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MOKPO, South Korea (AP) — Divers recovered 13 bodies from inside a ferry that sank off South Korea, pushing the confirmed death toll to 46, officials said Sunday. The discovery came after rescuers finally gained access to the inside of the ship following three days of failure and frustration caused by strong currents and bad visibility due to inclement weather.

More than 300 people are missing or dead, and the captain of the ferry has been arrested on suspicion of negligence and abandoning people in need. Two crew members also were taken into custody, including a rookie third mate who a prosecutor said was steering in challenging waters unfamiliar to her when the accident occurred.

Late Saturday, divers broke a window in the submerged ferry and initially retrieved three bodies, Kim Kwang-hyun, a coast guard official, said Sunday. These apparently were the first bodies recovered from inside the ferry since it sank Wednesday. Later Sunday, government officials announced that 10 more bodies had been found inside the ferry, pushing the confirmed toll to 46. Officials said 256 people were missing, most of them high school students on a holiday trip.

Details about how divers managed to enter the ship and where the bodies were found or their identities weren't clear. Government officials said the bodies were found inside the ferry but didn't immediately provide other details.

Hundreds of civilian, government and military divers were involved in the search.

The ferry's captain, Lee Joon-seok, 68, was arrested along with one of the Sewol's three helmsmen and the 25-year-old third mate, prosecutors said.

"I am sorry to the people of South Korea for causing a disturbance and I bow my head in apology to the families of the victims," Lee told reporters Saturday morning as he left the Mokpo Branch of Gwangju District Court to be jailed. But he defended his much-criticized decision to wait about 30 minutes before ordering an evacuation.

"At the time, the current was very strong, the temperature of the ocean water was cold, and I thought that if people left the ferry without (proper) judgment, if they were not wearing a life jacket, and even if they were, they would drift away and face many other difficulties," Lee said. "The rescue boats had not arrived yet, nor were there any civilian fishing ships or other boats nearby at that time."

The Sewol had left the northwestern port of Incheon on Tuesday on an overnight journey to the holiday island of Jeju in the south with 323 students from Danwon High School in Ansan among its passengers. It capsized within hours of the crew making a distress call to the shore a little before 9 a.m. Wednesday.

With only 174 known survivors and the chances of survival increasingly slim, it is shaping up to be one of South Korea's worst disasters, made all the more heartbreaking by the likely loss of so many young people, aged 16 or 17. The country's last major ferry disaster was in 1993, when 292 people were killed.

General Motors delayed a safety recall of more than 330,000 Saturn cars that have been found to have defective power steering systems, newly released federal documents show. The records also show federal regulators didn't demand a recall of the cars, despite thousands of complaints about them.

The cars' problem is described as "a sudden loss of electric power steering (EPS) assist that could occur at any time while driving" by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Some drivers have complained that those failings came at dangerous times, such as mid-way through a turn.

As NPR's Hansi Lo Wang reports, news of the recall comes after recent criticisms of GM's delayed response to faulty ignition switches that have been blamed for more than a dozen deaths. Here's a report Hansi filed for our Newscast desk today:

"It took General Motors more than a decade to warn the public that more than 2.6 million of its cars had faulty ignition switches.

"Now documents posted on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's website show that GM also waited years to recall more than 300,000 Saturn Ions for power steering failure — despite receiving thousands of consumer complaints and claims for warranty repairs.

"The documents also show that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an investigation about the defective power steering systems more than two years ago.

"But the government regulator did not seek a recall, after finding the problem caused a dozen crashes and two injuries."

In a surprising discovery, scientists have found evidence of a tundra landscape in Greenland that's millions of years old. The revelation goes against widely held ideas about how some glaciers work, and it suggests that at least parts of Greenland's ice sheet had survived periods of global warming intact.

"Glaciers are commonly thought to work like a belt sander," a news release from the University of Vermont says. "As they move over the land they scrape off everything — vegetation, soil, and even the top layer of bedrock."

That's why researchers from several universities and NASA say they were "greatly surprised" to find signs that an ancient tundra had been preserved beneath two miles of ice in Greenland, in a study that was published this week in the journal Science.

"We found organic soil that has been frozen to the bottom of the ice sheet for 2.7 million years," says University of Vermont geologist and lead author Paul Bierman.

The researchers studied 17 "dirty ice" samples from the bottom of an ice core taken in the area of Summit, Greenland, looking for the presence of the isotope beryllium-10, which would signal an exposure to the atmosphere in the 10,019-foot "GISP2" sample that was taken in 1993.

The ice core has been involved in many other studies — but few of those were focused on its very bottom.

"I was asking a really different question than people who look at ice cores," Bierman tells the site LiveScience. "I was looking for a history of landscapes in ancient Greenland, and that mindset wasn't there 20 years ago. It's the evolution of science — you're always coming up with new hypotheses to test," he said.

The scientists believed they would find only trace amounts of beryllium-10. Instead, they found millions of the atoms, LiveScience says.

Bierman says that "we thought we were going looking for a needle in haystack." But, "It turned out that we found an elephant in a haystack."

To put their findings in context, the researchers compared their results with data from a sample they took in the tundra that exists today, in Alaska's Brooks Range. The results were similar to those from the ice core, leading at least one scientists to say they'd found a new rationale for Greenland's name.

"Greenland really was green! However, it was millions of years ago," says co-author Dylan Rood of the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Center and the University of California, Santa Barbara. "Greenland looked like the green Alaskan tundra, before it was covered by the second largest body of ice on Earth."

The study gives a sense of the findings' potential wider impact:

"The preservation of this soil implies that the ice has been non-erosive and frozen to the bed for much of that time, that there was no substantial exposure of central Greenland once the ice sheet became fully established, and that preglacial landscapes can remain preserved for long periods under continental ice sheets."

Lisa Robinson has done just about every kind of music writing there is. She's followed Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones on tour, covered the scene around CBGB in the 1970s, been a syndicated newspaper columnist, written live reviews for The New York Post and cover stories for Vanity Fair. In that time –- four decades plus, beginning as a filing clerk for a late-night radio DJ — she got to know everybody, and held her own as a woman in the quintessential boys' club of rock and rock journalism.

Robinson's new memoir, There Goes Gravity: A Life in Rock and Roll, is an insider's look at some of the biggest personalities in music, and how their hopes and fears changed as the industry changed around them. She spoke with NPR's Wade Goodwyn; hear the radio version at the audio link, and read more of their conversation below.

It's sometimes astonishing, and perhaps a little frightening, the age in which our destinies can be set in motion. You write that your destiny began with a transistor radio, listening to Symphony Sid's jazz radio show as a kid in New York City.

Lisa Robinson has done just about every kind of music writing there is. She's followed Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones on tour, covered the scene around CBGB in the 1970s, been a syndicated newspaper columnist, written live reviews for The New York Post and cover stories for Vanity Fair. In that time –- four decades plus, beginning as a filing clerk for a late-night radio DJ — she got to know everybody, and held her own as a woman in the quintessential boys' club of rock and rock journalism.

Robinson's new memoir, There Goes Gravity: A Life in Rock and Roll, is an insider's look at some of the biggest personalities in music, and how their hopes and fears changed as the industry changed around them. She spoke with NPR's Wade Goodwyn; hear the radio version at the audio link, and read more of their conversation below.

It's sometimes astonishing, and perhaps a little frightening, the age in which our destinies can be set in motion. You write that your destiny began with a transistor radio, listening to Symphony Sid's jazz radio show as a kid in New York City.

In Bayonne, they take their ham very, very seriously.

This medieval fortress of a town is minutes from the French seaside ports of Barritz and St. Jean de Luz, and not far from Spain's St. Sebastian. It has reigned as a cultural and commercial center for a millennium, according to historian Mark Kurlansky in The Basque History of the World.

Its most famous item since the Middle Ages? The jambon de Bayonne. The town's celebrated ham even has its own festival on Easter weekend.

First, some background. Bayonne may be technically in France, but its people call themselves Basque and claim ancestry from four Spanish states and three French states. It is said, in this case, 4+3=1.

Above all, the Basque have a rich culinary tradition combining sea exploration, the spice trade and foods raised in the fertile valleys of the nearby Pyrenees. And since 1464, the Foire au jambon de Bayonne or Ham Fair, has celebrated this remarkable food.

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The signs came early that Abhina Aher was different.

Born a boy biologically and given the male name Abhijit, Aher grew up in a middle-class neighborhood of Mumbai, India. The son of a single mother who nurtured a love of dance, Aher would watch enthralled as she performed.

"I used to wear the clothes that my mother used to wear — her jewelry, her makeup," Aher, now 37, recalls. "That is something which used to extremely fascinate me."

Draped in a bright sari, gold earrings and painted nails, Aher is, by outward appearance, a female, preferring to be addressed as a woman.

She has undertaken a long and arduous journey, rejecting her biological sex and opting to become a hijra — a member of an ancient transgender community in India, popularly referred to as eunuchs.

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A survey of emergency contraceptives in Lima, Peru, turned up worrying results: More than a quarter were either counterfeit or defective.

Some of the morning-after pills tested contained too little of the active ingredient, or none at all. Other pills contained another drug altogether, researchers reported Friday in the journal PLOS ONE.

Swallowing these fakes can result in dangerous side effects, not to mention unwanted pregnancies.

"The biggest implication is the quality of emergency contraceptives in developing countries cannot be taken for granted," says Facundo Fernandez, a chemist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, who contributed to the study.

Shots - Health News

Poll: Americans Favor Age Restrictions On Morning-After Pill

"Does Russia intercept, store or analyze in any way the communications of millions of individuals?" former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden asked Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday.

"We don't have a mass system of such interception, and according to our law it cannot exist," the Russian leader responded.

