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Mali says it freed four militants with links to al-Qaida in exchange for securing the release earlier this week of French hostage Serge Lazarevic.

The African country's justice minister, Mohamed Ali Bathily, speaking to France24, said that the deal for Lazarevic, who was seized by Islamist militants three years ago, involved the swap.

"Yes, we did it and we have done it for Malians before, too," the justice minister said.

"Mali cannot deny that it freed them because it is a fact," he said. "Everyone knows, it serves no purpose to hide it, but Mali did it under a precise framework."

France has refused to confirm the quid-pro-quo swap, although Paris has been known to pay ransoms in the past.

The BBC reports:

"Two members of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) who allegedly took part in Mr Lazarevic's abduction have previously been named as having been released - Malians Mohamed Aly Ag Wadoussene and Haiba Ag Acherif.

"The Malian Human Rights Association told the BBC's Alex Duval Smith in Bamako it had learned that a further two militants, Tunisian national Oussama Ben Gouzzi and Habib Ould Mahouloud, from Western Sahara, were released last week."

The justice minister said a similar deal had been done to free about 30 of its nationals who were captured in the northern city of Kidal, a stronghold of Tuareg separatists, according to Reuters.

France24 says:

"Lazarevic was snatched by armed men in Mali on November 24, 2011, while on a business trip with fellow Frenchman Philippe Verdon in a kidnapping claimed by al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

"Verdon, who suffered from an ulcer and tachycardia – an abnormally fast heartbeat – was found shot dead last year, and those close to his family suggested he had been executed because he was weak."

french hostage

Terrorism

Al-Qaida

Meeting in a rare Saturday session, the Senate is debating a $1.1 trillion package that would increase military and scale back financial and environmental regulations.

As The Washington Post notes: "While mostly liberal resistance had kept the bill's fate in doubt in the House, conservative opposition in the Senate is now the focal point. On the right, the resistance was led by those who wanted to use the bill to confront President Obama on his executive actions on immigration."

And, The New York Times says:

"Partisan maneuvering on Friday disrupted what both Democratic and Republican leaders had expected to be a relatively smooth path toward final passage, a late-night twist that is emblematic of the dysfunction plaguing the 113th Congress.

"Though the spending deal is still almost sure to pass, the Senate did not reach an agreement late Friday. Lawmakers are scheduled to being taking votes on nominations Saturday and work through the weekend to address unfinished business."

The government's current spending authority runs out at midnight Saturday, though it's expected that the Senate to extend that deadline until midnight Thursday to give them more time to wrangle over the budget bill.

One of the main sticking points comes from conservative senators led by Ted Cruz of Texas, who are pushing an amendment to cut off funds to the Department of Homeland security for carrying out President Obama's executive action to relax deportations. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has blocked the measure.

federal spending

It's been a rough ride for the Russian economy and it keeps getting worse. Low oil prices helped push the ruble to another record low on Friday. This spate of bad economic news is probably just accelerating an existing trend: Russia's purchase of gold at an astounding rate.

Russia's central bank bought more than 130 tons of gold this year. Last year, it bought about 75 tons. Bob Haberkorn, senior market strategist at the brokerage firm, RJ O'Brien, says Russia has shifted even more assets into gold because it has had a particularly bad year.

"Western sanctions, coupled with the fall in oil recently, has caused a lot of turmoil in their markets, their stock markets as well as in their currency markets," he says.

Haberkorn says he's not surprised Russia is buying lots of the precious metal. He says gold has been a currency for over 5,000 years, it's always been a vehicle to store wealth throughout history.

"Whether it be a central bank or an individual investor, they always like it, it's always a good feeling to have part of your assets backed up in gold," he says.

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Joshua Aizenman, professor of economics and international relations at the University of Southern California says with its economy suffering, and the cost of imports skyrocketing, Moscow needs to be seen doing something.

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As Oil Prices Fall, Who Wins And Who Loses?

