A major natural gas storage well in Southern California is still leaking, though less so than back in late October, when the giant gas leak was first reported.
Families Near The Huge Gas Leak Wonder: Is Home A Safe Place To Be?
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After Brief Lockdown At U.S. Capitol, Here's What We Know
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Transcript
KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:
Capitol Hill this afternoon was a place for a lot of police activity. The U.S. Capitol went into lockdown after a man with a weapon entered the Capitol Visitor Center. He was shot by police and taken to the hospital.
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Gangs Flex Their Muscle On Violent Streets Of El Salvador
Copyright 2017 NPR. To see more, visit ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: This year the country with the highest murder rate in the world outside of war zones is breaking its own records. El Salvador is a place where one person is killed nearly every hour. The reason for that is street gangs. These gangs first formed in the U.S. in the 1980s by Salvadorans fleeing civil war. Then in the 1990s thousands of gang members were deported from the U.S. back to El Salvador and the gangs reformed there. Now they control entire sections of cities and operate like mafias, collecting protection money and killing people if they don't comply. Last summer the gangs flexed their muscles in a way the country had rarely seen. For her podcast Embedded, our co-host Kelly McEvers and NPR's Jasmine Garsd were there. KELLY MCEVERS, BYLINE: It started around 5 in the morning on a Monday. City bus drivers started getting killed, shot while driving their regular routes. Then the gangs put out a statement that says any public
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Ameera, A 6-Year-Old Afghan, Prepares To Walk Out Of U.S. Military Hospital
Earlier this year, a 6-year-old girl was shot and badly wounded during a firefight between U.S. and Afghan forces and the Taliban. Her father, a Taliban fighter, her mother and some siblings were all killed in the gun battle. Dr. Chance Henderson, a Texas-born orthopedic surgeon, was there when the girl, whom NPR is calling Ameera, was brought to the hospital at the Bagram Airfield outside Kabul. "I remember her quite vividly there on that stretcher, and how tiny she looked," he says. Back in May, NPR reported that it was unclear whether Henderson — who has a daughter close to Ameera's age — and his medical team would be able to save Ameera's severely wounded left leg. The stakes were high, Henderson explained at the time, because the girl's "outlook on a life as a single amputee that does not have a family is much different than it would be for us in the States. Her future would be grim, and probably her lifespan would be short." This week, there's good news. Henderson says he
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In 'Confirmed Kills,' Iliza Shlesinger Cloaks Social Commentary In Comic Rants
Comedian Iliza Shlesinger has a lot to say about what it's like to be a lady these days — and what things could have been like in the past. "Do you think for a second, that if women were physically stronger than men, we would have waited for the right to vote?" she asks in her latest Netflix special, Confirmed Kills . She goes on to imagine a "jacked up housewife" in 1910, with a "shaker of horse testosterone and creatine," shoving her husband out of the way because "mama's going to the polls." Shlesinger's comedy is both topical and physical — she contorts, she snorts, she stalks the stage, she pretty much becomes the characters in her own jokes. The 34-year-old comedian grew up in Dallas, studied film in college, and nine years ago became the first woman to win NBC's competitive reality show Last Comic Standing . Shlesinger says she doesn't love the label "female comic" — she says she competes with men all the time, but if you must compare her act to other female stand ups, there is
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Police Videos Aren't Going Away. How Can We Learn From Them?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysGtZdeZT0k Editor's Note: This story includes videos and descriptions of violent encounters between police and civilians, as well as language that may not be appropriate for all readers. For three days last summer, many of us watched as TV and computer screens showed violence between police and civilians. Alton Sterling and Philando Castile were shot and killed by police. Then a gunman killed five police officers in Dallas . That week made clear just how much these videos of police violence have become part of our lives. The videos are not new, of course — the Rodney King beating by Los Angeles police was filmed in 1991. But from dashcams to body cameras to bystanders' cellphones, more and more interactions between civilians and police are being captured on camera. How are these videos changing the police? How are they changing civilians? And what can we learn from them? These are the questions we tried to answer as we looked at three very different
