniquet. She understands she has been desensitized to some daily realities of war but not all of them.

SHALUKINA: It's very scary to say that it's become, like, a normal and regular thing because when I'm going abroad, when I hear the fireworks, I - like, I got the panic attack.

SHAPIRO: Even before today, previous attacks on energy infrastructure meant that millions of Ukrainians were already facing a winter with up to 20 hours of electricity cuts per day. And to help keep the lights on, workers are rushing to repair damaged power plants before the harsh frost sets in. NPR's Joanna Kakissis recently visited one of those plants.

(SOUNDBITE OF SHOVEL SCRAPING)

JOANNA KAKISSIS, BYLINE: Two women in hard hats scrape pulverized concrete out of a dark, broken room. They're inside a thermal power plant, where they've worked for years. Lesia says she should be operating the conveyor belt that delivers coal - Ukraine's main fuel source - to the plant's furnace. But earlier this year, a Russian missile hit the plant.

LESIA: (Speaking Ukrainian).

KAKISSIS: "The attack really shook everything up," Lesia says. "Look at all this mess. That used to be the conveyor belt."

She remembers everyone running to the bomb shelter the day of the attack.

LESIA: (Speaking Ukrainian).

KAKISSIS: "And we stayed there a long time, like, three hours," she says. "We hoped the missile would hit somewhere else, but it came right at our plant. We heard the explosions from the shelter."

The attack left Lesia in a constant state of fear, but she and her colleagues have returned to the plant every day for months to fix it. This plant is owned by DTEK, Ukraine's largest private energy supplier. Russia has struck all six of DTEK's thermal power plants this year. At the request of the company, NPR is not disclosing the plant's location or the last names of its workers for security reasons.

OLEKSANDR: (Non-English language spoken).

KAKISSIS: Oleksandr manages the plant. He says Russia has already attacked it several times. He worries about morale.

OLEKSANDR: (Non-English language spoken).

KAKISSIS: "There was a lot of panic after the first strike," he says. "We are civilians. We aren't trained to deal with this. After the first couple of attacks, though, it became clear that this was not going to end, and we had to get used to it."

We walk through the plant on a cold, rainy day. There are teams on cranes and crews on the ground. Birds rest on heaps of rubble and twisted metal.

VASYL: (Speaking Ukrainian).

KAKISSIS: A manager named Vasyl steps over a muddy pile of bricks. He's in charge of repairs.

VASYL: (Speaking Ukrainian).

KAKISSIS: "Boilers, turbines, generators, and also equipment for fuel supply," he says, "all this needs to be restored."

VASYL: (Speaking Ukrainian).

KAKISSIS: He says workers are learning how to do this on the fly, following safety precautions in case something collapses.

(SOUNDBITE OF MACHINERY HUMMING)

KAKISSIS: Outside, a crew is working on the switch yard, which connects the plant to the transmission network. They wear heavy protective suits to prevent electrocution. Andriy is the crew's leader.

ANDRIY: (Speaking Ukrainian).

KAKISSIS: "We replaced all those wires," he says. "Over there, you can see the new ones. Everything was damaged after the missile exploded."

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Non-English language spoken).

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Non-English language spoken).

KAKISSIS: This is the scene at power plants all over Ukraine. Energy officials say the damage would've been much worse without support from the European Union and the U.S. Ukraine's allies have donated air defense systems to shoot down Russian drones and missiles.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: The heart of the substation because it...

KAKISSIS: The U.S. Agency for International Development also supplied raw materials to the Ukrainians for protective measures. Ukraine's state energy company, Ukrenergo, used materials like rebar and concrete to build shelters around critical equipment. USAID administrator Samantha Power examined one of these shelters during an October visit to Ukraine.

SAMANTHA POWER: What we have learned over this very difficult wartime period is there is no panacea. But if something slips past air defense, if the Ukrainians are not able to shoot down - whether it be a drone or a missile - this physical protection has made a profound difference in keeping energy online.

(SOUNDBITE OF STEAM HISSING)

KAKISSIS: And so has the seemingly Sisyphean task of fixing energy equipment after every Russian strike. At the DTEK power plant we visited, crews are working overtime. A mechanic named Petro is replacing pipes that pump out coal waste.

PETRO: (Speaking Ukrainian).

KAKISSIS: "We just have to finish before it gets really cold," he says. "Sooner even - as soon as possible, at least," he says, "before the next Russian missile strike."

Joanna Kakissis, NPR News, reporting from a power plant in Ukraine.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5214478

Related

- NPR

Law

- Lawsuit accuses Jay-Z of raping a 13-year-old with Sean 'Diddy' Combs in 2000: 2024 Dec 9

- Trump focuses on tariffs, immigration in first network TV interview: 2024 Dec 8

MUSIC | SUNDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2024 • 10:25 PM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Lawsuit accuses Jay-Z of raping a 13-year-old with Sean 'Diddy' Combs in 2000

By Emma Bowman

Jay-Z, the rapper whose real name is Shawn Carter, was accused of drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl, allegedly along with Sean "Diddy" Combs, in 2000, according to a civil lawsuit filed in federal court on Sunday.

The anonymous plaintiff, identified as "Jane Doe," said the assault took place at an MTV Video Music Awards after-party.

According to the accuser, an unidentified female celebrity stood by and watched Combs and Carter take turns raping the minor, and that no one at the party attempted to stop the assault.

NBC News was the first to report the accusations against Carter. The lawsuit was initially filed in October in the District Court of the Southern District of New York, with Combs named a defendant. It was refiled on Sunday to include Carter.

Tony Buzbee, the Texas attorney who filed the complaint, has filed several lawsuits against Combs in recent months accusing the hip-hop mogul of physical assault and rape. Buzbee's lawsuit accused Carter of filing his own lawsuit against Buzbee, which Buzbee called "frivolous."

None of the accusers have been named, and Jay-Z is the first high-profile defendant Buzbee has listed besides Combs.

In a statement emailed to NPR, Carter said he was the target of a blackmail attempt designed to extort settlement money.

"These allegations are so heinous in nature that I implore you to file a criminal complaint, not a civil one!!" he said. "Whomever would commit such a crime against a minor should be locked away, would you not agree? These alleged victims would deserve real justice if that were the case."

"My only heartbreak is for my family," Carter added. "My wife and I will have to sit our children down, one of whom is at the age where her friends will surely see the press and ask questions about the nature of these claims, and explain the cruelty and greed of people. I mourn yet another loss of innocence."

Representatives for Combs, who has denied all accusations against him, declined to comment on the record.

In September, Combs was criminally charged with federal offenses including sex trafficking and racketeering. He is currently awaiting a May 5 trial for those charges, while behind bars at a Brooklyn detention center. He was denied bail for a third time last month.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5221691

Related

- NPR

POLITICS | UPDATED MONDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2024 • 7:08 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Trump focuses on tariffs, immigration in first network TV interview

By Luke Garrett

President-elect Donald Trump doubled down on levying tariffs in his first days in office, minimizing his prior emphasis on retribution against his perceived enemies, in his first network interview since he won the election.

But in an interview on NBC News' Meet The Press with Kristen Welker, Trump also said he believed members of the Jan. 6 committee should go to jail, and said he'd work to end birthright citizenship of Day One of his presidency.

He also vowed to implement his top campaign promises — deporting all those in the U.S. illegally, pardoning Jan. 6 rioters and extending major tax cuts.

Trump also promised he won't restrict access to abortion pills and hopes to find a legislative solution that keeps "Dreamers" in the country legally. Dreamers are undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children who have legal status under an executive action from former President Barack Obama.

When asked about going after President Joe Biden after inauguration on Jan. 20, Trump said he won't focus on the "past."

"Retribution will be through success," Trump told Welker. "I'm looking to get — bring prices down. Because … I won on the border, and I won on groceries."

Trump had previously threatened to investigate, prosecute, imprison or otherwise punish his perceived enemies, including Biden.

But when asked about the Jan. 6 committee, he said, "honestly, they should go to jail." When Welker asked him if he'd press his FBI director to prosecute them, Trump said: "No. Not at all. I think they'll have to look at that."

In the unedited transcript of the interview, Trump spent a lot of time repeating a false claim that the committee had destroyed evidence (It didn't), and said he plans to follow through on his pledge to, on Day One, pardon people who have been convicted of crimes for their activities on Jan. 6 — though he said the pardons would be considered on a case-by-case basis.

The president-elect also maintained his plans to levy heavy tariffs on the nation's top trading partners such as Mexico, Canada and China. When asked about whether this would increase prices for consumers, as many economists have warned, Trump said: "I can't guarantee anything. I can't guarantee tomorrow."

When pressed further by Welker on the fact that tariffs from his first administration cost Americans $80 billion, the president-elect pushed back, saying tariffs "cost Americans nothing" and can even be a tool of diplomacy.

"I have stopped wars with tariffs by saying, 'You guys want to fight, it's great. But both of you are going to pay tariffs to the United States at 100%'," Trump said, without providing evidence of any wars he stopped.

Spending cuts, immigration

Trump has often pointed to tariffs as a source of revenue for the federal government to offset the losses due to his tax cuts in the first term. He has also promised to drastically cut federal spending through the Department of Government Efficiency — an outside group led by tech billionaire Elon Musk and former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. Trump said Social Security and Medicare are not on the chopping block.

"I said to people we're not touching Social Security, other than we make it more efficient," Trump said. "But the people are going to get what they're getting."

On the topic of health care, Trump did not offer a clear path forward. During his first presidency, Trump spent his first months in office trying to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.

When asked if he'd do the same this time around Trump said, "Obamacare stinks. If we come up with a better answer, I would present that answer to Democrats and to everybody else and I'd do something about it."

Immigration remains a top priority for Trump. During the NBC interview, he stood by his plans to implement mass deportations of people living in the U.S. illegally. Trump said he'd start with convicted criminals, but he'd go beyond that group.

"Well, I think you have to do it, and it's a hard — it's a very tough thing to do," Trump said. "It's — but you have to have, you know, you have rules, regulations, laws. They came in illegally."

When asked if he wants Dreamers — those brought to the country as children and registered to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program — to stay in the U.S., Trump said, "I do. I want to be able to work something out."

But he also repeated his desire to end birthright citizenship on Day One — though he conceded it may require a constitutional amendment, which would take a long time, if ever.

"We have to end it," Trump said, adding that it was "ridiculous." He also said birthright citizenship was uniquely American — though more than two dozen nations provide it.

Asked about mixed-status families, he suggested the best way to avoid family separation would be to send American citizen children away with their undocumented parents. And he acknowledged that there could well be images that emerge from these policies that turn the public against them.

On abortion, Trump continued to acknowledge to political potency of the issue and said he would not get in the way of abortion pill distribution.

"Will you restrict the availability of abortion pills when you're in office?" Welker asked.

"I'll probably stay with exactly what I've been saying for the last two years," Trump said. "And the answer is no."

Full article: https://www.npr.org/g-s1-37377

Related

- NPR

- NPR

- NPR

- NPR

- NPR

Politics

- Biden creates a new national monument marking the legacy of Indian boarding schools: 2024 Dec 9

- In NBC interview, Trump talks tariffs, immigration and Jan. 6 committee: 2024 Dec 9

- Takeaways from Trump's first network TV interview since his reelection: 2024 Dec 9

- Under Trump, an 'all of the above' energy policy is poised for a comeback: 2024 Dec 9

- Why Latino voters' turn to Trump, GOP may not have been as sharp as exit polls showed: 2024 Dec 9

- President Biden gives White House address on the dramatic events in Syria: 2024 Dec 8

- The enormous consequences Trump's tariffs could have: 2024 Dec 8

POLITICS | UPDATED MONDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2024 • 4:25 PM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Biden creates a new national monument marking the legacy of Indian boarding schools

By NPR Washington Desk

President Biden on Monday announced a new national monument to tell the story of the more than 400 boarding schools where tens of thousands of American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian children were sent for assimilation.

Biden said the schools were "designed to sever ties between children and their tribal families, their language and culture."

Biden formally apologized for the Indian boarding schools in October, calling it one of the "most horrific chapters in American history." He announced the new monument during the White House Tribal Nations Summit.

"I don't want people forgetting 10, 20, 30, 50 years and pretend it didn't happen," Biden said.

The monument will be located in Carlisle, Pa., on what was the campus of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School — part of the U.S. Army's Carlisle Barracks — and will be managed by the National Park Service and the U.S. Army.

About 7,800 children from more than 140 tribes were sent to the Carlisle boarding school, which ran from 1879 to 1918. The school was a model for the federal Indian boarding school system, where more than 970 children died and survivors bore scars from abuse and separation.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5222331

Related

- NPR

POLITICS | MONDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2024 • 7:14 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

In NBC interview, Trump talks tariffs, immigration and Jan. 6 committee

By Tamara Keith, Michel Martin

Heard on Morning Edition

Transcript

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

And now we have another window into how President-elect Donald Trump says he plans to govern.

LEILA FADEL, HOST:

In his first network television interview since winning the election, he sat down with Kristen Welker on NBC's Meet the Press.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "MEET THE PRESS")

DONALD TRUMP: I won on two things, the border - and more than immigration. You know, they like to say immigration. I break it down more to the border, but I won on the border, and I won on groceries. It's a very simple word, groceries.

FADEL: He sung the praises of the power of tariffs. He said he doesn't intend to cut off access to abortion pills, and he said mass deportations have to be done.

MARTIN: For more on this, we are joined by NPR senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith. Good morning, Tam.

TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Good morning.

MARTIN: OK, so you covered Trump's first term. You followed him and his time in office very closely. What did this interview tell you about how he is approaching his second term?

KEITH: You know, for much of the interview, he spoke in soft tones. He talked about unity and said that it would be the theme of his inaugural address. These are things that he has said when he feels confident and appreciated. And he voiced something that he's voiced many times before over the past eight years, that success brings unity. Take this moment where Welker asked him about whether he plans to prosecute President Biden.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "MEET THE PRESS")

TRUMP: I'm really looking to make our country successful. I'm not looking to go back into the past. I'm looking to make our country successful. Retribution will be through success. If we can make our success - this country successful, that would be my greatest - that would be such a great achievement. Bring it back.

KEITH: So you could call this the generous victor version of Trump. But there were other times in this interviews where he let his old grudges slip through.

MARTIN: OK, so tell us more about that.

KEITH: Well, success is retribution was all finding good until the House January 6 committee came up.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "MEET THE PRESS")

TRUMP: For what they did...

KRISTEN WELKER: Yeah.

TRUMP: ...Honestly, they should go to jail.

WELKER: So you think Liz Cheney should go to jail?

TRUMP: For what they did...

WELKER: Everyone on the committee, you think should go to jail.

TRUMP: I think everybody on the - anybody that voted in favor...

WELKER: Are you going to direct your FBI director...

TRUMP: No.

WELKER: ...And your attorney general to send them to jail?

TRUMP: No, not at all. I think that they'll have to look at that.

KEITH: It's not entirely clear what he thinks they should go to jail for. But in an unedited transcript, he spent a lot of time repeating a false claim that the committee had destroyed evidence. It didn't. And he said he plans to follow through on his pledge on Day 1 to pardon people who've been convicted of crimes for their activities on January 6. Though he did say the pardons would be considered on a case-by-case basis.

MARTIN: OK, so let's go back to policy. Immigration, a signature issue for him since his first run for office - did he make some news here?

KEITH: Yeah, he did. He said he wants to come up with a legislative solution for dreamers who were brought to the U.S. as young children who have been living here in some cases for decades now. And he repeated his desire to end birthright citizenship on Day 1, and then he conceded that it may require a constitutional amendment, which definitely couldn't happen on Day 1.

As for his campaign pledge of mass deportations, he said he planned to start by deporting criminals, but eventually, it would have to move beyond them. Asked about mixed-status families, he suggested the only way to avoid family separation would be to send American citizen children away with their undocumented parents. Quote, "you have to send them all back." And he acknowledged there well could be images that emerge from these policies that turn the public against them.

MARTIN: That is NPR's Tamara Keith. Tam, thank you.

KEITH: You're welcome.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5220203

POLITICS | MONDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2024 • 5:00 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Takeaways from Trump's first network TV interview since his reelection

By Michel Martin

Heard on Morning Edition

Transcript

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Back here in the U.S., President-elect Trump appeared on "Meet The Press" Sunday. It was his first network TV interview since being reelected. On his signature issue, immigration, he reiterated his promise to deport people living in the U.S. illegally. He said he'd start with criminals, then, if necessary, families with mixed immigration status.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

DONALD TRUMP: I don't want to be breaking up families. So the only way you don't break up the family is you keep them together, and you have to send them all back.

MARTIN: Trump also said he is open to giving legal status to people who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children, known as dreamers.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

TRUMP: These are people that have been brought here at a very young age, and many of these are middle-aged people now. They don't even speak the language of their country. And yes, we're going to do something about the dreamers.

KRISTEN WELKER: What does that mean? What are you going to do?

TRUMP: I will work with the Democrats on a plan.

MARTIN: We wanted to get a sense of how all this might play out in Congress and potentially with his base. So for this, we called someone who knows the inner workings of Congress and who generally agrees with Mr. Trump on key issues. That's Republican strategist John Feehery. He served as press secretary to former speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert. Good morning, Mr. Feehery.

JOHN FEEHERY: Hi, Michel.

MARTIN: OK, so let's start with immigration. What did you take away from the comments we just heard, particularly in areas where he'll need to work with Congress?

FEEHERY: Well, obviously, he thinks he needs to do bipartisan. I mean, there's a lot of things he can do just through executive order. There's some things he can do through reconciliation, which means Republicans only. But the biggest chunk, when it comes to immigration to make permanent change, he has to get bipartisan coalition with Democrats in the House, and he needs 60 votes in the Senate to pass it. And dreamers is the best way to do that because that is the hot topic that, you know, we've been thinking about for years. How do we take care of these folks who've been here since they were kids and never been to their home country? And it seems like it's inhumane to just kind of send them back. But, you know, some Republicans want that to happen.

MARTIN: I was going to ask you about that. Do you think that he could get buy-in from the Republicans on this?

FEEHERY: He can get buy-in from some Republicans, but other Republicans, he can't get buy-in. And I think he has to have a conversation with his own deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, who I think is not too excited about this idea. The Republican base is pretty hardcore on immigration these days, and, I mean, I think they want to send a lot of people back home.

MARTIN: And remember with that family separation, you know, policy, which arose because of, you know, a reinterpretation of the law. It was deemed that if you had crossed over illegally, you were a criminal, and therefore, you know, children would be separated from their parents. It was tremendously unpopular. Even, you know, Republican former first lady Laura Bush, you know, wrote an op-ed about it. It was tremendously unpopular. What is the sense of that now? Do you think that Americans would be willing to tolerate something like that or even the idea of families being, you know, sent back even if they're sort of mixed-status families? What's your sense of that now?

FEEHERY: Well, my sense is that what Trump is focused on first is sending back violent criminals and then kind of working his way down. And we'll see how far he gets along that process. I think it's pretty unpopular to send mixed families. I know that Trump said it, and I think that there's some sentiment with Republicans that we need to kind of get illegal people out of this country no matter what the situation. But as you know, it becomes - even when President Obama deported 3 million people, it became kind of politically unpopular. So - and there's an economic part to this also, which is there's a lot of people here who do a lot of important things for our economy. So you want to make sure that you're doing things that help the country but don't undermine the economy. And so that's the balance that Trump has to achieve.

MARTIN: Let's talk a little bit about those cabinet positions. They're facing confirmation headwinds, you know, in the Senate. I know your expertise is mainly in the House, but I did want to get your take on this. We heard Trump yesterday defend his nominee for secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth. You've worked in Congress. Which nominees do you think still have work to do to get through the Senate?