"It makes perfect sense politically for Russia to horde and accumulate more gold," he says. "And equally importantly, it makes sense to advertise this to the population that ... leaders are aware of the need to take care of the reserves and the like."

Central Banks Snap Up Gold

China, India, and many other emerging economies have also been snapping up gold lately, says Ashish Bhatia, a director at the World Gold Council. He says this is a big sea change in gold market. Bhatia says up until a few years ago, central banks were selling their gold assets.

"And what we're seeing is unprecedented in that central banks are now buying somewhere between 300 and 500 tons per year," he says.

The gold price soared a few years back and hit an all-time high of more than $1,800 an ounce in 2011. It's come down since then and is now trading around $1,200 an ounce.

Professor Aizenman says gold is seen as a safe haven, giving countries a degree of autonomy during times of turbulence in the world economy. Aizenman co-authored a report looking at the patterns of central banks buying and selling gold.

"We noted, for example, that there seemed to a positive correlation between ... the wish to signal your political might and the accumulation of gold," he says.

Bhatia, with the World Gold Council, says there are other factors at play. He says the central banks of Russia, China and many other countries are sitting on vast piles of foreign reserves, primarily U.S. dollars and bonds and Euros. Bhatia says central banks began parking their reserves in gold a few years ago as a way to diversify their assets.

"It has no credit risk, unlike the sovereign debt of countries, it has ample liquidity so you can get in and out of the asset very easily, and there's large availability of gold," he says.

Bahtia says the trend in buying gold will likely continue. He says Russia knocked China from its perch as 6th largest holder of gold in the world. Russia now has more than 1,100 tons, about 10 percent of its total assets are now in gold. By comparison, the U.S., still the world's largest holder of gold by a wide margin, has more than 8,000 tons.

China

Russia

i i

To document the veterans at Walter Reed hospital with PTSD, du Cille photographed Army Sgt. John Daniel Shannon, a sniper who was injured in Iraq, with his son, Drake Shannon (right). Michel du Cille/The Washington Post/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Michel du Cille/The Washington Post/Getty Images

To document the veterans at Walter Reed hospital with PTSD, du Cille photographed Army Sgt. John Daniel Shannon, a sniper who was injured in Iraq, with his son, Drake Shannon (right).

Michel du Cille/The Washington Post/Getty Images

The friends and colleagues of Michel du Cille are in shock. They simply can't believe that the photographer with the deep voice and the gentle soul is gone. He died on Dec. 11 of an apparent heart attack while covering the Ebola crisis in Liberia for the Washington Post.

Ben de la Cruz, visuals editor for global health and development at NPR, worked for du Cille at the Post. We asked him to share his memories of the three-time Pulitzer Prize winner.

How did you first encounter du Cille?

Through his images. When I joined the Post in January 2000, [the paper] was featuring his photography from Sierra Leone in the aftermath of the Civil War. He did a photo essay in a camp for people who had amputated limbs [which had been hacked off during the conflict]. This kid is walking down the street of the camp with crutches. The sunlight is in back of him, there's an orange glow. For me, this photo symbolized the plight of the kids.

A picture like that could seem exploitive. I take it this one did not.

Michel was all about gaining the trust of people and presenting these people with dignity. There's this quote I was reading last night from [Washington Post editor] Gene Weingarten. Du Cille was doing this story about this community in Miami. After two weeks Weingarten asked him, "How's the shoot's going?" And du Cille hadn't even taken out his camera yet. He said, first the trust and then the shooting.

So he didn't just parachute in and start taking pictures.

You don't get access to anything, you don't get those intimate moments, unless you have the trust of the people. He was able to have such a long, illustrious career because he really cared about the stories and the people in them.

What was he like as a boss?

He had a tough exterior. When you were called into his office and he looked at you with a poker face, you weren't sure what he was going to say. He always spoke in this slow, deep voice that gave gravitas to everything he said. But he had an infectious laugh and a great smile. I'll always be grateful for getting the chance to learn from him.

What did you think of his coverage of Ebola?