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'I Think It's Hard To Be A Person': Aimee Mann On Compassionate Songwriting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=en8HZ6X20Og Aimee Mann 's music has always been characterized as melancholy. So on her new album, Mental Illness , she decided to lean into the stereotype. "A friend of mine was asking me what the record was about," Mann says, "And I said, 'Oh, you know, my usual songs about mental illness,' kind of being glib about it. And then my other friend said, 'Maybe you should call it Mental Illness, ' also being glib. It's so bald, but also accurate and funny, so it really made me laugh. And I felt like if it's making you laugh, there must be something accurate about it." Mann spoke with NPR's Kelly McEvers about the inspirations for some of the songs on Mental Illness . Read interview highlights below, and listen to the full conversation at the audio link. Interview Highlights On the encounter that inspired "Patient Zero" I met the actor Andrew Garfield at a party. I was a big fan of him, and he had just come to LA, I think to be in Spider-Man . I think he's a
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'Aggressive Yet Sublime': A Looter, Nirvana And The Los Angeles Riots
When you talk about the unrest that broke out in Los Angeles 25 years ago after the Rodney King verdict, one thing people usually remember is the looting. People went into stores and just walked out with stuff. Some people stole vital things such as food and baby formula because they didn't know how long the riots would last. Others stole booze and cigarettes. Still others dared to carry mattresses and giant TVs home on their backs — and they weren't stopped by anyone. Gilbert Monterrosa was one of those looters. But, he says he was a reluctant participant. Monterrosa was 15 at the time — a sophomore at James A. Foshay Junior High, now known as James A. Foshay Learning Center. He lived with his mom and two younger sisters in what was then known as South Central Los Angeles, and he and his mom had immigrated from El Salvador. Monterrosa says he and his siblings weren't allowed to watch TV after 5 p.m., so when the riots started on April 29, they didn't know anything had happened. They
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What's Next? Sixth Season Of 'Veep' Probes Post-Presidential Life
Julia Louis-Dreyfus — who plays U.S. Vice President Selina Meyer on the HBO comedy Veep -- says that growing up in Washington, D.C., and later living in Los Angeles helped her prepare for the role: "I think I understand the insular nature of Washington ... " she says. "There's an inside-the-Beltway mentality, not dissimilar from Hollywood — it feels like the only thing that matters. I think you're selling a brand of yourself." Louis-Dreyfus also did plenty of research for the show, now in its sixth season. She talked with lobbyists, senators and even former vice presidents. "I really tried to ask questions that would get at: What is the human experience of this position?" she says. "Nothing about policy or anything like that, but just about: What it's like day to day? ... It was also interesting to watch them not answer or read between the lines." After a couple of seasons as the vice president, Selina Meyer actually does become president briefly, but doesn't get re-elected in a runoff
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Don't Be Fooled: 'Generation Wealth' Is More About Wanting Than Having
Plastic surgery, private jets, toddlers in designer clothes, magnums of champagne — Lauren Greenfield's 500-page photo collection , Generation Wealth , shows all of that. But this book isn't just about people who are wealthy, it's about people who want to be wealthy. I met up with Greenfield at the Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles, where there's an exhibit to accompany the new book. She says some of her early work was photographing kids here in LA, where she grew up. This project, about wealth and striving for wealth, developed from there, even though she didn't know it was about that at the time. "I started it as a kind of looking back at the culture I grew up in," she says. "And then I went on to do other things, about gender, about fashion, about consumerism, about how our values have been exported. It wasn't until the 2008 financial crash I realized that the stories that I'd been doing for a couple of decades were all connected, and kind of formed a morality tale." So
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Food Critic Now Halfway Through Taco-A-Day Quest. Will He Fold?