Well, as NPR's Tom Gjelten tweets, the bipartisan Center for Strategic & International Studies has now provided "an actual answer" to Snowden's query.

Here are some excerpts from what the center posted today:

"Three programs, SORM-1, SORM-2, and SORM-3, provide the foundation of Russian mass communications surveillance. Russian law gives Russia's security service, the FSB, the authority to use SORM ('System for Operative Investigative Activities') to collect, analyze and store all data that [are] transmitted or received on Russian networks, including calls, email, website visits and credit card transactions. ...

"Russian law requires all Internet service providers to install an FSB monitoring device (called 'Punkt Upravlenia') on their networks that allows the direct collection of traffic without the knowledge or cooperation of the service provider. ...

"Collection requires a court order, but these are secret and not shown to the service provider. According to the data published by Russia's Supreme Court, almost 540,000 intercepts of phone and internet traffic were authorized in 2012. ...

"SORM is routinely used against political opponents and human rights activists to monitor them and to collect information to use against them in 'dirty tricks' campaigns. Russian courts have upheld the FSB's authority to surveil political opponents even if they have committed no crime. ..."

Unbridled industrialization with almost no environmental regulation has resulted in the toxic contamination of one-fifth of China's farmland, the Communist Party has acknowledged for the first time.

The report, issued by the ministries of Environmental Protection and Land and Resources, says 16.1 percent of the country's soil in general and 19.4 percent of its farmland is polluted with toxic heavy metals such as cadmium, nickel and arsenic. It was based on a soil survey of more than 2.4 million square miles of land across China, spanning a period from April 2005 until December 2013. It excluded special administrative regions Hong Kong and Macau.

In a dire assessment, the report declares: "The overall condition of the Chinese soil allows no optimism."

The Associated Press writes that the report was "previously deemed so sensitive [that] it was classified as a state secret." The official Xinhua news agency blames "irrigation by polluted water, the improper use of fertilizers and pesticides and the development of livestock breeding."

Xinhua says: "In breakdown, 11.2 percent of the country's surveyed land suffers slight pollution, while 1.1 percent is severely polluted." (Update at 12:06 p.m. ET. Earlier, we were citing numbers from The Guardian, but these figures from Chinese state media are being more widely cited.)

Most of the contaminated farm land is on the highly developed and industrialized east coast, but heavy metal pollution was especially bad in the country's southwest, according to The Guardian.

The newspaper says:

"In January, an agriculture official admitted that millions of hectares of farmland could be withdrawn from production because of severe pollution by heavy metals. And last December the vice minister of land and resources estimated that 3.3 million hectares of land is polluted, mostly in gain producing regions."

A survey of emergency contraceptives in Lima, Peru, turned up worrying results: More than a quarter were either counterfeit or defective.

Some of the morning-after pills tested contained too little of the active ingredient, or none at all. Other pills contained another drug altogether, researchers reported Friday in the journal PLOS ONE.

Swallowing these fakes can result in dangerous side effects, not to mention unwanted pregnancies.

"The biggest implication is the quality of emergency contraceptives in developing countries cannot be taken for granted," says Facundo Fernandez, a chemist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, who contributed to the study.

Shots - Health News

Poll: Americans Favor Age Restrictions On Morning-After Pill

There was really only one tech story last week — the potentially disastrous Heartbleed bug. This week, we return to more of a panoply of tech-related news, starting with NPR stories in the ICYMI section, the broader topics in the industry in The Big Conversation and fun links you shouldn't miss in Curiosities.

ICYMI

Digital Distraction Remedies: Is a backlash beginning ... in favor of the physical world? Kids, gamers and restaurant-goers are finding ways to step away from smartphones and reconnect the old-fashioned way. Laura Sydell introduced us to Ingress, a video game that gets people to connect in person. Steve Henn's daughter reminded us that in some cases, parents are too distracted by devices and ignoring their kids. And the service industry says put those phones away and just enjoy breaking bread together, in a piece I reported on Monday.

Big Conversation

Tech Earnings: The tech bubble 2.0 questions keep swirling, and stocks started tumbling even before Google reported its numbers, which were disappointing to Wall Street despite 19 percent revenue growth. Yahoo performed relatively better in the eyes of investors, thanks to its stake in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, which is poised for an IPO. More companies will be releasing numbers in the next couple of weeks, so as Time notes, it will all be interesting to watch.

Heartbleed Hacker Charged: It was a vulnerability that someone skilled could exploit, and law enforcement believe they found at least one guy who did. A 19-year-old Canadian student was arrested for allegedly exploiting the Heartbleed vulnerability to steal taxpayer data from as many as 900 Canadians. And researchers say an attacker used the bug to break into a major corporation.

Curiosities

The Verge: The Inventor of Everything

This profile introduces you to Mike Cheiky, a darkside version of Elon Musk. "He is either the world's most unheralded genius, or he's criminally insane," a former colleague says of Cheiky.

Wall Street Journal: Bitcoin Creator Satoshi Nakamoto 'Unmasked'...Again?

It wasn't that long ago that Newsweek caused a tempest over its claim that a man living in LA named S. Nakamoto was the father of the digital currency. He denies it and may sue. Now, a linguistic analysis points the finger at Nick Szabo, "a well known name in cryptography circles," the Journal reports. Szabo has also denied being Nakamoto.

Engadget: 'Wearable eyes' take all the work out of having emotions

A Japanese professor has designed a high-tech version of those novelty spectables with eyes drawn on them. "The digital eyes blink when you nod or shake your head, look up when you tilt your head down and (best of all) it stays open even while you doze off ... ," the tech blog says. They're designed "to make you look friendlier and less socially awkward than you actually are."

The captain of the ferry that sank off South Korea, leaving more than 300 missing or dead, was arrested early Saturday on suspicion of negligence and abandoning people in need. Two crew members also were taken into custody, including a mate who a prosecutor said was steering in challenging waters unfamiliar to her when the accident occurred.

Prosecutors said the ferry captain, Lee Joon-seok, 68, was arrested early Saturday along helmsman Cho Joon-ki, 55, and the ship's 25-year-old third mate. Another helmsman, Park Kyung-nam, identified the mate as Park Han-kyul.

Senior prosecutor Yang Jung-jin told reporters that the third mate was steering the ship Wednesday morning as it passed through an area with lots of islands clustered close together and fast currents. Investigators said the accident came at a point where the ship had to make a turn, and prosecutor Park Jae-eok said investigators were looking at whether the third mate ordered a turn so sharp that it caused the vessel to list.

Yang said the third mate hadn't steered in the area before because another mate usually handles those duties, but she took the wheel this time because heavy fog caused a departure delay. Yang said investigators do not know whether the ship was going faster than usual.

So far 29 bodies have been recovered since Wednesday's disaster off the southern South Korea coast. More than 270 people are still missing, and most are believed to be trapped inside the 6,852-ton vessel.

Divers fighting strong currents and rain have been unable to get inside the ferry. A civilian diver saw three bodies inside the ship Saturday but was unable to break the windows, said Kwon Yong-deok, a coast guard official. Hundreds of rescuers planned dives Saturday.

The captain apologized Saturday morning as he left the Mokpo Branch of Gwangju District Court to be jailed. "I am sorry to the people of South Korea for causing a disturbance and I bow my head in apology to the families of the victims," Lee told reporters.

"I gave instructions on the route, then briefly went to the bedroom when it (the listing) happened," he said.

The captain defended his decision to wait before ordering an evacuation.

A transcript of a ship-to-shore radio exchange shows that an official at the Jeju Vessel Traffic Services Center recommended evacuation just five minutes after the Sewol's distress call. But helmsman Oh Yong-seok told The Associated Press that it took 30 minutes for the captain to give the evacuation order as the boat listed. Several survivors told the AP that they never heard any evacuation order.

"At the time, the current was very strong, temperature of the ocean water was cold, and I thought that if people left the ferry without (proper) judgment, if they were not wearing a life jacket, and even if they were, they would drift away and face many other difficulties," Lee told reporters. "The rescue boats had not arrived yet, nor were there any civilian fishing ships or other boats nearby at that time."

Lee faces five charges including negligence of duty and violation of maritime law, and the two other crew members each face three related charges, according to the Yonhap news agency.

Yang, the senior prosecutor, said earlier that Lee was not on the bridge when the ferry Sewol was passing through the tough-to-navigate area where it sank. Yang said the law requires the captain to be on the bridge at such times to help the mate.

Yang said Lee also abandoned people in need of help and rescue, saying, "The captain escaped before the passengers." Video aired by Yonhap showed Lee among the first people to reach the shore by rescue boat.

Yang said the two crew members arrested failed to reduce speed near the islands, conducted a sharp turn and failed to carry out necessary measures to save lives.

Cho, the helmsman arrested, accepted some responsibility outside court. "There was a mistake on my part as well, but the steering (gear of the ship) was unusually turned a lot," he told reporters.

Prosecutors will have 10 days to decide whether to indict the captain and crew, but can request a 10-day extension from the court.

The Sewol had left the northwestern port of Incheon on Tuesday on an overnight journey to the holiday island of Jeju in the south with 476 people aboard, including 323 students from Danwon High School in Ansan. It capsized within hours of the crew making a distress call to the shore a little before 9 a.m. Wednesday.

With only 174 known survivors and the chances of survival becoming slimmer by the hour, it is shaping up to be one of South Korea's worst disasters, made all the more heartbreaking by the likely loss of so many young people, aged 16 or 17. The 29th confirmed fatality, a woman, was recovered late Friday, the coast guard said.

The country's last major ferry disaster was in 1993, when 292 people were killed.

