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The first of two American aid workers infected with the deadly Ebola virus in Liberia reportedly arrived in Atlanta today to begin treatment. Dr. Kent Brantly has been living in quarantine conditions since realizing he had been infected with the disease last month.

"The medical plane transporting American Ebola patient Dr. Kent Brantly has landed at Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Georgia," CNN says, citing Phoenix Air, the company that operates the chartered plane. Shortly after noon (ET), the network's TV feed cut to a helicopter camera tracking an ambulance driving on Atlanta's interstates.

When the patient arrives at Emory University Hospital, it will mark the first time someone with Ebola has been treated in the U.S., as NPR's Michaeleen Doucleff reports.

Brantly, 33, and another aid worker, Nancy Writebol, 59, are said to be in serious but stable condition since they contracted the virus while fighting an outbreak that has killed more than 700 people in West Africa.

The two had been working for the Christian charity organization Samaritan's Purse when they became infected. When the news broke Thursday that Brantly and Writebol would be brought to the U.S., officials said they have a much better chance of surviving if they're treated in the U.S. rather than in Liberia.

News of the plan to evacuate people suffering from viral hemorrhagic fever from Africa to the U.S. has caused alarm in some circles. As Michaeleen reports, officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention emphasize that the virus can't be spread by casual contact or through the air.

Both Emory University and the CDC are based in Atlanta; the school says it "has a specially built isolation unit set up in collaboration with the CDC to treat patients who are exposed to certain serious infectious diseases.

No drug can cure someone of Ebola. So far, the two American patients' treatments have included "a blood transfusion from a 14-year-old boy who recovered from the disease" and an "experimental serum," NPR's Richard Harris reports for our Shots health blog.

From member station WABE in Atlanta, Jim Burress reports about the treatment plans after today's arrival:

"The patient is expected to arrive from Liberia at Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Marietta, Ga. From there, a specially outfitted ambulance will take the patient approximately 18 miles to Atlanta's Emory University Hospital where there is a specially built isolation unit.

"Dr. Alexander Isakov is overseeing the transport. At a Friday press conference, he downplayed any threat to public safety.

"'Through drills and exercises over the years, we've developed our competency and feel confident we can do this job well,' he said.

"Once at the hospital, the patient will be treated by a team of doctors and nurses trained in infectious diseases. Emory says it expects the second patient to arrive within the next few days."

While fighting between Israel and Gaza militants rages on for a fourth week, there's another war being fought among Israelis themselves — a war on speech. The nation is proud of its tolerance for free expression. But some Israelis critical of the war say their views are under attack; others say the dissent has gone too far.

On The Street And Online

If there's one place in Israel where you'd expect anti-war demonstrations to be tolerated, it's bohemian Tel Aviv. But last Saturday night, human rights activist Avi Blecherman and a friend were coming home from a protest when three Israelis pounced on them in the stairwell.

"And then they just told me, you know, 'You're a leftist. You're a traitor,' " he says. "And then they just pushed me to this door over there and started beating me and the woman that was with me. Head, chest, arms, legs."

They were fine, but Blecherman is still shaken.

"Something really, really bad is happening to the Israeli society," he says. "It will stay here with us even after the war is ending."

All Tech Considered

The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Remixed And Retweeted

In about one-third of U.S. households, the sound of a phone or doorbell ringing may trigger a desire to duck.

That's because roughly 77 million adults with a credit file have at least one debt in the collection process, according to a study released by the Urban Institute, a research group. A credit file includes all of the raw data that a credit bureau can use to rank a borrower's creditworthiness.

Some of those debts can be quite small — perhaps just a $25 overdue water bill. But some are substantial, and all can hurt a family's long-term economic prospects, the study found.

"In addition to creating difficulties today, delinquent debt can lower credit scores and result in serious future consequences. Credit scores are used to determine eligibility for jobs, access to rental housing and mortgages, insurance premiums, and access to (and the price of) credit in general," the study concluded.

The typical adult in trouble with bill collectors has a median debt of $1,350 in the collection process.

We aren't talking about home loans here. This report looks at nonmortgage debt, such as credit-card balances, stacked-up medical bills or past-due utility bills. These are debts that are more than 180 days past due and have been placed in collections. The study didn't count personal debts, such as loans from family members, or pawnshop loans.

Nevada, a state hit hard by foreclosures, has the worst problem with overdue bills. There, just under half of the residents with credit files have debt in collections, according to the study. The Urban Institute based its report on a random sampling of 7 million people with 2013 credit bureau data from TransUnion, a major consumer credit reporting agency.

While Nevada is a standout, problems with debt are concentrated mostly in the South, the study found. Of the 12 states besides Nevada with high levels of debt in collection, 11 are Southern states: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas and West Virginia. The 12th state is New Mexico.

The states with the fewest troubled debtors are Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota.

About 22 million Americans have no credit file, which typically means they are too poor to have any credit at all. In other words, the study underreports the financial troubles of the truly poor and is more a reflection of the stresses on middle-class families in the U.S.

The report talks about the problems with "snowballing" debt. A lot of these overdue bills start out as relatively minor problems, such as past-due gym memberships or cellphone contracts. But once those old bills get turned over to the collection industry, troubles mount for the debtors, whose credit scores worsen.

Here's an odd twist to the debt story in the post-recession era: Most people are actually cleaning up their credit-card debt. The American Bankers Association said earlier this month that as a share of Americans' income, credit-card debt has slipped to the lowest level in more than a decade.

Today, about 2.44 percent of credit-card accounts are overdue by 30 days or more, compared with the 15-year average of 3.82 percent, according to the ABA Consumer Credit Delinquency Bulletin.

