Holocaust survivors who lost property in Warsaw now have six months to reclaim it. But a new Polish law says that people who don't come forward by that deadline will not receive any compensation. The city will assume permanent ownership of their property. The World Jewish Restitution Organization has put together a database to help people track down their property. Gideon Taylor is the chair of operations for the organization. And he joins us now from New York. Mr.  Taylor, thanks for being with us.

Thank you.

And what kind of property is listed?

So it's a mixture of buildings and empty plots. Warsaw was a thriving Jewish community. It was actually the second-largest Jewish community after New York before the Holocaust. And so there's a range of buildings and assets that were - originally belonged to Jews in what was a thriving, bustling Jewish community.


They were part of the crew of the USS Monitor, a celebrated Civil War ship that helped open a new era in naval warfare. The ship was ironclad, powered by steam instead of sails, and supported a rotating gun turret. The Monitor sank in a storm in 1862. Sixteen of 62 men on board went down with their ship. They were thought to be lost forever until 2002. The Monitor was being restored and the remains of two of the sailors were discovered in the turret. We're joined now by historian Anna Holloway. She's curator of the USS Monitor Center in Newport, Virginia. Thank very much for being with us.

Well, thank you so much for having me.

What do we know about these two sailors who have finally been buried?

Well, we still don't know their names, and that is one of the ongoing mysteries about these two heroes of the USS Monitor. However, as you mention, 16 men went down with the vessel, so there are 16 possibilities. Now, forensics tells us a little bit about them - their relative heights, their ages and their race - so that does narrow it down a bit.


As we move forward, though, and as you see President Trump continue to backtrack on his comments on background checks, in the last 30 seconds we have, what would you like to tell him to stay on the message that you would like him to stay on?

Listen to the American people. We're a democracy. That's what we're supposed to be doing. There can be special interests that are whispering in his ear. They represent the past. What the future is are the kids in our elementary schools or high schools that practice a mass shooting drill during the first couple days of school. That's not the United States of America.

Democratic Mayor Greg Fischer of Louisville, thank you very much.

Thank you.


So - but they did these kits, which also are - each one of them is a box that contain a lot of evidence that could be tested. And so yes, we have a problem in this country with rape culture. You see that going on right now. It's never been more evident than it is now - rape culture, sexual harassment culture, all of that.

And so training was also needed. Back then, when we first started, we had found police reports in some files that we pulled where police officers were writing very disparaging things about our victims - not believing them, dismissing their cases, not bothering to work on them. And so that was a part of it as well - not just the neglect, not just no money but just active rape culture in play, where they just did not care.

Based on your expertise, this is happening in a number of cities and counties. Isn't it?

Yeah. There are estimated to be over 400,000 untested abandoned rape kits in this country. And I don't know if you're familiar with Michigan Stadium right here in our state. It seats over 100,000 people. When I tell people that the amount of untested kits in this country that they're estimated to be - you can fill up the biggest college or national football stadium in the country four times. And that's if each kit represents a victim - which it does - and you think of game day at Michigan Stadium four times over, that's how many we have in this country. And that's probably a conservative estimate. It is absolutely horrible. And hopefully, it is changing, albeit very slowly.


I'll say.

Dissection, anger, back and forth, denunciation by both major party presidential campaigns. Do you think that this cover crossed the line of propriety?

Of propriety?Perhaps. But what it - I think it did so for an urgent and good cause, which is to blow this stupid calumny about Obama away, once and for all. It travels as the subtext through all this polite conversation. I just saw some NBC report that was quoting a Newsweek poll saying 50 percent of Americans believe that Obama is or was a Muslim, or was signed - sworn in on the Koran to the Senate seat, and so on. It's madness. And I - it seems to me that showing the fevered image directly will be a possible way of looking at and dissipating that image.

I think as a result it's a fairly brave thing to do, in which the New Yorker's fulfilling its function at its best, which is to make people think and talk. And the New Yorker helped that discussion happen. And it's one of the times where I feel, hats off, New Yorker!They got it right, you know. This is not something that goes away by saying, but it's not seemly to discuss this.

But there are some people who are always going to read this un-ironically and say, well, yeah, he is a Muslim despite, you know.


Yeah, literally - quite literally. Yeah, man. It's like - it's usually my go-to in writing. And it's just naturally a - such a part of everything. And then in making that song "Disco," it's like, disco - what do you think of disco?Like, strings. Strings are all up in and around disco - heavy, heavy, heavy.

(Vocalizing).

What's this song about - "Poor Fake"?

I think it's about kind of looking deeper into something that on the surface, seem so authentic and so real. But then as you get closer to it, you start to see what it's really made of.


From NPR News, this is News & Notes. I'm Tony Cox. FEMA wants immunity from Class Action lawsuits for its formaldehyde-ridden trailers given to Hurricane Katrina victims. And President Bush is expected to sign a housing bill that once it clears the Senate, will help homeowners in trouble with their mortgages. That and more on today's Reporter's Roundtable. But first, we check in with our very own Farai Chideya coming live from the journalists of color UNITY convention in Chicago. Hey, Farai.

Hey, Tony.

So listen, for those not in the journalism world, what is Unity?

Unity is a once-every-four-year gathering of the Ethnic Journalism Associations. So the NABJ, the National Association of Black journalist, the Hispanic Journalist, Asian-American Journalists, Native-American Journalists. It's really this kind of diversity fest for journalism.


Well, how much were the islands able to prepare for Hurricane Dorian?I mean, to stock up on adequate supplies, to make sure people got to shelters safely. Do you think there was enough time in advance?

Oh, absolutely. From the first module that came up that showed the path of Dorian. Based on experience, Grand Bahama and even the other islands - we've weathered many ferocious storms. And so it has become our way of life. Can you imagine six months out of a year, you're in a hurricane basin?And at any point from June 1 to November 30, you could be struck with a hurricane, whether a Category 1 or Category 5. We remind the public that it is, you know, their duty to prepare themselves and their families for any disaster, whether it's natural or man-made.

So over the next 24 hours, tell us what you're going to be looking for. What are the main priorities?

Over the next 24 hours, the storm will still be impacting the northwest Bahamas at some level because we were hearing, based on the predictions, this storm would not be clear out of the Bahamas until about Wednesday. So we're still expecting the level of damage that kind of strength would do on a flat island. We know we have to rebuild. That's obvious.


And that polio virus is thought to be non-zoonotic. It's thought to be a virus that only affects humans, but it's capable of passing from humans into chimps. So it seems to have made those chimps sick and killed some of them.

Likewise, the mountain gorillas of Rwanda and Uganda, when people visit those on - ecotourist adventures, they're not allowed to come closer than within about 15 feet. The gorillas are habituated. They're perfectly happy to have people nearby.

But the people who manage those gorilla populations are concerned that diseases, human diseases, will spill over into the mountain gorillas, which are an endangered subspecies and have a relatively small gene pool. So, yes, we have to be careful that we don't give diseases to wildlife also, especially wildlife that's closely related to us and that's endangered.

It seemed like many of the viruses you talk about in this book spilled over from bats, and I don't think of them as close relations to us particularly. But do we have. . .


Yeah.

. . . The right forecast probably wasn't (laughter) - 'cause no one's clairvoyant, it probably wasn't that, oh, it's going to be a conservative sweep. It was probably that hey, we don't know a lot and maybe there's a 15 or 20 percent chance that somehow they can maintain their majority. So I think, you know, when I say that I think our forecast was wrong and I don't want to make excuses for it, I think the part that was wrong is the part that was too narrow in terms of the margin of error.

Yeah. I've got to tell you, Mr.  Silver, you're not giving people much of an incentive to read FiveThirtyEight seriously if you're essentially backing away from the idea that you can reach any conclusions. That's why people read you.

Sometimes the right conclusion is to say that people are too sure of themselves, right?


. . . Had you wanted to see these images. You had to have heard about it. You're just seeing brief news reports saying that foreign powers, especially the United States, have been provoking riots and dangerous behavior in Hong Kong for their own selfish reasons - those kind of terse news bulletins. But on the social media that the Chinese exchange every day that they love on their smartphones, any hint of searching for news that Hong Kong is immediately shut down by the censors.

So the U. S.  is being blamed on mainland China. The U. S.  does have a lot of financial interests in Hong Kong. The State Department has expressed grave concern over this extradition law. It says there are more than 1,300 U. S.  firms with operations in Hong Kong, about $80 billion in U. S.  investment, 85,000 American citizens. Are U. S.  businesses operating in Hong Kong likely to be affected by all of this?

They certainly would have been if this law had gone through. I mean, in essence, what this proposal was was that for the first time ever people in Hong Kong, whether foreigners or locals, could be sent for trial by being extradited to the mainland, and the mainland's courts are explicitly under the control of the Communist Party. They are not independent courts. They're not meant to be independent courts. So that caused a gigantic backlash from even rather meek and mild business groups. . .

Hm.


And I saw that with just kids I knew at public school that were gifted. A lot of them struggled as they got older because they've been told they were smart. And so when they failed, they felt let down, they felt confused, and they blamed themselves.

So I think you see that on a much grander level with a child star where they get this level of fame and success and they think that that's going to last forever because they get used to it. And as they get older it's taken away from them, and they're not sure who to blame. And they don't know how to do anything for themselves.

And almost inevitably taken away from them by a disease called adolescence.

Yes, exactly. I mean I think that child stars are - they're used, in a way, to - their cuteness is used. And a lot of child actors - I mean people often ask me, they say why were you in so many kids' movies. And one was that my mother and father believed that there weren't enough good kids' movies out there. Now, I wasn't always in the best kids' movies, but they thought that that was important. And another thing is that there can really only be so many "To Kill A Mockingbirds" out there.