Only the ferry's dark blue keel jutted out over the surface on Friday, and by that night, even that had disappeared, and rescuers set two giant beige buoys to mark the area. Navy divers attached underwater air bags to the ferry to prevent it from sinking deeper, the Defense Ministry said.

Divers have pumped air into the ship to try to sustain any survivors. Three vessels with cranes arrived at the accident site to prepare to salvage the ferry, but they will not hoist the ship before getting approval from family members of those still believed inside because the lifting could endanger any survivors, said a coast guard officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, citing department rules.

Coast guard official Ko Myung-seok said 176 ships and 28 planes were being mobilized to search the area around the sunken ship Saturday, and that more than 650 civilian, government and military divers were to try to search the interior of the ship. The coast guard also said a thin layer of oil was visible near the area where the ferry sank; about two dozen vessels were summoned to contain the spill.

___

Klug reported from Seoul. Associated Press writers Hyung-jin Kim and Jung-yoon Choi in Seoul contributed to this report.

Few mixtures in American life are more emotionally combustible than the one formed by the combination of politics and race.

That helps explain why Democrats, in general, and President Obama, in particular, have tended to steer clear of overtly raising the race issue to explain some of the opposition to Obama's presidency and agenda.

There seems to be a shift in recent days, however.

Top Democratic party officials have either directly or indirectly blamed race for some of the hostility to Obama, his policies, or both.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader from California, and New York Rep. Steve Israel, who heads the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, both cited racism, pure and simple, among some Republicans as explanations for the House GOP's resistance to legislation to comprehensively overhaul the nation's immigration laws.

Meanwhile, Attorney General Eric Holder, took a slightly subtler approach. Speaking to the National Action Network, the largely African-American civil rights group founded by Rev. Al Sharpton, Holder suggested some Republicans had a racial animus towards the president and himself.

"The last five years have been defined by significant strides and by lasting reforms even in the face, even in the face of unprecedented, unwarranted, ugly and divisive adversity," Holder said.

"If you don't believe that, you look at the way, forget about me, forget about me. You look at the way the attorney general of the United States was treated yesterday by a House committee has nothing to do with me, forget that. What attorney general has ever had to deal with that kind of treatment? What president has ever had to deal with that kind of treatment?"

All of this has led to accusations that Holder, Pelosi and Israel are themselves guilty of playing the race card.

The attorney general later pointedly stated that he never explicitly said race explained the political right's treatment of him or the president. Instead, he claimed his complaint was about Washington's growing incivility.

Holder, an African-American, was like his boss — the first African-American president — who has also refrained from going there.

In any event, what Holder demonstrated is that just as those on the right can use dog whistle politics to motivate their base, those on the left can also send messages that are heard a certain way by theirs.

It's a safe bet, for instance, that many African-Americans who heard or read Holder's words didn't doubt he was talking about race. And he did it without ever uttering the "r" word like Pelosi and Israel.

Is this partly about activating minority voters during a mid-term election year in which Democrats stand a good chance of losing the Senate if their voters don't go to the polls in numbers? Could be.

When Obama has been on the ballot, minority voters, especially African Americans, didn't need much more motivation than that to vote. But a mid-term election when he's not on the ballot is different.

Social scientists who have studied voters have found that voter participation rises when voters are emotionally engaged.

For some voters, suggestions that some of the opposition to Obama and his policies is more than just honest disagreement — and is indeed racially based — could help do the trick.

The Democrats' use of voting rights strikes the same chord. Voting rights and race have been so inextricably linked in the nation's history, and in the African-American experience, that Obama can send a resonant message to many minority voters without ever explicitly mentioning race.

He did exactly that when he spoke to the same Sharpton group as Holder, a few days after the attorney general.

Obama portrayed Republican voter ID efforts as attempts to undo civil and voting rights protections enacted during the Johnson administration — protections won at the price of blood.

That those Johnson-era laws were needed to counter racist laws and practices that prevented blacks from voting, especially in the South, could go unsaid before an audience well-steeped in that racial history.

"You think about Brown v. Board of Education, and the Civil Rights Act, and the Voting Rights Act, and Freedom Summer," Obama said. "And with those anniversaries, we have new reason to remember those who made it possible for us to be here." He mentioned three civil rights workers who became famous after they were killed registering Mississippi blacks to vote.

"James Chaney and Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner believed so strongly that change was possible they were willing to lay down their lives for it," Obama said. "The least you can do is take them up on the gift that they have given you. Go out there and vote. You can make a change. You do have the power. "

People-died-so-you-can-vote is a powerful emotional appeal. Come November, we'll see if it was powerful enough.

Few mixtures in American life are more emotionally combustible than the one formed by the combination of politics and race.

That helps explain why Democrats, in general, and President Obama, in particular, have tended to steer clear of overtly raising the race issue to explain some of the opposition to Obama's presidency and agenda.

There seems to be a shift in recent days, however.

Top Democratic party officials have either directly or indirectly blamed race for some of the hostility to Obama, his policies, or both.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader from California, and New York Rep. Steve Israel, who heads the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, both cited racism, pure and simple, among some Republicans as explanations for the House GOP's resistance to legislation to comprehensively overhaul the nation's immigration laws.

Meanwhile, Attorney General Eric Holder, took a slightly subtler approach. Speaking to the National Action Network, the largely African-American civil rights group founded by Rev. Al Sharpton, Holder suggested some Republicans had a racial animus towards the president and himself.

"The last five years have been defined by significant strides and by lasting reforms even in the face, even in the face of unprecedented, unwarranted, ugly and divisive adversity," Holder said.

"If you don't believe that, you look at the way, forget about me, forget about me. You look at the way the attorney general of the United States was treated yesterday by a House committee has nothing to do with me, forget that. What attorney general has ever had to deal with that kind of treatment? What president has ever had to deal with that kind of treatment?"

All of this has led to accusations that Holder, Pelosi and Israel are themselves guilty of playing the race card.

The attorney general later pointedly stated that he never explicitly said race explained the political right's treatment of him or the president. Instead, he claimed his complaint was about Washington's growing incivility.

Holder, an African-American, was like his boss — the first African-American president — who has also refrained from going there.

In any event, what Holder demonstrated is that just as those on the right can use dog whistle politics to motivate their base, those on the left can also send messages that are heard a certain way by theirs.

It's a safe bet, for instance, that many African-Americans who heard or read Holder's words didn't doubt he was talking about race. And he did it without ever uttering the "r" word like Pelosi and Israel.

Is this partly about activating minority voters during a mid-term election year in which Democrats stand a good chance of losing the Senate if their voters don't go to the polls in numbers? Could be.

When Obama has been on the ballot, minority voters, especially African Americans, didn't need much more motivation than that to vote. But a mid-term election when he's not on the ballot is different.

Social scientists who have studied voters have found that voter participation rises when voters are emotionally engaged.

For some voters, suggestions that some of the opposition to Obama and his policies is more than just honest disagreement — and is indeed racially based — could help do the trick.

The Democrats' use of voting rights strikes the same chord. Voting rights and race have been so inextricably linked in the nation's history, and in the African-American experience, that Obama can send a resonant message to many minority voters without ever explicitly mentioning race.

He did exactly that when he spoke to the same Sharpton group as Holder, a few days after the attorney general.

Obama portrayed Republican voter ID efforts as attempts to undo civil and voting rights protections enacted during the Johnson administration — protections won at the price of blood.

That those Johnson-era laws were needed to counter racist laws and practices that prevented blacks from voting, especially in the South, could go unsaid before an audience well-steeped in that racial history.

"You think about Brown v. Board of Education, and the Civil Rights Act, and the Voting Rights Act, and Freedom Summer," Obama said. "And with those anniversaries, we have new reason to remember those who made it possible for us to be here." He mentioned three civil rights workers who became famous after they were killed registering Mississippi blacks to vote.

"James Chaney and Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner believed so strongly that change was possible they were willing to lay down their lives for it," Obama said. "The least you can do is take them up on the gift that they have given you. Go out there and vote. You can make a change. You do have the power. "

People-died-so-you-can-vote is a powerful emotional appeal. Come November, we'll see if it was powerful enough.

I officially became NPR's White House correspondent in January. But the job didn't seem real until Thursday at 3:56 PM, when the President of the United States looked down at a white note card and said "ahhhh, Tamara Keith."

That was my cue to ask a question — my first at a presidential press conference.

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Fading Gigolo

Director: John Turturro

Genre: Comedy

Running time: 90 minutes

Rated R for some sexual content, language and brief nudity.

With John Turturro, Woody Allen, Sharon Stone

Cowardice comes in many forms, but there's a special sense of shame reserved for captains who abandon ship.

South Korean prosecutors on Friday sought an arrest warrant for Capt. Lee joon-Seok, who was one of the first to flee from the ferry as it sank on Wednesday.

"I can't lift my face before the passengers and family members of those missing," Lee told reporters on Thursday.

The incident came two years after Francesco Schettino, the captain of the wrecked cruise ship Costa Concordia, was charged with manslaughter and abandoning ship — charges he denies. The ship ran aground off the Italian coast in 2012, killing 32 people.

Has the old idea that captains should not abandon ship itself been abandoned?

"I'm kind of flummoxed that a master of a passenger ship anywhere in the world would not understand his obligation extends until that last person is safely off the ship," says Craig Allen, director of the Arctic Law & Policy Institute at the University of Washington.

The Victorian notion that a captain should actually go down with the ship has become archaic. But his or her responsibility extends to executing the evacuation plan that all passenger ships are required to have and practice.

"It comes from the tradition that the captain has ultimate responsibility and should put the care of others ahead of his own well-being in the discharge of his duties," says David Winkler, program director with the Naval Historical Foundation.