In other words, most people these days are more focused on paying off their bills. "More and more consumers are using their credit cards as a payment vehicle, paying off or paying down their balances each month," the ABA's chief economist, James Chessen, said in a statement.

Here's another peculiar point: The recession really hasn't done much to change the percentage of Americans dealing with debt collection. A decade ago, a study done by Federal Reserve economists concluded that just more than one-third of individuals with credit records had a debt in the collection process.

For the people who have fallen behind on nonmortgage debts, being in the hole hurts because it undermines their long-term prospects.

"High levels of delinquent debt and its associated consequences, such as limited access to traditional credit, can harm both families and the communities in which they live," the Urban Institute study concludes.

Nearly two dozen diaries and notebooks of Siegfried Sassoon – among a handful of prominent soldier-poets whose artistic sensibilities were forged in the trenches of World War I – are being published online for the first time by the Cambridge University Library.

Sassoon, who served in the British Army, was "A gifted diarist [who] ... kept a journal for most of his life," the library says.

"The papers include a run stretching from 1905 to 1959," the library says of the diaries and journals made public to coincide with the centenary of the start of the war.

"At the heart of this series are the war diaries, a fascinating resource for the study of the literature of the First World War which enables a fresh analysis of Sassoon's experience of the catastrophic war which influenced him profoundly," the library says.

As the BBC reports:

"Until now only Sassoon's official biographer - Max Egremont - has had access to the complete 4,100-page archive due to its fragile state.

"Librarian Anne Jarvis said the war diaries were of 'towering importance.'

"The journals, which are made freely available online from Friday, offer a unique insight into life on the front line during World War One.

"Writing in a 'distinctive' but clear hand, Sassoon describes life in the trenches, including the moment he was shot by a sniper at the Battle of Arras, and his depiction of the first day of the Battle of the Somme as a 'sunlit picture of hell.'"

Everaldo Dias Pereira — known to his flock as Pastor Everaldo — shakes the hands of potential voters at a shopping mall in a suburb of Sao Paulo in Brazil.

As he wishes them the peace of the Lord, a group of supporters shout out: "Enough of corruption, enough of people who don't know the word of God. We want Pastor Everaldo."

The pastor is running for president, and even though it is unlikely he will win — polls show he only has 3 percent of the vote — his socially conservative message resonates among many of the evangelical faithful.

"Our proposal is clear," he says. "We defend life of the human being since its conception. We defend the Brazilian family. We defend this clearly: marriage is between a man and woman."

Campaigning is in full swing in advance of Brazilian elections in October. Polls show President Dilma Rousseff will have a tough re-election battle on her hands amid grim news on the economy.

Among those competing for the public's vote are evangelical Christians — a group with growing political clout. And to garner support they're using a strategy familiar to American voters — focusing on passion-inspiring social issues like abortion, homosexuality and religion in schools.

Religious Leaders, Political Kingmakers

There are dozens of other evangelicals running for national office in this election. Some are affiliated with one of the two main evangelical parties, one of which Pastor Everaldo heads; others are members of other groups.

Evangelicals currently make up 14 percent of deputies and 5 percent of senators in Brazil's National Congress. Evangelicals say they hope their numbers in government will jump some 30 percent after the upcoming elections.

Parallels

Brazil's Evangelicals A Growing Force In Prayer, Politics

"From a very small percentage of the population ... we get out these general laws of migration that were defined in the late 19th century," Schich says.

One law was unexpected: People don't like to move too far from home, even in the 21st century. Despite the invention of trains, planes and cars, artists nowadays don't venture much farther from their birthplaces then they did in the 14th century. The average distance between birthplace and where a person dies hasn't even doubled in 400 years, the team found. (It's gone from 133 miles to 237 miles.)

Schich and his team also showed that deviations from these overall trends could be linked to historical events. For example, a lot of politicians and architects died in France between 1785 and 1805, right around the time of the French Revolution. But the violence had a much smaller effect on people in the fine arts.

The models are the latest application of a rapidly growing field, called network science — which uses visualizations to find the underlying patterns and trends in complex data sets.

Krulwich Wonders...

A 'Whom Do You Hang With?' Map Of America

Last month, the only hospital in the sleepy town of Belhaven in eastern North Carolina closed its doors, prompting Belhaven Mayor Adam O'Neal to step out of party lines and call for an expansion of Medicaid in North Carolina. And then he took a lot more steps.

The Republican mayor and self-proclaimed conservative spent the last two weeks walking the 237 miles from eastern North Carolina to Washington, D.C., to raise awareness of the need to save his and other rural hospitals around the nation.

O'Neal did it with the support of the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP. O'Neal, Belhaven residents and NAACP members met on the front steps of a U.S. Senate building on Monday. They demanded the reopening of the hospital and hoped to draw attention to what they call a rural health care crisis.

The protesters fear that the 20,000 residents of Beaufort and Hyde counties will have to travel as far as 75 miles for emergency department facilities. O'Neal asserts that people will die as a result of the hospital's closure and that one woman, 48-year-old Portia Gibbs, was the first victim of Vidant Health's "shameless and immoral" decision to close the hospital.

Barry Gibbs, husband of Portia Gibbs, joined O'Neal at the rally in D.C. He says his wife died as a result of delayed care, waiting for a helicopter to airlift her to Norfolk, Va., because the hospital in Belhaven had closed. There aren't any doctor practices or hospitals in Hyde County.

Shots - Health News

Medicaid Expansion Boosted Emergency Room Visits In Oregon

The coal industry made its presence known in Pittsburgh this week for public hearings on President Obama's controversial plan to address climate change. A key element is rules the Environmental Protection Agency proposed in June. They would cut greenhouse gas emissions — chiefly carbon dioxide — from existing power plants. The national goal is 30 percent by 2030, based on 2005 levels.