One taco is good, but two tacos are better. By that reasoning, hundreds of tacos should be incredible. And Mike Sutter, food critic for the San Antonio Express-News , is now about halfway through his " 365 Days of Tacos " quest to eat at a different taco joint every day for a year. So far, he's consumed about 700 tacos. Back in January, NPR's Kelly McEvers talked to Sutter as he set off on his taco trek. He did it before in 2015, when he consumed a whopping 1,600 of them. But then he moved to San Antonio, a town where tacos are a part of the fabric of life, and where some taquerias have been around for decades. The challenge, he told us at the start, would be limiting himself to just 365 different kinds. Six months in, we thought we'd taco bout how it's going. A transcript of the conversation follows, edited for clarity and brevity. Kelly McEvers: Be honest. Are you sick of tacos? Mike Sutter: No, because you can put so many different things inside of a taco. It's just an infinite
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Former New Mexico Governor Discusses His Role In Otto Warmbier Negotiations
Copyright 2017 NPR. To see more, visit KELLY MCEVERS, HOST: The Hamilton County Coroner's Office in Cincinnati is investigating the death of Otto Warmbier. A public funeral is planned for Thursday. The 22-year-old died yesterday less than a week after being returned to Ohio from North Korea in a coma. Doctors at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center described his condition as a state of unresponsive wakefulness. President Trump talked about Warmbier's death today. (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING) PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: It's a total disgrace what happened to Otto. That should never ever be allowed to happen. And frankly, if he were brought home sooner, I think the result would have been a lot different. MCEVERS: One of the people who had been working to get Warmbier released sooner is former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson. His foundation, the Richardson Center, helps negotiate the release of political prisoners. Richardson started working on the case just after Warmbier was
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Before Her Teacher's Murder, This 'Keepers' Witness Was Already Living A Nightmare
This story includes content some readers may find disturbing. Who killed Sister Cathy Cesnik? The Baltimore nun and school teacher was murdered in 1969, and in the Netflix documentary series The Keepers , her students tell a troubling story of abuse by priests, alleged police complicity and a possible cover-up by the Catholic Church. Jean Wehner is one of those students. She attended Archbishop Keough High School in the late 1960s. Wehner tells NPR that she was "systematically abused, manipulated, raped, conditioned by [school chaplain] Joseph Maskell for a good year and a half before any of this with Sister Cathy happened." Wehner buried her memories of the abuse, and they stayed buried until 1992, when she began to remember things — like telling Cesnik about what was happening to her. After their conversation, Cesnik transferred to a different school, then disappeared. She was found dead nearly two months later. Her murder remains unsolved. Wehner believes Cesnik may have been killed
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'GLOW' Co-Creators Explain Why Wrestling Is Like Greek Theater
If you ask Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch, wrestling was just better in the 1980s: They say it was less slick, less violent, more fun — even silly. There were easier entry points, too. "Liz and I will watch a wrestling match now, and we'll actually make it 15 minutes in and still have no idea who the good guy or the bad guy is," Mensch says. Mensch and Flahive are diving back into the world of '80s wrestling in their new Netflix series GLOW. The show stars Alison Brie as Ruth Wilder, a struggling actor who finds work with Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling league — a wrestling circuit which actually existed in the 1980s. Ruth takes on the persona of a Russian villain named "Zoya the Destroya." "Capitalist pig!" she yells at her nemesis Liberty Belle (Betty Gilpin). "I shall neuter all your dogs and fill your swimming pools with borscht!" Co-creators Flahive and Mensch say making a wrestling show meant dealing in a lot of offensive stereotypes — and figuring out how to address those tensions
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'You're Never Too Old To Screw Up': Keegan-Michael Key On 'Friends From College'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkAK9QRe4ds You might remember Keegan-Michael Key as the fast-talking, quick-moving comedian on the award-winning Comedy Central sketch show Key and Peele . The show aired for five seasons before Key and his former co-star, Jordan Peele, ended it (in its prime) to move on to other projects. But Key and Peele 's characters transcended beyond the show. Key went viral after he appeared as Luther, President Obama's anger translator, at the 2015 White House Correspondents Dinner, proving he had both comedic and acting chops. Now Key is starring in the upcoming Netflix dramedy Friends From College . It's about a group of Harvard grads (played by Key, Cobie Smulders, Fred Savage and others) who reunite in New York City more than 20 years after they've graduated. Key tells NPR that the show is about continuing to make mistakes even in your 40s, but not necessarily learning from them. "One of the mottos of our show is, 'You're never too old to screw up, and you