In South America, a massive power grid serves Argentina and neighboring Uruguay, as well as parts of Paraguay. Tens of millions of people rely on that grid, until Sunday morning, when they could not. The grid crashed. Much of three countries went dark. NPR's Philip Reeves has been covering this story from Rio de Janeiro. Hey there, Philip.

Hi.

How did this unfold?

Well, it started, Steve, at around 7 in the morning. People were - woke up for, you know, what they hoped would be a nice, peaceful Sunday to discover that the power was out across almost all of Argentina, which is the second largest country in this region, and also in parts of neighboring Uruguay and Paraguay, which get electricity, as you mentioned, from the Argentine grid. Now, the impact would have been a lot worse on a working day, but big power cuts are always very serious matters.


Glad to be here, Michel.

So you said that Thomas Jefferson was the first to hold July 4 celebrations at the White House in 1881 because he was the first to live in the White House during the Fourth of July. What did he do?

Well, Jefferson just had a little reception for some citizens and some officials. And they had some punch and some cakes, and they had some Italian musicians in to play some music. And this sort of set the trend for future presidents where they had receptions during July 4, something very low-key. And, in 1841, John Tyler had a dinner on that day, and he had turtle soup with - made from a 300-pound turtle they brought in from Key West, Fla.  And then, that night, they walked across the street to Lafayette Square, and they watched the fireworks, which has been part of the July 4 celebration from the very beginning.

So it seems as though the previous presidents had pretty low-key celebrations. This turtle soup was kind of fancy. But the letter from House Democratic leaders state that the Fourth of July celebrations have always been, quote, "nonpartisan and apolitical. "Is that true?


And now we'll go to another Dickerson. This is Brian Dickerson. He's a political columnist for the Detroit Free Press. And we're going to talk about Michigan. It is one of the key swing states in this election. Welcome to the program.

Thank you, Madeleine.

Well, both candidates have stumped a lot in Michigan, and is either candidate getting more traction?

Well, the most recent polls this week are a little mixed. But generally, the average of the reputable polls has been showing Obama steadily in front since about mid-June and picking up some momentum in the last two or three weeks.


So you show pictures of people who play with kittens but also behead human beings?

Absolutely. It's a very strange contrast, but you'll see them behaving in very normal ways. Then you also see them participating in this awful violence.

Social media platforms are private companies. Why don't they just shut them down?

The problem is the companies don't really want to do thought policing. Open displays of violence, threats of violence against other people oftentimes get these accounts thrown off-line. But beyond that, it's very tough because who's to say one person's thoughts or ideas should render them thrown off the platform versus another?


Yeah.

The Land O' Lakes butter box - there's a Native American on that. And an informal poll of people taken around here suggests a lot of people don't even see her.

Well, she's in your refrigerator. And God knows what she's doing at night. I never look closely at it myself. I do buy that brand. And when you look at it closely, what you see is she's kneeling. And she's holding the box that she's in. And so it recedes into infinity. In other words, you know, in that box, you see her again and again and again. So it's this amazing combination of American identity, a generic Indian with really brilliant graphic design that, you know, you don't really notice. But I really do think she's up to something at night in the refrigerator.

(Laughter) I'll check. Is it offensive?


Well, it's unclear. But at least the Department of Health and Human Services is saying that the Affordable Care Act will stand as this works its way through courts. And the funny thing is today is the final day for. . .

Yes.

. . . Open enrollment for next year for people to get insurance. And on the website healthcare. gov, there's actually a banner that says, this decision doesn't change open enrollment for now.

What about political repercussions?

And that's a more complicated thing.


Yeah.

. . . Or if you're sad about the way it ended but also want to be outside at the same time, not in front of a TV, this is the perfect time to pick up "Wolf Hall. "Now, I know. . .

A throwback.

. . . That sounds a little crazy. But - it's a throwback, but remember, the third one is coming out in 2020, in March of 2020. They just announced it.


We don't know the why. We do know the effect. It bears a striking resemblance to the Jim Crow literacy tests. I mean, it's 43 questions ranging from geography to culture to agriculture. I would challenge any citizen of any state in Georgia to pass a test of 43 questions about their state.

So before we let you go, could you just describe for people, you know, what it is - because some people might not find it upsetting. They say, well, you know, maybe they're just trying to determine whether the residents of Puerto Rico who have moved are really from Puerto Rico as opposed to from some other Spanish-speaking place. Could you just describe for people again why this - in your view, this violates the law and is offensive?

Well, Puerto Rican American citizens have the same right to transfer their lives, move to another state and have a driver's license as Texans or Ohioans. It's a matter of federal law. It's a matter of the federal Constitution. And Puerto Rican citizens in Georgia are subject to a different set of rules that are much more restrictive.

That's Gerry Weber. He's a senior attorney at the Southern Center. He's also a professor at Emory University School of Law.


So we hear that a lot. We hear employees being congratulated for working 24/7, which now we know is the cognitive equivalent of coming to work drunk. But it's changing. We are now in this amazing transition period where more and more companies are beginning to realize that living like that and working like that has actually terrible consequences, not just on the health and productivity of their employees but also on their bottom line.

You talk about sleep as a basic human right that we have not ranked alongside, you know, the right not to go hungry, the right to freedom of expression, that sort of thing.

Yes, and what is interesting is that it's a right that has been violated both in workplaces where employees have been expected to be perpetually on, especially since the advent of the smartphone, but also which is constantly violated by us because we have so minimized the importance of sleep. So that basic human right that you mention is often violated by us.

We can't do an interview with Arianna Huffington at this point and not ask about the 2016 presidential campaign. And I will point out Donald Trump says he just gets by on about four hours of sleep a night. Any reaction to that?


There is a famous case called the Kenneth Parks case in which he zones out and kills his father-in-law and almost kills his mother-in-law. After looking into his history, we find that he had a history of sleepwalking. And the case is referred to as homicidal somnambulism, meaning homicide while sleepwalking.

The Miami Herald profiled you this past week, which is where we heard about your class. And you had some advice for those of us fearing the coming zombie apocalypse. And I count myself among them. So how should we survive?

(Laughter) OK. So if a zombie apocalypse hits, you'll need food and water, shelter and, of course, ammunition to fight off the zombie attack. And the place that I can think of that would have plenty of it and a lot of space for you to move around is Walmart. So I often tell people, go to Walmart. Hunker down. And fight it out for as long as you can.

Eric Smaw, a professor of philosophy at Rollins College in Florida. Happy Halloween. And thanks so much.


Thanks so much for having me.

I think a lot of people are wondering how could it be that the families of people who are serving their country in the U. S.  armed forces need food assistance.

So when you come into the military, that compensation system has not kept up with how the force has changed and how military families have changed. You're no longer looking at, say, a 17 or 18 year old kid right out of high school with no family who's receiving that base-level pay, right?You're looking at, say, somebody in their late 20s who might have a couple of kids. Well, that income compared to his family size or her family size puts them at a place where they qualify for this food assistance.

What would the change in, as you see it, SNAP benefits mean for military families that receive that kind of assistance?


That's the unmistakable voice of Faith Evans, known as the first lady of hip hop. At 35 years old, she's been through more than most folks will in their entire life. Faith was raised by her grandparents in a house full of children, foster children, and other relatives. By the age of four, she found her first adoring audience in her church.

By 15, she was climbing out of her bedroom window to go learn how to record and mix music. Three years after that, Faith was a college dropout, a songwriter, a single mother, and a survivor of a brutal and abusive relationship. By 24, she was a successful singer and a widow.

Now, Faith Evans is telling all in her memoir, "Keep the Faith," starting with the death of her estranged husband, the rapper Notorious B. I. G.

Basically, my life was changed in a matter of seconds. I mean, I think that's pretty much how I did sum in up in the intro, I mean, before I even described what I was doing and you know, what he was doing.


Well, I've said for a long time that I think the president needs an assistant to the president for Twitter control. And once again, we have an example of why you would want that. In this case though, I have to say, when I first read the tweet, you know, you're just shocked. I was shocked at the the mayor's speech last night begging for help and saying that people were dying. That was heartbreaking to hear. But this feels to me like it fits in a theme that he has had for a while starting with his inaugural, which is to side on the side of the forgotten people. In this case, he names the military, the first responders and the aid workers.

Yeah. But nobody feels more forgotten than the people of Puerto Rico.

And - yeah. I was gonna say, and the people of Puerto Rico - versus what he sees as the elite, which would be the mayor and questioning the mayor's poor leadership ability - can't get workers to help, was told to be nasty to Donald Trump is in the tweet also. And this fits with his M. O. of going against the elites. And this fits with the rest of the news this week as well. I'm not surprised.

Is the Trump administration failing Puerto Rico now?


I'm Farai Chideya, and this is News & Notes.

Singer Jennifer Hudson won an Academy Award for her role in "DreamGirls. "But in the last week, her family life has become the stuff of nightmares. Some people now say neighbors should have done more. Did Hudson's family try in vain to distance itself from the man who's now a person of interest in the case?Plus, a federal judge in Missouri blocked part of a new law designed to keep sex offenders away from kids on Halloween.

We'll take a look at these cases with Judge Lynn Toler. She's the start of TV's "Divorce Court" and the author of "My Mother's Rules: A Practical Guide to Becoming an Emotional Genius. "Hi, Judge Toler.

Hi, Farai. How are you?


Hi, Lulu.

All right. Do Democrats have a strategy here?