Coal has much to lose under the rules. The EPA says power plants make up about a third of the greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S, and coal is used to generate nearly 40 percent of electricity today. States have a variety of options for meeting their reduction targets, but in coal country the industry and its workers are worried about the future.

At an industry rally Wednesday, Joel Watts with the West Virginia Coal Forum opened the event with a prayer. Referring to "God-given coal fields" his prayer took aim at the White House and EPA. "Give us the strength to stand strong against those who lie to us and hide behind their laws," prayed Watts. After "amen" there was applause.

Few here mention climate change. They focus instead on jobs and the economy. "If you shut coal down you lose miners. Miners lose money and they can't get out and shop. So it affects other businesses — it affects your community," says Kathy Adkins, a nurse in Madison, West Virginia who's married to a retired coal miner.

This theme continued at EPA's public hearing at the federal building in downtown Pittsburgh. West Virginia's Democratic Secretary of State Natalie Tennant called for more federal investment in technologies to capture carbon from burning coal and then store it before it escapes into the atmosphere. "There is no reason to pit clean air against good-paying jobs," testified Tennant, "West Virginia can lead the country in developing coal technology that supports both."

Related Stories

The Two-Way

EPA Chief Says Greenhouse Gas Rules Will Save Country Billions

If your boss was fired, would you walk off the job in protest?

That's what's happening at the New England grocery store chain Market Basket, which has 25,000 employees. Business at Market Basket stores has slowed to a trickle as workers disrupt operations, stage protests and ask shoppers to stay away.

They say CEO Arthur T. Demoulas treats them well, and they want him reinstated.

Outside the Market Basket store in Somerville, Mass., a dozen workers wave protest signs as cars honk in support. Gabriel Pinto, a bagger, says he wants the new top executives gone.

"We're here to get support from all the customers and try and make sure no one comes in. We want Artie T. back," Pinto says.

He's referring to Arthur T., not his cousin and boardroom rival Arthur S. Demoulas. Their battle for control of the company has now spilled over into the 71 supermarkets.

Inside the Somerville store, only three checkout aisles are open. None of them has a line. The entire produce section is barren.

At the deli counter at the back of the store, Adelaide Leonardo is stocking the display case with cheese that may just end up spoiling. Fliers are taped to the glass. One says: "Boycott Market Basket." Another says: "Bring back A-T-D, our one true leader."

Leonardo agrees. "We know everybody. We know the customers," she says. "We are family here."

Yet family is the reason Market Basket is in a muddle. Cousins Arthur T. and Arthur S. are both grandsons of a Greek immigrant, also named Arthur Demoulas, who opened a small grocery in working-class Lowell, Mass., nearly a century ago. Two of his sons grew it into a regional supermarket chain. Their sons have been feuding for decades. An epic legal battle between the two in the 1990s featured a courtroom fistfight. Last month, Arthur S. gained control of the board and ousted Arthur T. That's when workers surprised themselves with their power to grind business to a standstill.

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"It's a terrible infection, and it's taken a terrible toll on the health care system," Frieden says. More than 100 doctors and nurses in the region have gotten infected, and about 70 of them have died.

Two leading doctors in Liberia and Sierra Leone died this week, and two American aid workers are in serious condition at a clinic in Monrovia.

Dr. Kent Brantly, of Fort Worth, Texas, and Nancy Writebol, of Charlotte, N.C., were working with the Christian aid group Samaritan's Purse when they caught the virus. They are both in "grave condition," the group said on its website.

Goats and Soda

American Doctor Sick With Ebola Now Fighting For His Life

Director George A. Romero grew up on classic movie monsters — and he says he never dreamed he'd be responsible for creating the modern zombie that now lurks alongside those monsters. "I never expected it. I really didn't," he tells NPR's Arun Rath. "... All I did was I took them out of 'exotica' and I made them the neighbors ... I thought there's nothing scarier than the neighbors!"

Zombies are everywhere in Hollywood — there's a new batch of films every year, and AMC's The Walking Dead continues to kill it in the ratings. All these zombies can be traced back to Romero's Night of the Living Dead. The 1968 movie wasn't just a low-budget, black-and-white film about corpses that came back to life to feed on people — it was also a commentary on the racial and social tensions of 1968 America.

Romero went on to direct another five films in the zombie canon — most recently 2009's The Survival of the Dead. Romero has chosen to tell his latest zombie tale — which takes place in New York City — in the form of a comic book. The Empire of the Dead is being published by Marvel, and the first five installments are being published as a book.

Members of Congress face a deadline next Thursday – 90 days before the election – to put constituent newsletters in the mail. Carefully timing the mailings is just one fillip in the fine art of congressional communications, especially those that might suggest campaign messages.

"It's either a congressional perk that looks a lot like someone campaigning with tax dollars, or it's part of your constituent service responsibility," says Rep. Rob Woodall, a Georgia Republican, in an acknowledgement that while congressional mass mail is as old as the republic, so are voters' suspicions about its real purpose.

For starters, official congressional mail travels without a stamp. Instead, there's just the lawmaker's signature – called a "frank" – where the stamp would be. The frank implies free postage, but that's not accurate.

"Congress used to have free mail," says Woodall. "Congress now has weird mail" – weird because the frank hides the cost, which is buried in congressional accounting.

Woodall and Rep. Tammy Duckworth, an Illinois Democrat, have introduced legislation to get rid of the frank. Lawmakers would pay regular postage, just like small businesses do.

"I'll buy a bulk permit," says Woodall. "I'll get that done."