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This 10-Pound Keyboard From The 1980s Is Making A Comeback
Only a well-trained ear might be able to hear the difference between a generic keyboard and the IBM Model F keyboard that was popular in the 1980s. The Model F is considered by many people to be the best keyboard ever. IBM stopped making it in the '90s and the patent expired. But the keyboard is having another moment. Joe Strandberg of Garden City, N.Y. loves this keyboard so much that he has independently worked to re-manufacture it. With his project, he outlines all of the mechanics that go into creating "the best keyboard ever," and how he's striving to make "a perfect, working reproduction." In today's market, the original keyboards would have cost around $600, but Strandberg's models will cost about $300. In an interview with NPR's Kelly McEvers, Strandberg explains why people think the Model F is a big deal and how it differs from the keyboards of today. Interview Highlights On what makes the Model F special and why people love it Well, I think that it's the best keyboard ever
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Who's The True Boss Of Snopes? Legal Fight Puts Fact-Check Site At Risk
You may have read that Bigfoot was found dead on a lake shore in New Mexico this summer. He wasn't. You can learn about that hoax here from the myth-busting and fact-checking site Snopes. You may have heard NASA predicted the Earth will endure 15 straight days of darkness this fall. It didn't. Snopes has that covered too — debunking the claim when it first appeared in 2015 and again in May when it resurfaced. What isn't a hoax is that the future of Snopes, one of the nation's first digital fact-checking initiatives, is in doubt. Ownership of the site is the focus of a sharply contested legal battle between its founder, David Mikkelson, and a small digital outfit called Proper Media, which had an arrangement to manage advertising and some other elements of Snopes' site. (It has similar agreements with such digital publishers as Salon, Raw Story and the Daily Dot.) Mikkelson tells NPR that he's been cut off from all revenues and has launched online crowdfunding appeals; he says he's
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U.K. Bans Gas And Diesel Cars Starting 2040: Electric Cars Are The Future
Copyright 2017 NPR. To see more, visit KELLY MCEVERS, HOST: Leaders in the U.K. want to make it illegal to drive a car with a gasoline or diesel engine. Britain's environmental secretary says the country will ban the sale of new gas or diesel vehicles by 2040. The plan is to phase out all cars with internal combustion engines by 2050. And this has become a movement in Europe. France and Norway have announced similar plans with pressure growing in Germany to do the same. To talk about the prospect of an all-electric, gas-free Europe is NPR's Sonari Glinton, who joins us from the studios of Youth Radio in Oakland, Calif. Hello there. SONARI GLINTON, BYLINE: Hey. MCEVERS: So what's the reason for the ban on gasoline and diesel in the U.K.? Is it about more than climate change? GLINTON: Well, yes, it is in a real way about air quality. Air quality has become a really important political issue in England. As a matter of fact, electric cars and clean air was a part of the election, and it
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Sessions Has Long Shown Unwavering Support For Trump
Copyright 2017 NPR. To see more, visit KELLY MCEVERS, HOST: The relationship between President Trump and his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, is not getting any better. In an interview with The New York Times, yesterday during a news conference in the Rose Garden and over and over this week on Twitter, the president has been openly criticizing Sessions for recusing himself from the Russia investigation and for, in Trump's view, going too easy on Hillary Clinton and government leakers. And all that criticism comes in stark contrast to what once appeared to be a close relationship. Jeff Sessions has been by Donald Trump's side almost since the beginning of his run for president. (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING) JEFF SESSIONS: At this time in Americans' history, we need to make America great again. MCEVERS: It's February 2016. It's just a couple days ahead of Super Tuesday. The Republican primary is still wide open. And Jeff Sessions becomes one of the first members of Congress to
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Muslims In The U.S. Face Increased Discrimination, PEW Report Says
Copyright 2017 NPR. To see more, visit KELLY MCEVERS, HOST: There are an estimated 3.3 million Muslims in the United States, and that number is growing. Today the Pew Research Center released a wide-ranging poll on Muslims in America. And while almost half the Muslims surveyed reported incidents of verbal or physical abuse in the past 12 months, many still say they are optimistic about their future and about this country. To talk about this, we're joined now by NPR's Leila Fadel. You might remember her from her time as NPR's Cairo correspondent. Now she has taken on a new job covering culture, race and diversity here in the U.S. She is with us from her new base in Las Vegas. Hi there. LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: Hi. MCEVERS: So what were the most striking findings in this poll of Muslim-Americans? FADEL: Well, this is the third Pew poll on Muslims in America in 10 years. And I think the first thing that's so noticeable is the incredible diversity of Muslim communities in this country. Often
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