FEEHERY: Well, I think there's opposition to Hegseth, but I think it's kind of, you know, the Trump folks have done a pretty good job of putting a lot of heat on Republicans to approve him. I think his biggest challenge is kind of demonstrating that he has the ability to kind of manage the huge defense bureaucracy. I think that that's kind of the underlying thing. Can he really bring the necessary change to the bureaucracy, which is very difficult to do, and you need to have some expertise on how to kind of get, you know, get rid of bureaucracy. I think that Kash Patel and Tulsi Gabbard have - both have some serious issues, but I think Patel is in better shape than Gabbard. There's a lot of folks who have problems with Tulsi Gabbard.

MARTIN: So before we let you go, as briefly as you can, after watching the interview yesterday, do you see differences between Trump 1 and Trump 2?

FEEHERY: It seems more - much more normal. There's normalization of Trump in a good way that - the interview with Kristen Welker I thought was what you'd expect from typical presidents, and I thought it was contentious but not chaotic. It was a good interview.

MARTIN: John Feehery is a Republican strategist and lobbyist. Thanks so much for talking with us.

FEEHERY: Thank you.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5220185

BUSINESS | MONDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2024 • 5:00 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Under Trump, an 'all of the above' energy policy is poised for a comeback

By Camila Domonoske

President-elect Donald Trump talks a lot about "unleashing American energy" — specifically oil, which he likes to call "liquid gold."

And based on his nominees for key energy posts, there's every indication that a Trump administration 2.0 will actively promote oil and natural gas.

But another phrase is popping up a lot right now in Republican circles: "All of the above." Trump's pick for "energy czar," who has a history of supporting both oil and renewables, has been described as an "all-of-the-above energy governor." A key Republican in Congress hopes that Chris Wright, Trump's choice to be the new secretary of energy and a believer in fracking, nuclear and geothermal energy, will support "an all-of-the-above energy policy." Statement after statement, story after story. Even the summer before the election, the phrase was reportedly the talk of the Republican National Convention.

It's shorthand for a set of policies that support oil and natural gas — and simultaneously, every other form of domestic energy, including solar, wind, geothermal and nuclear. The phrase has been around for decades. It appears to have been first promoted by the fossil fuel lobby before being embraced by a Democratic president, Barack Obama. For Obama, the phrase meant supporting natural gas and pursuing cheap gasoline while also investing in renewable power. Today, it's a mainstream Republican position on energy.

President Biden, some argue, also supported "all of the above" in practice — although he didn't use the phrase. But he only supported it in the near term. For the long term, he promoted green energy instead of fossil fuels, talking about a "clean energy transformation" that would remake the economy and address the climate crisis by gradually phasing out oil.

In contrast, the version of "all of the above" being talked about in conservative circles today asserts that oil is here to stay — but it leaves room for cleaner energy, too.

Trump can influence, but not dictate, oil production

Trump has promised to "drill, baby, drill," but presidents in the U.S. don't dictate oil production. They can try to influence it, but market forces still dominate companies' decision-making. Case in point: Biden tried to accelerate the shift from fossil fuels, but under his administration U.S. oil production hit new record highs.

The American Petroleum Institute has presented Trump with a policy wish list for the industry, including many things that the president-elect has promised to do, like rolling back incentives for producing and buying electric vehicles, restarting permitting for liquid natural gas exports, opening up more land for drilling for oil, and repealing or relaxing environmental regulations.

Those changes might make it easier and cheaper, and therefore more profitable, to drill for oil. But they won't guarantee a massive increase in production. After all, U.S. production is already historically high. Global oil demand is far from booming. In fact, the oil cartel OPEC and its allies just delayed plans to boost production, judging that the world doesn't need more oil at the moment. After all, if production suddenly surges beyond what global markets demand, prices would fall — which would, in turn, cause companies to pull back on drilling.

That's a scenario investors and executives are eager to avoid. Wall Street has spent several years pressuring companies to focus less on "drill, baby, drill," and more on a strategy you might call "dollars, baby, dollars" — sending spare cash back to stockholders, instead of deploying as many rigs as possible.

So, with financial incentives to keep production growth in check, how much would production increase if Trump enacts these oil-friendly policies?

In an interview with NPR, Thomas Pyle, who runs a think tank supporting free-market energy policy and was part of Trump's transition team in his first administration, rejected the question entirely.

"I don't know and I don't care," he said. "The industry should make those decisions based on the marketplace. … To me, it's not about producing more. It's about giving the industry the ability to make those choices free from the hammer of the regulations."

Homegrown energy (and, shh, it's clean)

The Biden administration just spent four years offering billions of dollars in federal support to the clean energy industry, as part of an effort to slash U.S. carbon emissions and help curb the most catastrophic effects of climate change.

Meanwhile, Trump dismisses climate change as a hoax. Suffice to say that "clean energy" or "green energy," defined by its climate benefits, won't be a priority for the administration.

But under a different name, the same climate-friendly energy technologies might still thrive. That's because alternative energy sources have other selling points for a Republican administration: They're domestic, which keeps the U.S. less dependent on foreign imports. They support jobs. And wind and solar, in particular, are also now huge industries in states with Republican governments, like Texas, Oklahoma and North Dakota, which has shifted some of the politics around their support.

Kennedy Nickerson focuses on energy policy for Capstone Consulting Group. She said some renewable projects, like offshore wind developments, will be set back by Trump's policies, but others could still advance.

"There will be a lot of marketing activities going on, I think, in order to kind of rebrand renewables from a climate tech [into] an energy security, energy dominance viewpoint that I think could get a lot of Republicans on board," she said.

Wright, Trump's nominee for secretary of energy, has openly called for a rebranding, arguing that no energy is "clean" at all. "We want new energies, but let's just be honest," he said in a talk this summer. "Let's call them alternative energies or new energies — don't call them clean energy."

And those in the green industry business are prepared for a reframing. Abigail Ross Hopper, who leads the Solar Energy Industries Association, emphasized U.S. jobs and energy security in a press call this month – calling that a narrative that "translates across political parties."

Costs, not climate

Hopper noted that something important is changing: Demand for electricity is soaring, thanks to AI data centers and new factories.

"This is not a time to choose between technologies," she said. "This is the time to expand and increase our energy dominance across the portfolio and across the world."

And meeting that demand with renewables will be less expensive than it was during past administrations. Today, solar and wind power are typically cheaper than fossil fuels. Paired with batteries, they can provide around-the-clock power — and the cost of batteries has plummeted, too.

The economic case for renewables being cheaper "was not quite there during President Obama's time," says Arun Majumdar, the dean of the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability and a senior official at the Department of Energy during Obama's administration. Instead, renewables were pricey — a major reason why both Obama and, later, Biden, pursued policies designed to help bring the costs down over time.

"At the end of the day, what is cheaper really matters," Majumdar says.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5220305

Related

- NPR

- NPR

- NPR

- NPR

- NPR

- NPR

- NPR

- NPR

- NPR

- NPR

- NPR

- NPR

POLITICS | UPDATED MONDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2024 • 3:55 PM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Why Latino voters' turn to Trump, GOP may not have been as sharp as exit polls showed

By Obed Manuel

Heard on Morning Edition

For decades, Democrats have counted on the support of the majority of Latino voters.

In this year's election, that pattern continued, with Democrats receiving the majority share of the Latino voters. But exit polling data showed Latinos backing President-elect Donald Trump and Republicans at levels some see as a crushing blow to Democrats' long-held hope that this community would be a reliably blue bloc.

Despite the GOP's inroads with this electorate, Latinos' shift to the right may not be as sharp or permanent as exit polling suggests, according to Eric Rodriguez, Senior Vice President of policy and advocacy for UnidosUS, a nonpartisan civil rights organization.

Rodriguez argues that exit polls "notoriously" have "questionable methods," particularly when it comes to measuring subpopulations of Latinos. He said that there's much actual voting data that needs to be considered to know how Latinos actually voted.

UnidosUS' poll of Latino voters, which was conducted right up until election day, showed 62% of Latino voters supporting Vice President Harris compared to 37% backing Trump. Rodriguez said there was an uptick in support for Trump, particularly among Latino men.

"So the dust is going to settle on this. I think we'll get true numbers. We'll match up some to individual precincts. So we'll get a better sense of how people actually voted and the reasons that drove them out there," Rodriguez said in an interview with NPR's Steve Inskeep.

Making some sense of Trump's gains with Latinos

Rodriguez doesn't dispute that Trump made gains with Latino voters, however. Like most of the country, Latino voters were primarily concerned with the state of the economy – an issue that polling consistently showed voters overall favoring Trump to handle better than Harris.

UnidosUS' polling found that the top four concerns for Latinos were inflation, jobs and the costs of housing and healthcare. Because Latinos were feeling this pocketbook pinch, Roriguez said he questions to what extent this election represented the unique qualities that Trump has versus an actual realignment of Latino voters.

"It just remains to be seen if what we're going to see from the incoming administration and the new Republican leaders in Congress, if they're going to go further in appealing to the policies that the Latino voters have said in a bipartisan way they support, which include things like comprehensive immigration reform, health care coverage," Rodriguez said. "And if they don't start to see some of those things matching up, how they react to what they see coming out of Washington."

Still, Trump did manage to win in some areas that had long been blue. In South Texas, for example, Trump and Republicans have flipped 16 counties since the 2016 election, Texas Public Radio reports. Republicans there said this was the result of years of planning.

Rodriguez said this is proof of how investing in courting Latino voters makes a huge difference.

"Over the last few years there's been a lot of conversation about the economy and a lot of conversation about how it is Biden's economy, so changing opinions about that after three and a half years or so of that I think was quite difficult. It was baked into the cake," Rodriguez said. "I was not surprised to see that. But it does point to the value of investment in voters to turn them out and to engage them."

Daniel Alegre, CEO of TelevisaUnivision – the largest Spanish-language and Latino media outlet in the U.S. – told Morning Edition in an interview last week that the Latino vote "really was influenced by messages around the economy and messages around the border and security. You saw it reflected in the election results."

Alegre also said that, after reviewing how political campaigns spent their money, campaigns that advertised in Spanish fared better than those that did not.

This story was edited by Treye Green and Kristian Monroe. The radio version of this story was edited by Adriana Gallardo and produced by Lilly Quiroz.

Transcript

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

For decades, Democrats have counted on the support of the majority of Latino voters. That was still true in this year's election, but the Republican Party gained ground. Eric Rodriguez is the senior vice president of policy and advocacy at UnidosUS, which calls itself a Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization. He joined my colleague, Steve Inskeep, to talk about the election results and what was at play in this year's elections.

STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: The exit polls on election night suggested that Latinos moved sharply right. What do you find when you look more closely at that?

ERIC RODRIGUEZ: Our election-eve poll of voters really showed that 62% of Hispanic voters said they supported Harris, 37% supported Trump. Now, there is a notable increase in Trump's support since 2020, and it is particular with respect to men. And I think we knew that. That was very consistent with what we have been seeing and hearing most of the year, but it's far different from what you're seeing or hearing from other exit polls. So the dust is going to settle on this, and I think we'll get a better sense of how people actually voted and the reasons that drove them out there.

INSKEEP: I think I hear you saying that your surveys show Latinos moving toward Republicans, just not as dramatically as some of the election night numbers would suggest.

RODRIGUEZ: That's right, and I would say particularly Trump. You saw some distinctions between the amount of support that Republican Senate candidates got, say, in Nevada and Arizona, compared to Trump's numbers. And Florida is an outlier, right? It's one of the largest states with Latino voters but also includes a very large, consistently Republican Cuban population that overwhelmingly voted for Trump and Republican candidates.

INSKEEP: Well, let's talk about another important state, Texas, where Democrats have been hoping for years and years that this big red state would flip over to purple or blue. It never quite happens. And I'm now looking at two different maps of the counties in Texas and particularly looking at South Texas near the border. Heavily Latino area. And in 2020, there's a bunch of blue counties and a few red counties. So lots of Democratic votes, which is the traditional pattern. And in 2024, I'm seeing a bunch of red counties and only a few blue counties. A bunch of counties flipped.

RODRIGUEZ: Yeah, that's right. Part of that is also the Republican Party investing, getting messaging out, engaging communities there in a way that the Democratic Party did not. Over the last few years, there's been a lot of conversation about how it is Biden's economy. So changing opinions about that after 3 1/2 years or so of that, I think, was quite difficult. So that too I was not surprised to see that, but it does point to the value of investment in voters to turn them out and to engage them.

INSKEEP: Do you think that Democrats now agree that a key part of their base is under threat here?

RODRIGUEZ: In some ways, both parties are trying to think about, is there a new coalition here? To what extent does this election represent some unique qualities that Trump has versus a realignment of some sorts? And from our sense, when both parties are competing for the Latino vote, that is a good thing. It just remains to be seen if what we're going to see from the incoming administration and the new Republican leaders in Congress, if they're going to go further in appealing to the policies that the Latino voters have said in a bipartisan way they support, which include things like comprehensive immigration reform, health care coverage. And if they don't start to see some of those things matching up, how they react to what they see coming out of Washington.

INSKEEP: Are there limits to identity politics when you are appealing to Latino voters because you have so many different kinds of people from so many different backgrounds at so many different income levels and you might like to appeal to them as a person of color, but they see themselves a different way, or they feel that their Christian identity is more important or that some other part of their life and experience is more important?

RODRIGUEZ: When you look at where they have shared agreement around policies that are up for conversation, there's actually a lot of agreement. I mean, there are, of course, distinctions between the communities. Each one should be treated uniquely as you're engaging them and talking to them, and you have to tailor your messages to those communities just like any other community. No one addresses the non-Hispanic white community in West Virginia the same way they do in Wisconsin, right? So there's uniqueness to each community, but you're looking for those things that bring them together.

INSKEEP: Eric Rodriguez is the senior vice president of policy and advocacy at UnidosUS. Thanks so much.

RODRIGUEZ: Thank you.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5196277

Related

- NPR

- NPR

POLITICS | SUNDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2024 • 6:43 PM EST | VIEW ON NPR

President Biden gives White House address on the dramatic events in Syria

By Franco Ordoñez, Scott Detrow

Heard on All Things Considered

Transcript

SCOTT DETROW, HOST:

Here in the United States, President Biden spoke about this historic moment.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: At long last, the Assad regime has fallen.

DETROW: In a speech from the White House, Biden took some credit for the fall of Assad's authoritarian regime. He spoke about the opportunity for Syria's suffering people but also about the risks, saying the U.S. should remain involved to support our regional partners there. Around the same time that Biden spoke, in fact, the U.S. confirmed a series of missile strikes in Syria that targeted Islamic State camps and operatives. In a statement the U.S. government said, quote, "we will not allow ISIS to reconstitute and take advantage of the current situation in Syria." But Biden leaves office in about a month. And President-elect Donald Trump says this is not the U.S.'s fight. NPR White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez is here to speak it out - about it all. Hey, Franco.

FRANCO ORDOÑEZ, BYLINE: Hey, Scott.

DETROW: So Biden did take some credit. How exactly did he portray the U.S.'s role?

ORDOÑEZ: Yeah. I mean, he said, for the first time ever, Assad could not count on the support of Russia or Iran or Hezbollah, which have been left weaker. And he said they're weaker because of U.S. support for Ukraine in its fight against Russia, as well as U.S. support of Israel in its fight against Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

BIDEN: It's a moment of historic opportunity for the long-suffering people of Syria to build a better future for their proud country. It's also a moment of risk and uncertainty.

ORDOÑEZ: Biden cited U.S. sanctions against Syria, and the U.S. forces have remained in the country, particularly to counter threats of extremists like the Islamic State.

DETROW: So Biden's talking about risk and uncertainty. What exactly does that mean and what comes next from the White House's point of view?

ORDOÑEZ: Well, the White House insists that Syria's future will be written by Syrians. But Biden says the U.S. will be involved and continue to work with the United Nations and partners in the region, including Iraq, Jordan and Israel. The U.S. remains concerned about the Islamic State kind of taking advantage of the situation to seize control. Biden says they're not going to let that happen. Biden also told reporters that he thinks American journalist Austin Tice, who has been missing in Syria for 12 years, is alive and that they think they can get him back.

DETROW: Biden, of course, will not be there long. He's only going to be president for another month, and - or so. What about President-elect Trump? - because Trump has made it clear, going back to his first administration, he doesn't really see the U.S. being tied up in Syria. He's deeply skeptical of that.

ORDOÑEZ: Yeah, I know he doesn't. I mean, he made that point very clear this weekend, when he warned that the U.S. should not have anything to do with this. He wrote in big capital letters on social media - this is not our fight; let it play out. But it's a tumultuous time. And this is just another example of the global challenges that Trump is going to inherit. I mean, he's promised to deliver peace through strength. You know, that's really going to be put to the test.

DETROW: All right, Franco, let's stick with Trump for a moment a little more broadly. He did an interview today on "Meet The Press." He talked a lot about his priorities. What did we hear?

ORDOÑEZ: He did. In many ways, it sounded like a campaign speech on issues like immigration and the economy. He promised to end birthright citizenship, you know, established explicitly in the Constitution. He also talked about pardons for many of the January 6 rioters. You know, he is not backing down on mass deportations of those here illegally, though he says he will focus on those who had committed crimes. That said, he said families could also be deported. I mean, he talked about deporting documented and undocumented families, including their children, if they wanted to stay together. You know, but of course, there's a big difference between saying that, which his administration basically did in 2018, versus the reality of dealing with thousands of children being separated from their parents, as ended up happening during the first Trump administration. Trump, of course, reversed course after the public outcry.

DETROW: That is NPR White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez. Franco, thanks as always.

ORDOÑEZ: Thank you, Scott.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5218163

CONSIDER THIS FROM NPR | SUNDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2024 • 6:30 PM EST | VIEW ON NPR

The enormous consequences Trump's tariffs could have

You never know if president-elect Donald Trump is bluffing, but when you have billions of dollars on the line, you have to take him seriously. So car companies took notice, when Trump announced a plan for huge new tariffs in a social media post before Thanksgiving.

A 25 percent tax on imports from Canada and Mexico would have a major impact on the car industry, which depends heavily on cross border trade.

Trump's tariffs could have huge consequences for the people who make cars, and the people who buy them.

Even if he's bluffing, he has other big plans to shake up the auto industry.

For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.

Email us at considerthis@npr.org.

Transcript

SCOTT DETROW, HOST:

Back in 2022, some angry truckers in Canada unintentionally ran a real-life experiment in international trade. This was that big convoy protesting Canada's COVID-19 vaccine mandate, requiring truckers to be vaccinated to pass freely across the U.S. border.

(SOUNDBITE OF TRUCKS HONKING)

DETROW: They drove the rigs into Ottawa - the Canadian capital - and basically shut it down. Here's the police chief, Peter Sloly, at the time.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

PETER SLOLY: This is a siege. It is something that is different in our democracy than I've ever experienced in my life.

DETROW: The protest, though, wasn't just in Ottawa. The truckers also blockaded the Ambassador Bridge between Windsor and Detroit. A quarter of all trade between Canada and the U.S. goes over that bridge. Truck driver Jeff Wigfield was stranded on the U.S. side of the border during the blockade. He said the jam also rippled out to another nearby border crossing.

JEFF WIGFIELD: I got a friend down there - four hours, and he's moved a half a mile. Now the blockade is supposedly down there, blocking that off. So sign - you're closed, this closed. Where do you go? The other option is you want to run 700 miles out of route and go to Buffalo, cross and come all the way back to Windsor. That's the only other option.