The bill isn't likely to get a vote in the remaining weeks of this Congress. And meanwhile, he says, "For us — we'll do a big mailing before the blackout period." So will many of his colleagues.

A Senate history says Congress once went 18 years without the frank, from 1873 to 1891, before deciding life was better with franking. But the practice was long open to easy abuse. In the early 1800s, a senator "attached his frank to his horse's bridle" and mailed the animal to Pittsburgh.

Nowadays, the Congressional Research Service says the volume of franked mass mail spikes twice every two years: in the holiday season of the first year, and leading up to the pre-election blackout.

Rep. Peter King (R-NY) just sent off a newsletter, which he calls "basically a four-page newsletter, describing all my great activities."

"It's not so much that I'm timing it. It's to get it done while I can get it done, that's all," he says.

Congress has rules, of course, intended to tamp down the political subtext of newsletters. But there's still a good amount of leeway.

"Members of Congress can send out a newsletter that puts out exactly how they voted on key pieces of legislation and explains it in very nonpolitical terms, or they can send out a newsletter that basically says they walk on water," says Brad Fitch, president of the nonprofit Congressional Management Foundation, which advises members on how to run their offices.

Pete Sepp, executive vice president of the National Taxpayers Union, points to legislation requiring that mass mailings be printed on official letterhead, "so that these glossy newsletters could not be easily fabricated and sent out to constituents."

But not all members of Congress contribute to the logjam at the congressional mail rooms.

Rep. Danny Davis, another Illinois Democrat, and a nine-term incumbent from a working-class district in Chicago, says he used to issue newsletters. Now, he says, he can't afford to. The money saved on mail goes into constituent aid, dealing with housing, utility shutoffs and other critical problems.

"We're inundated with service requests, all day long, every day," he says.

Davis says he reaches constituents, using means ranging from printed posters to local radio shows. He says he believes in an enlightened citizenry, but his constituents' needs are more pressing than a congressional newsletter before the election.

The House voted Wednesday to authorize a lawsuit against President Obama, claiming that he has overstepped the limits of his executive authority.

The vote to allow Speaker John Boehner to sue Obama was 225 to 201. Five Republicans voted no, while no Democrats voted in favor of pursuing the lawsuit.

Republicans say that Obama exceeded his constitutional authority by unilaterally deciding to delay the employer mandate for insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act.

Boehner said that Obama shouldn't be able to pick and choose which laws he will faithfully execute.

"By circumventing Congress, the president's actions have marginalized the role that the American people play in creating the laws that govern them," said Texas Republican Pete Sessions, who chairs the House Rules Committee. "Specifically, the president has waived work requirements for welfare recipients, unilaterally changed immigration laws, released the Gitmo Five without properly notifying Congress — which is the law — and ignored the statutory requirements of the Affordable Care Act."

Democrats decried the GOP's move. The lawsuits may serve to energize constituents of both major parties — or at least be useful for fundraising appeals, as NPR's S.V. Date reports.

Democrats have attempted to cast it as part of the broader partisan effort to undermine the president. "The lawsuit is a drumbeat pushing members of the Republican Party to impeachment," said New York Democratic Rep. Louise Slaughter.

Boehner denied his caucus has any plans to impeach the president.

Obama, as he has for weeks, dismissed the vote as a "political stunt.

"The main vote that they've scheduled for today is whether or not they decide to sue me for doing my job," Obama said earlier Wednesday.

A temporary peace will begin Friday morning in Gaza, as Israel and Hamas agree to an "unconditional humanitarian ceasefire," according to a statement by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Secretary of State John Kerry.

The truce is set to begin at 8 a.m. local time Friday and last for 72 hours. U.N. Special Coordinator Robert Serry says he's been assured by officials from both Israel and Hamas that they will abide by the truce. The envoys will also travel to Cairo to negotiate a possible longer peace deal, in talks hosted by Egypt.

As NPR's Emily Harris reported earlier today, Gaza has been hit by water and power shortages.

From the statement from Ban and Kerry:

"This ceasefire is critical to giving innocent civilians a much-needed reprieve from violence. During this period, civilians in Gaza will receive urgently needed humanitarian relief, and the opportunity to carry out vital functions, including burying the dead, taking care of the injured, and restocking food supplies. Overdue repairs on essential water and energy infrastructure could also continue during this period."

The House voted Wednesday to approve a bill that would address widespread problems with health care for veterans.

The vote in favor of the $16.3 billion package was 420 to 5.

The problems veterans have had obtaining care has drawn national attention in recent weeks. A White House investigation into problems at Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals found "significant and chronic systemic failures."

House and Senate negotiators unveiled a package to address the problems on Monday. The deal provides $10 billion for veterans to see private doctors if they live far away from VA facilities or have to wait more than two weeks to get an appointment.

The package would also provide $5 billion to hire additional medical staff to address crowding problems at VA facilities themselves, with $2 billion more devoted to opening new offices and expanding existing programs.

"The Department of Veterans Affairs is in the midst of an unprecedented crisis caused by corruption, mismanagement and a lack of accountability across the board," Florida Republican Jeff Miller, who chairs the House Veterans Affairs Committee, said in a statement. "VA is in need of reform, and I applaud my colleagues in the House for passing legislation to do just that."

The Senate is expected to approve the measure before leaving for the summer recess at the end of the week.

On Tuesday, the Senate unanimously confirmed former Procter & Gamble executive Robert McDonald to lead the Veterans Affairs Department.

Parallels

Gaza's Network Of Tunnels Is A Major Hole In Israel's Defenses

If your boss was fired, would you walk off the job in protest?