Women And Children First

In the middle of the 19th century, there were a number of incidents in which ships foundered and captains and their crews were either celebrated for leading the rescue or reviled for saving themselves while passengers drowned.

One of the most famous involved the HMS Birkenhead, which wrecked off the coast of South Africa in 1852 while transporting British troops to war.

"The captain called the men to attention," says William Fowler, a maritime historian at Northeastern University. "They were to stand at attention on the sinking ship until the women and children — their wives and children — were led off the boats."

The moment was immortalized by Rudyard Kipling as the "Birkenhead drill." Reinforced when Capt. Edward Smith went down with the Titanic, the notion that a captain must stay with his ship became part of folklore.

"A lot of this is candidly still more lore than law," says Miller Shealy, a maritime law professor at the Charleston School of Law.

A Breach Of Duty

In the U.S., case law indicates that a ship's master must be the last person to leave and make all reasonable efforts to save everyone and everything on it.

"It is not just unseemly for a captain to leave a ship," Shealy says. "In Anglo-American law, you would lose your license and make yourself liable."

After Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger crash-landed a flight in the Hudson River in 2009, he twice walked the plane to make sure no one was left onboard before leaving himself.

International standards for sea captains vary. Often, as in the case of Schettino, charges are brought based not on dereliction of maritime duty but for offenses that might pertain on land as well, such as negligence and manslaughter.

In 1991, Capt. Yiannis Avranas not only abandoned the Greek cruise ship Oceanos after it suffered an explosion off the coast of South Africa but cut ahead of an elderly passenger to be hoisted aloft by a helicopter.

"If the master is simply looking out for himself or herself, you've breached your duty both legally and morally, to your ship, your crew and your passengers," says Allen, the University of Washington law professor.

Part Of The Culture

In last year's Star Trek Into Darkness, the bad guy taunts Captain Kirk by saying, "No ship should go down without her captain."

The image of a captain staying with a sinking vessel has recurred again and again, in literature and real life. It remains so potent because of the almost mythic authority invested in ship captains, Allen suggests.

At sea, there's no question about who's in charge, so there's no doubt who is responsible for safety.

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Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker officially announced this week that he is running for — wait for it — re-election as governor of Wisconsin.

It will be at least six months before he says anything definitive regarding that other office, the oval-shaped one in Washington, D.C.

And that's to be expected.

Governors in both parties routinely run for re-election while keeping coy about the White House — much like Bill Clinton in 1990 and George W. Bush in 1998 and Rick Perry in 2010.

Of course there's no question what's on Walker's mind, long-term. His autobiography is titled Unintimidated: A Governor's Story and a Nation's Challenge — generously expanding his current horizon.

Although just 46 years old, the Wisconsinite has avoided any public vow that he'll serve out his four years if re-elected, and he's wandered as far afield as Las Vegas to court the casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who bankrolled Newt Gingrich's last run for the White House.

Walker moved up on a lot of people's short lists after the media love affair with Chris Christie's candidacy got nipped in the bud by Bridgegate. He has some of Christie's potential to span the GOP's internal divide, appealing to both the establishment (as Jeb Bush might) and the hard-core conservative base (as nearly all the other wannabes are trying to do).

But to rise into that role, Walker needs a boost from a robust re-election. And that could get tricky in a swing state like Wisconsin, where pride often goeth before a fall.

Walker's state GOP stands at a pinnacle of success and influence at home and in Washington. As he reclaimed the governorship for his party in 2010, the GOP was also seizing control of the state Legislature. Republicans captured the majority of the seats in the state's congressional delegation for the first time since 1996 and Ron Johnson became the first Wisconsin Republican in the U.S. Senate since 1992.

Since that watershed, Wisconsinite Reince Priebus has become chairman of the Republican National Committee and Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan has been the party's nominee for vice president.

But even this apparent golden age for the party has worrisome elements in the mix. Good times can expose rifts, and recently state Sen. Glenn Grothman, a hard-line conservative from West Bend, announced a challenge to 73-year-old Republican Tom Petri in the state's 6th Congressional District.

Though a good party man, Petri is too mild-mannered a conservative for many in the Tea Party wing. Not long after Grothman got in, the 73-year-old got out, retiring after 35 years in office.

Something of that same insurgent spirit animated a recent 6th District meeting of activists that produced a resolution calling on state legislators to affirm the state's rights — including its right to secede "under extreme circumstances."

In headline shorthand, that became a "secession resolution," but a party committee approved it for consideration by the full statewide GOP convention in May. That prompted lots of media inquiries and forced Walker to dissociate himself from the"secession resolution" forthwith.

It was the second time this month the governor, who has been a darling of much of the right, found himself at odds with some conservatives. The first came when his new 25-year-old campaign spokeswoman, Alleigh Marre, was outed as a supporter of Planned Parenthood and "a woman's right to choose." Walker's allies in the anti-abortion movement erupted in protests. But so far the governor has stood by his aide.

No, Walker has not become some middle-of-the-road pol. To be sure, his re-election would be rooted in his high-profile showdown with public employee unions in 2011 and his renown as a social conservative. But to win a big re-election this fall, he needs to cut into his Democratic opponent's margins among women and independents. That is a tall order against that opponent, Democrat Mary Burke, a woman with a business background.

That could be why Walker, ever "the conservative's conservative," has lately seemed attuned to sensibilities beyond his fan base. He has not shifted on policy but on tone, turning toward "big tent" tolerance. That will not make Walker the national favorite of his party's hard-liners. But the competition to be the most implacable conservative in the 2016 GOP presidential field is already crowded to the point of pointlessness. The better running room for Walker is to be found somewhere between Jeb Bush and everyone else.

If the jockeying before the 2016 presidential race is a game of political chess, the most powerful queen on the board would obviously be Hillary Clinton.

So much of what will happen in 2016 hinges on Clinton's decision on whether to run, which she has said she'll announce by the end of this year.

If the former secretary of state and New York senator enters the race, she reduces the space on the board for any competitors within her own party. That would be particularly true for the Democratic women mentioned as possibilities for national office.

Vice President Joe Biden or Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, both of whom have the presidential itch, could still decide to run with Clinton in the race. They haven't closed the door to a challenge, and might argue that a contested primary is a necessary endeavor, if only to give Democrats a choice.

What's more, says Lorena Chambers, a Democratic political consultant and principal of Chambers Lopez Strategies, told It's All Politics that someone like O'Malley might feel the need to challenge Clinton in the primaries in order to be considered for her veep spot.

It could come down to someone in O'Malley's position "thinking, 'Yes, there's no way potentially I could win the primaries and caucuses. But certainly I could show my strength and be able to prove to Secretary Clinton that I'm formidable and can really help on the ticket.' It would be a very cordial debate and back and forth. Everyone on the Democratic side would be as unified as they could be considering they were ostensibly running against each other in the primary."

The most prominent other Democratic female prospects not named Clinton, on the other hand, signed a private letter last year urging the former secretary of state to run. So Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota are on record encouraging the former first lady to get in the race. That doesn't preclude them from challenging Clinton, but if one of them turned around and ran, the move would risk being viewed as treachery.

In any case, they wouldn't find much running room: The shadow Clinton campaign, which has been unofficially underway since last year, is locking up fundraisers, donors and campaign operatives.

Ready for Hillary and Priorities USA have joined forces to provide Clinton with a campaign-in-waiting.

A Clinton decision to run would also likely force a reaction on the Republican side.

So far, there's no evidence suggesting there's a top Republican female candidate raising money or putting together a team for a potential presidential run.

That means a Clinton candidacy would focus attention on what, at the moment, is shaping up as an all-male GOP field. And that would increase pressure on the Republican nominee to name a woman as a running mate.

"Whether she runs or not, GOPers would be smart to have someone other than a white male on the ticket," said Becki Donatelli, a Republican consultant. "John McCain was right in his tactics by picking Sarah Palin. The strategy of the pick was sound — someone new, exciting and different. And even though you are not seeing women queue up to run for president [on the Republican side], I suspect you will see several women or people of some ethnic minority on the VP short list — seriously on the list — and not for show."

Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and Govs. Susana Martinez of New Mexico, Nikki Haley of South Carolina and Mary Fallin of Oklahoma are names that keep coming up.

(Martinez is already getting a taste of 2016-style scrutiny. A Mother Jones profile just out portrays her as vindictive and having alienated many Republicans in her state. In another 2016 touch, the Democratic National Committee made sure to email the story to journalists.)

There's the possibility that Clinton won't run, of course, as unlikely as that now seems given all the attention she's getting and her well-known ambition.

But if, for whatever reason, Clinton decides against running, that would set off a scramble on the Democratic side resembling a 19th-century land rush.

"All hell breaks loose," Chambers said. "It is just a free-for-all in a way we haven't seen in a very long time, at least not on our side, the Democratic side."

That would open the field for some of those aforementioned Democratic women. One or more could try to attract disappointed members of Clinton's Democratic base, especially women.

Chambers doesn't think Democratic women would necessarily rally behind another Democratic woman if Clinton chooses not to run. That's because there is no other woman who will be able to capture Democratic hearts and minds anywhere close to the way Clinton can.

Chambers can just as easily see Democrats getting behind a man, perhaps O'Malley, who might then choose a female running mate, someone like California Attorney General Kamala Harris, for instance.

"When you talk about chess, literally, the queen has this virtual power," Chambers said. "And no one can replace it. Once you get the queen, it's done. So I don't think we can pull this chess piece out and put another chess piece in to take the queen's place. I don't think Secretary Clinton is replaceable as a woman."

Chelsea Clinton announced Thursday that she and husband Marc Mezvinsky are expecting their first child, also a first grandchild for former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

"Mark and I are very excited that we have our first child arriving later this year," Chelsea Clinton, who is 34, said at a New York event while sitting on a stage with her mother, according to The Associated Press.