They thought they had one. Remember; the mantra before the election was that Trump's world would change because the House of Representatives would have subpoena power. But now we're finding out, what if they issued a subpoena and no one came?I don't think that the House anticipated that he would really stiff them across the board. And in some ways, the very idea of Congress holding oversight over the executive branch is being challenged.

So this is a combination of Bill Barr, the attorney general's, long-standing belief in a very strong executive. He really doesn't think Congress should be investigating the president. And that fits nicely with Trump's, really, lifelong instinct, which is if you're not fighting, you're losing. He also doesn't want the exposure and the optics of having Mueller testify before the cameras. And, of course, he has a career-long history of litigiousness - take his enemies to court, cost them some money and, above all, run out the clock.

All right, so what can the Democrats do then?


Yeah. Then we got to get to gambling. How did that enter your life?

Oh, man. By the time my body broke - my body literally broke from overuse. It broke from not sleeping. It broke from not eating. The only thing I turned to that brought me some sort of feeling was gambling. And so every cent that I made from a particular date until another date, probably for, like, 6 years, went to casinos. And it was hard to write about that. It was harder to write about that than it was to write about different forms of abuse that I talked about in that book.

Because you were implicated in this in a way. You're the victim in one, and you're the, in a sense, the perpetrator in the gambling.

Well, I'm definitely the perpetrator, but in my family, you know, I think because I am from Mississippi and so much of Mississippi black labor has been taken from us, I think there's a shame when we show people and tell people that the money that we are able to make we aren't able to keep - right?- and especially if it's tied to a kind of, like, mental illness. So I started to understand halfway through my gambling addiction that I wasn't going to the casino to win, though I told myself that's exactly what I was going to do. I was going to creatively lose as much as possible. I wanted to drive back home that two hours feeling absolutely like trash.


Oh, thanks for having me on, Scott.

What made you decide to do this?

You know, Scott, we'd been trying to sort of open up the view of this place to the public pretty much from day one. But we had to get through some of these hurdles so that, in the event of bad things going on in jail, we're not going to hide from it. We're going to be transparent. And we'll attempt to work through firing, criminally charging, if - as necessary as well - but to let the public know that we're trying. We're not involved with some cover-up, or this isn't some big secret.

Bad things going on - I mean, to be plain about it, you mean mostly guards abusing inmates?


Well, their explanation was largely that this is mostly normal. There were several years where they sort of deprioritized taking people out of this program and allowed families that they say were no longer eligible to stay in. And now they have restarted disenrolling people and expected a significant number of children to be cut from enrollment. I think there are still very large questions about how many of those families were removed because they are no longer eligible and how many were removed because they did not properly do paperwork.

What's your response to people who say, look, this is the responsibility of the parents - what's so difficult about filling out some forms?

Well, I have seen the packet, for one, and it's not easy. And two, even if tens of thousands of parents drop the ball, it's not the kids' fault. Is that really what we want, is a state where lots and lots of kids don't get health insurance, to which they are legally entitled, because their family didn't fill out paperwork or the state sent that paperwork to the wrong address or it got lost in the mail or any of many possible procedural errors that could have happened somewhere in this paperwork?

Your story came out earlier this week, and the governor has since acknowledged this reporting. What's been the fallout so far?


Governor, thank you so much for talking with us.

Oh, you bet.

And we are sorry for the loss. . .

Yeah.

. . . Of this important figure in your life and the lives of many other people. You've referred to Judge Keith as a mentor and even more than a mentor. Tell us a little bit, if you would, about how you came to clerk for him and why he meant so much to you.


And in most car journeys, he'd be playing me music and reciting poetry. So it was really extraordinary being a daughter of such a man.

Rebecca, I mentioned earlier how I grew up in a very religious family. I don't go to church that much anymore. Actually, I don't go at all. So I'm wondering, for you, where is your faith now?Do you still have it?

No one's asked me that question (laughter). I would say that one of the things I expected from this book was that it would lay some ghosts for me, and I think it has. I still cannot open the Bible without hearing the sound of those men using scriptures almost like rapiers with each other. They knew the Bible inside out, so they would use one scripture to trump another. And it was all men locking horns, you know. So it's hard for me not to see the Bible full of words that have been used for warfare, if you like.

And yeah, I've been surprised at the effect on me of writing the book and also of the many, many people who have written to me, ex-Brethren - I would say 70 or 80 by now - beautiful letters from elderly people writing to me to say, the Brethren was a terrible thing. We all lived through it - and telling me their stories but saying, I came to find a kinder God and kinder Christians outside. And I've been really moved by how much people have wanted me to know about their kinder God.


Can anybody do this?And this being adopted and adapted by commercial industry?

Well, anybody with a little equipment could do it. The thing is, it's still not easy, and it's still really expensive because you can only make - right now they only know how to make really, really, really tiny amounts. But the big thing he was trying to show is you don't have to start with really expensive feed stocks, is the chemical term.

You can make this stuff from anything. So once people figure out their techniques a little bit better, the prospects for a huge drop in price are great. Now of course there are other problems with this stuff. There's not enough of it that people have figured a lot of the technical problems. Like if you make electronics from graphene, it has all these beautiful properties. But if you make them, you've got to connect them to wires.

And the connector problem, you know, just in a way it's a version of when you plug something into your computer, how do you connect it. How do you connect something to a sheet of carbon that's one atom thick so that it's reliable and does what you want it to?People are working on that. That's still a mystery.


Yeah, my mom was one of those moms that loved pretty much everything I did and encouraged me to do it and also just instilled in me a love for books and for reading. You know, she read to us all the time.

Yeah.

Yeah, just enjoying the ideas and the things that I did meant so much. And my dad was, you know, more critical, and I think maybe that balance was crucial, too. But I used to come home - Mom tells me I used to come home from kindergarten and I'd sit up on, you know, the kitchen counter and basically spend an hour telling her the story we heard, you know, from story time. And that's because she wanted to hear it, or at least, you know, gave me that impression. And I would - I just - I learned to tell stories and to, yeah, just enjoy that process of crafting a story for a person. And in that case, it was my mom. So yeah, I can't say enough about Mama.

It's funny because there's a cartoon that I've just turned to here that shows a couple of married couples chatting, and the wife in one of the couples says our son wants to be a comedian, so we're getting a nasty divorce.


Yeah. It's a slam dunk. Yeah. I think that's kind of universal.

What's Krosno like?

Krosno is great. It's really small. It's about 50,000 people. It's kind of a young town, too - lots of high school students. But they get excited about basketball. So that's good.

I'm going to guess you're pretty well-known in town already.


So they've also gone after defense contractors. So there - in that case, the motivation, of course, is military secrets and as well espionage, economic, you know, gains. And they've also targeted law firms, particularly law firms that are engaged in litigation in China or engaged in mergers and acquisitions so that they can obtain market information.

So there is an economic goal, here. There is a military goal. There is also what seems to be - there's a security goal and an image goal, public relations, if you will.

Yes. Like I said, it's multiple. They're going after - you know, it seems like this is an industry. And, you know, I'm hesitant to point a finger at China, because it's very easy to point the finger at China. And it's also very easy to make an attack appear to come from China when it's not coming from China. So, you know, and speaking in broad terms, you know, what we know of the attack, that they are coming from China, it appears that it is, you know, a very big industry there.

And we should note that Chinese deny it. I'm not sure that anybody holds any great belief in that.


Some of our questions are very basic. Were you a slaveholder?Did your money come from the labor of enslaved people?Many of the questions we're asking at our university are the same as the questions that people are asking at other universities. But I think we have one very special part of our story. That is that Princeton really was a very Southern school.

And it turns out that between 1790 and the outbreak of the Civil War, about 40 percent of our students came from the South. That's extraordinary. And there were some consequences of this very Southern orientation of our student body. There were some horrific acts of violence in our community in the 1830s and '40s as Southern boys raised in slaveholding families came to this town in New Jersey and encountered a free black community for the first time in their lives.

These Southern students were important to our school. Their tuition money was important. Keeping their parents happy was important. So the ethos on our campus was, let's just not talk about this stuff. Let's keep the peace.

Obviously, we are having a debate in this country right now about the legacy of the Civil War. And as a historian, I'd like your thoughts on how you resolve the tension between remembering and honoring.


People see both sides. From one side, we see everything changed after Trump came to office and withdraw from the nuclear deal. In another side, we see mismanagement and corruption inside the government. So Iranians see both sides. But the much bigger side is this thing that we - they see from Trump's administration. They see, every day, sanctions. People see that the White House always says, we have nothing to do with Iranians.

But we think that maybe the most important part of the sanctions is its impact on Iranians. Maybe authorities, officials haven't been affected that much. They're rich. They're wealthy. They have no problems with inflation or with all the problems. But the Iranian ordinary people who have a limited income - it is very hard for them. They see the impact of the sanctions directly on them.

What's the overall mood in Tehran as all this plays out?

Hopelessness and uncertainty.


Yeah. I mean, Jodi came to me very strongly. Before I even realized that I was writing a book, I was hanging out with Jodi. And she kind of took up residence in my mind. And I became a little infatuated with her. I started thinking about her all the time. And then the plot and the rest of the story sort of fell into place. I really, actually, kind of felt like I was getting to know her. And so it was a process of realizing what she had been through.

Well, Jodi - without giving too much away - gets out of prison. She meets an interesting woman, Miranda, who has three children, a failing marriage to a has-been country singer and an addiction. What draws them to each other?

She's just gotten out of prison. And she knows, in many ways, that taking up with Miranda is a bad decision. I mean, she kind of looks at her the first night that they're hanging out and tells herself, don't do this. But at the same time, she's drawn to her. I mean, she's physically attracted to her.