That's what's happening at the New England grocery store chain Market Basket, which has 25,000 employees. Business at Market Basket stores has slowed to a trickle as workers disrupt operations, stage protests and ask shoppers to stay away.

They say CEO Arthur T. Demoulas treats them well and they want him reinstated.

Outside the Market Basket store in Somerville, Mass., a dozen workers wave protest signs as cars honk in support. Gabriel Pinto, a bagger, says he wants the new top executives gone.

"We're here to get support from all the customers and try and make sure no one comes in. We want Artie T. back," Pinto says.

He's referring to Arthur T., not his cousin and boardroom rival Arthur S. Demoulas. Their battle for control of the company has now spilled over into the 71 supermarkets.

Inside the Somerville store, only three checkout aisles are open. None of them have lines. The entire produce section is barren.

At the deli counter at the back of the store, Adelaide Leonardo is stocking the display case with cheese that may just end up spoiling. Fliers are taped to the glass. One says: "Boycott Market Basket." Another says: "Bring back A-T-D, our one true leader."

Leonardo agrees. "We know everybody, we know the customers," she says. "We are family here."

Yet family is the reason Market Basket is in a muddle. Cousins Arthur T. and Arthur S. are both grandsons of a Greek immigrant, also named Arthur Demoulas, who opened a small grocery in working-class Lowell, Mass., nearly a century ago. Two of his sons grew it into a regional supermarket chain. Their sons have been feuding for decades. An epic legal battle between the two in the 1990s featured a courtroom fistfight. Last month, Arthur S. gained control of the board and ousted Arthur T. That's when workers surprised themselves with their power to grind business to a standstill.

i i

The Pinterest interface is simple: Just click a button, and any Web page gets broken down into its constituent images. Any of those can be added to your own set of images, known on Pinterest as a board. Other people can find those boards, and copy what they like — or simply search through all the photos on the site.

Pinterest didn't take off among tech-loving men in California. Rather, it was young women away from the coasts who initially flocked to the site to plan everything from simple dinners to weddings. Now, it has tens of millions of users who have copied billions of pictures onto boards about everything from macrame to sports cars.

Pinterest is mostly known as a place people go to find things to buy or make. The company likes to say that Pinterest is about planning your future, but it's also just about seeing — visually — a bunch of interesting stuff on a theme, all in one place. So there are boards for wedding planning and child rearing and men's linen suits, but also for kittens and model airplanes and mountains. Some boards are just a mood like "monumental" or "cute" or "adventurous."

All Tech Considered

You Love Pinterest. Find Out Why The Police Do, Too

For the average school kid, weighty, wonky topics like conservation, climate change and the circular economy might sound off-putting, if not downright dull. Yet Christiane Dorion has sold millions of children's books about these very concepts.

The trick? She never mentions them. "You can teach anything to children if you pitch it at the right level and use the right words," said the U.K.-based author.

Dorion distills hefty environmental concepts into bite-sized, kid-friendly explanations. Along the way, whimsical pop-up spreads — complete with pull-tabs, flaps and booklets ­­— engage even the shortest attention spans. Her books, written for 7- to 12-year-olds, tackle a variety of environmental and earth science topics, like how the weather works and how we make and discard everyday products from T-shirts to cheeseburgers.

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A new law in Bolivia allows children as young as ten to work legally, and has led to sharp criticism from many international human rights groups, who note that it goes against a United Nation convention setting a minimum age of 14.

But supporters of the legislation say that the law guarantees legal protections and fair wages for children, who have been working regardless of laws against it.

A 2013 report from the U.S. Department of Labor reported that more than 20 percent of Bolivians between the ages of 7 and 14 worked, while a U.N. agency reported a figure nearly three times that high in 2008, according to the Associated Press. Both reports note that Bolivian children work in some of the country's most dangerous working conditions.

NPR reporter Sara Shahriari spoke with NPR's Renee Montagne about the complicated situation that led to this controversial law, and the reactions in Bolivia and around the world.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio's administration is under fire for signing off on a building plan that allows a new luxury high-rise on Manhattan's western edge to have a separate entrance for low-income residents.

About 20 percent of the units in the 33-story tower will be reserved for low- and middle-income residents. But all the affordable units will be grouped in one area, and those tenants will have to enter through a separate door.

"This developer must go back, seal the one door and make it so all residents go through the same door," City Councilwoman Helen Rosenthal said. "It's a disgrace."

U.S.

Lack Of Affordable Housing Puts The Squeeze On Poor Families

New Jersey used to be known as "the nation's medicine chest," but over the last two decades, many of the state's pharmaceutical industry jobs have dried up or moved elsewhere and left millions of square feet of office space, warehouses and laboratories sitting empty.

One of those sites is the 116-acre corporate campus of the Swiss drug maker Roche in Nutley, N.J. There are dozens of buildings on this campus, 10 miles west of midtown Manhattan. In fact, there are enough bio and chem labs, offices and auditoriums to fill up the entire Empire State Building. But since December, all of that space — 2 million square feet of it — has been vacant, the laboratories dark and the sidewalks deserted.

"When this was a thriving site, this sidewalk would have been busy with folks walking up and down," says Darien Wilson, one of just 38 Roche employees still working at the site as the company tries to sell the property. "We had great amenities for people, like on-site childcare, you had dinners to-go where you could order food by lunch and take it home with you if you were working late. We had dry cleaning," he says.

Five years ago, Roche acquired Genentech, moved its management to San Francisco and started to slowly withdraw from New Jersey. That's a pretty typical story for what's been happening in the state. In the last 20 years, New Jersey went from having more than 20 percent of U.S. pharma manufacturing jobs to less than 10 percent.