Hillary Clinton said she's "really excited" about becoming a grandmother.

Chelsea is vice chairman of the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Foundation. She made the announcement at the end of an event on empowering young women, the AP says.

When I saw the first episode of BBC America's Orphan Black last year, I was convinced it was a crappy Canadian police drama.

That's because the set-up seemed like the oddest sort of crime procedural nonsense. A street urchin-style grifter sees a middle class woman who looks just like her leap in front of a commuter train, nabs her purse and climbs into her life – only to find her doppelganger is a troubled police officer with problems of her own.

Orphan Black fans know that was only the tip of the tale; grifter Sarah Manning learned she was one of more than a half dozen clones spread across the world. And someone was killing them off, even as others were suffering from a mysterious health breakdown which seemed connected to their unique heritage.

The show returns Saturday for its second season in fine form, with star Tatiana Maslany continuing her unerring ability to inhabit several different characters – many of them onscreen at the same time – and make you believe each one is separate and distinct.

Maslany's sizable achievements aside, however, I'm convinced another big reason Orphan Black stands as one of the best new series of last year is because it is really several different kinds of shows in one.

On the surface, it's a science fiction story about the dangers of science advancing ahead of legality and morality. As the second season opens, the clone we know best, British-raised Sarah Manning, has seen her daughter and foster mother disappear, possibly taken by the shadowy medical corporation that's monitoring the clones.

Last season, we learned one clone had been brainwashed into killing the others by a religious zealot. On Saturday, we will see that he is not alone; other people of faith have joined the quest to capture the clones, raising compelling questions about where God's laws end and man's ambition begins.

There's also a thriller element to all this, as several of the clones have banded together in hopes of discovering how they came to be and why the CIA-like Dyad Institute is so interested in monitoring and controlling them. The clone who is a buttoned-down housewife, Alison Hendrix, is the go-to for comedy relief, stuck performing in a god-awful community theater musical while enduring rejection from her soccer-mom buddies for a meltdown last year.

And don't forget the bits of cop drama: Sarah originally took the identity of police office Beth Childs. Now Beth's partner Art Bell has joined forces with Sarah to track the conspiracy, risking his own career in the process. A double murder in a diner – which Sarah happened to witness – only draws more police attention in Saturday's show.

The new episode is a rollicking return to form for the series, featuring Sarah confronting the Dyad Institute itself to find her missing child and foster mom. Maslany's command of her work is so complete in this second season, you barely notice when the Canadian actress plays against herself in scenes featuring two and three clones interacting at once. It's fascinating to see how they film it all.

TV insiders credit social media for much of Orphan Black's success, as high profile fans such as Kevin Bacon, Patton Oswalt, Scandal co-star Josh Molina and Sarah Silverman tweeted love for the show, sometimes using the hashtag #CloneClub.

But I'll always value how Orphan Black's ability to shift and combine genres — sometimes in the same scene — kept me hooked through the first season while supercharging the second.

Unbridled industrialization with almost no environmental regulation has resulted in the toxic contamination of one-fifth of China's farmland, the Communist Party has acknowledged for the first time.

The report, issued by the ministries of Environmental Protection and Land Resources, says 19.4 percent of the country's soil is polluted with toxic heavy metals such as cadmium, nickel and arsenic. It was based on a soil survey of more than 2.4 million square miles of land across China, spanning a period from April 2005 until December. It excluded special administrative regions Hong Kong and Macau.

In a dire assessment, the report says: "The overall condition of the Chinese soil allows no optimism."

The Associated Press writes that the report was "previously deemed so sensitive [that] it was classified as a state secret." The official Xinhua news agency blames "Irrigation by polluted water, the improper use of fertilizers and pesticides and the development of livestock breeding cause pollution to farming land."

Almost 70 percent of the samples taken for the survey turned out to be "lightly polluted," i.e., twice the national standard for pollutants. About 7 percent were found to be "heavily polluted" with levels more than five times the national standard, according to The Guardian.

Most of the contaminated farm land is on the highly developed and industrialized east coast, but heavy metal pollution was especially bad in the country's southwest, according to the Guardian.

The newspaper says:

"In January, an agriculture official admitted that millions of hectares of farmland could be withdrawn from production because of severe pollution by heavy metals. And last December the vice minister of land and resources estimated that 3.3 million hectares of land is polluted, mostly in gain producing regions."

At least 12 Sherpa guides died Friday on Nepal's side of Mount Everest when an avalanche buried them on the world's tallest mountain.

The death toll may go higher: The Himalayan Times reports that while 12 bodies have been recovered, an additional body "has been sighted buried in the snow," and that as the day ended another five Sherpas were still missing. CNN quotes a Nepalese Tourism Ministry official as saying at least four Sherpas were still unaccounted for. We will watch for updates.

Regardless of the final toll, it's the single deadliest day ever on Everest — surpassing the eight deaths in May 1996 when a storm struck. That tragedy was the basis for the best-selling book Into Thin Air.

According to Reuters, the avalanche "hit the most popular route to the mountain's peak ... between base camp and camp 1." CNN says the site of the disaster is about 20,000 feet above sea level. Everest's peak is an estimated 29,035 feet above sea level.

This is the climbing season on Everest, which more than 4,000 people have successfully climbed. About 250 have died on the mountain that borders Nepal and Tibet, Reuters notes. The Sherpas who were killed Friday and some climbers had in recent days been setting ropes, preparing camps and acclimating to the altitude, CNN reports.

While dangerous, Everest is not the world's "deadliest" mountain, according to various analyses. As The Daily Beast has noted, Nepal's Annapurna has a "death rate" of nearly 38 percent — or, as The Telegraph has put it, Annapurna has "the highest fatality-to-summit ratio of any mountain over 8,000 meters [26,247 feet]." While about 160 people have reached the top of Annapurna and returned, at least 60 have died trying.

Everest's death rate stands at about 6 percent. Other mountains with higher death rates than Everest, according to The Daily Beast's calculations, include:

— K2, which straddles China and Pakistan (23 percent)

— Nanga Parbat, in Pakistan (22 percent).

— Kangchenjunga, on the border of India and Nepal (19 percent).

Next week, President Obama is going to Asia, where he'll talk up a proposed deal to increase U.S. trade with that region.

If he succeeds, he could open up huge new markets for U.S. farmers and manufactures, strengthen U.S. influence in Asia and set a path to greater prosperity.

At least, that's what the White House says.

Critics say that cheery outlook is all wrong. They believe the Trans-Pacific Partnership would lead to environmental harm, more expensive prescription drugs and a less open Internet. Worst of all, the deal would have a "devastating impact" on U.S. jobs, Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., says.

Everyone agrees on this: The TPP would be a big deal.

Such a trade pact would pull together the United States, Japan, Australia and nine other countries whose collective gross domestic product accounts for 40 percent of all the goods and services produced in the world. The deal would influence geopolitics, the economy and the future of global trade.

The Government Shutdown

Obama's Absence At Asia Summit Seen Hurting U.S. Trade

Next week, President Obama is going to Asia, where he'll talk up a proposed deal to increase U.S. trade with that region.

If he succeeds, he could open up huge new markets for U.S. farmers and manufactures, strengthen U.S. influence in Asia and set a path to greater prosperity.

At least, that's what the White House says.

Critics say that cheery outlook is all wrong. They believe the Trans-Pacific Partnership would lead to environmental harm, more expensive prescription drugs and a less open Internet. Worst of all, the deal would have a "devastating impact" on U.S. jobs, Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., says.

Everyone agrees on this: The TPP would be a big deal.

Such a trade pact would pull together the United States, Japan, Australia and nine other countries whose collective gross domestic product accounts for 40 percent of all the goods and services produced in the world. The deal would influence geopolitics, the economy and the future of global trade.

The Government Shutdown

Obama's Absence At Asia Summit Seen Hurting U.S. Trade

Next week, President Obama is going to Asia, where he'll talk up a proposed deal to increase U.S. trade with that region.

If he succeeds, he could open up huge new markets for U.S. farmers and manufactures, strengthen U.S. influence in Asia and set a path to greater prosperity.

At least, that's what the White House says.

Critics say that cheery outlook is all wrong. They believe the Trans-Pacific Partnership would lead to environmental harm, more expensive prescription drugs and a less open Internet. Worst of all, the deal would have a "devastating impact" on U.S. jobs, Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., says.

Everyone agrees on this: The TPP would be a big deal.

Such a trade pact would pull together the United States, Japan, Australia and nine other countries whose collective gross domestic product accounts for 40 percent of all the goods and services produced in the world. The deal would influence geopolitics, the economy and the future of global trade.

The Government Shutdown

Obama's Absence At Asia Summit Seen Hurting U.S. Trade

As darkness fell Friday in the Yellow Sea off South Korea's southern coast, there was still no good news to report about efforts to determine if any of the nearly 270 people missing since a passenger ferry capsized Wednesday might still be alive inside the sunken ship.

The overturned ship's keel, which had been floating just above the surface of the water, disappeared below the waves at day's end. Officials were trying to determine how best to deploy cranes, which are now at the scene, in an effort to raise the ferry. Families and rescuers are holding out hope that some of the missing might have found shelter in air pockets aboard the ferry.

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren became an unlikely media star following the 2008 financial crisis.

She was a plainspoken law professor from Harvard, who advocated on behalf of families and consumers affected by the Wall Street meltdown.

Warren was brought to Washington to help monitor the multibillion-dollar bank bailout package.

As part of that work, Warren helped to create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — a watchdog agency that oversees and enforces consumer finance laws.