But she's also, I think, attracted to the fact that Miranda is bound and determined to enjoy life despite everything that's going wrong. So it's this sort of love of life and determination to make something joyful out of life.


The military also can benefit tremendously from this because if trade were to open with India - the military is a major producer of cement. They own a lot of state-owned enterprises, which they run for the benefit of ex-servicemen for the veterans. And they would be a major exporter of cement to India. Moreover, if there was transit trade between India through Pakistan and Afghanistan to Central Asia, the military is the largest transporter in the country.

So there are opportunities that need to be spelled out. But more important, I think, this is an opportunity for the Pakistani prime minister to have a national debate about this issue so that he can bring everybody on board.

What has the change been in the past few weeks, even, that gives you some optimism?

Well, it's not just the past few weeks. I think this is a change that has been occurring in the last decade or so. It's not perfect, and both leaders in India, and Pakistan will face enormous opposition from entrenched interests, apart from having a sclerotic bureaucracy that won't want to give up power and controls and business interests that may have helped them win their elections that want to retain their preferred access to state resources. It's not going to be easy, but I see strong possibility and I see a convergence of the need for economic development and growth, which will benefit people in general.


We got a few letters about the interview you did with Rick Warren this week. Celine Welch(ph) in Fort Worth, Texas, wrote into say she was a fan of the show, but not of the interview you did with the influential pastor.

Celine wrote, you began by asking him about rumors that McCain may have heard the first part of the show. Regardless of what he said, there was no way for Warren to know what was happening with McCain while Warren was on stage. What you should have asked was, why did you tell the audience at the beginning of the forum that McCain was in a cone of silence when in fact he was in a motorcade on the way to the church. That's something Warren needs to account for.

Then Thomas Tenhave(ph) in Philidelphia, Pennsylvania, had a different take on the interview. But he still thought we missed some topics. Farai Chideya did an excellent job interviewing Rick Warren, however, as with most of the media, it rarely hones in on misstatements. Ms.  Chideya failed to ask Mr.  Warren why social justice concerns were such a low priority, that they weren't raised because he ran out of time. Really?Once again, social justice takes a back seat to abortion, foreign affairs, and gay marriage. So much for Mr.  Warren's attempts to separate himself from the Christian right.

This month we're doing a series on addiction. Listener Anise Rice(ph) wrote in to say. . .


But it's a risk. Well, if you can't buy political advertising, what do you spend the money on?

Well, you spend the money, for example - and it's strange, because they call - his opponents call President Sarkozy l'Americain, the American. And they're not saying it with a smile on their lips. There's sort of a sneer on their lips. They're not any crazier about Americans than, for example, the Republican candidates in this country are about French socialists. But the irony is that it is the socialists.

And Hollande's campaign is ran by three absolutely charming young men who met at MIT and Harvard, three Frenchmen, in their late 20s, early 30s, and they are the ones running the campaign. And they have decided that they are going to replicate the Obama campaign of 2008 in France this year. And that's what they're doing. And they're going door to door. And they're using computerized systems. And they're using Internet radio. They're using all the same tactics that the Obama candidacy employed four years ago.

In the meantime, there is still power of incumbency. A lot of people thought the terrible situation in the south of France. . .


Yeah. To learn street - Glasgow street language.

They must have - well, a few particular words must have stuck to their vocabulary.

They spring to mind immediately, don't they?

Our guest is Billy Connolly. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News. And there is a lot of material, it would seem to me, that would go over better in Scotland than it would here. How do you have to change to adapt to audiences?


And the president called federal efforts to assist Puerto Rico during Hurricane Maria an unsung success. But, of course, as we know, 3,000 people died. And then, the president said that his critics had just cooked up that number. And that - we have to say it - that's just not true.

That's right. Now a lot of those deaths did not take place directly during the storm. Rather, they took place indirectly during the painfully slow recovery. Remember, it was only last month that electricity was finally restored throughout the island. So if this is a success, Trump is in a very lonely chorus singing about it.

In Florida, some of the president's fellow Republicans tried to distance themselves from Trump's comments. Candidates like Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis - they know that downplaying the scale of that disaster is not the way to make friends in Florida. A lot of Puerto Rican transplants have relocated to that state, and many of them will be voting in November.

And turning to the political news of the week, which is important. The president's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort pleaded guilty yesterday to felony conspiracy charges and agreed to cooperate with Robert Mueller's investigation. Do sources in the White House believe Paul Manafort has a lot to dish about on Donald Trump and/or the Trump campaign?


Huge.

Bringing peace there. Is there - there are some similarities I would imagine with Rwanda.

You know, I haven't heard the organized ones like we did see there. But always I think, they've been the backbone of the country but always in the background, not even allowed to own property. And now with these new rights given to them, we're seeing some real, real progress.

So, Carl, for you, in a sense you could say that Rwanda was ground zero, but now you have expanded beyond there to continue your works around the world. Tell us briefly about that.


Basically, this conflict, it stems from a power struggle between two very big people in South Sudan, the president, Salva Kiir, and his former vice president, Riek Machar. You have two guys who couldn't be more different. Kiir's this former commander from the independence struggle, a man of few words, in his ubiquitous black cowboy hat. And Machar is a smooth-talking, British-educated guy with a green philosophy who happens to be a huge fan of Karl Rove.

Now, besides being different personalities, these guys are also different tribes. And the tribal aspect of this conflict is what's triggered the most horrific aspects of this war. That's the violence that the pre-genocide label gets attached to.

The United States has a lot at stake in South Sudan. It helped create the nation, first under President Bush and then President Obama in 2011. What's Secretary of State Kerry proposing?

Well, Secretary Kerry has been talking about this idea of a transitional government. It's kind of - if you remember, back in January they tried a ceasefire that was disrespected by both sides because it told people to stop fighting. It didn't address why they were fighting, which was to control the government.


I think so. I mean, I think that these experiences, again, they tend to get spectacularized, you know, and day to day things like, you know, at other universities, it might not have had these types of you, know, well-known explosive incidents. Maybe like a University of Cape Town or University of Witwatersrand.

Still, you know, it's well known on those campuses that once the dorms of the residences are for blacks, once they integrated, white students moved out. They didn't perform those same sort of stunts, but they still, you know, walked out, in protest, that they didn't want to live, you know, side by side, with blacks.

So I think that, you know, when these incidents happen, you know, they kind of shed a light on something that's kind of insidious in a lot of different universities. And again, the message that gets sent is that we're not going backwards on this, you know, that we know it's going to take time. You know, we know that it's not going to happen overnight, but universities will be integrated spaces. This country will be an integrated country, where, again, black and whites have to live side by side with mutual respect.

Zine, thank you.


Well, it was a a very powerful scene. Francis stood with his head bowed in prayer next to the Armenian apostolate patriarch and a group of black hooded Orthodox bishops while musicians performed a mournful melody on an ancient Armenian flute that's called the duduk. Here's what it sounds like.

The memorial itself is very impressive - 12 tall, slanted slabs of rock that suggest figures in mourning in a circle around an eternal flame. Francis prayed, and then he wrote in the memorial guest book, here I pray with pain in my heart so that never again will there be tragedies like this. He went on - may God protect the memory of the Armenian people. Memory should never be watered down or forgotten. Memory is the source of peace and the future. And I've heard a lot of Armenians who are mostly Orthodox express admiration and thanks that the leader of the Catholic Church acknowledges their history and loyalty to the Christian faith.

Before the pope landed in Yerevan, I gather he met with reporters on the plane. And he was asked about the subject of the past couple of days - Britain's exit from the European Union. What did he say?

Well, he looked very pensive, and he said this was the will of the people. He added this requires a great responsibility on the part of all of us to guarantee the good of the people of the United Kingdom and also the good and coexistence of the entire European continent.


And, of course, we have humanitarian assistance programs on the ground providing lifesaving assistance to the thousands of people who are escaping, going into safety. The worry is, first of all, within Idlib itself, it's a governorate with 3 million people living. This is the area where many people had fled from throughout the country. So there's a displacement that is happening on the doorstep of Turkey with 3 million people inside. And it has, also, all the elements to create further regional destabilization should this escalation continue.

What we are calling for is a cessation of hostilities. There must be a peaceful way forward, a way which - a solution that does not involve residential areas being bombed, a solution that is not military and that - a solution that ensures the protection of the children, the women, the families, the civilians who are living in this area.

And there have also been strikes from the rebel side.

There have been strikes on both sides. There have been, also, victims on both sides. There's been civilians that then also have circulated from government areas, which have also been affected. And it's equally unacceptable to civilians on both sides to find themselves the victim of this conflict.

I gather the U. N.  has tried to protect civilians from attack by sharing information about the whereabouts of schools and hospitals with the government so they will know to steer clear. Has that not been successful?


I don't think they picked Deming necessarily. You know, we just happen to be a big border patrol station as well as our neighboring county. They're dropping off here as well - the Hidalgo County drops here as well.

How are these people - the asylum-seekers being housed in an airport hangar - how are they handling things?

You'd be surprised. I think they're - you know, they're a little - you know, I guess they're a little worried when they first show up. But then, I think, it's actually better than most places they've been, and that's what they tell us. So they have more room and more freedom than most places they've been, so they're actually really happy.

And how is the community of Deming handling this influx of new people?


I'm Farai Chideya, and this is News & Notes. It seems that wherever the Olympics go, politics follow. And the 1960 summer Olympics in Rome brought all sorts of culture clashes to the fore. Journalist David Maraniss has written the book "Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed the World. "David, welcome.