DETROW: This was a huge disruption to cross-border trade, and some of the businesses hit most immediately were car companies. With parts not able to get to the plants that needed them, factories on both sides of the border cut entire production shifts and slowed their operations. The blockade - which only lasted one week - ultimately cost autoworkers and car companies some $300 million by one estimate.

It was a demonstration of just how dependent the industry is on trade across the U.S.-Canada border. And this is particularly relevant right now, now that President-elect Donald Trump has said he will impose a 25% tariff on all imported goods from Mexico and Canada. It's a threat that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau takes at face value.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

PRIME MINISTER JUSTIN TRUDEAU: One of the things that is really important to understand is that Donald Trump, when he makes statements like that, he plans on carrying them out.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

DETROW: CONSIDER THIS - Trump's tariffs could have huge consequences for the people who make cars and the people who buy them. And even if he's bluffing, Trump has other big plans to shake up the auto industry.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

DETROW: From NPR. I'm Scott Detrow.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

DETROW: It's CONSIDER THIS FROM NPR. You never know if President-elect Donald Trump is bluffing, but when you have billions of dollars on the line, you have to take him seriously. So car companies took notice when Trump announced a plan for huge new tariffs in a social media post just before Thanksgiving. A 25% tax on imports from Canada and Mexico would have a major impact on the car industry, which depends heavily on cross-border trade. NPR's Camila Domonoske, who covers the auto industry and Andrea Hsu, who covers labor, have been talking to car companies and workers about the plan and join me now. Hey, there.

CAMILA DOMONOSKE, BYLINE: Hi.

ANDREA HSU, BYLINE: Hey, Scott.

DETROW: So, Andrea, I'm going to start with you. Getting back to this question, which we asked so many times for a four-year span, can Trump do this? Because specifically, doesn't the U.S. have a free trade agreement with Mexico and Canada?

HSU: Yeah. Yeah. It's called USMCA. Trump himself signed it into law in 2020. It replaced NAFTA. And under this agreement, goods flow across the borders duty-free as long as they meet certain requirements. So when it comes to cars, those requirements have to do with how much of the vehicle was produced in North America and the wages paid to people building those cars. But there's no outside party like a court that can force a country into compliance. So if Trump issues an executive order imposing a 25% tariff as he has threatened to do, we would just expect Canada and Mexico to retaliate with tariffs of their own. But I do want to reiterate here we just don't know if he's actually going to follow through with this.

DETROW: Right. Camila, I want to get to the car company's perspective on this. What would 25% tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico mean for the car industry?

DOMONOSKE: Well, look, it's an increase in cost, and that's coming at a time when affordability for vehicles is a major concern for the auto industry. The average new vehicle right now costs almost $49,000, which is wild. It's a tremendous amount of money. If you look at how these tariffs would affect prices, one way is on finished vehicles. So that's your Toyota Tacomas that come from Mexico, Chrysler Pacificas that are made in Canada. They would get more expensive as the tariff is applied to them. But the other element here - which is much bigger than that - is parts, the kind that cross that bridge between Canada and the U.S. and also cross between the U.S. and Mexico all the time. We have built an entire supply chain around these three countries working together to build vehicles.

DETROW: Can you give me an example to help us understand that supply chain and how important and, I guess, fragile it is when it comes to all of this?

DOMONOSKE: Yeah. I'll take one example, which is talking about wire harnesses.

DETROW: All right.

DOMONOSKE: So this is like the nervous system of a car, the wires that connect all the different electronic bits and bobs. And you don't want a giant spaghetti pile of wires at the bottom of a car like I have on top of my desk right now. So they connect these wires into bundles very precisely and neatly, right? It's a lot of labor. And what happens right now is you might have a wire or clips for those wires made in the U.S., shipped to Mexico to then be tied into these precise bundles, and then shipped back into the U.S. to go into, say, a seat or another component before then they also go into the final car.

Lots of parts of cars get built up like this in a series of steps that happen on different sides of these borders. So when you have concerns about tariffs and then retaliatory tariffs, the costs could really build. And this affects all car companies, not just ones that have plants in Mexico or Canada.

DETROW: Given all of this, though, Andrea, you know, the UAW has actually pushed for higher tariffs on cars in the past, right? Like, help us make sense of all of this.

HSU: Yeah. Specifically, higher tariffs on cars coming from Mexico and Canada that don't meet the strict requirements for North American-made parts and higher wages that I talked about. And this is all about protecting jobs. So let's say you have a car plant in Mexico that's making cars for the U.S. market, but the engines or the transmissions are not made in North America. Those cars can't come into the U.S. duty-free. The penalty is a 2.5% tariff.

But the union is saying that's too low to be a deterrent. It might be cheaper for those carmakers to pay that tariff than it would be to source everything in North America. So the Union would like tariffs that are high enough to compel companies to make, you know, cars, make parts ideally in the U.S. But, you know, raising that 2.5% tariff is very different from imposing a blanket 25% tariff on everything that's coming from Mexico and Canada.

DETROW: Any sense from the conversations you've had how workers think they'll be affected by all of this?

HSU: Well, I talked with Romaine McKinney. He's president of UAW Local 869 outside Detroit. His members work at Warren Stamping. They stamp all kinds of metal parts that are sent to plants in the U.S., but also to Mexico and Canada. And so they would feel the impacts of a trade war immediately. Maybe they'd have to slow production if orders slowed. But beyond that, McKinney stressed it's not just about cars or car parts. A 25% tariff, he says, would run up the prices of all kinds of consumer goods.

ROMAINE MCKINNEY: Whether that's fruit and vegetables or nuts and bolts, a 25% tariff will expeditiously run up the cost of operating your home. That is the bigger problem for us.

HSU: You know, he says autoworkers are middle-class Americans who are price-conscious consumers.

DETROW: OK, Camila, what about the other argument, though, the one in favor of tariffs? If you make it more expensive to import things, more things are built in the U.S.

DOMONOSKE: Yeah, and, you know, in the auto industry, there is a big, unusual kind of odd tariff, specifically on pickup trucks, called the Chicken Tax. And after that tariff was put in place a very long time ago, a bunch of pickup manufacturing did move from overseas to North America. One caveat is the number of jobs involved is not always what people would hope for. When a company moves production from a country where cost of labor is cheap to one where wages are really high, they are often very motivated to see how much they can do by robots.

HSU: Yeah. I will jump in here just to say, you know, a lot of manufacturing workers, union workers. They really were won over by Trump's promises that, you know, he was going to bring back manufacturing to the U.S. and do it through tariffs, even if the reality of that is far more complicated and messy.

I have also heard from rank-and-file workers who didn't support Trump who think his tariffs are a bad idea, who nevertheless believe this presidency, the second Trump term, ultimately will be good for their jobs. You know, some of the other promises that Trump has made could provide them some job security if he lowers emission standards, for example, that could extend the longevity of gas-powered models, like trucks and SUVs, which are best sellers in America and are fueling those jobs.

DETROW: OK, so when it comes to incoming President Trump, we know how quickly he can change his mind. We know how quickly policies will be redirected. We're talking a month and some change before he actually takes office. Given all of that, do either one of you want to give us a reality check on how likely this 25% tariff is?

DOMONOSKE: Yeah. I'll jump in and say that this particular tariff the president-elect has talked about it, he described it in his post as being a negotiating tactic over immigration and drug trafficking. So the goal is not to have this tariff in place. So even if it is actually imposed, there will be a question about how long it'll last. Paul Jacobson of - he's a senior executive at General Motors. He was recently talking to investors, and he said this.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

PAUL JACOBSON: You know, we're trying to not overreact to anything out there in the short term. I understand the rhetoric that's out there, but I'm not going to overreact to a tariff if I don't know that...

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Right.

JACOBSON: ...It's not going to be traded away in 90 days for something else.

DOMONOSKE: You know, car companies plan years ahead - right? - and any new factories would be open for decades. At the same time, I am hearing from folks that Trump has talked seriously about other tariffs, ones that he does not describe as bargaining chips but as policies in themselves, and companies are taking those possibilities really seriously.

DETROW: That's NPR's Camila Domonoske, who covers the auto industry, as well as Andrea Hsu, who covers labor. Thanks to both of you.

HSU: Thank you.

DOMONOSKE: Thank you, Scott.

DETROW: This episode was produced by Connor Donevan. It was edited by Courtney Dorning, Emily Kopp and Kara Platoni. Our executive producer is Sami Yenigun.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

DETROW: It's CONSIDER THIS FROM NPR. I'm Scott Detrow.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/1218160296

Health

- Consumers weigh the claim of health benefits against the risks of consuming raw milk: 2024 Dec 9

- Why these doctors started writing medical 'prescriptions' for solar power: 2024 Dec 9

- Cancer interrupted their school lives, but also set them on a mission: 2024 Dec 8

- PHOTOS: Take a ride with the Elephant Response Team. And be careful!: 2024 Dec 8

- NYPD releases 2 new photos of man sought in killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO: 2024 Dec 8

- Life Kit offers tips on how to care for a grieving friend: 2024 Dec 7

HEALTH | MONDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2024 • 5:15 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Consumers weigh the claim of health benefits against the risks of consuming raw milk

By A Martínez

Heard on Morning Edition

Transcript

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

The U.S. Department of Agriculture says it will begin testing the nation's milk supply in an effort to better track bird flu. That's after the disease was detected in unpasteurized milk products on a California farm. The sale of raw milk is legal in most states, but there's a lot of misinformation about its health benefits and risks. President Trump's nominee for secretary of health and human services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., wants to reverse what he calls the, quote, "aggressive suppression," unquote, of raw milk. Our co-host, A Martínez, spoke with Katelyn Jetelina. She is a public health expert who writes the newsletter "Your Local Epidemiologist."

KATELYN JETELINA: People drink raw milk for many different reasons. Some is to support local farmers. Some report taste differences, that it's more creamy, for example, than pasteurized milk. And then, of course, there's a lot of common misconceptions about the health benefits.

A MARTÍNEZ, BYLINE: Now, is there any truth, then, to the claims? Because the people that do claim health raw milk benefits, they're very fervent about their claims.

JETELINA: Right. So what we've seen is that unpasteurized milk doesn't have more nutrients than pasteurized, right? We have a meta-analysis, which is about 40 separate studies pooled, that found only minor losses in some nutrients, like B1 and B6. But these nutrients are low in milk generally, and we get them from other dietary sources. Another common misconception is that raw milk is better for those who are lactose intolerant, and the evidence also doesn't show this.

MARTÍNEZ: OK, so then what are the risks of drinking raw milk?

JETELINA: There's a reason we have been pasteurizing milk for more than a hundred years. Before the pasteurization process, it's estimated that about 65,000 people died over 25 years due to contaminated dairy. And it's not just the immediate impact. These infections can actually have lingering consequences. So, for example, one type of bacteria can cause people to be paralyzed. Another type of E. coli can cause rare but serious disease that affects the kidneys and the blood clotting system. And so I think the bottom line is these risk-based choices are just - they're not always black and white. But drinking raw milk is like playing roulette with some really potentially serious risks, especially for children.

MARTÍNEZ: You're a data scientist, Katelyn. You're an epidemiologist. When these kinds of food trends happen, does it annoy you at all that you have to, like, tell people, OK, relax - some of these things you're hearing may not be true before you start trying something all kinds of different?

JETELINA: I think people have a lot of questions that they need answers to, and people need to be equipped with evidence-based information to make their own decisions. And I'm happy to be here to answer those questions.

MARTÍNEZ: Katelyn Jetelina is a public health expert. She writes a newsletter, "Your Local Epidemiologist." Thank you very much.

JETELINA: Thanks for having me.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5199770

PUBLIC HEALTH | MONDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2024 • 5:00 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Why these doctors started writing medical 'prescriptions' for solar power

By Martha Bebinger

Anna Goldman, a primary care physician at Boston Medical Center, got tired of hearing that her patients couldn't afford the electricity needed to run breathing assistance machines, recharge wheelchairs, turn on air conditioning or keep their refrigerators plugged in. So she worked with her hospital on a solution.

The result is a pilot effort called the Clean Power Prescription program. The initiative aims to help roughly 80 patients with complex, chronic medical needs keep the lights on.

The program relies on 519 solar panels installed on the roof of one of the hospital's office buildings. Half of the energy generated by the panels helps power Boston Medical Center. The rest goes to patients who receive a monthly credit of about $50 on their utility bills.

Kiki Polk was among the first recipients. She has a history of Type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure.

On a warm fall day, Polk, who was nine months pregnant at the time, leaned into the air conditioning window unit in her living room.

"Oh my gosh, this feels so good baby," Polk crooned, swaying back and forth. "This is my best friend and my worst enemy."

An enemy, because Polk can't afford to run the AC. On cooler days, she uses a fan or opens a window instead. Polk knows the risks of overheating during pregnancy, including added stress on the pregnant person's heart and potential risks to the fetus. She also has a teenage daughter who uses the AC in her bedroom — too much, according to her mom.

Polk got behind on her utility bill. Eversource, her electricity provider, worked with her on a payment plan. But the bills were still high for Polk, who works as a school bus and lunchroom monitor. She was surprised when staff at Boston Medical Center, where she was a patient, offered to help.

"I always think they're only there for, you know, medical stuff," Polk said, "not the personal financial stuff."

Polk is on maternity leave now to care for her baby, the tiny Briana Moore.

Goldman, who is also BMC's medical director of climate and sustainability, said hospital screening questionnaires show thousands of patients like Polk struggle to pay their utility bills.

"I had a conversation recently with someone who had a hospital bed at home," Dr. Goldman said. "They were using so much energy because of the hospital bed that they were facing a utility shut off. "

Goldman wrote a letter to the utility company requesting the power stay on. Last year, she and her colleagues at Boston Medical Center wrote 1,674 letters to utility companies asking them to keep patients' gas or electricity running.

Goldman took that number to Robert Biggio, the hospital's chief sustainability and real estate officer. He'd been counting on the solar panels to help the hospital shift to renewable energy, but sharing the power with patients felt like it fit the health system's mission.

"Boston Medical Center's been focused on lower-income communities and trying to change their health outcomes for over 100 years," said Biggio. "So this just seemed like the right thing to do."

Standing on the roof amid the solar panels, Goldman pointed out a large vegetable garden one floor down.

"We're actually growing food for our patients," she said. "And similarly, now we are producing electricity for our patients as a way to address all of the factors that can contribute to health outcomes."

Many hospitals help patients sign up for electricity or heating assistance because research shows that not having power or heat increases respiratory problems, mental distress and makes it harder to sleep. These are common problems for low- and moderate-income patients, said Aparna Bole, a pediatrician and senior consultant in the Office of Climate Change and Health Equity at the Federal Department of Health and Human Services.

But Bole said BMC's approach to solving them may be the first of its kind.

"To be able to connect those very patients with clean, renewable energy in such a way that reduces their utility bills is really groundbreaking," said Bole.

Bole is using a case study on the solar credits program to show other hospitals how they might do something similar.

Boston Medical Center officials estimate the project cost $1.6 million, and said 60% of the funding came from the federal Inflation Reduction Act. Biggio has already mapped out plans for an additional $11 million in solar installations at the Boston Medical Center.

"Our goal is to scale this pilot and help a lot more patients," he said.

The expansion he envisions would allow a 10-fold increase in patients who could be served by the program, but it still would not meet all the demand.

For now, each patient in the pilot program receives assistance for just one year.

Boston Medical Center is looking for partners who might want to share their solar energy with the hospital's patients in exchange for a higher federal tax credit or reimbursement.

Eversource's vice president for energy efficiency, Tilak Subrahmanian, said the pilot was a complex project to launch, but now that it's in place, it could be expanded.

"If other institutions are willing to step up, we'll figure it out," said Subrahmanian, "because there is such a need."

This story comes from NPR's health reporting partnership with WBUR and KFF Health News.

Transcript

A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:

A doctor got tired of hearing that her patients couldn't afford electricity to power basic but critical medical needs, such as running their breathing assistance machines, recharging their wheelchairs or even keeping their refrigerators plugged in. So she worked with a colleague on a way to prescribe electricity. From member station WBUR in Boston, here's Martha Bebinger.

MARTHA BEBINGER, BYLINE: The power comes from rows and rows of solar panels on the roof of a Boston Medical Center office building.

I think I'm good. Thank you, though.

I climb a ladder to the edge of that roof with Dr. Anna Goldman and Bob Biggio, the hospital's chief sustainability officer.

All right. I'll get off right now.

BOB BIGGIO: Yeah, off the edge.

BEBINGER: We move to a safe spot amid these 519 panels. The hospital uses half of the energy they generate. The rest goes to 80 low-income patients who have chronic and complex medical needs. They're getting a credit of about $50 a month on their utility bill. Goldman says hospital questionnaires show thousands of patients struggle to pay that bill. She describes one recent conversation.

ANNA GOLDMAN: Someone who had a hospital bed at home - they were using so much energy because of the hospital bed that they were facing utility shutoff. So I provided them a letter.

BEBINGER: Doctors at Boston Medical Center wrote nearly 1,700 letters to utility companies last year, asking them to keep a patient's gas or electricity running. Biggio, the hospital's real estate guy, wants more panels so more patients receive the energy credits. He's already mapped locations.

BIGGIO: One would be canopies right over the parking lot down here. We're looking at all different areas. I think we currently have scoped out almost $11 million worth of additional solar that could be installed on our campus.

BEBINGER: That would provide credits for 10 times as many patients. Biggio says installation is doable here and at other hospitals, as long as federal solar assistance continues. For Biggio and Goldman, providing power fits the hospital's mission to help patients cope with hunger and other nonmedical health needs. Goldman looks past the solar panels to a large vegetable garden.

GOLDMAN: We're actually growing food for our patients. And similarly, now we are producing electricity for our patients as a way to address all of the factors that can contribute to health outcomes.

BEBINGER: Many hospitals help patients sign up for electricity or heating assistance, because research shows not having them increases respiratory problems, mental distress and makes it hard to sleep. Dr. Aparna Bole in the Biden administration's Office of Climate Change and Health Equity says these are common problems for low- and moderate-income patients.

APARNA BOLE: To be able to connect those very patients with clean, renewable energy in such a way that reduces their utility bills is really groundbreaking.

BEBINGER: And a relief for Kiki Polk. The school bus and lunch room monitor has a history of diabetes, high blood pressure and is nine months pregnant. Polk turns on the air conditioner in her living room window occasionally these days and sways back and forth in front of it.

KIKI POLK: My AC is my best friend and my enemy (laughter).

BEBINGER: Her enemy because Polk cannot afford to run it, so she tries to use a fan or open a window when she overheats. But Polk got behind on her utility bill. She was surprised to hear the hospital offer help.

POLK: You know, I always think they're only there for, like, you know, medical stuff, and not outside personal, you know, financial issues. But I didn't know the doctors had that much, you know, pull.

BEBINGER: Polk says she's grateful for the credits, and her utility company's assistance, too. But her bill is still high, so...

POLK: All right, AC, you got to go off. Bye-bye (laughter).

BEBINGER: That's a decision many patients will make today - turning off the device they need to stay comfortable or breathe more easily or get around, to avoid running up a bill they cannot pay or getting a notice that their electricity may be shut off.

For NPR News, I'm Martha Bebinger in Boston.

(SOUNDBITE OF SABZI'S "PURBASHA")

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5193035

LIFE, AFTER DIAGNOSIS | SUNDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2024 • 9:23 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Cancer interrupted their school lives, but also set them on a mission

By Yuki Noguchi

EJ Beck was a bookish, wispy 10-year-old when a doctor found the thyroid cancer on her tiny neck that upended her life. Treatment for that cancer took Beck's joyful school routine and replaced it with a complicated surgery, followed by a harrowing radiation treatment that made her so sick and radioactive, it required her to remain in a sealed chamber without human contact for many days.