Republican opposition kept Warren from being nominated as the bureau's director. Instead, President Obama and others urged her to run for the U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts that was held by Sen. Scott Brown. She won the seat in 2012.

Violence has reignited in western Iraq, with Islamist fighters taking over much of Anbar province three months ago. A renegade al-Qaida group has set up its headquarters in Fallujah – the city where hundreds of U.S. soldiers died a decade ago, trying to wrest it from insurgent control.

But this time, the enemy isn't the U.S. and it's not just extremists fighting. Ordinary Sunnis in Anbar, furious at what they call years of discrimination by the Shiite-dominated government, have joined the militants' battle against the Iraqi army.

There's another difference: This group has better training and weapons, drawing strength and fighters from the chaos across the border in Syria, where it is also active.

In northern Iraq, I meet a group of young men who are among the 400,000 people who have fled the fighting in Anbar.

They say their brothers, cousins and friends are among those fighting against the army in Anbar — not because they like al-Qaida, but because they hate the Iraqi army so much. They've heeded the call by tribal sheikhs that each family leave one son behind to fight.

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Heaven Is For Real has an earnestness and an inertness that make it something of a bulletproof fish in a barrel. It's easy to take shots at because it's utterly artless and corny, but it's immune to criticism because it's not intended to be otherwise. It's simply intended to be affirming to people who go to church a lot, encouraging to people who go to church a little, and inoffensively irrelevant to people who don't go to church at all.

There's no question that Hollywood does a woefully poor job representing people of faith in any sort of nuanced way in mainstream films. Watching the opening scenes of Heaven Is For Real, there's actually a certain charm in its inclusion of scenes of American life that are hugely underrepresented in movies relative to their importance to the potential audience.

Pastor Todd Burpo (Greg Kinnear) and his four-year-old son, Colton, horse around listening to the ladies from church singing hymns in the living room with Todd's wife, Sonja. Todd goes in his sweatpants and T-shirt to the bedside of a dying man and quietly and compassionately prays with him. Todd and Sonja curl up on the couch and talk about how broke they are and the limitations of the house that came with Todd's job. It feels sort of ... fair, to put it simply, to people for whom prayer and church are important. It feels reasonably organic for those first moments.

But then, of course, we come to the central plot, in which Colton's appendix bursts and he nearly dies, and when he recovers, he tells his parents he went to heaven. He doesn't say he saw a light or anything similarly vague; he says he sat on the lap of actual Jesus (whom he later clarifies is a blue-green-eyed Jesus, juuuuuust in case you were wondering), he saw angels singing, he saw clouds, and he met some of his deceased relatives.

In fact, the perfection with which Colton describes not just the religious heaven but the cultural – perhaps the pop-cultural – heaven is part of what makes it a little bit less persuasive. Even Sonja points out that this is precisely the version of heaven Colton got from every story and song they ever sang to him. But Colton confidently begins going up to, for instance, kids who are hospitalized with cancer and, unbidden, grabbing their hands to tell them everything will be fine, which is received as comforting and welcome for whatever reason, and not as perhaps off-putting from a strange four-year-old.

Todd is presented with a crisis, which is just how literally he should take Colton's story of heaven. He consults an academic who tells him that there are plenty of non-heaven explanations for what Colton described, not that she means to take any "magic" away from him. (The way she sneers the word "magic" is one of a few places when the film has a keen ear for the way that religious people are indeed sometimes spoken to that they are perfectly capable of picking up as belittling.) He grills Colton on the experience. He – seriously – Googles "near-death experience." At first, that last move seemed absurd, but I came to think it was charming. I mean, what would you do in such circumstances?

Unfortunately, whatever charm the movie has built to this point is overmatched by the gooey sap that's been slathered all over it, not to mention the endless reminders that this is a Sony product. (Never have you seen so many people using Vaio laptops in one movie.) What starts out as a sneaky warmth quickly is swamped by Jesus Is Hiding In That Lens Flare and other far less thoughtful, far more leaden notions.

As is often the case with movies that aren't very good, there are flashes of something interesting here. When a member of the congregation (Margo Martindale) calls friends to pray for Colton during his surgery, there's ... power in those scenes. It comes to light later that Sonja isn't sure she literally believes Colton visited heaven, so you have to wonder whether she literally believes prayer repairs the body, but she seeks the prayers of her friends anyway, and they mean a great deal to her. Those passages are nice, and they really do happen in lots of communities, and there's a lot that could be said about what they mean to people and why. (My family used to be acquainted with a particular nun whose prayers for us I always found enormously comforting, despite the fact that I'm not Catholic.)

What's more, Kinnear and Martindale have an almost jarringly good moment in which she admits that she's very angry about the fact that Colton lived when her son, who was a Marine, died. It's suddenly a very real scene between these two solid actors, and he builds to the question, "Do you think God loves my son more than he loves yours?" There's something in that scene wanting to poke its head out and be alive, but it disappears back into the mush.

If the script had been willing to take a position on its own central conflict – so, does Todd believe Colton traveled in a Biblically meaningful way to a separately existing heaven or not? — it would have been on more solid footing. But in the end, its desire not to be too provocative, along with perhaps the vagaries of the true story on which the film is based, leaves Todd somewhere in the middle. He gives a climactic sermon that says ... well, yes, it's real, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's a literal place, because we've all seen heaven in the support of a loving friend, right? This was Colton's heaven. Maybe you have a different one. In other words, the title of the movie should perhaps have an asterisk after it. Or not! Depending!

So it's okay either way. It's enough for people who absolutely believe that heaven literally is a location and contains clouds and angels and a physical green-eyed Jesus, and not too much for people who believe that Colton's story, at least, is not enough to persuade them one way or the other. (You can both be religious and believe in heaven and still believe what happened to this child was not necessarily heaven, of course, particularly in light of the fact that they're clear that he never died on the operating table even briefly.)

I kind of liked this family. I liked Kinnear, I liked his flock (Thomas Haden Church shows up, along with Martindale), I liked the movie's soft-focus sense of humor in the opening scenes. But it's both too enamored of Colton's heaven and too uncommitted to it, in a way, to really have much to say about faith. Which is a shame, because faith really does remain an underexplored idea.

This Easter, you can drown your sorrows in a glass of Jellybean milk — or with a pile of beer-flavored jelly beans.

The new twists are a sign that jelly beans are continuing their march to candyland domination. Americans buy 16 billion beans in the Easter season alone (mid-February until the actual holiday), according to the National Confectioners Association. The candy even has its own holiday on April 22.

That's quite an accomplishment for a seemingly simple candy. But in fact, there's nothing simple about the bean. It is a riddle wrapped in a sugar shell.

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In the wilds of Africa, Chimpanzees consistently choose to make their sleeping nests in a particular tree that offers the "just right" kind of comfort that Goldilocks famously preferred.

That's according to a new study in the journal PLOS ONE that could also bolster a theory that solid shut-eye may have been a key to human evolution.

In the latest study, scientists measured the "stiffness and bending strength" of seven trees most commonly used by chimps to make their sleeping nests in Uganda's Toro-Semliki Wildlife Reserve. The scientists then looked at hundreds of nests.

National Geographic writes: "Of the 1,844 chimpanzee nests studied, 73.6 percent were made from a sturdy tree called Ugandan ironwood—even though that species made up only 9.6 percent of trees in a survey of the region.

"Despite the fact it's relatively rare, they're saying seven out of ten times, 'I want to sleep in this species,'" study leader David Samson was quoted by NatGeo as saying.

In the PLOS ONE abstract, the authors said it appears the chimps preferred "a compliant yet constraining structure [reducing] stress on tissues."

"[The] functional concavity of the nests obviates the need to adjust posture during sleep to prevent falls," the authors added.

A sleep quality hypothesis that holds "that apes construct sleeping platforms to allow uninterrupted sleep and to promote longer individual sleep stages" seems to be supported by the findings, scientists say.

So, what do snoozing chimpanzees have to do with our own evolution?

National Geographic says:

"Sometime in the Miocene period, 23 to 5 million years ago, ancient apes changed their sleeping locations from branches to platforms. That, in turn, led to a better night's sleep.

"Studies in both humans and orangutans show that better quality sleep, with longer periods of rapid eye movement, improves cognition and memory. Ancient apes' improved slumber, then, may have led to the development of bigger brains.

"But it's also possible that apes' big brains may have led to the need for more sleep, not the other way around, noted [biological anthropologist Aaron] Sandel (who is not involved in the chimp bed study)

"In any case, Samson said, an added boost in cognition certainly gave apes and humans an evolutionary edge.

"'Big brains,' he said, 'need big pillows.'"

Chelsea Clinton announced Thursday that she and husband Marc Mezvinsky are expecting the couple's first child, also a first grandchild for former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

"Mark and I are very excited that we have our first child arriving later this year," Chelsea Clinton, who is 34, said at a New York event while sitting on a stage with her mother, according to The Associated Press.

Hillary Clinton said she's "really excited" about becoming a grandmother.

Chelsea is vice chairman of her family's foundation. She made the announcement at the end of an event on empowering young women, the AP says.

Josh Gibbs normally wouldn't leave his apartment in Northeast Washington, D.C., pick up a loaded pizza from a restaurant in Chinatown, bike to a complete stranger's apartment, drop off the pizza and leave without any cash exchanging hands. But last week, he did just that. And truth be told, he kind of loved it.

"It's exciting. It's just fun," he says. "When the app goes off, when it beeps, I get this little adrenaline rush. I can make some money. It's like a game."

The app he's referring to is Postmates, a service that allows users in five cities — D.C., New York, San Francisco, Seattle and, as of last month, Chicago — to order any item, from any store or restaurant, any time of day, and receive it within an hour. The couriers are everyday people like Gibbs, who's a full-time teacher, and all the money is transferred through a smartphone app, no physical cash involved. Think of it as the Uber of home delivery.