Thanks Farai. Great to be with you.

So this was the first nationally televised Olympics. And several African countries were fighting for independence, but no black African had won a gold medal thus far in the Olympics. That was about to change dramatically. So tell us about who changed that.

Who changed that was Abebe Bikila, a marathoner from Ethiopia. You're right, there had been no black African gold medalists before him. The summer of 1960 was a summer of enormous transformation in Africa. Fourteen nations got their independence that summer, throwing off the yoke of colonialism. And Abebe Bikila from Ethiopia sort of is the first of the great African runners.


Remember, David, the lead FBI agent assigned to this probe started a new job in Virginia this month. And other lawyers have been moving off the team, too. But Andrew Weissmann was, in some ways, aside from Robert Mueller, the most well-known. He's been attacked by conservative talk radio hosts. And he was called a killer by Steve Bannon, one of Trump's former advisers, who also called him the LeBron James of money laundering investigations.

The thinking being that, I mean, once the important work is done, you're going to let your investigators move on, even if you're putting the finishing touches on the report or whatever is happening.

That's exactly right. And we're seeing more high-level departures by the day.

So the prosecutor you're talking about, Andrew Weissmann, I mean, really played a central role in the case against Paul Manafort. And we're seeing a lot of news in that case over the past 24 hours with the sentencing. What exactly is happening?


So I'm just going to put myself out. Ask me a question.

OK, I'll be nice.

"Everybody Hates Chris" star Terry Crews was drafted by what NFL team?So you have four options. Let me give those to you, the Redskins, the Eagles, the Chargers, or the Rams.

Oh, man. I am laughing here because I am so sports illiterate. I have no clue. I cannot even guess. But I will say that I was on the dance floor with Terry Crews last night at one of the BET parties, and he knows how to move and so does his wife. But I'm completely - I'll say the Redskins, I don't know.


There was an early and well-organized campaign of civil disobedience on the streetcars by forcing their way nonviolently onto streetcars and hanging onto their seats until conductors or police officers bodily threw them off.

Octavius Catto must have been an extraordinarily compelling personality.

You know, we like to say he's one of the few historic figures who has been likened to both Martin Luther King and George Steinbrenner. He was part of a generation of young men and women of color who had been raised by parents who had been denied the right to a schoolhouse. And yet, by the time Octavius Catto was 12 or 14 or 15 years old, he'd gotten a terrific education because his father was going to get that for his kid by hook or crook. And so along comes Catto and other men and women like him, by civil war time, came to adulthood believing that they could change the world.

And I have to ask about the baseball team.


And I guess the hope of getting to Europe has been extinguished for these people.

The European Union member states have effectively criminalized search and rescue operations on the Mediterranean Sea. And we think that this is a mistake, particularly in the light of how things have changed over last three months. The fact that the Libyan coast guard is taking people back into what is now an active war zone is simply unacceptable.

Elinor Raikes, the Europe and North Africa regional director for the International Rescue Committee, thanks so much.

You're welcome.


Presidential candidates sure ate a lot this week - matzah, blintzes, pizza slices. The presidential campaigns have moved to New York for the next primary. After Bernie Sanders won the Democratic primary in Wisconsin this week, Ted Cruz won the Republican side. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump hope to rebound in more familiar territory. NPR's Ron Elving joins us. Ron, thanks so much for being with us.

Good to be with you, Scott.

Let's begin with the Democrats. They were playing so nicely together. And then this week it seemed like they were calling each other unqualified. Both candidates say they're getting sick and tired. What happened?

I have no doubt that they are sick and tired of each other. But let's be clear, Hillary Clinton never actually said that Sanders was unqualified, despite multiple efforts on the part of many hosts to get her to do that. She kept saying that she thought she was more qualified and so on. And she never would actually say that he was qualified. And this, of course, all followed on a rather rocky interview that Bernie Sanders had with New York Daily News that went viral.


You've got videos being produces on one. And you've got TI and Grand Hustle and Will Packer and people making movies and trying to bring them here to be shot, in addition to Tyler Perry. I mean, you got music being produced, but also these musicians, you know, taking advantage of each medium, you know, film, TV, writing songs for a commercial.

You know, Toni Braxton, here, in Las Vegas when she gets healthy again. These people are still staying here but doing things across the globe now. And you know, people were upset and concerned LaFace closed in - what was it?2000, now?Now, you look at the charts and I would bet you that ten of the top 25 R&B artists are either from - R&B, people on the R&B charts, are either from Atlanta or produced by an Atlantan.

Same for the rap charts and also pop. I mean, you said that this is a city that has an impact on black music. You know, Atlanta has made black music popular music. These are artists that are on the Hot 100, the biggest songs in the country. So, I am very hopeful.

Dee Dee, same thing.


You're listening to SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. Thinking about hitting the gym or going out for a jog this weekend?Well, we all need some kind of motivation to get us going, right?We make the plan. Well, here's a reason to do it, to stick to those plans. Researchers have found that aside from helping us burn calories and shed pounds, exercise changes the DNA, changes the DNA in our muscle fibers, which raises all kinds of questions. Just how do workouts change DNA?

Do we pass on those DNA changes to our offspring?And how do those modifications affect muscle strength and metabolism?Well, here to talk about it is Dr.  Juleen Zierath. She is a co-author of the study in the journal Cell Metabolism, and professor of clinical integrative physiology at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. And she joins us from there. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY.

Well, hi, Ira. Thank you for your interest in our work.

We're very interested, because I don't think anybody has ever given two-minutes thought that exercise changes your DNA.


I think there's also a message to be had in the region. Mr.  Trump in Tokyo, with all the pomp and circumstance, with even the irritations on trade and that mixed signal in North Korea - it was clear that this is an alliance that was vibrant, that was coherent and that was still being deeply supported by both countries. That's the message Mr.  Abe wants to send to Pyongyang and certainly the message he wants to send to Beijing.

That pomp and circumstance extended to the appearance of Trump 2020 campaign banners. They were visible as the president was making his way through Japan's streets. Another of the events that he attended was this sumo tournament. Why is Prime Minister Abe so intent on courting President Trump?

Well, you know, you - the backdrop here, too, is the Japanese people are not as critical of President Trump as many of the citizens of our other allies in Europe, for example. The president and the prime minister do have a reasonably strong working relationship. The Japanese diplomats pointed out before the visit that they've spoken or met 42 times since the president came into office.

Forty-two times, wow.

An unprecedented amount of contact. So I think there's still this sense that this is a good partnership and that Mr.  Abe can make it work.


He used to love football because at the end of the year, we left him a gift. And it was a T-shirt, a real T-shirt of the Euro 2016 of France with his name behind the T-shirt and the number 41 on the top because we were 41 students in his class.

Heda says that she and her classmates have been talking and sharing thoughts with each other on Facebook and remembering their teacher.

I will never forget him, and he was the best ever teacher I ever had before. And I am so powerless with all this and I really want to be thankful for everything he did for us, for the class and also for me.

That's Laurence Heda, a student of Michael Pellegrini, who was killed, along with his mother and his grandparents in the Nice attack.


This past week, we learned more about Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Special counsel Robert Mueller indicted 13 Russians and three companies for an extensive effort to influence the election and support the Trump campaign. Susie Wiles was senior strategist for the Trump campaign in Florida, one of the states that Mueller's investigation determined were targeted by the Russians. And she joins us now. Welcome to the program.

Hi. Good morning.

So the indictment alleges that the Russians pretended to be Americans and impersonated political activists. Looking back, can you remember anyone that fits that description or something that feels suspect to you now?

In hindsight, there are things that I think maybe should've been at least an Amber flag, if not a red flag. But at the time, the Trump campaign in Florida had 70,000-plus volunteers. They were active in person and on social media. And it came fast and furious. And I just don't think we were sensitive to the fact that this might be happening.


That's for sure. And what we really think this overdose, if it would be moved forward with a company, would be packaged as a shot to have on - hands on, you know, with an ambulance or ER clinics for, you know, life or death situations.

Doesn't it raise some ethical concerns about having an antidote?

I don't think an antidote raises the ethical concerns. The ethical concerns would be more raised with what's known as the active vaccine, which basically requires multiple injections, and you have circulating antibodies for life in that potential individual.

So, you know, one could be potentially marked that you had that vaccine. The antidote vaccine we're developing now would be eliminated in the body within a matter of days.


Well, you know, just like I said, be careful what you wish for, because it may come true.

Yeah.

So now, with the explosion in great technology in genetics, we're getting a whole bunch of candidate genes. And then through other genetic studies and comparisons between groups around the world, we can see which ones seem to light up for multiple groups, although it can be different in different populations.

Yeah. There are some - how shall we say - unorthodox treatment ideas, are there not, like infesting patients with worms for treatment?


Well, speaking of talking, do you think that Mr.  Obama is now speaking with both the Israeli and Palestinian leaders?

I would not expect that. It would not necessarily be in his interest to do that. There's certain amount of meaning in the often-repeated statement that we just have one president at a time, and of course, over the weekend, we heard Obama's people repeating that. It's really not something that makes sense for him to be caught up in, the decision-making or negotiations, until he has a standing to be so and to be doing so as president of United States.

Well, this is certainly something that Mr.  Obama doesn't need right now, given that he's got a lot on his plate dealing with the economy. How distracting will it be for him?

It would be a tremendous distraction, except that this is the nature of the job, and he has himself said, back during the campaign, a president of the United States needs to be able to focus on more than one crisis at a time. It's a good thing he's thinking that way because he's going to have lots of them, and he's going to have to try to use the energy and the attention focus that he gets from one crisis to keep the country going forward on a number of fronts - that's the economy, the energy crisis, the healthcare situation - all of this while he tries to deal with international crises. That's the situation we're in, and he seems to know that, and he seems to be up for it.