"Essentially, every time there's a merger or one company acquires another company, there's a reduction in force, and there's been furious mergers and acquisitions in the pharma industry, particularly over the past 10 years," says James Hughes, dean of the school of public policy at Rutgers.

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Israel broadened its assault on Gaza on Tuesday, wrecking the region's only power plant and killing dozens of Palestinians.

Barrages "destroyed Hamas's media offices, the home of a top leader and what Palestinians said was a devastating hit on the only electricity plant," The New York Times reports.

The bombings came on a day when hope briefly arose about a new cease-fire. Both Israeli and Palestinian officials in the West Bank discussed the possibility.

But Hamas, which runs the Gaza Strip, rejected the idea.

"We don't accept any condition of ceasefire," Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif said on Hamas broadcast outlets. "There is no ceasefire without the stop of the aggression and the end of the siege."

With Tuesday's bombings, which the Guardian described as "the most relentless and widespread" of the three-week-old conflict, the Palestinian death toll has exceeded 1,200.

The shelling of the power plant, which Palestinian officials described as taking a devastating hit, will bring additional hardship. The lack of electricity will make existing problems with water and sewage far worse.

"We need at least one year to repair the power plant, the turbines, the fuel tanks and the control room," Fathi Sheik Khalil of the Gaza energy authority told the Guardian. "Everything was burned."

On All Things Considered, NPR's Emily Harris described how one family in Gaza spent the Muslim holiday of Eid, which marks the end of Ramadan.

Some family members have been killed, others injured and nearly all displaced. "There are 53 people staying in this three-bedroom apartment," Harris reported, "including, the mothers say, at least eight infants."

On the diplomatic front, there was disagreement between the U.S. and Israel about what had been said in private conversations between top officials.

The White House dismissed as "totally false" a report on Israel's Channel 1 that President Obama told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a telephone call Sunday that Israel must immediately end its military offensive in Gaza and was not in a position to choose which countries could mediate a cease-fire.

"We have seen reports of an alleged POTUS-Netanyahu transcript; neither reports nor alleged transcript bear any resemblance to reality," tweeted the National Security Council's press account.

For their part, Netanyahu's aids denied Secretary of State John Kerry's characterization of one of his many conversations with the Israeli prime minister. Kerry suggested Tuesday that Netanyahu had asked him to "try to get a humanitarian cease-fire," but the prime minister's staff said that the cease-fire idea was actually Kerry's.

Small fatty fish like mackerel, herring, sardines and anchovies are high in omega-3s, vitamin D and low on the food chain.

Those shining attributes have earned them plenty of nods from doctors and environmentalists alike, as we've reported. They're not among the most popular seafoods in the U.S., though, partly because of their fishy taste.

But if you knew that eating these fish would mean shrinking your carbon footprint a wee bit, would that convince you to buy them over say, that bag of frozen shrimp you just mindlessly threw into your grocery cart?

Robert Parker is betting that if you care about eating greener, you'll want to know about how much fuel it takes to catch your favorite fish. He's a Ph.D. candidate from Nova Scotia, studying the fishing industry at the University of Tasmania in Australia.

Parker and Peter Tyedmers, who directs the School for Resource and Environmental Studies at Dalhousie University in Halifax, recently published an analysis of a fishing industry fuel use database Tyedmers developed. Their analysis finds that fisheries producing the small fish – sardines, mackerel, and anchovies — are "among the most energy and carbon-efficient forms of protein production." The paper appeared in the journal Fish and Fisheries on July 4.

They also found that fishing for shrimp and lobster are almost as fuel-intensive as raising livestock. As we've reported, raising livestock has more of an impact on the environment than any other food we eat.

For example, Parker says, to catch a metric ton (about 2,200 pounds) of sardines or anchovies, it takes about 5 gallons of fuel.

In contrast, to get the same amount of lobster or shrimp, you'd burn an average of 2,100 to 2,600 gallons of fuel.

Now, U.S. and Canadian lobster outfits "are a bit more efficient because of the higher lobster biomass in the ocean," he says. But they are still burning close to 264 gallons of fuel to catch those 2,200 pounds of crustacean.

So why is all this fuel getting burned? As the fishing industry has evolved in the last century from throwing out a few lines over the local dock to industrialized operations, we've been able to fish in more parts of the ocean and freeze our catch right on the boats.

But "a consequence of many of these advancements has been the increased reliance of fisheries on larger vessels, the motorization of fishing fleets with more powerful engines and the increased demand by fisheries for fossil fuels to power everything from propulsion and gear operation to on-board processing, refrigeration and ancillary services such as navigational aids," the paper says.

A jury has awarded former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura $1.8 million in a defamation suit against a deceased author.

The jury on Tuesday determined that Ventura was the figure described as a "celebrity" Navy SEAL in Chris Kyle's 2012 book American Sniper.

The SEAL was called "Scruff Face" in the book, but Kyle later identified him as Ventura, who became a professional wrestler and one-term independent governor after leaving the Navy.

Kyle wrote that in 2006 he had decked Ventura in a bar in California, after Ventura said that he hated America and that Navy SEALs "deserve to lose a few."

Ventura denied having said any such thing and said the account had hurt his career, as well as his standing among the community of SEALs. Kyle died last year but Ventura sued his estate.

"The verdict will tell the world Chris Kyle's story was a lie," David Bradley Olsen, Ventura's attorney, said. "One-point-five million people have bought the book. Millions more heard Fox TV trash Jesse Ventura because of it. And the story went viral on the Internet and will be there forever."

In testimony videotaped prior to his death, Kyle stood by his account.