Gibbs, 23, is an avid biker, and he had toyed with the idea of making some extra money as a courier before. But he didn't know where to start.

Along came Postmates, which made the job seem not only appealing but also accessible. Gibbs started working for the startup three days after he applied.

"It's something I can do on the side. I can work during the dinner rush; I can work after the school year," he says. "I'm on my bike anyway."

A Low Barrier To Entry

Postmates is part of a burgeoning cohort of tech-savvy on-demand delivery services. In D.C., there's Urban Delivery; in San Francisco, Shyp; in Chicago and Manhattan, eBay-owned Shutl; also in Manhattan, UberRUSH, which entered the game just last week.

It's also part of a larger phenomenon that MIT researcher Denise Cheng calls the peer economy — "platforms that allow people to monetize skills and assets that they already have," she says. This includes Uber, TaskRabbit, Airbnb and Etsy, among some of the larger players.

All Tech Considered

How The Sharing Economy Is Changing The Places We Work

Former U.S. senator and Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards has returned to a North Carolina courtroom to help represent a 4-year-old Virginia boy in a medical malpractice case.

Edwards is one of three attorneys representing the parents and guardians of a boy with brain damage and physical injuries they say occurred in December 2009.

At that time, the boy was an infant in the care of Pitt County Memorial Hospital in Greenville, N.C., and an emergency room doctor.

In 2012, Edwards faced six felony charges in a case involving nearly $1 million provided by two wealthy political donors to help hide his pregnant mistress Rielle Hunter as he sought the White House in 2008.

A jury acquitted Edwards on one count of accepting illegal campaign contributions and deadlocked on the remaining five.

Edwards was a North Carolina senator from 199 to 2005.

In 2004, he was the Democratic Party's candidate for vice president.

Billionaire Michael Bloomberg's plan to invest $50 million in what he describes as a mom-driven grassroots effort to support pro-gun-safety candidates grabbed headlines Wednesday, and energized gun control activists.

The commitment, the former New York City mayor says, aims to beat back the profound political influence of the National Rifle Association in 15 targeted states — to "make them afraid of us," he told NBC's Today Show.

"This is what the American public wants," Bloomberg said, referring to his group's intended focus on gun-purchase background checks.

Polls show that Bloomberg, 72, is correct — Americans overwhelmingly support background checks for all gun purchases.

But Bloomberg and his ally in this new initiative, Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, have so far fallen short of overpowering the NRA, and Bloomberg's critics have argued his efforts aren't worth the money.

Just a year ago, in the wake of the mass shooting at Newtown's Sandy Hook Elementary School that left 20 children and six adults dead, the Democratic-controlled U.S. Senate failed to pass bipartisan gun safety legislation that included expanded background checks. Bloomberg spent millions supporting the legislation, including paying for tough television advertisements.

Since Newtown, a dozen state legislatures have passed stricter gun safety laws, but twice as many have loosened restrictions. Two Colorado legislators who supported that state's new gun control legislation were removed from office in a recall election viewed as a proxy war between the NRA and Bloomberg. (A third legislator facing recall resigned.)

And in the dozen-plus years that have passed since hundreds of thousands of gun safety activists participated in the Million Mom March on Washington in 2000, that mom-centric effort has largely fizzled.

What suggests that Bloomberg, whose Mayors Against Illegal Guns has joined with Moms Demand Action to form the new group, will see a better result?

"Politically, this looks very similar to the past, when there is an impulse for change that falters," says Robert Spitzer, who has written extensively on gun politics, including the 2012 Encyclopedia of Gun Policy and Gun Rights.

The difference now, Spitzer says, is that "there are substantial, high-visibility, well-funded groups that didn't exist previously." Those groups include Bloomberg's and the political action committee created by former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., and her husband. Giffords was seriously injured in early 2011 in a mass shooting that killed six people.

Her PAC, Americans for Responsible Solutions, reported raising $2.5 million the first three months of this year, has $7.7 million on hand, and has raised $14.5 million since its creation last year.

Bloomberg insisted Wednesday that he's not undertaking a "battle of dollars" with the NRA, which in the 2012 campaign cycle spent about $20 million. But the claim seemed more than a bit disingenuous.

"That's real money," Spitzer says of Bloomberg's financial commitment and the Giffords' successful PAC.

Jennifer Coffey, national spokeswoman for the pro-gun-rights Second Amendment Sisters organization, says she sees Bloomberg's investment as a waste of money.

"I think he has a very unhealthy fascination with firearms, and how this inanimate object is a threat to everyone in the world," she says. "He lives in a state where people are in food lines with not enough to eat, who are jobless — why doesn't he focus on them? Or on criminals running through his streets, destroying homes, families, businesses?"

Coffey says her major concern with gun-purchase background checks is proposals that would put mental health records on a national database. She predicts that first responders who have sought counseling because of job stresses would be targeted, as would those who have been treated for depression.

"Mental illness is not a crime," Coffey says.

At the California-based Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, however, executive director Robyn Thomas hailed the mayor's investment — and his potential future contributions — as something that will give state legislators courage to pursue gun safety efforts.

"One of the challenges in getting smart laws even considered has been the NRA's money and influence in the political arena," she said. "This investment and this commitment neutralizes some of that.

"Unlike the Million Mom March, having really organized, effective grassroots efforts in conjunction with the money — that combination has the potential to be incredibly effective."

The grass-roots appeal to women remains a powerful tool, though, political scientist Spitzer says. The focus on women — and mothers in particular — makes demographic sense, he says. Gun control is one of those gender gap issues: Not only do a higher percentage of women support expanding gun safety laws, women also are more likely to believe that gun crime is worse than statistics show.

"In many ways, this is about emotion," Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action, said on the Today Show. "We're going to go out and educate moms and women and Americans."

The message, she said: "Gun violence prevention, gun violence prevention, gun violence prevention."

With that mantra, plus money, can Bloomberg be a gun law game changer?

"The jury's out," Spitzer says.

At the height of the Great Depression, President Franklin Roosevelt enacted a raft of New Deal programs aimed at giving jobs to millions of unemployed Americans; programs for construction workers and farmers — and programs for writers and artists.

"Paintings and sculpture were produced, murals were produced and literally thousands of prints," says Virginia Mecklenburg, chief curator at the Smithsonian Museum of American Art.

i i

The "millennial generation" has been getting a bad rap in popular culture in recent years. Millennials, roughly defined as people born in the 1980s and '90s, frequently see themselves depicted as entitled, coddled and narcissistic.

But many — including millennials themselves — dispute those characterizations. Young adults today are tolerant, civic-minded and entrepreneurial, they note, and are thriving despite entering into a tight job market, often with significant amounts of student loan debt.

In an Oxford-style debate for Intelligence Squared U.S., two teams recently faced off over myths, realities and prospects for young adults while considering the motion "Millennials Don't Stand A Chance."

Before the debate, the audience at New York's Kaufman Music Center voted 18 percent in favor of the motion and 47 percent against. After the debate, 38 percent agreed with the motion, while 52 percent disagreed, making the team arguing that "Millennials Don't Have A Chance" the winners of this particular debate.

Those debating were:

More From The Debate

A friend of mine grumbled on Facebook recently about the phenomenon of people moaning in despair over April's weather. There's often a cold snap around this time, she pointed out. There's often unpleasant rain. There's often unpredictability.

It's true, of course. The delicate dance of when to put away the warm clothes and take out the short sleeves must be repeated every year, and then re-repeated in reverse the first time you go outside in early September and feel that the air has become slightly less hospitable than it was yesterday. It's true that we shouldn't act surprised. It's true that we should look at our calendars, nod sagely, and say, "Right on time."

But somehow, we manage to summon every April the impatience and restlessness that can only mean one thing: we are lusting for spring in our hearts.

It really is remarkable, though. It should be old by now, but it isn't. It's amazing. I literally allow myself to be amazed by the effect of the earth going around the sun. It happened again! I think. My part of the globe is once again getting more direct sunlight more of the time! It's as if I feared maybe it wouldn't. Maybe this would be the year that we chugged to a stop and it stayed January forever. Or worse, February. I should, in theory, be no more impressed by the arrival of spring than by the arrival of morning. I happen to have a huge window through which I can watch the sun come up, and I often do at certain times of year. But I don't have feelings about it.

I have feelings about spring. Every spring, I look forward to that first day that I can drive with the window down, even though I've been driving with the window down since I was a little girl. (I recommend accompanying this trip with the New Pornographers' record Mass Romantic.) Every spring, there's that one day. That one day, when you turn the corner. You hit the farmer's market in a shirt you've washed and dried a hundred times until it's fuzzy and pilling. The tables are crammed with berries that are a little early but they are there, and you ease past somebody slathering sunblock on a kid in a stroller. You take your berries home, but you eat several of them in the car on the way there, because hey – they're grown without pesticides, right?

It's true: We shouldn't grouse about the way winter hangs around. (Even though, in many places, this winter was worse than most.) We should be used to it. It starts to get better, and then it rains, it gets cold again, and we feel suspended and impatient, snapped back and forth between cold and warm. But all that angst is just part of the dance. We talk about the bad weather in part because it preserves that feeling of that one day. It's going to happen soon here.

I sing "Spring, Spring, Spring" from Seven Brides For Seven Brothers to myself at least once every year. Just because. (Well, just because it's pegged to spring, while the other major kicky musical number about animals mating seasonally is specifically pegged to June, and I can never wait that long.)

Every Monday night, TV gives itself over to a mass of preening, posturing men, indulging in petty backbiting. Some are decked out in elaborate costumes, most are presenting idealized versions of the human form, and all are angling for a shot at a singular, prized accessory.