So to me, I'm not blaming what took place in El Paso on the politicians. What I am saying is that our political climate may very well serve as a facilitative platform for these crazy, extreme actions and ideas to be made manifest. So all of us need to build firewalls immediately. That's what I'm saying.

The question, though, I think, Reverend Rodriguez - I'm sorry, you just cannot escape the fact that many people feel that this president exacerbates these tensions in a way that few other national leaders do. I mean, telling people to go back where they came from, you know, who are people who happen not to be white - you know, when three of the four people he told to go back where they came from are people of color - I mean, how is that - how do you not account for that?I mean, how do you address that?

Again, I don't sign off on absolutely everything Nancy Pelosi, Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer or Kevin McCarthy may tweet or declare. I don't. I'm not the endorser of anyone. And I have pushed back on statements that I do believe do exacerbate the very climate and culture that I just referenced. Indeed. But to put the onus exclusively on the president when on the other side of the aisle there are calls of uber-racism and absolutely. . .

When has Nancy Pelosi ever told anybody to go back where they came from?


Help us understand how - what life has been like in Venezuela over the past few years that's brought the country to this point.

Venezuela's shockingly misgoverned. It's hard to wrap your head around a country that has lost half of its GDP in five years without a war. That's worse economic performance than Syria. It's the - only the first case of hyperinflation in Latin America in the 21st century. Inflation is running at over 1 million percent a year, and prices are doubling every three weeks or so. And so what we've seen is a mass exodus. People have just walked - in many cases, actually walked - tens, hundreds of kilometers to the border of Colombia and Brazil to find a better life in neighboring countries.

So it's a first humanitarian crisis in South America in the 21st century. And neighboring countries have never seen anything like it. Colombia had to send a fact-finding team to the Turkish-Syrian border to figure out how to deal with an influx of hundreds of thousands of desperate, hungry people.

Can your reporters operate freely?


A lot of people are very skeptical of the talks. The government, before even going to Geneva, voiced their concern that they're not going to Geneva to negotiate or deal. They just wanted to go to Geneva to make sure that the Houthis will comply when the U. N.  see a resolution. So to begin with, the political parties were in Geneva not to talk, not for dialogue, not to negotiate. They were there for blinking contests.

And what's the mood there in the capital?

A lot of people are depressed 'cause pretty much everybody was hoping that there's going to be some sort of a truce, especially now that it's the month of Ramadan. It is the holy month for four weeks where people fast. People - they don't actually have food to begin with. But it's a religious month where people fast, so we were hoping for some sort of a cease-fire, some sort of a truce where the blockade will be lifted so that the aid will come in, so that the commercial vessels now stuck at the seaports will be allowed to move in. Yemen imports 90 percent of its food, so we're in dire need of those commercial vessels to be allowed into the country. Unfortunately, the Geneva talks ended without the lifting of the blockade, without a truce being agreed upon.

We should explain to our listeners that blockade has been led by Saudi naval forces to keep weapons out of the hands of rebels. You have said that you're both anti-Houthi and anti-airstrikes. How do you solve one problem without the other?


Yeah.

Why has the price gone up in recent years?

Prices will rise to whatever the market will bear, right?We see that uniquely in the U. S.  One vial of insulin in the U. S.  costs seven times what it does in Germany. So there's a huge disparity there. Some of the reasons have to do with reformulations of insulin that are, in fact, better than some of the older ones. Although, when I'm talking about that 1 in 7 price comparison, that's the same exact insulin.

In the U. S. , what's happened - and this is something that I know the Trump administration is looking at and many experts in the field have decried - the slow arrival of biosimilars or generic insulins onto the market, which are on the market in other countries. The problem in this country is the lowering of prices of insulin. And insulin patents have been held up in the courts for years now in suits and countersuits between the three big insulin drug makers, including by Eli Lilly, which is the former employer of our new HHS Secretary.

That's Alex Azar - has been appointed Secretary of Health and Human Services.


President George W.  Bush's book of portraits of more than 60 soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who served in wars under his watch was published this week - "Portraits Of Courage: A Commander In Chief's Tribute to America's Warriors. "President Bush has done a number of interviews in recent days talking about how he took up painting after leaving office and how he came to paint portraits of men and women that he sent in to war. We're joined by one of the president's subjects now. They call each other friends. Michael Rodriguez was a U. S.  Army Special Forces Green Beret who served from 1992 to 2013 in Latin America, Somalia, Haiti, two tours in Afghanistan, nine deployments in 21 years. Michael Rodriguez joins us now from his home near Fort Bragg, N. C. Thanks so much for being with us.

Oh, thank you for having me.

What do you think of your portrait?

Oh, wow. I'm, you know, I'm blown away that my former commander in chief would actually take the time to paint those that served under him. And I'm humbled that he selected me as one of them. I think it's a pretty good representation of me. I couldn't - I'm still kind of processing the whole thing.


The program hasn't been very popular with the farmers. They would much prefer to just have more successful markets that they can go to rather than have to kind of accept government handouts.

President Trump tweeted earlier this year that with more than a hundred billion coming into the U. S.  in tariffs, the U. S.  would buy agricultural products from farmers, ship them to poor and starving countries in the form of humanitarian assistance. Has that happened?

No. They looked into a program along those lines but realized it was pretty infeasible. You know, there's problems with kind of dumping large amounts of crops on poor countries because you can ruin their own agriculture sectors. So they decided to just do the more simple program, where you provide the direct payments to farmers. Now, the part that is right there is that the total amount being brought in by these could get to be $100 billion. I mean, at the current pace - it was 6 billion in June. That would work out to about 72 billion a year if it continues. And there's talk of adding even more tariffs on top of that. So you really could get to 100 billion being the number.

But at the end of the day, this has not turned into some kind of windfall for the U. S.


That's right. The discussions we've had about whether the First Lady should have worn clothing by black designers for her husband's inauguration is still creating a lot of traffic. Aljory Stallings(ph) wrote us this on our Web site, I am completely irritated on this trivial commentary on this issue. I wonder if the black designers who were complaining about this realize that by doing that, they are cutting off their noses to spite their faces.

Flora Gayle(ph) chimed in with this, I think she needs to get some credit for almost always wearing American designers. I am not black, but I do work in fashion. I think before we start judging this, we should look at how many black students are going to fashion school. I wish there were more.

And Dianne Truckenberg(ph) wrote in to say, I am concerned with the concept drawing lines for black versus white, for fill in whatever topic. Insistence on basing decisions on whether or not something or someone is of a certain race will certainly bring back racial tension.

And then last week, we had a discussion about spanking with Judge Lynn Toller. Well, that topic raised a lot of listener hackles. Here are a few letters that summed up the debate. Christopher Watson(ph) sent us this, I sat in my car shocked as I listened to your program talk about spanking. I'm a 33-year-old black male who was spanked as a child and has since worked for several organizations fighting domestic and sexual violence and child abuse. I was slack-jawed as I heard two highly educated adults advocate child abuse.


Good morning, Debbie. How are you?

I'm good. When you hold hearings on the administration's immigration policies, what are going to be the key questions you're going to be looking to have answered?

Well, for the last two years, we've had very few oversight hearings on the department. Now, we've only talked to the secretary one time since she's been secretary. And so we plan to do robust oversight on the whole department. It just so happens that the border is front and center now because of what's going on. We're very concerned about the tragic death of the two children. We're concerned about the wholesale release of migrants seeking asylum on the streets of El Paso.

So we want to get to the bottom of why these things are happening. Is it a resource issue?Is it an issue that the policies that are presently being implemented are causing the system to not work?So oversight is what we have to do. It's our mandate from Congress, and we plan to do it.

Now, you're not the only incoming chairman who's looking at oversight. There'll be other committees - judiciary, intelligence, for example - who will also be investigating. Could that be a recipe for overreach?


Well, Super Tuesday was not necessarily designed to be the end. It was designed to give some states that had been itching to get into the early part of the calendar an opportunity to do so - and many took - the opportunity to do so.

It began back 20 years ago when some Southern states felt like they weren't getting enough of a say in the nominee. And so, round about 1984, they started all having their primaries together. That just grew and grew. Until now, we've got 22 states on the Democratic side, 21 states on the Republican side - all doing it on the same day.

And, you know, it's getting down to a question of not just who's won how many states, because states after all is not how we do this at the convention. We do it by delegates. And so, of course, the focus is on California, New York, Illinois, Georgia - the big ones voting tomorrow. But all those states have delegates, and all the states give each candidate an opportunity to add to their delegate total. And that's in the end the math that really matters.

All right. Let's go to Republican math. Senator John McCain is leading in most national polls over Mitt Romney. What about surprises?Do we expect any surprises either in terms of the popular vote or the delegates that - will shake out tomorrow for the Republicans?


Well, I think we're certainly more prepared than we were back in 2016. I think what this did is alerted our agency, as well as election officials across the country, of the dangers and the vulnerabilities that their systems may have with respect to a cyber breach. So I think it's a lesson learned. And I think cybersecurity is something that everybody is taking very seriously, as they should, and are taking steps to prevent future attacks. Many election jurisdictions are in the same position as those in Illinois - with limited funds and a massive problem with respect to maintaining cybersecurity. No system of any type can be completely impregnable. So you're facing those odds to begin with.

Are you getting the help you need?I mean, obviously, states fund this. Should the federal government step in to help?I mean, are they taking it seriously enough?And what is it that you're asking for?