Beck, along with her parents, had decided not to tell friends, her teachers or even her two younger sisters about her illness, hoping that might help her slip back into normal life, eventually. But in the short term, it intensified her isolation in the hospital, where she passed her solitary confinement rereading the Harry Potter series and drawing on a picture of Spiderman posted to the window.

"I was so, so jealous because Spiderman could just leave the hospital, and I couldn't," Beck recalls. "Spiderman got to take radiation, and he got cool powers; I got sick and sad and lonely and tired."

Today, Beck is a 23-year-old medical student, and among a growing population of 18 million people who are surviving cancer for much longer, thanks to myriad recent advances like AI-powered tumor detection and new immunotherapies that chemically target cancers. Survival rates for pediatric cancer, in particular, are considered a crowning medical achievement: Those rates increased from 58% in the mid-1970s to 85% today.

But in order to get on with life after treatment, Beck also had to overcome many of the less-discussed aftereffects of cancer – notably the missed schooling and loss of identity and peer support that came with it, not to mention various other cognitive and physical impacts of treatment that deeply shape survivorship. Patients often feel forgotten when treatment ends, but research shows the knock-on effects, from mental health to financial challenges, can persist decades into recovery.

Out of step with peers

Today Beck is cancer-free, but says she still feels she lives in its shadow – quite literally, in the sense that her apartment is within earshot of the sirens near the New York City hospital complex where she received treatment as a child.

Also, the experience forged her into who she is, she says, and left her feeling scholastically, socially, and emotionally out of step with peers. "It takes a really long time to feel like you're falling into sync with everybody else," Beck says. "Even if you would make it on to college with everyone else, you kind of feel like you're marching to a slightly different beat and you're trying really hard to keep up."

When a child is diagnosed and undergoing treatment, doctors and parents tend to pour their energies – understandably – into managing the medical demands of pediatric cancer. But Julia Gomez, an education coordinator at NYU Langone Health, says for kids, the absence of the normalcy of school usually hits harder. "It's quite devastating, to the whole child," she says. "School is their whole world."

With the increase in the population of survivors, there's growing recognition that cancer care must also include planning for various aspects of life after treatment. And Gomez says more cancer centers, especially at research hospitals, are hiring education coordinators like her, who can help patients and their families stay connected to school during treatment and transition them back into their lives afterward.

Consistent support

Gomez works with some patients for up to five years, helping them and their families navigate the dizzying number of school or state bureaucracies to ensure students receive home tutoring or additional accommodations, for example. She matches them with tutors in the hospital or at home, and keeps teachers at school updated with treatment plans – tasks parents are often too overwhelmed to manage.

"I can offer myself to take on the whole academic-education-school piece," she says.

Patient advocates argue specialized wraparound care like education coordinators should be an essential part of all pediatric and young adult cancer treatment plans. But they realistically are only accessible to a privileged minority of patients who live near the research hospitals or cancer centers that offer them.

Aside from those outside services, family engagement and support can have huge bearing on how children fare through treatment and survivorship, says Dr. Saro Armenian, director of the Childhood, Adolescent and Young Adult Survivorship Program at City of Hope Children's Cancer Center in Los Angeles.

The more consistent, positive support a child feels from the adults and schools around them, the better they will maintain their self-worth through the grueling times, Armenian says. "The social network plays a huge role, especially as a child, when you really don't have a guidepost for how you should behave and act in that situation."

But even when children can remain in class or reintegrate back into school, they often feel marked by disease.

EJ Beck, for example, typically only missed morning classes through most of her treatments, but her highly restrictive, iodine-free diet meant she couldn't eat school lunch, making her a conspicuous target for classmates. "I had this girl — I'll never forget it," Beck recalls, "she'd come up to me and say, 'You're really bullying everyone else because you're so skinny and you're dieting, so you're saying that the rest of us are fat.'"

Beck swallowed her explanation to keep her cancer secret: "Once people know, they never look at you the same way."

Still, she felt lucky, because she didn't lose her hair — that telltale, dreaded side effect — which meant keeping cancer secret was an option for her. "I had the privilege of somebody who…cancer was never going to be as visible on me as it is on the majority of cancer patients."

An abrupt departure from normalcy

Brendan Harley's exit from school was far more dramatic and noticeable. On the evening of May 5, 1995 – the night before his SAT exams – Harley landed in the hospital with acute leukemia at age 17.

"I had to call my date for the junior prom, which was the next weekend, and say, 'Sorry, I'm not going to be there' – and I was then gone," he says. He remained in the hospital, in treatment, or in isolation and away from school and friends, for a full year. Notably, this was in an era before cell phones and social media existed, so Harley's isolation felt complete.

"I was effectively living in a bubble at home," Harley says. His middle brother helped ferry homework to and from school. "I'd have a tutor that showed up once a week and we would set masks and gloves on different sides of the room and talk."

It helped Harley to keep pinning his thoughts to discrete school assignments and other tasks he could control. Bald and tired, Harley studied frantically from his hospital bed, clinging to schoolwork as a handhold on life.

Often, things didn't go to plan, as was the case with his chemistry finals: "I got out and went right to take my exams in June and I couldn't remember any of the things I was studying because of all the chemotherapy."

But, says Harley, returning home after feeling so vulnerable made him more determined to live, fully. Driving home from the hospital with the trees having reached full bloom in his absence, he appreciated the vibrancy of color with fresh eyes – and saw his own life in the same light. "It was like I saw it for the first time; I've made it back," he says. "To this day, I can't forget."

Vocations forged by experience

Three decades later, Harley's cancer-free and a father of two. He now fights cancer on a different front. As a biochemical engineer at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, he's developing better tumor models that help improve targeted treatments to both kill cancer and improve the quality of life afterward. Harley says the cause of his own leukemia may be the earlier radiation and chemotherapy treatments he received at age 1, when he was diagnosed with a neuroblastoma. "How can I make it so that the next generation goes through something different?" he says of his career in cancer research.

Personalizing treatments can help avoid some of the harsher alternatives. "This idea of taking cells from a patient and turning them into a cure…that's something that is incredibly motivating," he says.

Meanwhile, EJ Beck is on her own revenge tour against cancer. This fall, she started medical school at NYU Langone, the very hospital where she'd received treatment as a 10 year old. Walking through the same doors as a physician in training felt like the bookend that made her whole life story make sense. "I almost feel like I can see the younger version of myself standing next to me in such a different place in her life," Beck says.

What cancer stole from her childhood, she's now reclaiming. "It was extremely identity-forming to me. It helped me understand people's pain more and gave me a mission that I've carried with me in life to become a physician who gives back to a field that's given me so much."

Original photography by José A. Alvarado Jr. Visuals design and editing by Katie Hayes Luke.

Audio and digital story edited by Diane Webber.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5221433

Related

- NPR

- NPR

GOATS AND SODA | SUNDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2024 • 8:06 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

PHOTOS: Take a ride with the Elephant Response Team. And be careful!

By Text and photos by Tommy Trenchard

The emergency call comes in just before midnight. In the driver's seat of a battered Toyota Hilux pickup truck, 29-year-old Chamunolwa Jimayi chats briefly with the caller. He hangs up the phone and shouts to his two colleagues in the back to hold on tight, then shoots off at high speed through the city center, careening around the traffic.

Jimayi's job is not your regular 9-to-5. He's a member of a three-man Elephant Response Team fighting to keep the peace amid a worsening and at times deadly conflict between humans and the world's largest land animal. His hometown of Livingstone, Zambia, lies on the edge of the Mosi-oa-Tunya National Park and has long witnessed incidents of human-wildlife conflict. But the combination of recent urban expansion and successive poor rainy seasons has led to a dramatic escalation.

"Sometimes we get more than 30 calls in a day," says Jimayi, who receives only a stipend of around $140 a month. "The game park is almost completely dry. So the elephants are just coming into the community to feed. We've been receiving a huge number."

As he drives, signs of elephant incursions are visible all around: cinderblock walls with gaping holes, splintered mango, acacia and mopane trees, freshly deposited piles of dung. Strings of old beer cans and potato chip packets, designed to scare away elephants, adorn the walls of roadside homes.

With his favorite reggae playlist straining the vehicle's dust-choked sound system, Jimayi heads for the suburb of Linda, where he's learned that a pair of elephants are wreaking havoc in a residential area. Tensions there are high after a string of deaths caused by elephants. If the community responds with aggression, the situation could become volatile, putting both people and elephants in danger.

"They're friendly animals. They don't come to harm anyone," says Jimayi, who has a deep appreciation and respect for elephants. "But not everyone understands what I see in them. The community is really scared of these animals. And some are angry. People have lost their loved ones. Our goal is to keep the community and the elephants safe."

By the time Jimayi and his colleagues arrive at the scene, one of the elephants has disappeared back into the bush. He finds the other walking along a residential street and maneuvers the truck to try and cut it off.

A brief standoff ensues as Jimayi and the elephant size each other up, neither willing to back down. "Easy boy, back you go," he shouts through the open window. A few moments later, the elephant starts to run. Revving his engine, Jimayi pursues it through the streets of Linda, turning this way and that to channel it away from the settlement until eventually it ducks beneath a footbridge and disappears into the darkness in the direction of the national park.

The Elephant Response Team gets going

This has been Jimayi's life since 2019 when the Elephant Response Team was launched by a small Livingstone-based nonprofit, the Conservation and Tourism Society, in response to what was already, long before the drought began, a growing problem of human-wildlife conflict. With a total budget of barely $40,000 per year, CATS also helps search the national park for snares set by bushmeat poachers and carries out an extensive conservation education program designed primarily to teach people how to stay safe around elephants. The advice includes tips such as: always stay at least 300 feet from an elephant, never confront them and don't expect to outrun them: elephants can hit 28 mph.

They also teach residents about the different forms of elephant deterrents available to protect their homes and gardens, like reflector fences and "chili bricks" — a potent mix of elephant dung, used engine oil and fresh chili peppers that produces a noxious smoke when burned.

The Elephant Response Team is based in Dambwa South, a neighborhood of single-story brick homes set in a maze of dusty streets on the edge of the National Park and one of the areas worst affected by human-wildlife conflict. Every evening through the long months of the dry season – typically between May and October -- children gather along the park perimeter to watch the daily exodus of wildlife crossing into town in search of food.

Crocodiles hunt for prey in sewage ponds, hippos lumber past industrial buildings, and zebras and buffalo graze contentedly by the roadside, seemingly oblivious to their human audience. From about 7 p.m. onward, elephants take over the streets.

The park was once ringed by a fence but maintaining it has proved a challenge. Either it succumbs to elephant damage or is looted by residents looking to make a few dollars from the scrap metal. What remains are lines of empty fence poles and, here and there, a section of mangled wire flattened by the passage of animals. Park authorities say they are currently building a new one, with additional electric fencing in some areas, but Dominic Chiinda, director of the Department of National Parks and Wildlife, admits that a fence is unlikely to prove a lasting solution.

Since 1990, Zambia's population has nearly tripled from 7.68 million to over 21 million. In that time, Dambwa South has sprawled outward to the point where, today, the outermost houses lie no more than 16 feet from the boundary of the national park.

"When we were growing up, there were no houses here," says Jimayi, as he warms his hands over a campfire at the team's base in Dambwa South. "This whole place was just full of trees. The elephants know this used to be their land."

Tough life for the locals

For the residents of the homes nearest the park perimeter, life has become a daily struggle.

"This was the only house we could find," says Janet Sikabonga, 36, who recently moved to the area with her husband and four children. "We didn't know there would be elephants here. We thought they would be inside the national park."

The previous night, Sikabonga had watched through her window as four elephants entered her front yard, destroying her water tap and her clothes line. Over the past few weeks, elephants had also destroyed her guava tree and her vegetable patch, prompting the family to abandon efforts to grow their own food. They no longer venture outside after dark.

"I don't know what to do," says Sikabonga, whose family relies on the money her husband earns doing odd-jobs for a Livingstone hotel, and who lacks the means to move again. "They destroy everything. Last night I was so scared I didn't even sleep".

Most incidents of human-wildlife conflict don't result in physical injury, but deaths still occur on a regular basis. So far this year, the DNPW has reported 10 people killed by elephants in the town. One evening in August, 91-year-old tobacco trader Luka Chiyesu was on his way back from the market, following the same route he'd taken every day for years, when he encountered a herd of elephants.

"I found my father's body just lying there in the bush," recalls his son, also called Luka, as he sits on a plastic chair in the yard of his home in the Nakatindi neighborhood. "He died on the spot."

Luka Jr, who grew up around elephants, always held them in great esteem, seeing them as "the mother of all animals." Now, he feels conflicted.

"We used to live peacefully. Nobody was ever attacked by elephants," he says. "Things have changed a lot. When they see us, they see an enemy. When we see them, we see an enemy. That day, if I had a gun, I'd have shot two or three."

The death of Luka Chiyesu triggered anger in the community not only toward elephants but also toward the Department of National Parks and Wildlife over their perceived failure to protect communities living near the national park. After the old man's death, it took hours for a DNPW vehicle to arrive on the scene. When one eventually turned up, an angry mob stoned it. None of those spoken to by NPR said they were aware of the Department carrying out elephant patrols in the area.

"They don't care about the people anymore -- they only care about the animals," said Luka Jr, echoing a widely held perception in the town. "They say this is a corridor of elephants. They say it's a wildlife area."

Dominic Chiinda said the department does have a vehicle assigned to elephant patrols in Livingstone but that more are needed to effectively cover such a large area. He also said many of the "unfortunate incidents" of deaths and injuries caused by elephants were "self-inflicted," alleging that some of the victims may have been drunk, and that villagers were planting their crops too close to elephant corridors. Chiinda said the department was trying to teach people about elephant safety, as well as distributing fireworks to affected communities to help them scare off elephants. They're also providing supplementary food for wildlife in the National park.

Livingstone sits within the Kavango Zambezi Conservation Area (KAZA), the world's largest terrestrial conservation area, which is home to more than half of Africa's savannah elephants and more than 2 million people. Spanning five countries, it contains a kaleidoscope of protected areas connected by so-called wildlife corridors that allow animals to move between one national park or reserve and another along traditional migration routes.

The pachyderm puzzle

The approach has helped to sustain elephant numbers in the KAZA at a time when, elsewhere on the continent, they are in decline. Yet for people living in the corridors, the regular passage of elephants poses numerous challenges.

"This is a village, not a national park," complained David Mweetwa, a 35-year-old schoolteacher in the village of Simoonga, a few miles from Livingstone, whose sister was killed by an elephant in April. "The authorities should put up a wire to prevent animals coming in. If they did that, it would save lives."

Another fraught issue is that of compensation. There's currently no government policy in place to provide assistance for the victims of elephant attacks or damage, yet such events can be ruinous for those involved. Many rely heavily on their vegetable patches or fruit trees. And in the case of a death, funeral costs are a heavy burden.

Namukolo Kabuki was a successful market trader until her son was killed by an elephant in Linda last year. To pay for the funeral, she had to sell her entire stock of plastic kitchenware, charcoal and goats. A year later, she still hasn't been able to raise the capital to restart her business.

Dominic Chiinda of the DNPW said the department is currently reviewing legislation to introduce a system of compensation by the start of the next dry season, yet he acknowledged that implementing it will be complicated.

"Every night, families are losing their fruit trees, their gardens, their fences," said Brighton Manongo, a farmer and community leader in Dambwa South, who once lost 1,000 heads of cabbage to elephants in a single incident. "Who would you even compensate? There'd be a claim every day. And you can't buy back a life."

In human-wildlife conflict hotspots across Southern Africa, several organizations have put in place measures to try to protect people from elephant raids. These include building "beehive fences", planting fields of chilli as a "buffer crop" and the practice of "cluster fencing" -- when groups of farmers with adjacent fields cooperate to build a fence around their properties.

"There's a lot of optimism that humans and elephants will be able to co-exist in close proximity," said Chris Thouless, director of the Kenya-based conservation organisation, the Elephant Crisis Fund. "But there hasn't been enough discussion about precisely what we mean when we talk about coexistence. The mitigation measures are good up to a certain point, but none of them is a silver bullet if the underlying issues are still there."

Burning chili bricks

With the human population increasing across the region, Thouless believes we must adopt a "triaged approach" to addressing human-elephant conflict: accepting that in some areas, where the population density of people and elephants has reached a certain threshold, efforts toward mitigation may be unsustainable. In these instances, he says, separation may be the only solution.

Thouless believes we should focus instead on areas where some form of long-term coexistence may be achievable.

In Livingstone, Manongo does his best to mitigate the danger. After the loss of his cabbage harvest, he abandoned growing vegetables in favor of keeping fish and goats. And every night he burns chilli bricks in the four corners of his yard. Yet the bricks only last a few hours; new ones must be lit throughout the night. Three days earlier, Manongo had failed to get out of bed to light the next round of chilli bricks. In the morning he woke to find a section of his fence destroyed.

"If you make a mistake, you're going to suffer damage," he said. "We're on the frontline here".

Part of the hostility toward elephants stems from the fact that few people in communities like Dambwa South see any tangible benefit from the wildlife tourism they bring. To address this, Manongo runs a series of urban elephant safari tours to bring in tourist dollars – the fee is $50 per person -- and to demonstrate the advantages of living with elephants.

The tour guides preach "co-existence," but it's an uneasy balance. As soon as the tourists have wrapped up their elephant viewing, the Elephant Response Team is sent in to herd the animals back to the park before they can cause any damage.

"Here, coexistence would mean keeping the elephants on one side of a fence and the humans on the other," Manongo acknowledges.

As the night wears on, the members of the Elephant Response Team continue with a mix of patrols and callouts. From time to time they come across people walking alone in the darkness and stop to give them a ride. They spot one man, who appears to be inebriated, staggering along a road directly toward a herd of buffalo grazing near a conference center. Elephants are also nearby.

"Life is precious," admonishes Jimayi, as the team drop the man safely at his destination. "If you want to get drunk, do it at home."

At one point, the team are confronted with a breeding herd of over 40 elephants. They attempt to corral them back toward the park. Jimayi skillfully maneuvers the vehicle back and forth through dense bush, clattering over shrubs and tree stumps, issuing a stream of orders and pleas to the herd through the open window. They say they think the strategy works.

But no sooner do some of the elephants start to head back toward the park than others break off in the opposite direction. At the same time, other groups of elephants are being reported elsewhere in the town.

"As soon as we try to park the car we get a call --Come to Linda, then come to Nakatindi, then come somewhere else," says Gift Ngandu, at 21, the youngest member of the team. "It goes on like that all night."

The work is exhausting, and by the end of the dry season, when food in the park is scarcest and human-wildlife conflict peaks, the volunteers are getting by on barely two or three hours of sleep a night. CATS has repeatedly attempted to hire a second driver to give Jimayi a break, but none of the candidates have returned after their trial shift.

"They feel the job is risky," says Jimayi. "And that you could be killed by an animal at any time. But if I thought like that I don't think I'd be able to work. The key is to understand the elephants."

A Toyota serves as sheepdog

Elephants are not inherently aggressive animals, says Chris Thouless, who first began studying human-elephant conflict in the early 1990s. Yet certain factors can make them more so. The team members know to look out for secretions on the sides of the faces of bull elephants, a sign that they may be in musth -- a testosterone-fueled state that can make them more likely to act aggressively. They are wary of getting between a mother and her calf -- and keep a close eye on any elephants that appear to be sick or wounded.