Also, RuPaul's Drag Race is on.

To compare WWE's Monday Night Raw to RuPaul's Drag Race may seem like an easy punch line to those who dismiss both as lowbrow entertainment pitched to niche audiences. But those who indulge in both (almost assuredly a very small sliver of that particular Venn diagram) know better than to reject the notion out of hand. While that opening description focused largely on surface similarities, that's only the beginning of the resemblances. Dig more deeply, and you'll find that not only are the two shows comparable, but they're essentially one and the same.

The sports-entertainment industry and reality-competition-television complex both exist wholly in the realm of massaged reality. While scripted in advance, Raw remains a far more malleable property than your typical scripted series. The WWE churns out five hours of traditional network programming each week, but storylines remain fluid, with emergency rewrites happening at the last minute, if necessary.

The most notable example of late came in the aftermath of the Royal Rumble in January. Fan outcry was so vehement in the wake of the pay-per-view event that no less than Vince McMahon, chairman and CEO of the WWE, reportedly demanded an 11th-hour rewrite of the following night's Raw. That the ultimate outcome of the program is predetermined serves as the gist of the argument to those who dismiss professional wrestling as fake. But such a restrictive point of view misses the fact that while the scripted storyline provides a skeletal frame for the performers to work within, the matches themselves provide the true heart of the show. To watch a high caliber match is to watch tremendously skilled athletes move with seamless and acrobatic grace in an elaborate and largely non-choreographed dance. Beneath that garish exterior is a core of quiet elegance, plainly evident to any who care to look.

Balancing elegance and garishness is the hallmark of any good drag queen as well, and the queens featured on Drag Race do it better than any. The show itself operates under the rules of any reality television show, by trading traditional writers for story producers. (Meaning the show crafts the narrative after it films, rather than before.) And while the composition may differ, the song remains the same: Strings get pulled, plot gets finessed, but the true entertainment comes not from the story, but from the element of performance. Drag Race, too, showcases seasoned, dedicated performers at the height of their skills. The queens see drag as a passion and work to elevate it to art.

Both shows contain the shadows of ancient entertainment forms: large groups of men coming together to put on elaborate, out of the ordinary performances, many of them performing as women. From ancient Greek theater to Japanese Kabuki to Shakespeare, it's not hard to see the trickle-down effect that's led to a single night of programming featuring men acting out the most extreme archetypes of masculine and feminine with big, broad strokes. Conflict need addressing on Raw? Resolution most likely comes with a steel chair to the back, if not a choke slam through a table, if not both. Spat brewing on Drag Race? Someone's almost certainly been disparaging someone else's sewing skills. Or makeup. Or wig. One man's steel chair is another queen's sharp tongue.

At times, the shows present almost like a lazy stand-up comedy set: "See, men act like this, but ladies act like this." The men—wrestlers—snort and snarl at each other, so aggressive that it's inevitable all conflict resolves physically. Often, the most winning are the smoothest talkers, who bring finely honed skills to the microphone and cut the best promos. Most of these men are simultaneously oiled up and watered down with images meticulously fashioned, worked and then reworked. Wrestlers are coiffed and costumed and spray-tanned and chiseled within an inch of their lives. Tradition dictates that anything less than a veritable Adonis must be relegated to a bit part. (For some viewers, this isn't such a marked difference from how the world already operates.)

The women, meanwhile—the drag queens in performance mode—are all vivacious, good time girls, pretty and polished and perfect. Bodies are tight; hair impeccable. The interactions are predictably catty, with girls throwing shade and proving beyond a doubt that this is not RuPaul's Best Friend Race. Queens fine-tune their personas through years of trial and error. ("You better work" no doubt echoing through their minds.)The girls that stand tallest are those whose minds work the fastest. Pretty will get you far, but an acid wit will keep your frenemies where you want them.

Such are the surface observations of shows centered on what it is to create, maintain, and make an art out of your own gender facade. Each world, wrestling and drag alike, contains a multitude of characters and character types. In drag, queens often identify within a certain type, be it comedic, camp, pageant, etc., and no single is dominant. Fishy queens (that is, queens that resemble women to the extent that their true gender is confusing or "fishy") don't perform substantially better than more niche queens when it comes to taking home the crown.

Similarly, at least of late, Raw has moved away from the thought that only the manliest of men can dominate the field. The driving story in the WWE for the last nine months has been that of an ascendant wrestler named Daniel Bryan. His storyline represents a struggle between what the WWE has been — a place where wrestlers are bred (no, really) and bigger is better — and what the WWE could be, which is a place where talent and technique count for more and pretty packaging counts for less. Bryan's rise was fueled by an organic and passionate affinity from WWE fans at large, and his story came to a climax at WrestleMania XXX, a night in which he triumphed over two former WWE champions and one current champion to win the belt(s). (There are two. It's a long story.)

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

Ginny Weasley, the freckly, flame-haired girl who later marries Harry Potter, grows up to be a sports journalist, according to new writing from J.K. Rowling on the website Pottermore. (Login required.) The stories are Ginny's dispatches from the 2014 Quidditch World Cup for the magical newspaper The Daily Prophet. "Not a single Quaffle thrown, not a single Snitch caught, but the 427th Quidditch World Cup is already mired in controversy," she writes. "Magizoologists have congregated in the desert to contain the mayhem and Healers have attended more than 300 crowd members suffering from shock, broken bones and bites."

In Vanity Fair, Ian McEwan talks about having dinner with Salman Rushdie, who had a fatwa out against him: "I remember standing the next morning with Salman in the country kitchen, a gray English morning, and he was the lead item on the BBC — another Middle East figure saying he too would condemn him to death. It was a very sad moment — standing buttering toast and listening to that awful message on the radio."

James Salter remembers Peter Matthiessen, the writer and naturalist who died earlier this month: "His illness was private. It lasted more than a year, and the treatment was difficult. During it, as he became weaker, with his characteristic determination he wrote a final book, just published this past week, 'In Paradise.' He died at home, and his wife, his son Alex, and Zen family washed his body as in ancient times."

The editorial director of Ecco, Lee Boudreaux, is leaving the HarperCollins imprint to launch "Boudreaux," her own imprint at Little, Brown. She told Publisher's Weekly that the imprint will allow her to "discover the kind of electrifying and unexpected voices I've grown to treasure."

Man Booker winner Eleanor Catton writes about the process of finding inspiration for a novel: "Creative influence can have a positive or a negative charge, either imitative ('I want to try that!') or defiant ('I want to see that done differently'). Both kinds of influence are vital for the health of an idea. Too defiant, and the idea will be shrill; too imitative, and the idea will be safe. For me, the moment when these two charges first come together — when I connect, imaginatively, something that I love as a reader with something that I long for as a reader — is the moment the idea for a story is born."

Some investors avoid paying taxes in a move called round-tripping — sending money offshore, then investing it in U.S. stocks or bonds. A study estimates it costs the U.S. billions in lost revenues.

Recently, MIT professor Michelle Hanlon and two colleagues set out to find out all they could about round-tripping.

"I think it's a big problem in the U.S. tax system that individuals can evade taxes and that they try to do so offshore," Hanlon says. "So we just felt like it was a big policy issue actually to try to get a handle on how much this occurs and whether we could track this down with data."

Round-tripping occurs when American citizens open bank accounts in tax havens such as the Cayman Islands. They funnel money into the accounts and then use it to buy stocks and bonds back in the U.S., which is why it's called round-tripping.

"A U.S. individual would pretend essentially to be a foreign investor," Hanlon says. "So they would set up, say, a bank account or a shell corporation offshore and from that offshore location they would invest back in the U.S."

Normally, she says, American citizens who invest in the United States are supposed to pay taxes on any profits they make. "But if they pretend they're foreign and don't report that they're U.S. [residents] and don't report that income then it's very hard for the tax authorities to catch them," Hanlon says.

For a long time it's been nearly impossible to quantify round-tripping. E.J. Fagan of Global Financial Integrity, a nonprofit research and advocacy group, says a lot of countries refuse to tell the Internal Revenue Service anything about their U.S. customers.

"Very often a lot of these jurisdictions — places like, for example, Mauritius or the British Virgin Islands — they make the Cayman Islands look open and transparent. So, very often it's hard to know where the assets are," Fagan says.

But, a study in the Journal of Finance, Hanlon and her co-authors, Edward Maydew of the University of North Carolina and Jacob Thornock of the University of Washington, took a look at how much money has come into the country from places such as the Cayman Islands since 1984. The flow of money into the U.S. has always been erratic and it can be affected by a lot of different factors. But the researchers decided to look at what happened to the flow when the U.S. tax rate went up.

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Havens Are Turning Hellish For Tax Avoiders

One of the least imaginative, but always popular, stories for an editor to assign in years past was the annual tax day frenzy at the local post office.

Younger Two-Way readers may not know this, but before e-filing was the thing to do, many procrastinators would wait until the last possible moment to finish their federal tax returns. And many post offices would keep staff on hand until midnight so that those returns could be postmarked before April 15 turned into April 16.

Now?

"Post offices no longer stay open late on tax day," is one of this morning's typical headlines. As Michigan's Macomb Daily writes:

"Local post offices used to take on a circus-like atmosphere on April 15 when many people would file their taxes up until a midnight deadline amid tax protestors and consultants on hand, often with some dressed up as Uncle Sam.

"But those days are gone.

"Since so many taxpayers now file electronically, most post offices no longer stay open late on tax day.

" 'We really stopped extending hours at our postal locations because there really isn't a need to any more,' said Elizabeth Najduch, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Postal Service's metropolitan Detroit region."