Well, I think they're taking it seriously. We've received assistance from the Department of Homeland Security. With respect to funding, Congress recently appropriated approximately $380 million to the states. Illinois received about $13. 2 million. It's a start, but we feel that cybersecurity is going to be an ongoing thing. So we're hoping that more funds will be forthcoming in the years ahead.

Steve Sandvoss, executive director of the Illinois Board of Elections, thank you very much.


Let me go from pickles to apples and Poland because the agricultural minister apparently went on TV saying he thought Russia had broken international law with the embargo. And now they're asking the United States to purchase Poland's excess apples, which must be a lot of apples. Is Poland more exposed than, say, Germany?

On fruit, Poland is much more exposed than Germany. If you look at the exposure of countries - Poland on produce, Britain on finance, France has a big military order with Russia and there's a dispute over whether those vessels - those ships should be delivered. And for Germany, Volkswagen - those are the companies that are worried. So the food sanctions business doesn't hit Germany like it hits Poland.

Norwegian salmon - I guess there's also concern there too because even - there's only so much salmon even Norwegians themselves can eat and they need Russia's - that market.

Sure, and that's a big market for Norway. Fish producers in Britain are also very worried about it. But the countries say they will go on. And they also assert who's this going to hurt?If you read the Russian press, there is a view that sanctions against - or the reverse sanctions, as it were, by Russia against the European Union will actually help Russian producers. They say this is the chance for us to produce and to get our own markets going.


It says, he that copieth this letter shall be blessed of me. He that does not shall be cursed, etc. , etc.

Oh, my gosh. Gotcha. And people believe this?Or enough people?

Many people believed it because they needed to or they wished to because the gaps in history - we have nothing from Christ's life that survives directly, physically from that moment. And so people wanted to fill in gaps - desperately to fill in gaps so that they could feel closer to the concept of a Jesus that was like them.

Well, show us something else.


(Laughter).

. . . To navigate these tricky moments where the relationship changes. And so, first of all, tell us about Nana. And what was your relationship like with her before your relationship had to change?

My relationship with her in my childhood was charmed and golden. She was indulgent. She bought me a record player when I was 3 and let me play anything I wanted, gave me ball gowns to dress in and ice cream. And it was lovely.

But Nana was no joke, right?


So expect some of them to say, look, we promised Italians to change this country, we're going to do that. And so they already proved that in Bologna, where I am, actually. It's - they've been successfully here in Emilia-Romagna. They were successfully in Parma and in Sicily. They cut deals all the time, American style, really cutting deals on the legislative floor without the parties, and they were very successful.

Well, you've said what you thought should happen. What's your best guess as to what you think will happen?

My bet is that they will find some way - some agreement with - between the Democratic Party and Beppe Grillo's Five Star Movement. Actually, quite - they share - they both are sort on the liberal side of things, to use an American category. They're not right-winger at all. That's my prediction. If Beppe Grillo refuses to do that, he risks, number one, a kind of split within his party, number one.

And number two, if we go back to the polls in ruins next year, with, you know, the (unintelligible) and problem with our bonds, and all that, I think Beppe Grillo will have the hard time to tell Italians, look, I have so many votes and I just threw them away. And I think next time, he's going to have not 25, 30 percent, but 10 percent. It's not in his interest to do that.


And then the phone rang a few times, but I didn't pick it up. And, you know, you don't always answer your phone when you're having dinner on a Saturday night.

Right. Right.

So that's when I called his mom. And her cousin picked up and said - Alex, you need to get on the next plane to Sri Lanka. There's been a bombing. And Kieran is hurt, and he's here in the hospital.

But he was alive at that time?

The answer is no. He wasn't.


After he infected you?

Yeah, yeah.

So, let me get this straight. He infected you. You went back to him, and then he didn't want to be associated with you because other people knew about you?

Right. And he was scared his own status would be revealed. They would, you know, he was scared people would think, oh, she got it from him, and things like that.

What was it that you think made you go back to him when many other people would say I'm so angry I want to smack this guy up the head, or worse?


It's a pleasure to be with you. And thank you very much for having me.

So this issue has been kind of dancing around the edges of political discourse for years now. I mean, Jesse Jackson made it part of his platform when he ran for president in 1988. And as we mentioned, your former colleague, Representative Conyers, reintroduced the bill in every congressional session for 25 years. But now it seems to be gaining some traction again. Why do you think that is?

I frankly believe that there's something to elections - And this is a Democratic House with Democratic leadership - and also the times. And it is tragic, but it is real that we've seen an uptick in racial incidences - white supremacy, white nationalism. And so the question of slavery, frankly, has never been addressed, particularly from the institutional governmental perspective. And I've updated the language of the resolution, HR40, and that is that it is a commission to study and to engage in proposals, recommendations on the question of reparation.

And it really goes to, I think, more people understanding that 40 acres and a mule was a legitimate concept right after the Emancipation Proclamation, and that never happened. But yet cotton was king. It was an economic engine of the entire United States. And so the prominence of the United States today in the 21st century is grounded on the free brutal labor that Africans gave and their descendants.


The tornado that struck Oklahoma this week was classified as an EF5, highest ranking on the Enhanced Fujita scale. And if you've seen the pictures from Oklahoma, you have a sense of how powerful it was. And this storm visited towns that have been struck in the past. Moore, Oklahoma, had been hit by another EF5 in 1999. In fact, if you look at a national map of tornado probability, you'll see a kind of bull's eye radiating out right from around Moore. But why is that?What makes some parts of the country so susceptible to tornadoes?Basically, why does Tornado Alley exist at all?

Joining me now to talk about how tornadoes form and how our understanding of tornadoes is linked to our ability to predict them is Marshall Shepherd. He's the president of the American Meteorological Society and the director of the Atmospheric Sciences Program at the University of Georgia. Welcome back to the show, Dr.  Shepherd.

Oh, always happy to join you.

So tell us why. Why is it that some parts of the country are so twister prone?


I don't know that all of it will be seen. Some of the evidence went to the grand jury, and in order for that to be revealed, you'd have to go to the judge and show a particularized need for disclosure. There's also some FBI reports and other types of evidence and possibly Freedom of Information Act requests - we'll get that. But I don't think you're going to see everything that the prosecutors accumulated and might have presented in the criminal case.

Because now there's going to be a bunch of different investigations into the circumstances surrounding Jeffrey Epstein's death, might that reveal some information that otherwise would have been hidden?

Well, that's a possibility because as they look at people, there's all sorts of conspiracy theories already floating out there. And as they start investigating who might have had an interest, who had a motive, might that information come out?It could. But we don't know yet. And many questions still may not be answered. I think for the victims, this is going to be hard because they're never going to see Jeffrey Epstein in court, get what they think is due to him. But I think more of the information still could come out.

As you mentioned, there have been a lot of conspiracy theories about Epstein's death. And people are angry. And and I'm wondering, do you share that feeling?


Mm-hmm. A skyscraper overlooking the Sydney Harbor was named best tall building from Asia and Australia. Why?Why was this tall building a standout?

Well, this, again, is a very beautiful tower, but that is innovating in that a large part of the building is naturally ventilated. And we lost our way with tall buildings in architecture generally maybe 60, 70 years ago when we had the freedom to disconnect them from their environment by creating enclosed, mechanically ventilated boxes.

So this is a, you know, a 60-story tower in Sydney which uses the wind, the ventilation, to naturally ventilate a huge atrium, which runs the full height of the building. Quite innovative.

You say that 95 percent of the tall buildings in the world are terribly designed.


Yeah.

You look ahead, and what do you see?Just life is going to be a kind of process of trying to figure out how to live on very reduced circumstances.

Yeah. And my grandparents raised me, and they did live through the Depression. And I've kind of gone back more and more to how they coped. I remember my grandmother telling me how they had to eat the kids' pet chickens for dinner.

Cutting back to two meals a day, that's two things, dire circumstances and also an enormous amount of self discipline.


We wanted to show that it's much more than just the bad guys and the good guys. I remember that I went to the writer's room. And when we were sitting there, I said, I really want to be able and love and want to play every and each role in this show. Most of the terrorists that I saw on TV shows and movies are just the bad guys. Nothing - they didn't have kids. They didn't have families. They didn't have love. They didn't have anything.

And we wanted to show that. We wanted to show that the Israelis - they are not just the soldiers, the brutal bad soldiers. And this is why people feel compassion for both sides. But I can tell you that the terrorists in our show, when they go out in the streets of Israel - even in settlements - it doesn't matter where - people just want to take a selfie with him.

(Laughter).

They became sex symbols for Jewish and Arabs. It doesn't matter. It's like - it's crazy (laughter).


The third-longest-serving justice on the U. S.  Supreme Court is issuing a warning. Stephen Breyer was nominated by President Bill Clinton. He took his seat on the court in 1994 and is now part of the court's liberal minority. He wrote an unusual opinion released yesterday. In it, Justice Breyer appeared to send a message to his conservative colleagues on the bench, urging them to respect precedent and only overrule it when the circumstances demand it. His comments came in a dissent, after the Supreme Court ruled that a state cannot be sued in the courts of a different state by a private party unless it gives its permission.

Amy Howe is in studio with us this morning. She's co-founder of the SCOTUSblog. Amy, thanks for coming in.

Thanks for having me.

So can you flesh out the context of this warning?I said it came in a dissent. What more can you tell us about what led Justice Breyer to do this?


So what is this thing about turning Girl Scout cookies into graphene?

All right, we'll start with a little reminder about graphene. Graphene is just a form of carbon. It's a form of carbon people knew existed, but just about eight or so years ago, for the first time, people were able to get enough of it to actually look at it. It's the two-dimensional form. It's like a big sheet of chicken wire, that's the shape, and it's really hard to get.