"Elephants are like people," said Thouless. "They can be aggressive when threatened, but they're peaceful when they feel comfortable."

"You need to be able to see what mood they're in and be able to tell a real charge from a mock charge," says Gift Ngandu. "You need to understand their behavior. If you talk to them politely they're very friendly. You need to show them that you're not here to harm them."

When the team members approach an elephant, they start gently, doing their best to coax and nudge the animal out of harm's way. They talk to the elephants, gently revving their engine and using their spotlight to convey the message that it's time to leave.

Some of the elephants now recognize the team and depart of their own accord, knowing that if they don't, they're likely to be chased away with more forceful measures, Ngandu says.

When the elephants stand their ground, the team up the ante, bringing their vehicle in close, often within feet of the herd, shouting instructions and revving hard on the engine. Turning this way and that to round up stragglers and keep the animals moving in the right direction, they deploy their ageing Toyota as a farmer might a sheepdog.

Shortly before dawn, the team conduct their last routine patrol of the night, rounding up the few elephants left in the town and ushering them back toward the national park, while the residents of Dambwa South emerge to assess the night's damage. Once a safe distance from the nearest houses, Jimayi switches off the engine. For a while, the team sits together in the truck, watching in companionable silence as the lumbering giants disappear, one by one, into the trees.

"I feel so privileged to be able to do this job," says Jimayi. "When I see an elephant, I see an animal that's gentle, peaceful and intelligent. I hope that one day we can learn to live together."

Tommy Trenchard is an independent photojournalist based in Cape Town, South Africa. He has previously contributed photos and stories to NPR on the Mozambique cyclone of 2019, Indonesian death rituals and illegal miners in abandoned South African diamond mines.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/g-s1-36636

NATIONAL | SUNDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2024 • 5:30 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

NYPD releases 2 new photos of man sought in killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO

By The Associated Press

NEW YORK — They have seen him smiling on a hostel security camera, but don't know his name. They found the backpack he discarded while fleeing, but don't know where he's gone.

As the search for UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson's killer goes on, investigators are reckoning with a tantalizing dichotomy: They have troves of evidence, but the shooter remains an enigma.

Police don't know who he is, where he is, or why he did it, though they are confident it was a targeted attack instead of a random act.

"The net is tightening," New York City Mayor Eric Adams said Saturday.

Hours after he spoke, police divers were seen searching a pond in Central Park, where the killer fled after the shooting. Officers have been scouring the park for days for any possible clues and found his bag there Friday.

Late Saturday, police released two additional photos of the suspected shooter that appeared to be from a camera mounted inside a taxi. The first shows him outside the vehicle and the second shows him looking through the partition between the back seat and the front of the cab. In both, his face is partially obscured by a blue, medical-style mask.

Retracing the gunman's steps using surveillance video, police say, it appears he left the city by bus soon after the shooting Wednesday morning outside the New York Hilton Midtown. He was seen on video at an uptown bus station about 45 minutes later, NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said.

With the high-profile search expanding across state lines, the FBI announced late Friday that it was offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction, adding to a reward of up to $10,000 that the NYPD has offered. Police say they believe the suspect acted alone.

Police provided no updates on the hunt Saturday, but investigators are urging patience — even with a killer on the loose.

Hundreds of detectives are combing through video recordings and social media, vetting tips from the public and interviewing people who might have information, including Thompson's family and coworkers and the shooter's randomly assigned roommates at the Manhattan hostel where he stayed.

"This isn't 'Blue Bloods.' We're not going to solve this in 60 minutes," Kenny told reporters Friday. "We're painstakingly going through every bit of evidence that we can come across."

The shooter paid cash at the hostel, presented what police believe was a fake ID and is believed to have paid cash for taxi rides and other transactions. He didn't speak to others at the hostel and almost always kept his face covered with a mask, only lowering it while eating.

But investigators caught a break when they came across security camera images of an unguarded moment in which he briefly showed his face soon after arriving in New York on Nov. 24.

Police distributed the images to news outlets and on social media but so far haven't been able to ID him using facial recognition — possibly because of the angle of the images or limitations on how the NYPD is allowed to use that technology, Kenny said.

On Friday evening, investigators found a backpack in Central Park that had been worn by the gunman, police said. They didn't immediately reveal what, if anything, it contained but said it would be tested and analyzed.

Another potential clue, a fingerprint on an item he purchased at a Starbucks minutes before the shooting, has so far proven useless for identifying him, Kenny said.

Aided by surveillance cameras on nearly every building and block, police have been able to retrace the shooter's movements.

They know he ambushed Thompson at 6:44 a.m. as the executive arrived at the Hilton for his company's annual investor conference, using a 9 mm pistol that resembled the guns farmers use to put down animals without causing a loud noise. They know ammunition found near Thompson's body bore the words "delay," "deny" and "depose," mimicking a phrase used by insurance industry critics.

Kenny said the fact that the shooter knew UnitedHealthcare group was holding a conference at the hotel and what route Thompson might take to get there suggested that he could possibly be a disgruntled employee or client.

Investigators know from surveillance video that the shooter fled into Central Park on a bicycle and ditched it around 7 a.m. near 85th Street.

He then walked a couple blocks and got into a taxi, arriving at 7:30 a.m. at the George Washington Bridge Bus Station, which is near the northern tip of Manhattan and offers commuter service to New Jersey and Greyhound routes to Philadelphia, Boston and Washington.

Investigators don't know what happened next. They are searching through more surveillance video but have yet to locate video of the shooter getting on a bus or exiting the station.

"We have reason to believe that the person in question has left New York City," Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch told CNN on Friday.

Police have determined from video that the gunman was in the city for 10 days before the shooting. He arrived at Manhattan's main bus terminal on a Greyhound bus that originated in Atlanta, though it's not clear whether he embarked there or at one of about a half-dozen stops along the route.

Immediately after that, he took a cab to the vicinity of the Hilton and was there for about a half hour, Kenny said.

At around 11 p.m. on the night he arrived, he went by taxi to the HI New York City Hostel. It was there, while speaking with an employee in the lobby, that he briefly pulled down the mask and smiled, giving investigators the brief glimpse they are now relying on to identify and capture a killer.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/g-s1-37361

Related

- NPR

- NPR

MENTAL HEALTH | SATURDAY, DECEMBER 7, 2024 • 6:34 PM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Life Kit offers tips on how to care for a grieving friend

Heard on All Things Considered

Transcript

SCOTT DETROW, HOST:

The holidays can be a challenging time for people who are grieving loved ones. For NPR's Life Kit, Julia Furlan talked to grief experts about ways you can support a friend or loved one who's grieving.

JULIA FURLAN, BYLINE: When a person you love loses somebody they love, it can feel like the stakes could not be higher. And the tension between wanting to support somebody and also not overstep or bother them can make things a little awkward. I talked to Dr. Mekel Harris, who's a certified grief therapist and author of "Relaxing Into Pain." She says that supporting a grieving heart is about being a witness.

MEKEL HARRIS: Just to sort of give a tangible example of what witnessing is, just imagine if you and I were out, you know, on a beach. And I look out into the water, and I say, gosh, can you see that in the distance? And you say, Mekel, I can. I can see it, too. And we both sort of marvel at whatever that thing is out there.

FURLAN: If your friend brings up their loss, you may have an instinct to breeze past it, but avoiding the topic doesn't actually make it go away. Dr. Harris says it's okay to bring up a loss.

HARRIS: And so it really is important to name the elephant in the room as opposed to sidestep that as a supporter.

FURLAN: Seeing someone in their grief doesn't mean you have to 100% understand what they're going through, either. Dr. Harris told me a story of being in Costco with her friend looking at sweaters. And if you've grieved somebody, you know this feeling.

HARRIS: I looked over at the sweaters, and I saw the sweater design, and it literally reminded me of something that my dad wore years ago when we traveled to Spain. And I was sort of stunned in the moment and got a little tearful.

FURLAN: Dr. Harris' friend took the cue and asked about the trip and asked about her dad, and Dr. Harris was able to share in a way that made her feel supported. Now, there was one person I knew I had to call if I was going to talk about grief, my dear friend Avi Wisnia, who lost his dad last year and, in 2012, lost his older brother Dov.

So, technically, I guess that means you're an expert. I'm sorry, and you're welcome.

(LAUGHTER)

AVI WISNIA: Yeah. That's a weird thing, to be called an expert in grief, but I get it.

FURLAN: There was something he said that I thought was so important to remember for anyone supporting a grieving person.

WISNIA: You know, like, when you do a physical activity or you're at work all day or you go on a hike, it takes energy out of you. And it feels like, when you are grieving, you are just sapped of energy, even if you're not doing anything.

FURLAN: Grief takes energy. So sometimes, instead of a big gesture, it can be helpful to think really small.

WISNIA: My friends got me gift cards when my dad died, you know, like food delivery service. I didn't even realize that I didn't have the energy to cook. I didn't have anything in the house, and it took that task. It made it so much easier.

FURLAN: Dr. Harris mentioned that when you're in grief, you also might be having to make logistical choices that are just really challenging.

HARRIS: You're having to make decisions about funeral homes and services and hosting and all these different things, financial decisions - that there's so much going on that it's such a gift to literally have a truncated choice.

FURLAN: For example, would you like me to walk your dog, or do you want me to take care of dinner? So they can very easily choose. And if you're not the kind of friend that has a killer baked ziti, that's fine. Maybe they need you to come over and play video games or watch reality TV. Whatever it is, stay true to who you are, and if you can take down the recycling on your way out the door, go for it. For NPR's Life Kit, I'm Julia Furlan.

DETROW: For more Life Kit, you can go to /lifekit.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5191758

Science

- A material that's almost entirely air keeps EV fires from spreading: 2024 Dec 9

- Artificial Intelligence wants to go nuclear. Will it work?: 2024 Dec 9

- Here's what a second Trump presidency could mean for scientists: 2024 Dec 9

SCIENCE | MONDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2024 • 7:00 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

A material that's almost entirely air keeps EV fires from spreading

By Ari Daniel

Electric vehicles (EVs) continue to gain in global popularity even though, says John Williams, the VP of Technical Services at Aspen Aerogels, "Inside each of these vehicles are hundreds, if not thousands of lithium ion cells — one of the densest ways that we know to store electrical energy in a battery, but they come with tradeoffs."

One of those tradeoffs is that every now and again, a lithium ion cell catches fire and, if allowed to burn, could ignites those around it.

That's why the Department of Energy recently provided Aspen Aerogels with a $670.6 million loan to build a new factory in Georgia. The federal government is hoping the technology that the company is developing will help contain EV fires.

An ethereal, almost magical, material

When a battery in an EV gets too hot, it can lead to something called thermal runaway. "In the case of some kind of defect, under the right kinds of circumstances, the temperature goes up and up and up until eventually the battery catches on fire," says Williams.

A lithium ion battery in a car is way less likely to ignite than an internal combustion engine, says Williams, but it burns hotter and is harder to put out. "So the goal for a vehicle designer is to give a passenger enough time to exit the vehicle, get off of the road, get clear of the vehicle if the worst should come to happen," he explains.

This is where an aerogel can help. Williams calls it the world's best thermal insulation. It's a substance akin to a very light, yet firm piece of gelatin. It's not new but the technology continues to improve.

"This is a very ethereal material," says Aspen Aerogels Chief Technology Officer George Gould. "It's very delicate. They are a little bit translucent, you might say. There is a smoky appearance to the material."

At the company's research lab in Northborough, Mass., some 35 miles west of Boston, Gould holds up a chunk of aerogel roughly the shape of a hockey puck. "That piece is probably 99% air," says Gould. The rest is an extremely porous material made mostly of silicon and oxygen.

Irene Melnikova, a chemist at the company, walks through the process of making the material. She takes two liquids (reprocessed silicone materials and an alcohol), combines them, and then pours the mixture onto a patch of fibrous material that absorbs the liquid. Within a minute, it solidifies.

"It's amazing," she says. "You have a fluid and it's liquid. And after that, you have a solid." This solid has a rather useful property: "It can survive at high temperature and protect materials from heat," says Melnikova.

"And that combination together makes a flexible insulation material," says Gould, "which is extremely good at preventing heat from transferring from one side to another of a layer of insulation."

Engineer Matt Gwin demonstrates this high temperature resilience. In the lab, a piece of aerogel material a couple millimeters thick is held taut inside a metal frame. This is what's placed between the lithium ion cells of EV batteries currently inside certain vehicles made by GM, Toyota, Honda, and others.

Gwin turns a couple knobs to get the propane flowing and ignites it. A jet of fire some 2000 degrees Fahrenheit erupts outwards.

No flame comes out the other side. There's no evidence that anything is burning. "The secret of our material is that it's passing the energy on very slowly," says Gould.

After a minute or two, Gwin kills the flame and Gould touches the aerogel material immediately. It's completely intact and only feels warm—as if it had not just been scalded. "It's like magic," Gould says with a chuckle.

The limits of the technology

An aerogel does not prevent a fire in the first place, but if a lithium ion cell wrapped with this material ignites, the aerogel keeps the fire from spreading too far. "Think of it as a firewall," says Williams.

Aspen Aerogels' products go beyond EVs. Gould says by varying how the aerogel is prepared, the material can be used for insulating the pipes associated with liquified natural gas transport, refineries, and subsea oil exploration and extraction. "We have products in outer space and particle physics detectors," says Gould. "Separating hot and cold in the most challenging environments is our strength."

Amar Pradhan is with Mobility Impact Partners, a venture capital firm that invests in emerging transportation technologies. He says aerogels are just one kind of safety measure under development.

"There's different ways to stop the fire depending on the timeline of battery fires," says Pradhan. "You can solve it before it happens, you can solve it while it happens, you can solve it after it's already on fire."

A range of approaches is necessary, especially given the life cycle of a lithium ion cell inside an EV and afterwards in a landfill. "You could prevent the problem years before by picking a better chemistry," says Pradhan. "You could prevent it hours before by predicting it using data."

Ultimately, he says it will take a variety of interventions to ensure that EVs are as powerful and safe as possible.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5214775

TECHNOLOGY | MONDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2024 • 6:18 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Artificial Intelligence wants to go nuclear. Will it work?

By Geoff Brumfiel

Heard on All Things Considered

MIDDLETOWN, Pennsylvania — Standing in front of one of Three Mile Island's iconic cooling towers, Bryan Hanson remembers the day in 2019 when he shut the nuclear plant down.

"It was really melancholy," Hanson, chief generation officer for the utility Constellation, recalls.

Three Mile Island is best known because its Unit 2 reactor partially melted down in 1979. But the Unit 1 reactor went on to operate for decades, until Hanson finally had to pull the plug.

"I remember, just driving away seeing no water vapor coming out of the towers, knowing it wouldn't happen again," he says.

Then, earlier this year, the Three Mile Island got a second lease on life. In September, Microsoft signed a power purchase agreement with Constellation, guaranteeing it would buy electricity from the plant at a fixed price. That allowed the utility to invest the projected $1.6 billion necessary to restart the reactor.

Across the tech sector, companies like Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta are all getting into nuclear tech.

Their interest is driven by commitments they've made to fight climate change, according to Emma Strubell, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Before 2022, Strubell says, large tech companies were "reducing their actual carbon emissions year-over-year."

But since the advent of AI, power consumption has been rising rapidly.

Training and using AI requires significantly more computational power than conventional computing, and "that corresponds to energy use," Strubell says. Strubell and other experts expect emissions will skyrocket as AI becomes more common.

Nuclear power offers a way out: plants like Three Mile Island can deliver hundreds of megawatts of power without producing greenhouse gas emissions. New nuclear plants could do still more, powering data centers using the latest technology.

But Silicon Valley's ethos is to go fast and break things. Nuclear power, on the other hand, has a reputation for moving extremely slowly, because nothing can ever break.

That makes some long-time watchers of the nuclear industry skeptical.

"I find it fascinating that big tech is interested in these technologies," says Sharon Squassoni, a research professor at the George Washington University who's studied the nuclear industry for years. But she wonders if the companies understand how much time and money it will take to harness the power of the atom.

"I'm really perplexed," she says.

A climate promise

Big tech firms have long promised to grow sustainably, and in recent years they've pledged to slash or even eliminate their greenhouse gas emissions.

Initially, they tried to do so with solar, wind and hydroelectric power. "If you went back a decade, they were all focused on being 100% renewable-energy powered," says Ted Nordhaus, executive director of the Breakthrough Institute, a Berkley, Calif.,-based environmental think tank that has studied nuclear power and the tech sector.

Large tech companies purchased power from renewable sources, but Nordhaus says they drew criticism, because the purchase agreements often left parts of their demand uncovered. For example, purchasing power from a solar plant does little to reduce emissions during night time operations.

Over the years, some companies have moved towards 24/7 matching of their demand with clean energy supply. Nordhaus says that change, together with the anticipated and enormous power requirements of AI, have left nuclear power as one of the few solutions.

"I think nuclear is probably the most cost-effective current technology stopgap that we have," Strubell agrees. Wind or solar are just too intermittent and "the size of the battery you would need to build next to a data center in order to support these workloads is enormous and it would be incredibly expensive."

Given the looming energy needs, paying to restart a plant like Three Mile Island seems like a bargain for a company like Microsoft.

"You're talking about data centers that are very power intensive, 24 hours a day, seven days a week independent of whether the sun is shining or the wind is blowing," says Hanson, who is trained as a nuclear engineer. "It's a perfect match for nuclear energy."

Hanson says that Constellation will have the plant, which has been renamed the Crane Clean Energy Center, up and running by 2028.

The nuclear doldrums

If tech needs the nuclear industry, then the nuclear industry may need tech even more.

"For several decades there were no nuclear power projects underway," says Edwin Lyman, who tracks the industry for the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Only two power reactors have actually gotten built in the U.S. in recent years and they were billions over budget and way behind schedule. "The ultimate cost was more than twice the original estimate and the time it took to bring the reactors into service was twice as long as originally projected," Lyman says.

Meanwhile, the existing fleet of nuclear plants has struggled to keep up with less expensive natural gas and renewables. In fact, that's why Three Mile Island had to close in the first place. "Power prices started declining, and nuclear plants, which are intensive operations to run, became uneconomical," Hanson says. "We owed it to our shareholders to make that difficult decision."

The Microsoft commitment has caused a turnaround. Hanson is now scrambling to recruit employees, check old equipment, and work with regulators to get the plant up and running again. "Microsoft has purchased the power of this unit for the next 20 years, that gives us the financial certainty to invest our money," he says.

Smaller is better

Restarting old plants is a limited solution, though, because there simply aren't that many old plants in the U.S. awaiting a fresh influx of cash. To meet future demand, tech is looking to build new nuclear power plants, and those reactors will look very different than the old ones.

In a commercial office park outside Washington DC, a company called X-energy is promising a new kind of nuclear power.

"X-energy has developed a design very different from what most people think about in terms of very large, conventional nuclear power plants," says Clay Sell, the company's CEO.

Instead of using rods filled with nuclear fuel, X-energy's plant will run off of little balls of uranium. "We put it in a round pebble, about the size of cue ball, and we fill the reactor core with these pebbles and they flow through the core like gumballs in a gumball machine," he says.

Sell says the reactors will be smaller and modular, with several units powering a data center. And crucially, he says, this system has one big advantage.

"The plant cannot melt down under any scenario that you can imagine," he says.

In the past, companies like X-energy would have struggled to find someone willing to buy their design, but not anymore. Earlier this year, Amazon invested more than $250 million in the company, as part of a $500 million round of venture investment. Other small reactor companies have received interest as well. Open AI CEO Sam Altman has invested heavily in a company called Oklo, and Google has committed to buying power from a company called Kairos. Earlier this month, Meta announced it would also be seeking to partner with nuclear power companies.