"Legal experts had said Ventura had to clear a high legal bar to win, since as a public figure he had to prove 'actual malice,' " The Associated Press reports. "According to the jury instructions, Ventura had to prove with 'clear and convincing evidence' that Kyle either knew or believed what he wrote was untrue, or that he harbored serious doubts about its truth.

The jury voted 8-2 in favor of Ventura, awarding him $500,000 in defamation charges and $1.345 million for "unjust enrichment."

Jurors had been instructed to reach a unanimous verdict, but were unable to do so. Federal rules allow for split verdicts, if both sides agree.

"The decision came just a day after the jury sent a note to court saying it could not reach a verdict after five days of deliberation," Minnesota Public Radio reports. "U.S. District Judge Richard Kyle (no relation to Chris Kyle) told jurors to 'take one more shot' at coming to a consensus."

A class of insecticides called neonicotinoids, which are used on a lot of big corn and soybean fields, have been getting a pretty bad rap lately.

Researchers have implicated these chemicals, which are similar to nicotine, as a contributor to the alarming decline of bee colonies. That led the European Union to place a moratorium on their use, and environmentalists want the U.S. to do the same.

In a study published July 24, researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey found that these chemicals are also leaching into streams and rivers in the Midwest — including the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. And that may be bad news for aquatic life in the region, the scientists say.

"We did the study because the use of the neonicotinoids has been increasing dramatically, especially in the Midwest," says Kathryn Kuivila, an environmental organic chemist with the USGS.

And since these chemicals are highly water soluble, it made sense to investigate whether they were present in the region's streams and rivers, Kuivila tells The Salt.

These pesticides aren't sprayed on. Instead, they're used to coat the seeds of many agricultural crops. But they still end up in the soil and then in the water that runs off farms.

Runoff transports the chemicals from the field to streams and rivers, and since they don't break down easily in the environment they can stick around in these bodies of water for long periods of time, the USGS study notes. And while they're not especially toxic to humans, they can harm a wide variety of insects. At certain concentrations, they can hurt other animals as well.

The Salt

Studies Show Why Insecticides Are Bad News For Bees

In about one-third of U.S. households, the sound of a phone or door bell ringing may trigger a desire to duck.

That's because roughly 77 million adults with a credit file have at least one debt in the collection process, according to a study released by the Urban Institute, a research group. A credit file includes all of the raw data that a credit bureau can use to rank a borrower's creditworthiness.

Some of those debts can be quite small — perhaps just a $25 overdue water bill. But some are substantial and all can hurt a family's long-term economic prospects, the study found.

"In addition to creating difficulties today, delinquent debt can lower credit scores and result in serious future consequences. Credit scores are used to determine eligibility for jobs, access to rental housing and mortgages, insurance premiums, and access to (and the price of) credit in general," the study concluded.

The typical adult in trouble with bill collectors has a median debt of $1,350 in the collection process.

We aren't talking about home loans here. This report looks at non-mortgage debt, such as credit-card balances, stacked-up medical bills or past-due utility bills. These are debts that are more than 180 days past due, and have been placed in collections. The study didn't count personal debts, such as loans from family members, or pawnshop loans.

Nevada, a state hit hard by foreclosures, has the worst problem with overdue bills. There, just under half of the residents with credit files have debt in collections, according to the study. The Urban Institute based its report on a random sampling of 7 million people with 2013 credit bureau data from TransUnion, a major consumer-credit reporting agency.

While Nevada is a standout, problems with debt are concentrated mostly in the South, the study found. Of the 12 states besides Nevada with high levels of debt in collection, 11 are Southern states: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas and West Virginia. The 12th state is New Mexico.

The states with the fewest troubled debtors are Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota.

About 22 million Americans have no credit file, which typically means they are too poor to have any credit at all. In other words, the study under-reports the financial troubles of the truly poor, and is more a reflection of the stresses on middle-class families in the U.S.

The report talks about the problems with "snowballing" debt. A lot of these overdue bills start out as relatively minor problems, such as past-due gym memberships or cell-phone contracts. But once those old bills get turned over to the collection industry, troubles mount for the debtors whose credit scores worsen.

Here's an odd twist to the debt story in the post-recession era: Most people are actually cleaning up their credit-card debt. The American Bankers Association said earlier this month that as a share of Americans' income, credit-card debt has slipped to the lowest level in more than a decade.

Today, about 2.44 percent of credit-card accounts are overdue by 30 days or more, compared with the 15-year average of 3.82 percent, according to the ABA Consumer Credit Delinquency Bulletin.

In other words, most people these days are more focused on paying off their bills. "More and more consumers are using their credit cards as a payment vehicle, paying off or paying down their balances each month," the ABA's chief economist, James Chessen, said in a statement.

Here's another peculiar point: The recession really hasn't done much to change the percentage of Americans dealing with debt collection. A decade ago, a study done by Federal Reserve economists concluded that just more than one-third of individuals with credit records had a debt in the collection process.

For the people who have fallen behind on an array of non-mortgage debts — from hospital bills to cellphone charges — being in the hole hurts because it undermines their long-term prospects.

"High levels of delinquent debt and its associated consequences, such as limited access to traditional credit, can harm both families and the communities in which they live," the Urban Institute study concludes.

Saying that the conflict in Ukraine had "gone on for far too long," Secretary of State John Kerry called on Russia to use its "considerable influence" to make sure investigators had access to the debris field of the downed Malaysia Airlines plane in eastern Ukraine.

The separatists who control that area of Ukraine, said Kerry, "have displayed an appalling disregard for human decency."

Kerry spoke after Dutch and Australian experts abandoned their attempts for a third day in a row to reach the debris field.

CNN reports that the 50-member team was accompanied by monitors from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, who were unable to leave Donetsk because "there is too much fighting at the moment on and near the route to the disaster site."