The guys who figured it out did it in a goofy way, using pencil and scotch tape. When you write with a pencil, that stuff that comes off, that graphite, that's really sheets, and sheets and sheets of this thin stuff. But separating those, that was expensive.

The numbers you've tossed around show you how expensive. People have been able to do experiments. They've found all kinds of really interesting possibly valuable properties, but nothing, no industry is really going to start until they can make enough of this stuff cheaply to use it.


We're now going to take a look at another flood and what lessons it may have for Houston and other cities facing the possibility of disaster. Twenty years ago, 50,000 residents were evacuated from Grand Forks, N. D. , when the red river burst its banks. At the time, it was the largest displacement ever in an American city.

What followed was a painful process of raising homes, redrawing maps and building flood walls. The town has been well-protected ever since. Michael Brown has been the mayor of Grand Forks since the year 2000. And he joins us now. Good morning.

Good morning.

So can you remind us, first, of the devastation your city faced in 1997?Take us back.


All right. My apologies there.

Oh, thank you.

Well, technical glitch. Thanks very much for being with us. And you wrote about your experience as a child actor in an article for the website Cracked. And you wrote you're glad you weren't Olsen twins famous, but you are pretty famous.

Well, thank you. I mean, I think that when I was child, acting was mostly just a hobby for me. It was something that my parents encouraged me to think of the way that my brothers thought of their cross-country classes, or my little sister to dance classes and art classes, and it was something like that for me. You know, the other kids were playing Little League or Pee-Wee hockey or whatever, and I was - well, I was an actor.

That's the way that I saw it. So I never really realized how much of an impact that was having on other kids' lives. And still to this day, I'm not sure how much on an impact I really had.

And you wrote in your piece that this was your choice. You didn't have a stage mom and stage dad. This was something you wanted to do.


You don't see anything problematic with the underlying facts - the fact that, according to the unclassified transcript released by the White House, immediately after the Ukrainian president talks about buying more Javelin missiles, the president is asking Zelenskiy to do him a favor, though - his words - and then he turns the conversation to investigating former Vice President Joe Biden and his son. You have no problem with that.

Yeah, that is not an accurate description of the transcript. I've read the transcript. I've read the whistleblower account. And in neither one of those documents is there something that appears to be high crimes and misdemeanors, which is what the Founding Fathers created the impeachment process to account for to begin with. It should only be used in extraordinary circumstances to impeach a president for high crimes and misdemeanors. I have yet to hear an account by any Democrat on Capitol Hill of where the high crimes and misdemeanors are found in the whistleblower account or the transcript.

OK.  That would be an interpretation of those facts, though. Just let me be very clear. I'm just reading from the transcript. I have it in front of me, and my rendering of it is entirely accurate. What we're talking about here is what the interpretation should be of that and isn't that what the inquiry is for?

Well, I would love to hear you read the part of the transcript that would indict the president of high crimes and misdemeanors. I mean, it's not there.


So, I think, you know, I didn't expect her to do anything huge after "Dream Girls. "I think that's just sort of the name of the game. When you're an African-American actress, you take what you can get. And this is a big film. It's a small role, but it's in a huge movie that will probably do incredibly well. I just thought she was ill-fitted. I didn't think she belonged in it.

Kelly Rowland, you mentioned her name, Destiny's Child.

MS.  SAMUELS: Right.

She basically said she wanted the part.


And so if we organize the production and the processing and distribution of organic foods on a large scale, there's efficiencies to be had. This is actually kind of an experiment, a test. You know, how much of the extra costs that you pay when you buy organic food - how much of that is just the fragmented nature of the business?How much of it is the small-scale aspect?And how much of it is inherent in organic production?

Well, there's no question that Walmart is kind of the king of logistics. But if you talk to some of their suppliers, they'll also complain that Walmart is the king of squeezing them and making them produce the product ever more cheaply at their own expense.

Right. So you could say this is a threat to some organic producers who are used to higher margins. On the other hand, I mean, the organic production is expanding, and if Walmart wants large quantities, they may have to outbid other producers. There is a limit right now on the amount of organic food for sale. They say they want to expand that, and there's no reason why they couldn't. There's lots of land out there. Right now, organic is actually a very small part of American food production, people say 5 percent or less. So there's no reason why Walmart couldn't expand organic production if they offered a good price. The question is can they do it cheaply?

Part of this has to do with trust. Are people going to stop going to Whole Foods and go over to Walmart 'cause they can get the eggs $2 cheaper?I'm a little skeptical.


Look; can Democrats accuse Republicans of refusing to live up to their oversight responsibilities because they don't want to antagonize what they take to be their political base if Democrats don't bring up impeachment because the poll numbers are discouraging or because they think they'd lose the vote in the Senate?Isn't there a constitutional responsibility, too?

I think there's absolutely constitutional responsibility right now to break through obstructionism put up by the president to continue the investigations that we're pursuing right now. Just as an example, you know, within the Intelligence Committee and the Oversight Committee, we're pressing for the financial records of the president through Deutsche Bank and his accounting firm to figure out, you know, what are his ties to the Russians?This is material that I don't think that the Mueller team necessarily pursued because the president had put a red line around it. And I think the Mueller team, based on what we can tell, decided not to cross that red line.

So this is potentially new material that hopefully would move some independent-minded folks on the other side depending on what the results are. But at the end of the day, this can't be about party. It has to be about our country and what's best for our country. I do believe the president has done some very bad things, and now we have to hold him accountable.

How?I mean, isn't - doesn't the Constitution provide the instrument for holding him accountable right in front of you?


What happened was there was this terrible murder in a house on Runyon Street. It was called the Runyon Street murders. Four people were killed. And the police set their sights on a 14-year-old named Davontae Sanford. He was young. He was alone. He was developmentally disabled.

And they got him to admit to what he said was, quote, "something" with his understanding that he would be let go. He ended up signing a confession to the murders. He was indicted. His attorney, who was guilty of all sorts of misconduct, ended up, in the middle of trial, having Davontae plead guilty to the four murders and get an extremely long sentence.

Eighteen days after he pled guilty - or maybe 16 days - the actual killer, a guy named Vincent Smothers, confessed to the Detroit Police that he had carried out these four murders and eight other murders at the behest of a hitman. So the Detroit Police, even though they had this evidence, didn't free Davontae Sanford. And at some point, the evidence leaked out. I think that was in 2009. And at that point, he started fighting to be released and was opposed at every turn by Prosecutor Worthy.

We contacted Prosecutor Worthy, who didn't come in for another interview. But she - there is this statement. And let me read it.


Pleasure to be here.

How was your lab affected by this?

Well, pretty severely. We lost the great majority of our mice. And I guess probably the clearest way I can put it is to say mice are very - are quite literally our partners in discovery. We really rely on them to inform us on pretty much every aspect of what we learn about how the brain functions.

I mean, I was trying to think about this, too, how - what the right analogy is. I mean, you don't - they're encoding data, as well, right?


So the root stocks that people today associated with French wines came from another country?

One part of the genetic signature is of the domesticated grape. And then as the domesticated grape travels across the Mediterranean, you get crosses with wild grapes because the wild Eurasian grape, Vitis vinifera, it grows all along the southern coast or along the Mediterranean. So as you get - bring in the domesticated grape vine, you know, starting over in, you know, the area of Lebanon today, and you move across to Crete and Greece and then on to Italy, you're getting crosses between that domesticated vine and the wild grapes that are growing there.

And so you get a whole series of cultivars springing up, and those are the ones that then, you know, get chosen for different reasons. It could be the color of the grape, it could be the thinness of the skin, the sugar, flavor and so forth. But the grapevine is very promiscuous. So it crosses quite easily.

Can you tell from the residue whether the wine was red or white that was in there?


Sure, Scott.

Russia's been taking over bases in Crimea all this week following the referendum. Was this expected?Were there any signs of resistance, near as you can tell?

There were signs of resistance. So, just to give you a sense, so this was an airbase - the tarmac area was taken weeks ago. That was in the initial occupation by Russian forces. This part of the base is where the soldiers and the pilots lived, and lived with their families. There were houses, apartments right around there. So not a strategic area but certainly symbolic. And all these bases had a deadline of yesterday. This base missed that deadline; they had an ultimatum of today to evacuate the base or be stormed.

Significantly, this was one of the few bases that did announce their intention to fight. We're not sure what that would lead to, whether it would lead to death. And this is all because of the commander. Very interesting guy named Yuli Montir(ph), who became famous for a YouTube video that he put up, saying that he'd stand until he heard from Kiev, which has not given any information to these soldiers as to what they're supposed to do. Whether they're supposed to evacuate, evacuate or fight. And so when the Russians did come, it was very expected. They came today and the attack was very swift. Military people describe it as very professional. It was clearly designed to minimize casualties, and it seems to have done so. In fact, an ambulance followed the tank that crashed open the gate today.


That's a separate project and the basic premises for Stratolaunch is that there are satellite customers who are really want a lot of flexibility in launch location. So the rocket can be picked up by a giant aircraft and the launch can occur, I think, almost anywhere on Earth. That's the basic idea with Stratolaunch, or that's the premise. But it's independent from our other activities.

So like going back to the '60s with dropping an X-15 out of the belly of a bomber and shooting it up into space.

Right, right. It doesn't result in a cost-savings, but it does result in increased launch life flexibility.

Mm-hmm. And just - while I have you here for a few here for a few seconds, let's talk a bit about Tesla Motors if you don't mind.