"Nuclear is not only one of the few solutions, it's clearly the best… and I think the tech companies have come to that conclusion, over the last two to three years," Sell says.

X-energy says its first reactor could come online as soon as 2030, but its design still needs approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

That process takes time, and AI needs power now. Some longtime nuclear skeptics wonder whether Silicon Valley executives really understand what they're getting into.

"These are champions of innovation who believe they can disrupt any technology," says Lyman. But "nuclear power is a tough nut to crack."

Squassoni worries that nuclear power simply isn't the right fit for fighting climate change.

"You need the biggest bang for the buck in the shortest amount of time, and nuclear is not that," she warns. "If that's where you're putting your money, you're consigning us to severe climate change."

She says until these plants are running, many AI data centers will have to operate using natural gas.

Squassoni says she thinks the slow nuclear industry just won't be able to catch up with speedy Silicon Valley, and if it can't, there's going to have to be a different solution. "I don't know," she muses. "Maybe the answer is just to use less AI."

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5171063

SHORT WAVE | MONDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2024 • 3:00 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Here's what a second Trump presidency could mean for scientists

By Jon Hamilton, Emily Kwong, Rachel Carlson, Rebecca Ramirez

The next four years may be challenging for foreign-born scientists who want to work in the United States. Foreign-born workers account for about half of the doctoral-level scientists and engineers working in the U.S., but the incoming Trump administration wants to make it harder for them to get H-1B visas.

These visas allow many scientists and engineers – including Elon Musk before he became a citizen – to work in the U.S.. But Trump has said he sees the visas as as a way to replace U.S. workers with cheaper foreign labor.

Some scientists worry a scarcity of H-1B visas may prompt top foreign researchers to work in other countries and make it harder for research institutions, universities and tech firms in the U.S. to find enough highly educated workers.

Read more of science correspondent Jon Hamilton's reporting here.

Questions or ideas you want us to consider for a future episode? Email us at shortwave@npr.org. We'd love to hear from you!

Listen to Short Wave on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave.

This episode was produced by Rachel Carlson and edited by our showrunner, Rebecca Ramirez. Jon Hamilton checked the facts. The audio engineer was Jimmy Keeley.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/1218396326

Climate

- Making steel is a huge climate problem. Sweden is pioneering a solution: 2024 Dec 9

CLIMATE | MONDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2024 • 5:21 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Making steel is a huge climate problem. Sweden is pioneering a solution

By Reid Frazier

Heard on Morning Edition

Transcript

LEILA FADEL, HOST:

Some companies in Sweden have found a way to cut steel's carbon footprint down to almost zero. That's a big deal because its production accounts for nearly 10% of global carbon dioxide emissions. Reid Frazier of the Pennsylvania-based public radio show The Allegheny Front has more.

REID FRAZIER, BYLINE: Anne Graf hops into the back seat of a Toyota pickup truck in Boden, Sweden.

ANNE GRAF: So what are we doing? We're putting our seat belts on, and we're driving out onto the site.

FRAZIER: Graf is with the Swedish company Stegra. She's showing off the company's huge construction site here in the Swedish forest just below the Arctic Circle. Stegra is building the world's first commercial-scale, fossil-free steel mill. Graf says steel made here will be the same as what's produced at traditional mills.

GRAF: It will become cars, trucks, construction materials. It will become dishwashers and fridges and freezers.

FRAZIER: Basically, all the stuff that makes modern life possible. But the way most steel is made now, all that stuff comes with a heavy climate price. Steelmakers have been using the same basic recipe for hundreds of years. They heat up iron ore in a blast furnace with refined coal. That chemical process releases lots of carbon dioxide. But Stegra will use a different process. Instead of coal, they'll use hydrogen, a common industrial gas. This way, the biggest by-product is water, Graf says, not CO2.

GRAF: In a very concrete way, we are physically going to remove CO2 emissions by providing better steel.

FRAZIER: Scientists have known hydrogen could be used to make steel for decades, but it's hard to work with and more expensive than coal. Plus, most hydrogen today comes from fossil fuels and is a carbon pollution problem of its own. Stegra will produce its hydrogen out of water, using renewable energy, significantly cutting its CO2 footprint. Other steel companies in Sweden are also starting to work with hydrogen. The steelmaker Ovako recently converted some of its furnaces from natural gas.

MIKAEL PERSSON: It was very hard (laughter).

FRAZIER: Mikael Persson managed that project for the company.

PERSSON: I've never done this. Nobody has done this. We went into it with - blindfolded.

FRAZIER: His team spent four years building a hydrogen plant inside an old steel mill.

PERSSON: Yeah, this is the plant.

FRAZIER: Inside a large white room are eight cylindrical tanks. Picture huge double-A batteries, each laid on their side. An electric current courses through each tank, separating water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen.

PERSSON: The current is really, really, really high. So the power needed as a maximum is what we call 20 megawatt.

FRAZIER: That's a lot of juice, enough to power 10,000 homes in the U.S. The company can use this much electricity with very little climate impact. That's because Sweden's electric grid is virtually carbon-free. The country relies mostly on hydro and nuclear plants, not fossil fuels. But what's really driving this investment in green steel now? Money. In Europe, it's about to get much more expensive to make steel the old-fashioned way. Max Ahman is a professor at Lund University in Sweden.

MAX AHMAN: The EU system for putting a price on carbon has actually started to work.

FRAZIER: The European Union has a carbon trading system that taxes companies for emitting greenhouse gases. It's set to impose a larger penalty on traditional steelmakers in the next decade.

AHMAN: With that price on CO2, suddenly, green steel from hydrogen is more or less competitive.

FRAZIER: Dozens of similar projects are in the works around the world. Experts say Sweden is proving that making green steel is possible. But to make it work elsewhere, the industry needs lots of affordable, clean energy and policies, like a carbon tax that will help it compete with traditional steel.

For NPR News, I'm Reid Frazier in Boden, Sweden.

FADEL: That reporting was made possible by a grant from the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative.

(SOUNDBITE OF MIZLO'S "NEED SOME SPACE")

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5178137

Religion

- Catholic church in Switzerland finds an opportunity for a spirited debate about AI: 2024 Dec 9

RELIGION | MONDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2024 • 4:22 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Catholic church in Switzerland finds an opportunity for a spirited debate about AI

By Hosts

Heard on Morning Edition

Transcript

LEILA FADEL, HOST:

The Catholic Church in Switzerland has found an opportunity for a spirited debate about artificial intelligence.

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

St. Peter's Chapel in Lucerne hosted an art installation earlier this year. It allowed visitors to step into a confessional and have a conversation with a digital Jesus that gave AI-generated answers.

AUTOMATED VOICE: In this world, you will have trouble. But take heart, I have overcome the world. Draw strength from faith, for even in your darkest hour, you are never alone.

FADEL: Marco Schmid is a theologian and curator of art installations at St. Peter's Chapel. He says the intent was never for AI Jesus to take confession or to replace a priest. Instead, it's to raise a question.

MARCO SCHMID: What is the role of AI, of the modern technologies, in the future of the church?

MARTIN: As part of the project, the church held lectures and panel discussions to debate that question in collaboration with a local university.

FADEL: Schmid has talked with visitors who spoke with AI Jesus. He thinks the technology could help people share personal matters that are a source of shame.

SCHMID: It could be a first step, let's say, for a person to really process an inner healing, and then of course, go on and have the courage to also talk out with a priest.

MARTIN: Schmid says the response has been mostly positive. To critics of the project who call it sacrilegious, Schmid points to the feedback from visitors who call their conversations with AI Jesus inspiring.

SCHMID: You can see that they really got something positive from it. I would even say God was really working in them, making a step in growing in faith. And if that happens, what can be then blasphemic in that?

FADEL: The experiment is now over. Schmid says there are no current plans to bring the technology to other houses of worship, but he says the chapel is in talk with art museums.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "PERSONAL JESUS")

DEPECHE MODE: (Singing) Your own personal Jesus.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5217762

Culture

- An 84-year-old pop superstar just dropped an album — how does she sound so good?: 2024 Dec 9

- Cooks We Love: 11 cookbooks from 2024 recommended by NPR critics and staff: 2024 Dec 9

- 'Black Doves' is a wry spry spy tale: 2024 Dec 9

- Packed house pays tribute to Kennedy Center honorees: 2024 Dec 9

- Kennedy Center pays tribute to the Grateful Dead, Bonnie Raitt, Sandoval and The Apollo: 2024 Dec 9

- Ruby slippers worn in 'The Wizard of Oz' are auctioned for a record $28 million: 2024 Dec 9

- How one university student launched a wildly successful club to make friends: 2024 Dec 8

MUSIC NEWS | MONDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2024 • 12:00 PM EST | VIEW ON NPR

An 84-year-old pop superstar just dropped an album — how does she sound so good?

By Chloe Veltman

Mina, one of the bestselling Italian musical artists of all time, just dropped a new album — at the age of 84.

She's not a household name in the United States, though audiences in this country might recognize the performer's unmistakable voice from the Netflix series Ripley, the HBO series The White Lotus, and the Pixar animated feature Luca.

But in her native country, Mina has been worshipped for decades — especially because of her powerful and distinctive voice.

"All generations have always identified with her voice and with her albums," said Rome-based musicologist and music critic Paulo Prato.

Prato said Mina sings in many languages and is constantly reinventing herself.

"She can sing pop music, opera, jazz, rock and roll," he said.

Retreat from the stage and the media

Like Barbra Streisand, another singer with an enduring career and a voice for the ages, Mina has sold more than 150 million records worldwide. But unlike Streisand, who has given live concerts over the past decade, Mina hasn't performed in public since 1978.

"She chose to focus on recording and making the music she wanted to," said independent scholar Rachel Haworth, who is based in the U.K. and has written a book about Mina.

Mina also doesn't give media interviews. Haworth said the last time the general public was offered a glimpse into the artist's creative process was in 2001, in a video live-streamed from her recording studio.

"It broke the server, because so many people wanted to see it," Haworth said.

Signs of aging suggest authenticity

As a result of the relative secrecy that surrounds Mina's work, and the toll aging takes on the human voice, Haworth said it's hard to know just how she keeps her amazing voice going, or if that voice — especially in our age of artificial intelligence-generated replicas — is truly hers.

Mina's use of imagery made with AI in at least one recent music video has prompted discussion, Haworth noted.

"There's this kind of debate around, 'Well, we never see her. How do we know if it's even her?'" Haworth said. "And then you get the counter to that, where it's, 'Well, of course it's her, because we know what she sounds like.'"

Mina's representatives did not respond to NPR's requests for comment.

But experts generally do believe it's Mina's authentic voice on the recordings because it plainly shows signs of aging.

"In the early years, she had a very clear voice — a lot of flexibility, a lot of range," said Sarah Schneider, a voice speech pathologist at the University of California, San Francisco, who works with singers. "In listening to her most recent work, there's a little bit more of a huskier, raspier sound to it — which is not unexpected."

Navigating the aging voice

Schneider said just as our bodies age, so do our voices.

"Our breathing mechanism changes, our vocal folds themselves change, skin gets thinner, muscle gets smaller, potentially," Schneider said.

She said Mina's apparent use of backup singers on her new album, Gassa D'Amante, helps bolster her voice in the higher passages.

Youtube Video

And she added the singer's retreat to the recording studio has likely worked in her favor over the years. It's less physically taxing than keeping up with a relentless touring schedule.

And she owns her own label and studio. "Assuming she has control over her studio time, she's going in when she wants and she's doing as many takes as she wants," Schneider said. "Being in control of those things allows for you to choose your best work."

Not all artists have this kind of control — though many do have access to is the latest technology.

"I think pop stars are going to be more and more tempted to use AI-assisted voice software that will allow them to keep their vocal timbre and their vocal range maybe longer than their actual physical voices will allow them," said musicologist and Switched on Pop podcast co-host Nate Sloan.

But Sloan said he hopes they'll resist the temptation.

"Audiences want to hear a direct and unfiltered performance. They want to hear an artist's vulnerabilities. They want to hear their flaws," Sloan said. "Because that is what draws us to art is that human connection."

Sloan said he gets excited when singers like Mina connect with listeners in an unvarnished way. "There's space for older artists to make their voices heard," he said.

Jennifer Vanasco edited this story for broadcast and digital. Chloee Weiner mixed the audio.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5200587

BOOKS WE LOVE | MONDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2024 • 8:00 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Cooks We Love: 11 cookbooks from 2024 recommended by NPR critics and staff

By Dhanika Pineda

NPR has an appetite for great recipes. Every year, when NPR staffers and critics offer their recommendations for Books We Love — NPR's annual, year-end books guide — plenty of cookbooks get thrown into the mix. Here are 11 cookbooks with a broad array of recipes from (dare I say it?) Cooks We Love. If you're hungry for more, head over to Books We Love for our full menu of food recommendations for 2024.

Amrikan: 125 Recipes from the Indian American Diaspora by Khushbu Shah

Amrikan is Khushbu Shah's answer to "What is Indian food in America?" It's a thoughtful celebration of adaptation: American influences on Indian foods, Indian influences on "American" foods and some untouched Indian classics. This book was my introduction to Rajma – who knew that the humble kidney bean could be so swoon-worthy? I served it alongside the beautifully simple Cabbage Nu Shaak with some rice and yogurt, and the meal was a hit. I am also a convert of Shah's Masala Deviled Eggs and Jaggery and Fennel Rice Krispie Treats. The photos are gorgeous and the recipes are concise and easy to follow, making this an inviting collection for a range of occasions. — Nicolette Khan, researcher and archivist, Research, Archives and Data Strategy

Đặc Biệt: An Extra-Special Vietnamese Cookbook by Nini Nguyen with Sarah Zorn

According to New Orleans-based chef and teacher Nini Nguyen, "Đặc Biệt" translates loosely to "extra special," a term that could also be applied to her first cookbook. In addition to the classics (pho, bánh cuón) Nguyen freely riffs on French and Vietnamese techniques and ingredients, as in the succulent and acidic Shaking Beef with Watercress Salad, or mouth-puckering, juicy Shrimp Caramelized with Tamarind. When you feel unadventurous, simple dishes like ginger-braised chicken and cabbage charred with garlic will do nicely. But chances are Nguyen will convince you, like me, to finally venture into shrimp paste territory. Don't fear the fermented! — T. Susan Chang, food writer

Greekish: Everyday Recipes with Greek Roots by Georgina Hayden

Not everyone who loves Greek food is lucky enough to have a Yiayia to teach them to hand-roll dolmas and work with phyllo dough. Fans of the cuisine also don't necessarily have the time it takes to lovingly prepare specialty dishes that would typically take hours or even days to come together. Enter Georgina Hayden with a collection of recipes inspired by her Greek-Cypriot heritage, adapted for busy home cooks. The flavors and dishes manage to feel both classic and fresh, inspiring Tuesday night dinner options that will transport your family. — Tayla Burney, director, Network Programming and Production

Mastering the Art of Plant-Based Cooking: Vegan Recipes, Tips, and Techniques by Joe Yonan

Washington Post food editor Joe Yonan has been marching in a plant-forward direction for years now, but his latest offering is definitive. Flavor-building details add dimension to basics like Spiced Roasted Tomato Soup and Crunchy Kale Chips "Your Way." Reach for handfuls of fresh herbs for eerily crablike Lion's Mane Mushroom Cakes; raid the spice cabinet for Avocado Salad with Dukkah Croutons and Harissa. Bringing together two dozen vegan or vegetarian chefs and 300-plus recipes, Mastering the Art of Plant-Based Cooking demonstrates once and for all that you needn't sacrifice taste, texture or excitement in a vegan kitchen. — T. Susan Chang, food writer

Milk Street 365: The All-Purpose Cookbook for Every Day of the Year by Christopher Kimball

If you follow Milk Street Magazine recipes, you'll recognize the sweet spot: globally inspired, streamlined, about a dozen ingredients. You could cook for over a year from Milk Street 365 without repeating yourself, and there isn't a clinker in the bunch. Dry Fried Beef with Celery, Crisp Oven-Fried Cauliflower with Tahini-Yogurt Sauce, Coconut Curry Salmon, Turkey Herb-Mayo Parmesan Burgers: All are crowd-tested and most sail through weeknight prep in under an hour of active cooking time. Do you have, or know where to get, Thai basil, harissa, pomegranate molasses, poblano chiles? Then this one's for you! — T. Susan Chang, food writer

Ottolenghi Comfort: A Cookbook by Yotam Ottolenghi with Helen Goh

Many celebrity chefs who churn out a yearly cookbook experience a certain mission creep. Not so with Yotam Ottolenghi and his team, who continue to deliver provocative, doable recipes with virtuoso consistency. Slather Curry Leaf Dukkah Butter over your trusty weeknight roast chicken; sizzle some sage leaves and hazelnuts to adorn your orecchiette. While Ottolenghi and his cohorts don't shy away from some far-flung terminology (Carrot and Vadouvan Quickbread, Peanut Rayu, Tortang Talong Omelet) thoughtful explanations and substitutions offer a glide path to efficient feasts that make the most of your most obscure pantry items. — T. Susan Chang, food writer

The SalviSoul Cookbook: Salvadoran Recipes and the Women Who Preserve Them by Karla Tatiana Vasquez

Karla Tatiana Vasquez was born in El Salvador, but her family fled to Los Angeles because of war. Food became a way for her to stay connected to her culture. She began documenting recipes and stories of the women who preserve Salvadoran traditions. That work led to The SalviSoul Cookbook. It's her tribute to El Salvador, its people and the diaspora. This is the first cookbook focused on Salvadoran food from a major U.S. publishing house. — Milton Guevara, producer, Morning Edition

Sandwiches of History: The Cookbook: All the Best (and Most Surprising) Things People Have Put Between Slices of Bread by Barry W. Enderwick

On social media, Barry W. Enderwick, aka @sandwichesofhistory, makes sandwiches from all sorts of historical sources, to mixed results. In this cookbook, he's given us a range of 50+ recipes from the classic (Croque Monsieur) to the unexpected (Pineapple Cucumber). Each recipe includes the cookbook and year it came from (Beverages and Sandwiches for Your Husband's Friends, 1893, is a particularly delightful example), as well as some light historical context. Sometimes he offers us his signature "Plus Ups" – ways to make an OK sandwich great (often adding heat, spice, texture or contrast). The book is chatty and accessible, offering coaching and encouragement the way you would to a friend. To borrow a phrase from him, I recommend you give this cookbook … a go. — Melissa Kuypers, audio engineering and operations manager, NPR West

Sprout & Co Saladology: Fresh Ideas for Delicious Salads by Theo Kirwan

"I'd LOVE salad for dinner!" If you're like me, you say it every summer – before traitorously throwing another slab of protein on the grill. Behold, a salad book for meat lovers! In Saladology, restaurateur-farmer Theo Kirwan (who with his brother Jack runs Dublin's Sprout & Co. franchise) assembles explosively flavored, globally inspired quasi-salads that stand alone as a meal: Shredded Chicken in Mala Sichuan Dressing, Vietnamese-Style Pork Meatballs with Rice Noodles and Lemon Grass Dressing, Smacked Cucumbers with Chili Crisp and Tahini, Miso Butter Bean Mash with Sauteed Leeks and Crispy Aromatics. A salad-esque splash of green appears in each, though lettuce is clearly optional. — T. Susan Chang, food writer

What Goes with What: 100 Recipes, 20 Charts, Endless Possibilities by Julia Turshen

"What Goes With What" is the fifth accessible, unfussy cookbook from the highly organized brain of Julia Turshen. This time, each section begins with a formula and variations, in chart form. A great lettuce salad has a Base, a Crunchy Thing, a Rich Thing and a Dressing (e.g., chopped romaine, sliced pepperoncini, diced salami, pizzeria vinaigrette). Chicken-Zucchini Meatballs with Dill and Tahini (Meat + Binding + Seasoning + Sauce) light up the palate. The irony is, this book makes you feel so organized … you might just end up thinking you don't need it. — T. Susan Chang, food writer

When Southern Women Cook: History, Lore, and 300 Recipes with Contributions from 70 Women Writers by America's Test Kitchen

This cookbook geek, and longtime Southern cook and eater, was thrilled to get this gorgeous tome from America's Test Kitchen and the editors of Cook's Country. It's a bible of Southern cuisine told via stories of remarkable women from the diverse cultures that make up the American South. Think chefs, farmers, seed savers, shrimpers, pitmasters, canning pioneers and even the queen of bootleggers! I love reading about the roots of Southern classics like hoecakes, shrimp and grits, pimiento cheese and tamale pie. This will be a go-to in my kitchen. I've already tried the pickled shrimp recipe, a huge hit on my game day table. Next up – Sweet Potato Corn Bread with Ginger Honey Butter, just in time for the holidays. — Debbie Elliott, correspondent, National Desk

This is just a fraction of the 350+ titles we included in Books We Love this year. Click here to check out this year's titles, or browse nearly 4,000 books from the last 12 years.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5168915

POP CULTURE HAPPY HOUR | MONDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2024 • 5:51 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

'Black Doves' is a wry spry spy tale

By Glen Weldon, Roxana Hadadi, Kristen Meinzer, Hafsa Fathima, Lennon Sherburne, Mike Katzif, Jessica Reedy

The new Netflix series Black Doves is a pulpy and stylish British spy show starring Keira Knightley and Ben Whishaw. Knightly plays a politician's wife who's been secretly funneling information to a mysterious spy network for years, and Whishaw plays her old partner who's been out of the game. But when Knightley 's character gets targeted, Whishaw's returns to protect her. It's all set in London at Christmastime, so if you like your holiday cheer spiced with British wit and gunplay, Black Doves may be for you.