Kerry also spoke after the European Union agreed to implement tougher sanctions against Russia.

Reuters reports the deal reached by the EU on Tuesday targets the Russian "oil industry, defense, dual-use goods and sensitive technologies."

"Among the new measures that were discussed are steps that could limit access of Russian banks to European capital markets, which could affect European holders of Russian debt and financial services firms that do business there," Reuters reports.

Meanwhile, the White House said the U.S. could also unveil additional sanctions against Russia as early as today.

"It's precisely because we've not yet seen a strategic turn from Putin that we believe it's absolutely essential to take additional measures, and that's what the Europeans and the United States intend to do this week," Tony Blinken, Obama's deputy national security adviser, told the AP earlier today.

Kerry, who was speaking alongside the Ukrainian foreign minister in Washington, said he had talked to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who told him Russia wanted to deescalate the situation in Ukraine.

However, Kerry said, actions have not shown "a shred of evidence" that Russia wants to end the violence.

Russia Today, the Russian-funded, English-language news service, reports that Lavrov blamed Kiev. If it adhered to a cease-fire agreement, Lavrov said, investigators would have access to the Malaysia Airlines disaster site.

Saying that the conflict in Ukraine had "gone on for far too long," Secretary of State John Kerry called on Russia to use its "considerable influence" to make sure investigators had access to the debris field of the downed Malaysia Airlines plane in eastern Ukraine.

The separatists who control that area of Ukraine, said Kerry, "have displayed an appalling disregard for human decency."

Kerry spoke after Dutch and Australian experts abandoned their attempts for a third day in a row to reach the debris field.

CNN reports that the 50-member team was accompanied by monitors from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, who were unable to leave Donetsk because "there is too much fighting at the moment on and near the route to the disaster site."

Kerry also spoke after the European Union agreed to implement tougher sanctions against Russia.

Reuters reports the deal reached by the EU on Tuesday targets the Russian "oil industry, defense, dual-use goods and sensitive technologies."

"Among the new measures that were discussed are steps that could limit access of Russian banks to European capital markets, which could affect European holders of Russian debt and financial services firms that do business there," Reuters reports.

Meanwhile, the White House said the U.S. could also unveil additional sanctions against Russia as early as today.

"It's precisely because we've not yet seen a strategic turn from Putin that we believe it's absolutely essential to take additional measures, and that's what the Europeans and the United States intend to do this week," Tony Blinken, Obama's deputy national security adviser, told the AP earlier today.

Kerry, who was speaking alongside the Ukrainian foreign minister in Washington, said he had talked to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who told him Russia wanted to deescalate the situation in Ukraine.

However, Kerry said, actions have not shown "a shred of evidence" that Russia wants to end the violence.

Russia Today, the Russian-funded, English-language news service, reports that Lavrov blamed Kiev. If it adhered to a cease-fire agreement, Lavrov said, investigators would have access to the Malaysia Airlines disaster site.

This summer, more people than ever before are booking rooms on Airbnb and using carpooling websites and smartphone apps to get around on vacation. The new "share economy" can be a money saver in areas hard hit by the economic crisis, like southern Europe.

But in sunny Spain, authorities are cracking down.

In Barcelona — one of the top destinations for European tourists this summer — police are pulling over and ticketing drivers suspected of using the private taxi app, Uber.

The regional Catalan government is also trying to thwart Airbnb, fining the U.S. company some $40,000 and threatening to block its website. This is the first such punishment for the popular room-booking website, and other municipalities could follow suit.

Spain is emerging as a battleground for such apps and a test case for how governments handle innovations beloved by many citizens but hated by the hotel lobby and powerful labor unions.

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With Dollar Tree's agreement to purchase Family Dollar on Monday, two of the United States' biggest discount stores are coming together in a deal estimated at $8.5 billion in cash and stock.

The New York Times reports:

"The deal comes amid pressure on Family Dollar by the activist investor Carl C. Icahn, who urged the company last month toexplore a sale of itself. But Family Dollar said in a statement that it had been exploring strategic options since the winter.

"Under the terms of Monday's deal, Dollar Tree will pay $74.50 for each share of Family Dollar. The bid is made up of $59.60 a share in cash and Dollar Tree stock worth about $14.90. Including debt, the deal values the target company at about $9.2 billion.

"The bid represents a premium of nearly 23 percent to Family Dollar's closing price on Friday."

Politics

'Citizens United' Critics Fight Money With Money

Vincenzo Nibali has officially won this year's Tour de France, becoming the first Italian cyclist to do so since 1998 with a ride past fans lining Paris' Champs-Elysees.

As we reported on Saturday, Nibali, riding for Astana Pro Team, had worn the yellow jersey through most of the three-week competition that had been marked by bad weather and the relatively quick elimination of some of the favorites.

On an overcast Sunday in the French capital, Nibali rode past the Arc de Triomphe on his way to the winner's podium.

The New York Times sums up his victory, acknowledging that "To some extent, Nibali benefited from the misfortune of others.

"Chris Froome, the defending champion from Britain, quit early in the three-week race after three crashes in the miserable rain and cold that made the Tour sometimes seem as if was being run in the early spring. Then Alberto Contador, who has won the Tour three times although his 2010 title was stripped for doping, hit a sinkhole and broke his leg, again on a damp and chilly day.

"But Nibali, 29, ... did not cruise to a win by default. He won four stages of the Tour. Three of them came in each of the mountain ranges the ranges the Tour traversed this year: the Vosges, the Alps and the Pyrenees. All of the wins were decisive.

"Adding to the list, Nibali, wore the yellow race leader's jersey 19 of the 21 stages."