Transcript

GLEN WELDON, HOST:

The new Netflix series "Black Doves" is a pulpy and stylish British spy show starring Keira Knightley and Ben Whishaw. Knightley plays a politician's wife who's been secretly funneling information to a mysterious spy network for years, and Whishaw plays her old partner who's been out of the game. But when Knightley's character gets targeted and bodies start piling up, Whishaw returns to protect her. And it's all set in London at Christmastime. So if you like your holiday cheer spiced with British wit and a really surprising amount of gunplay, "Black Doves" may be for you. I'm Glen Weldon. And today, we're talking about "Black Doves" on POP CULTURE HAPPY HOUR from NPR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

WELDON: Joining me today is Vulture TV critic Roxana Hadadi. Hey, Roxana.

ROXANA HADADI: Hello.

WELDON: Hello. Also with us is Kristen Meinzer. She co-hosts the "Daily Fail," a podcast that does comedic close readings of the tabloids. Hey, Kristen.

KRISTEN MEINZER: Hi. Great to be back.

WELDON: Great to have you. All right, so "Black Doves" stars Keira Knightley as Helen, the wife of the U.K. defense minister. She's got a comfortable life, great house and sweet kids. But it's a cover. She's actually a highly placed spy, who's providing valuable information to an organization that sells that intel to the highest bidder. But when the man with whom she's been having an affair is murdered, her handler summons Helen's old colleague, Sam, back to London to watch her back. Sam is a queer, champagne-swilling assassin who used to work closely with Helen before he was forced to leave the U.K. for mysterious reasons. He's played by Ben Whishaw.

Helen and Sam get drawn into an escalating and increasingly, some would say, absurdly violent conflict involving London gangs, a couple of deadpan assassins, both the British and Chinese governments and Sam's old boyfriend. "Black Doves" is streaming on Netflix now and has already been picked up for a second season. So Roxana, let's kick off with you. What do you think?

HADADI: I loved it, like, a lot. I have such a huge smile on my face because I am very tired, I think, of spy shows that try to be realistic. I'm no longer interested in that.

WELDON: Not an issue here. Yeah.

(LAUGHTER)

HADADI: I only want, like, "John Wick," Guy Ritchie-style, very complicated, like, undergrounds...

WELDON: Sure.

HADADI: ...That have, like, entire worlds of characters. And I thought that this did that really well. The chemistry is so good. I think the action is so good. It really made me think of "Gangs Of London"...

WELDON: Sure.

HADADI: ...That is more fun, or "The Gentlemen" that doesn't make me feel as trashy for liking it.

WELDON: OK.

HADADI: So I had a really good time.

(LAUGHTER)

WELDON: All right. So threads a needle, you would say. OK, interesting.

HADADI: Yeah, absolutely.

WELDON: Kristen, what did you make of it?

MEINZER: You know, I think the cast is excellent. I think the dark, brooding atmosphere is well done. It did a good job of grabbing me immediately. But I just wanted more from the series.

WELDON: OK.

MEINZER: I wanted more action. I wanted more surprises. I wanted more intrigue. I wanted more of what the trailer is promising us. The trailer really makes it look like it's nonstop. But there are actually lots of very slow scenes on this show, a lot of moments of just quiet. I'm not here for quiet. I'm here for spies...

WELDON: (Laughter).

MEINZER: ...Being spies at Christmastime...

WELDON: OK.

MEINZER: ...And killing it. And they're not always killing it. They're frequently just looking at each other quietly.

WELDON: OK. That's interesting.

HADADI: Oh, man.

WELDON: All right. This is a good spread. I like the spread here. I'm going to come down more in the Roxana camp 'cause I just rolled over like a golden retriever for this show. I let it scratch my belly.

(LAUGHTER)

WELDON: I can't explain why, though, because I had some of the same issues you did. And I also - I think I came into it wrong. I thought this was going to be what it very much is not, which is going to be - I thought it was going to be cozy British spy stuff that's kind of delighting in the mundane and the punch-a-clock and the paper-pushing side of espionage like John le Carre, like "Slow Horses." I would not recommend this show to a "Slow Horses" fan because this is pulpy fantasy just shy of silly - right? - just a few notches shy of Bond. I think it's unrealistic in a kind of hilarious way.

MEINZER: Yeah.

WELDON: I lost count of the number of ferocious gun battles taking place on completely empty streets in the center of London, a place that has more CCTV cameras than people - right?

MEINZER: (Laughter).

WELDON: ...Or characters having secret conversations in incredibly echoey stairwells.

MEINZER: (Laughter).

WELDON: And I'm like, guys, there's a room right there. You could just go off into that room and have this incredibly perilous conversation. There are characters who invade gang hideouts, and they would get picked off as soon as they crossed the threshold, but they managed to kind of sail through the hideout and just gun people down like it's nothing. And then there's the main thing about the show - the promise that the show makes - which is that Helen is this incredibly public figure, right? She's the wife of the defense minister. So it's setting up boundaries for itself. And you think what the show is going to do is spend six episodes navigating those boundaries. You know, how is she going to live that spy life inside those boundaries? The way it deals with those boundaries is by ignoring them completely.

(LAUGHTER)

WELDON: She just - she's married to the defense minister, and yet she can slip off in the dead of night to do whatever the hell she wants.

HADADI: Yeah.

WELDON: She can have these incredibly violent fights in her kitchen while her kids and her husband just doze upstairs. So this isn't cozy le Carre.

HADADI: Yeah.

WELDON: It's cozy Guy Ritchie. There are so many guns in this thing.

HADADI: Yeah (laughter).

WELDON: There's a rocket launcher at one point, Roxana.

HADADI: There's a rocket launcher. And they need the rocket launcher, OK? It's not extraneous. It's very necessary. I mean, it's Guy Ritchie, like, without the racism and sexism, right?

WELDON: Yeah.

HADADI: Like, it's...

WELDON: Yeah. Yeah, there you go.

MEINZER: (Laughter).

HADADI: And I say that as a fan of Guy Ritchie at certain points. Like, this is more about, like, the Knightley and Whishaw relationship, I think, than any of the logic of this woman would be surrounded by security at all times, right? This is about, like, the conversations that are happening in this pristine, beautiful, brown BMW as the two of them talk about, like, the emotional weight of their lives. And I think that, for me, scratches, like, the American's itch of, we're spies and sometimes we're really sad.

WELDON: Right.

HADADI: But I do understand, if you want more of that action stuff, then maybe you want more of the knife fights, right? Like, Kristen, did you like the action, or were you also underwhelmed by the action?

MEINZER: I think the action when it existed was pretty good. I thought it could have been more creatively choreographed at points. Again, I think I was just teased by the trailer into thinking this was going to be more pulpy than it was. It just tiptoed near the edge of pulp, and I really wanted it to go all the way based on the trailer. And I also felt that there were some missed opportunities on this show, frankly, because if her husband is the defense minister, why is she not really tied up and spying on that most of the time? Why is there this whole other plot that we're really focusing on?

WELDON: Right.

MEINZER: Because I thought the setup was great. Like, yes, what is happening behind closed doors in London in this household? We don't really get that. We mostly are dealing with - and this is not a spoiler. It's in the very first episode. We're mostly dealing with her pining over this other guy that she was sleeping with and what's going on with him, and I want to avenge his murder. And I'm all for revenge, but I wanted more revenge. I wanted more fire there. I wanted more of everything.

WELDON: OK. This is bringing me into a closer focus 'cause I - that's the stuff - the stuff you wanted more of is the stuff that actually I didn't care about at all.

(LAUGHTER)

WELDON: And I think a weird thing happens with this show, and it's kind of counterintuitive, but when the violence and the espionage is so consequence-free - right? - it trickles down into everything. And I start to notice it in everything. At one point, Sam rolls up to a party. And he parks his car on a completely empty street...

MEINZER: Yeah.

WELDON: ...Right in front of the house he's going to walk into. And then he and Helen are practicing target shooting...

MEINZER: (Laughter).

WELDON: ...Under a bridge somewhere, and I'm like, where is this bridge? And do they just leave those targets there when they - like, that's when it just became kind of a fun watch because whenever something tense would happen that's important to the plot, like a character needs to infiltrate spy headquarters and get in and get out, I didn't waste any time worrying about how are they going to - again, boundaries - how are they going to navigate this? They're not. I don't care. All that's going to happen - 'cause I'm not going to believe what happens, so it's not important. And that's when I realized I'm watching this show not for the action, not for the gun battles, not for the spy stuff 'cause, again, I think the central plot involving the British and Chinese government was kind of, like - that was a missed opportunity for me.

HADADI: Yeah.

WELDON: I was in it for the hang. The show's a good hang for me.

HADADI: (Laughter) Yeah.

MEINZER: I can see that. And I do think Ben Whishaw is terrific in this role. I think that Keira Knightley is very convincing as a spy in this role. And Sarah Lancashire, who plays Mrs. Reed, she's fantastic. Americans probably know her best as Julia Child on the HBO series "Julia." I also liked hanging with these people. And I felt that the emotionally resonant scenes between them - some of them were very powerful, especially Episode 3. I hope this isn't a spoiler, but there's something that happens in Episode 3 with Ben Whishaw and his boyfriend at the time. And that one just punched me in the gut, and I loved that episode so much. And I just wanted the whole series to be like that, with those emotionally resonant moments combined with lots of killing and fighting. I wanted that all together.

WELDON: Roxana, what's your take on the Sarah Lancashire character, Mrs. Reed?

HADADI: That she's perfect, and I love her.

MEINZER: (Laughter).

HADADI: I mean, I think every spy series needs this sort of, like, no BS, very frank, like, handler figure. It's like the Margo Martindale on "The Americans."

WELDON: "The Americans," yes.

HADADI: You know, it's Gary Oldman on "Slow Horses." But I really love how precisely venomous she is. And there's this moment in the premiere where Helen is talking about how she was in love with Jason, her lover. And, like, she's really torn up about it. And Sarah Lancashire gives this great sighing, oh Christ.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "BLACK DOVES")

KEIRA KNIGHTLEY: (As Helen) It wasn't working an angle. It was real. It wasn't a job. It was...

SARAH LANCASHIRE: (As Mrs. Reed) It was what?

KNIGHTLEY: (As Helen) Love.

LANCASHIRE: (As Mrs. Reed) Oh, Christ.

HADADI: Those moments that feel very wary, spy craft, I can't believe you're getting emotions in this game. I think for me, the emotions felt effective because we did always have that counterbalance of how could you get caught up in this, right? Like, how could you reveal yourself to another person? I think that is sort of the interesting stuff for me about Season 2 because I don't want to spoil too much, but the season ends in a way where we're not sure...

WELDON: Right.

HADADI: ...That some of these partnerships are going to continue, right? Like, some people take different jobs. There's the introduction of a couple of new mole characters within the government. And so I do think that for me, at least, the friendships here were, like, pretty effective, and the threat that they're going to get blown up in Season 2, I think, worked. I am curious if it's going to be another six-episode season because that feels like the British standard, right? And so maybe we'll get, like, a different shift in terms of what these characters are doing or how the action operates in Season 2. But yeah, I think it's interesting that, like, each of us sort of responded to something different (laughter) and criticized something different. That's fun. I like that.

WELDON: That's fun. And I certainly felt most at home with the show when it was the Sam and Helen show because, in those moments where they're in that car, the dialogue is sufficiently witty and fun and sharp. In the case of Ben Whishaw's character, Sam, catty, he can occasionally be...

HADADI: Yeah.

WELDON: ...Kind of catty. I kind of love that. Even such that, you know, toward Episode 5 at one point, there's a character who says, (vocalizing), let's go get your friend. And I'm like, oh, no. No, no, no. That's not what I'm here for. But I let it slide 'cause so much goodwill had been built up to that point. I'm glad you guys are praising Sarah Lancashire's Mrs. Reed, the handler, 'cause I didn't pick up on what she was putting down. I got to tell you.

HADADI: Oh, wow.

MEINZER: Interesting.

WELDON: That character puzzled me because on "The Americans," Margo Martindale gets a lot of range to play that person. But her Mrs. Reed, Sarah Lancashire's Mrs. Reed, just kind of is playing her - the choices she's making is Mrs. Reed never blinks, and she delivers all her dialogue in this kind of ASMR monotone. I kind of thought she was one-note in gray bangs, and I wanted her to get more to do, which is another reason why I'm hoping she's back for Season 2. And I do hope it is another six-episode season because that means I don't think this show suffers from Netflix bloat. I think this...

HADADI: Yeah.

WELDON: ...Show got in and got out and did what it went to do. We'll get a different story next season. And it does tie you up the story it's telling in this season. And next season will be more fun nonsense, and I won't believe a second of it. But I'll be there. I mean, how much of this Christmastime setting is a factor for y'all? For me, it kind of is. I kind of want to pour myself a hot toddy and just settle in and vibe with this show and hang with this show or maybe just guzzle some champagne the way that Ben Whishaw does.

MEINZER: You know, I'm a Christmas nut. I love Christmas. I have two Christmas trees in my office 365 days a year. I love Christmas. And I thought Christmas was a nice backdrop for this show, but it wasn't necessary. Like, if the next series takes place during summer holiday, that's going to be fine. If this takes place at any other time, I think it's still going to be a great show for people who love this kind of thing or a fine show for people who thought this show was fine. It's going to be fine regardless of when it takes place. It is a nice backdrop for this particular series. But again, I don't think it was necessary.

HADADI: I liked it as a stylistic touch.

WELDON: Yeah.

HADADI: I love a forlorn spy walking through the snow.

WELDON: (Laughter).

HADADI: I like the sort of, like, garish, red and green lighting that keeps popping up, right? Very effective during an incredibly bloody shootout. So I liked it, and I almost hope that it's Christmastime (laughter) again next season.

WELDON: Yeah, me too. I kind of want this to be a Christmas tradition.

MEINZER: But if it is Christmas, don't you want there actually to be a shoutout to why it's at Christmas time? I kind of did, and they never did. You know? It's like, is there a murderer on the loose dressed as Santa? No. Is there poison being put in the advent calendar? No. It doesn't have to be during Christmas. And I kept on waiting for there to be a reason for it to be at Christmas. It never appears, and that's fine, but it might have been fun if we had a reason for it to be Christmas.

WELDON: I just thought it was the excuse that these people had to keep going to these horrible parties...

HADADI: Yes.

WELDON: ...And make these very stilted speeches and pretend to be all chummy and then go home and go oh, my God, I hated all those people, which - relatable. You want to see representation on television.

HADADI: It helps to build in that sort of, like, extraneous tension.

WELDON: Yeah.

HADADI: Right? Because can Helen kill this person or does she have to go to this holiday fundraiser? You know, so I do think that element of it is fun. And I do think, for me, it felt a little bit like the government stuff. I didn't need any of the government stuff. Like, I didn't care about any of that. It just added a little flourish narratively. And I just feel like Christmas added a little flourish stylistically.

WELDON: Yeah.

MEINZER: Yeah. And it did give her a lot of excuses of why she was out of the house. She was shopping a lot, supposedly.

HADADI: She was shopping a lot.

WELDON: Shopping a lot.

HADADI: A lot of very nice...

MEINZER: Yes.

HADADI: ...Flannel outfits. Lots of, like, warm, cozy - that mid-length leather trench is, like, exceptional. So really it's for the clothes. That's where you blame them.

WELDON: Yeah. I did want to shoutout the two assassins, Williams and Eleanor, played by Ella Lily Hyland and Gabrielle Creevy.

HADADI: Love them.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "BLACK DOVES")

ELLA LILY HYLAND: (As Eleanor) Why don't we just firebomb his place? I've got a rocket launcher.

GABRIELLE CREEVY: (As Williams) Since when have you had a rocket launcher?

HYLAND: (As Eleanor) Since last Christmas.

WELDON: Again, they don't seem particularly worried ever that they're going to die, so I wasn't worried that they were going to die. It did ratchet down the tension. Again, it's a problem with this show if you accept that it's a problem - I didn't. And then, when the great Kathryn Hunter shows up on Episode 2, I didn't know I needed. I didn't realize there was a Kathryn Hunter-shaped hole in this show, but she's here now, and she's filling it, and I am happy. It's a tiny little part. But - and all she has to do is sit in that tracksuit and be intimidating. But she did it like no one else can, and I was totally happy.

HADADI: Classic of the London crime genre.

WELDON: Yes.

HADADI: An evil baddie in a tracksuit. And I love...

MEINZER: Yeah.

WELDON: Exactly.

HADADI: ...That it's her before we get "Andor" Season 2. She just gave us a little bit to tide us over until then.

MEINZER: (Laughter).

WELDON: All right, well, we want to know what you think about "Black Doves" and if you're anticipating Season 2, and what you're drinking as you watch. Find us at facebook.com/pchh. And that brings us to the end of our show. Roxana Hadadi, Kristen Meinzer, thank you so much for being here.

MEINZER: Thank you so much.

HADADI: Thank you.

WELDON: This episode was produced by Hafsa Fathima and Lennon Sherburne and edited by Jessica Reedy and Mike Katzif. And Hello Come In provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to POP CULTURE HAPPY HOUR from NPR. I'm Glen Weldon, and we'll see you all tomorrow.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

Full article: https://www.npr.org/1218437730

CULTURE | MONDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2024 • 5:09 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Packed house pays tribute to Kennedy Center honorees

By Elizabeth Blair

Heard on Morning Edition

Transcript

LEILA FADEL, HOST:

Last night in Washington, D.C., musicians paid tribute to Cuban American trumpet player Arturo Sandoval, one of this year's Kennedy Center honorees.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

FADEL: Joining Sandoval in this year's class of honorees, Bonnie Raitt, the Grateful Dead, Francis Ford Coppola and the Apollo Theater. NPR's Elizabeth Blair reports.

ELIZABETH BLAIR, BYLINE: Julia Louis-Dreyfus emceed the tribute to Bonnie Raitt.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SPECIAL, "47TH KENNEDY CENTER HONORS")

JULIA LOUIS-DREYFUS: When Bonnie Raitt recorded the opening line of John Prine's "Angel From Montgomery" in 1974, she sang these words - I am an old woman. She was not an old woman.

(LAUGHTER)

LOUIS-DREYFUS: She was 24.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ANGEL FROM MONTGOMERY")

BONNIE RAITT: (Singing) I am an old woman named after my mother. My old man has another child that's grown up.

BLAIR: Bonnie Raitt has a history with the Kennedy Center Honors. She attended the very first one in 1978, when her father, Broadway singer and actor John Raitt, performed for the composer Richard Rodgers. Years later, she performed at the tributes for Buddy Guy, and then again, for Mavis Staples. She says she can't believe it's her turn.

RAITT: My throat is just, you know, lumped up since I arrived because last night, I got to see how many of my peers that I put on the list - they said, on your wish list of who would you like to be part of paying tribute to you, they all showed up.

BLAIR: Showing gratitude from one artist to another is what the Kennedy Center Honors is all about. Thirty-year-old singer-songwriter Maggie Rogers wasn't born when the Grateful Dead started attracting tens of thousands of fans to their shows, but she admires the deep connection the band shares with its followers.

MAGGIE ROGERS: To then see an act like that be honored here tonight, it means so much for the capacity to interact with my own community or my own creativity as a younger artist.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FRIEND OF THE DEVIL")

GRATEFUL DEAD: (Singing) Set out running but I take my time. A friend of the devil is a friend of mine. If I get home before daylight, just might get some sleep tonight.

BLAIR: It was a true family affair for honoree Francis Ford Coppola, the five-time Academy Award-winner known for such epic films as "The Godfather," "Apocalypse Now" and "American Graffiti." The movie business is in the Coppola DNA.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SPECIAL, "47TH KENNEDY CENTER HONORS")

TALIA SHIRE: I first met Francis Coppola when I was born.

(LAUGHTER)

BLAIR: Talia Shire, Coppola's sister, talked about Francis getting polio when he was 9 years old. When he could finally use his hands, he would make puppets and create characters.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SPECIAL, "47TH KENNEDY CENTER HONORS")

SHIRE: And every day, he would tell me a story. And I think that was the beginning of Francis' great gift.

BLAIR: For the first time, one of the Kennedy Center honorees is an institution, the legendary Apollo, founded 90 years ago in Harlem. The War and Treaty paid tribute to one of the venue's performances, the last time Marvin Gaye sang with his longtime duet partner Tammi Terrell in 1969. Terrell died the following year.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SPECIAL, "47TH KENNEDY CENTER HONORS")

THE WAR AND TREATY: (Singing) Like sweet morning dew, I took one look at you, and it was plain to see you were my destiny. With arms opened wide, I threw away my pride. I'll sacrifice for you, dedicate my life to you. Oh.

BLAIR: The Kennedy Center Honors airs on CBS and streams on Paramount+ on December 22.

Elizabeth Blair, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SPECIAL, "47TH KENNEDY CENTER HONORS")

THE WAR AND TREATY: (Singing) You'll be there to push me up the hill. There's no, no looking back for us...

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5193337

CULTURE | MONDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2024 • 3:17 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Kennedy Center pays tribute to the Grateful Dead, Bonnie Raitt, Sandoval and The Apollo

By The Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Not Fade Away closed out the Kennedy Center Honors ceremony on Sunday, just as honorees The Grateful Dead had used Buddy Holly's ode to enduring love to close out hundreds of concerts over the years.

The packed house danced in the aisles to the bouncy beat after a night of honoring the Dead and other recipients of the lifetime achievement award for artistic accomplishment: director Francis Ford Coppola, jazz trumpeter Arturo Sandoval and singer-songwriter Bonnie Raitt. The venerable Harlem theater The Apollo, which has launched generations of Black artists, also was recognized.

Longtime Deadheads, including actors Miles Teller and Chloe Sevigny and talk show host David Letterman, paid tribute to the band's blend of musical experimentation, longevity and community-building. "Their music fills the universe," Letterman proclaimed.

The choice to honor The Apollo was an unusual one: the first time the Kennedy Center has chosen to honor a specific performance venue.

"The Apollo means so much to so many of us," Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said while arriving on the red carpet. Moore pointed to iconic Apollo performances from Lauryn Hill and a young Michael Jackson as treasured memories of his youth.

The tribute to The Apollo highlighted the sheer diversity of art forms showcased at the 90-year-old theater. Savion Glover did a spirited tap dance routine; husband and wife duo The War and Treaty performed a medley of hits by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell; and comedian Dave Chappelle recounted his terrifying first Apollo performance at age 15.

"Everybody started booing. It was like I was outside my body watching," he said. Eventually Chappelle was rushed off the stage by the theater's infamous "Sandman," but he credited the experience with helping him overcome his fear of bombing.

The annual gala at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts always features personalized tributes with performances and testimonials from fellow artists. Medallions were presented during the traditional Saturday night ceremony at the State Department.

In the first of the night's tributes, Emmylou Harris and Dave Matthews performed a cover of Raitt's duet with the late John Prine, "Angel from Montgomery."

Music star Sheryl Crow paid tribute to Raitt's trailblazing career as not just a singer or songwriter but as a widely respected blues guitarist in a male-dominated field.

"I would not be doing what I'm doing if I had not seen her perform as a 17-year old," said Crow, who bought her first guitar shortly after seeing Raitt in concert.

Raitt herself, on the pre-event red carpet, predicted an emotional evening.

"I've brought a massive box of Kleenex and my waterproof eye liner," she laughed.

Coppola received a tribute filled with previous Kennedy Center honorees, including Robert De Niro, Martin Scorsese, Al Pacino and George Lucas. All described an iconoclastic and driven auteur who loved to nurture and support younger filmmakers.

"What Francis does creatively is jump off cliffs," Lucas said. "When you spend enough time with Francis, you begin to believe you can jump off cliffs, too."

Sandoval's tribute featured multiple performances from an all-star band featuring Trombone Shorty and pianist Chucho Valdez from Sandoval's original band, plus a flamenco dance performance by Timo Nunez. It also included a bit of light roast comedy from actor Andy Garcia.

"Arturo spoke very little English when he first came to America from Cuba all those years ago," Garcia said. "But now his English ... is much worse."

The tribute performances are often kept secret from the recipients themselves, most notably in 2018 when Cyndi Lauper flat out lied to her longtime friend Cher about being unable to attend. Lauper appeared on stage to perform Cher's hit, "If I Could Turn Back Time."

At a ceremony at the White House before attending the awards event itself, President Joe Biden praised each honoree. He also had De Niro, who was in the audience, stand before declaring, "If I get in trouble, I'm coming to you pal."

De Niro grinned and nodded and others in attendance, including the honorees, laughed at what appeared to be a reference to De Niro sometimes playing hardnosed enforcers in movies like "The Godfather." But Biden actually meant he might seek the actor's help for post-presidency career advice.

"Things are not looking good for February," Biden joked.

Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris received an extended standing ovation from the audience when introduced at Kennedy Center. But this could be the last honors ceremony without political intrigue for a while.

During Donald Trump's first four years in office, Kennedy Center officials were forced to walk a public tightrope between the tradition of the president attending the ceremony and the open antipathy toward Trump from multiple honorees. In 2017, recipient Norman Lear threatened to boycott his own ceremony if Trump attended. Trump, who takes office in January, skipped the ceremony for the entirety of his first term.

On the red carpet Sunday night, multiple Democratic political figures seemed to offer an olive branch.

"I hope he does come," Moore said. "This is a wonderful celebration of genius in all its forms."

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi added, "I think he would really enjoy it."

The awards show will air on CBS on Dec. 22.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/g-s1-37437

Related

- NPR

- NPR

NATIONAL | MONDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2024 • 2:26 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Ruby slippers worn in 'The Wizard of Oz' are auctioned for a record $28 million

By The Associated Press

MINNEAPOLIS — A pair of iconic ruby slippers that were worn by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz and stolen from a museum nearly two decades ago sold for a winning bid of $28 million at auction Saturday.

Heritage Auctions had estimated that they would fetch $3 million or more, but the fast-paced bidding far outpaced that amount within seconds and tripled it within minutes. A few bidders making offers by phone volleyed back and forth for 15 minutes as the price climbed to the final, eye-popping sum.

Including the Dallas-based auction house's fee, the unknown buyer will ultimately pay $32.5 million.

Online bidding, which opened last month, had stood at $1.55 million before live bidding began late Saturday afternoon.

The sparkly red heels were on display at the Judy Garland Museum in her hometown of Grand Rapids, Minnesota, in 2005 when Terry Jon Martin used a hammer to smash the glass of the museum's door and display case.

Their whereabouts remained a mystery until the FBI recovered them in 2018. Martin, now 77, who lives near Grand Rapids in northern Minnesota, wasn't publicly exposed as the thief until he was indicted in May 2023. He pleaded guilty in October 2023. He was in a wheelchair and on supplementary oxygen when he was sentenced last January to time served because of his poor health.

His attorney, Dane DeKrey, explained ahead of sentencing that Martin, who had a long history of burglary and receiving stolen property, was attempting to pull off "one last score" after an old associate with connections to the mob told him the shoes had to be adorned with real jewels to justify their $1 million insured value. But a fence — a person who buys stolen goods — later told him the rubies were just glass, DeKrey said. So Martin got rid of the slippers. The attorney didn't specify how.

The alleged fence, Jerry Hal Saliterman, 77, of the Minneapolis suburb of Crystal, was indicted in March. He was also in a wheelchair and on oxygen when he made his first court appearance. He's scheduled to go on trial in January and hasn't entered a plea, though his attorney has said he's not guilty.

The shoes were returned in February to memorabilia collector Michael Shaw, who had loaned them to the museum. They were one of several pairs that Garland wore during the filming, but only four pairs are known to have survived. In the movie, to return from Oz to Kansas, Dorothy had to click her heels three times and repeat, "There's no place like home."

As Rhys Thomas, author of The Ruby Slippers of Oz, put it, the sequined shoes from the beloved 1939 musical have seen "more twists and turns than the Yellow Brick Road."

Over 800 people had been tracking the slippers, and the company's webpage for the auction had hit nearly 43,000 page views by Thursday, said Robert Wilonsky, a vice president with the auction house.

Among those bidding to bring the slippers home was the Judy Garland Museum, which posted on Facebook shortly after that it did not place the winning bid. The museum had campaigned for donations to supplement money raised by the city of Grand Rapids at its annual Judy Garland festival and the $100,000 set aside this year by Minnesota lawmakers to help the museum purchase the slippers.

After the slippers sold, the auctioneer told bidders and spectators in the room and watching online that the previous record for a piece of entertainment memorabilia was $5.52 million, for the white dress Marilyn Monroe famously wore atop a windy subway grate.

The auction also included other memorabilia from The Wizard of Oz, such as a hat worn by Margaret Hamilton, who played the original Wicked Witch of the West. That item went for $2.4 million, or a total final cost to the buyer of $2.93 million.

The Wizard of Oz story has gained new attention in recent weeks with the release of the movie Wicked, an adaptation of the megahit Broadway musical, a prequel of sorts that reimagines the character of the Wicked Witch of the West.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/g-s1-37429

Related

- NPR

- NPR

CULTURE | SUNDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2024 • 8:03 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

How one university student launched a wildly successful club to make friends

By Ayesha Rascoe

Heard on Weekend Edition Sunday

Transcript

AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:

It's easy enough to sign up for a dating app, but how do you go about finding a friend? When student Juliette Sartori from San Francisco started studying in Scotland, she realized she was lonely. And when she confided in her roommates, she discovered they were lonely, too. So they decided to do something about it, creating a new club at the University of Glasgow called Dinner with a Stranger. It proved an immediate hit. Hundreds of students have signed up for the friendship experience. Juliette Sartori, who's in her senior year as a business and management major, joins us now. Welcome to the program.

JULIETTE SARTORI: Hi.

RASCOE: Hi. So what inspired your idea to do this?

SARTORI: So I originally saw the idea on TikTok by TikToker named Jessie Wright. For her New Year's resolution, she was having dinner with a new stranger every single week. But these were, like, mutual friends or friends of friends, so she was very easily able to find them. And I remember thinking, oh, this would be such a cool idea for society, but I wouldn't know how to actually originally connect people.

So I started to think about several ideas and ways to pair people together, and then I thought of the idea of doing a questionnaire and doing a questionnaire every month on a different topic, so it kind of gives you, like, some common ground going in. You have, like, an icebreaker. And then I pitched the idea to my flatmates, and I was like, oh, I kind of want to start this, but I don't know. Like, is this a weird idea? And they all ended up really liking it, so we went ahead and decided to start it at our university. We thought maybe, like, 30, 40 people would join, and then 200 people ended up doing the first questionnaire. And we were really shocked about that 'cause it's basically like friendship blind dating.

RASCOE: I would be absolutely terrified to do it. Like, it's, like, this is what my nightmares are actually made of (laughter). But explain to us how the matchmaking actually works 'cause you don't have, like, an algorithm, right? How do you fix people up?

SARTORI: We do, like, initial preferences. Like, do you only want to be paired up with people in the same year as you? Do you only want to be paired up with people who identify similarly? And we honor those first to make sure everyone's in pairings that they're comfortable with. And from there, we ask, would you want to be in a pairing of just a group of two, or would you want to be in a group of three or four? Just because it is a bit - 'cause I'm shy, as well. It is a bit nerve-wracking going in. And especially if it's, like, a one-on-one type of thing...

RASCOE: Yeah.

SARTORI: ...It really does feel like a first date.

RASCOE: Yeah.

SARTORI: So it kind of eases a lot of people's tensions when they realize they can go in a group. And then from there, every month, we have a different topic. So last month, we did movies. So we would ask, like, random questions based off movies like, what's your favorite genre? What's your favorite movie? And then we went by genre and did, like, of these different genres, like, which movie is your favorite? Stuff like that.

RASCOE: Why do you think so many people signed up? Do you think that because everything is so online - that there are a lot of lonely people in your generation?

SARTORI: Yes, I would say so. I would say especially now that, like, it's always in our face. When someone does a Instagram post, and they appear to have, like, 15 different friends, like, hanging out at a huge dinner. Like, stuff like that - it's constantly in your face of, like, seeing other people have so much fun and hang out with so many people.

And obviously, it is just, like, a snapshot of someone's life. It's not their whole life. But from the other end, sometimes it can kind of lead you to doomscroll and feel like you're quite lonely in that aspect. And then I feel like, while we do have a lot of clubs and stuff at my university to meet people, like, going into it - it's really scary.

But with this society, because it's more of an open community, like, it's very welcoming at all the socials because you can very easily just go up to whoever you want and just, like, spark a conversation with them because everyone's in the same boat. Everyone's there to make friends.

RASCOE: Well, do you participate every month, too? Like, have you made friends? How many friends have you made from this?

SARTORI: Yeah, I would say I make, like, two or three every month 'cause I tend to do a group of three or four. And one of our heads of events and our secretary actually - they weren't part of the committee last year, and they just did it for fun. And then they ended up meeting and becoming best friends. And now they live together, and they're both on the committee, which is so sweet.

RASCOE: That's Juliette Sartori, a student at the University of Glasgow. Thank you so much for joining us.

SARTORI: Thank you so much for having me.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5217722

Table of Contents

National Public Radio: 2024 Dec 9

National

Soft medium, hard truths - National Endowment for the Arts recognizes a Navajo quilter: 2024 Dec 9

Bidders are back in court battling over the auction of Alex Jones' Infowars: 2024 Dec 9

Police arrest 'person of interest' Luigi Mangione in United Healthcare CEO shooting: 2024 Dec 9

Supreme Court rejects challenge to Boston's school admissions policy: 2024 Dec 9

Supreme Court rejects challenge to Hawaii gun licensing rules -- for now: 2024 Dec 9

The Eras era ends: A look back at Taylor Swift's record-breaking, 21-month tour: 2024 Dec 9

Yes, the number of food recalls has been rising. Here's what you need to know: 2024 Dec 9

World

In Lebanon, villagers on the border watch Syria's revolution with unease: 2024 Dec 9

A gang leader in Haiti is accused of massacring over 100 people: 2024 Dec 9

How Syria's revolution could reshape the Middle East: 2024 Dec 9

Rebels seized control of Syrian capital. And, Trump's 1st post-election TV interview: 2024 Dec 9

For the first time in decades, an Assad is not in control of Syria: 2024 Dec 9

South Korea's Justice Ministry imposes travel ban on President Yoon over martial law: 2024 Dec 9

Russia targets Ukraine's energy grid as winter sets in. Here's how one plant copes: 2024 Dec 9

Law

Lawsuit accuses Jay-Z of raping a 13-year-old with Sean 'Diddy' Combs in 2000: 2024 Dec 9

Trump focuses on tariffs, immigration in first network TV interview: 2024 Dec 8

Politics

Biden creates a new national monument marking the legacy of Indian boarding schools: 2024 Dec 9

In NBC interview, Trump talks tariffs, immigration and Jan. 6 committee: 2024 Dec 9

Takeaways from Trump's first network TV interview since his reelection: 2024 Dec 9

Under Trump, an 'all of the above' energy policy is poised for a comeback: 2024 Dec 9

Why Latino voters' turn to Trump, GOP may not have been as sharp as exit polls showed: 2024 Dec 9

President Biden gives White House address on the dramatic events in Syria: 2024 Dec 8

The enormous consequences Trump's tariffs could have: 2024 Dec 8

Health

Consumers weigh the claim of health benefits against the risks of consuming raw milk: 2024 Dec 9

Why these doctors started writing medical 'prescriptions' for solar power: 2024 Dec 9

Cancer interrupted their school lives, but also set them on a mission: 2024 Dec 8

PHOTOS: Take a ride with the Elephant Response Team. And be careful!: 2024 Dec 8

NYPD releases 2 new photos of man sought in killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO: 2024 Dec 8

Life Kit offers tips on how to care for a grieving friend: 2024 Dec 7

Science

A material that's almost entirely air keeps EV fires from spreading: 2024 Dec 9

Artificial Intelligence wants to go nuclear. Will it work?: 2024 Dec 9

Here's what a second Trump presidency could mean for scientists: 2024 Dec 9

Climate

Making steel is a huge climate problem. Sweden is pioneering a solution: 2024 Dec 9

Religion

Catholic church in Switzerland finds an opportunity for a spirited debate about AI: 2024 Dec 9

Culture

An 84-year-old pop superstar just dropped an album — how does she sound so good?: 2024 Dec 9

Cooks We Love: 11 cookbooks from 2024 recommended by NPR critics and staff: 2024 Dec 9

'Black Doves' is a wry spry spy tale: 2024 Dec 9

Packed house pays tribute to Kennedy Center honorees: 2024 Dec 9

Kennedy Center pays tribute to the Grateful Dead, Bonnie Raitt, Sandoval and The Apollo: 2024 Dec 9

Ruby slippers worn in 'The Wizard of Oz' are auctioned for a record $28 million: 2024 Dec 9

How one university student launched a wildly successful club to make friends: 2024 Dec 8