He was fearless. He showed people lying in the street not able to get into the hospital. He went into Redemption Hospital, where it's clearly dangerous [because of the Ebola patients] and showed the conditions that people are in: crowded rooms, people lying on mattresses. It doesn't look like a modern hospital because it isn't. I think his pictures really bring it home: This is why it's so hard to control Ebola.

How would you describe his photographic voice?

He tried to capture emotion. The reason people see his photography as impactful is because there is that emotion that connects us, that humanizes the subject and story.

The Post interviewed him about photography and he said he's from the old school: Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, is what he said. And I thought, that's a good way to think about it.

Michel Du Cille

ebola

photography

On Christmas, a slew of Oscar hopefuls will hit theaters, taking on the kind of important topics you might expect from such prestige pictures: corruption in contemporary Russia, the psychological aftereffects of war, the struggles of the civil rights movement. In their company, the eccentricities of Alexandre Rockwell's Little Feet, which is getting a digital release on Vimeo and Fandor as well as a theatrical run in New York, stand out even more than normal. Shot in 16mm black-and-white and clocking in at a snappy 60 minutes, the movie could almost function as an opening short, certainly as a refreshing appetizer, for the more ambitious films receiving award chatter.

That's not to suggest the film is slight or shallow. Cutesiness and whimsy do feature prominently, but that's impossible to avoid given that the movie is about two siblings, Lana and Nico (played by Rockwell's children of the same names), who, upon discovering that one of their two goldfish has died, embark on a journey across Los Angeles to set the second one free in the Pacific Ocean. In fact, in its own understated way and without undermining the film's otherwise lighthearted mood, Little Feet broaches some serious topics of its own.

Nico and Lana, we surmise in the film's opening scenes, have recently lost their mother. The death of one of their goldfish affects them deeply, then, although it's evident that the two kids regularly process their lives through the lens of fantasy even before that — at one point, Lana tells Nico a story about a panda that becomes depressed after the death of his best friend. The moment comes only shortly after the brief appearance of their father (played by Rockwell), who we see passed out on the couch with a bottle of vodka.

Nico and Lana's journey, then, carries metaphorical weight, but it's not overwhelmed or defined by it. Little Feet doesn't merely explore escapism; it channels it. Not in the style of Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom, which may come to mind watching these children, but in a way much more ramshackle in its construction, more immediately and obviously a product of a child's imagination, with all the digressions and disorganization that entails.

Little Feet's end titles, in fact, give a story credit to "Lana and Dad," which is appropriate for a film that feels very much like a home movie, with father, son, and daughter playing dress-up around the city. Lana at one point walks around in a skeleton jumpsuit. Nene (Rene Cuante), a neighbor who joins Nico and Lana on their journey, dons a captain's hat and 3D glasses. Together, they look like they've just finished cleaning out the local thrift store.

A similarly disordered style permeates much of Little Feet, but of course, when dad is a renowned indie filmmaker, the results are a touch above what the rest of us might hope to produce in similar circumstances. Rockwell's presence is also felt in the occasional spurt of more provocative adult humor, such as when the three kids, in an attempt to get enough money for the bus to the ocean, collect empty liquor bottles off the street to cash in the deposit.

But what's most striking, in the end, are the kids themselves: Nico's rambunctious energy, his devotion to Lana, her tender protection of him. ("I love you Lana. In my brains and my heart," Nico says in one of the movie's more aww-inspiring moments.) They, along with a propulsive soundtrack, hold the film together, if only by a string. Shagginess is the movie's definitive trait, after all, which ultimately only further signals why Little Feet offers a compelling antidote to most other movies on the release calendar this month: Far from being precisely molded to elicit an emotional response, Little Feet is content to let the pieces fall more haphazardly and to seek resonance in small moments rather than grand, dramatic gestures.

Samuel Gbarzeki is fed up.

"How can we cope?" he asks.

The university professor, who teaches English to freshmen and sophomores, has been out of work since July when Liberia's government suspended schools because of the Ebola outbreak.

"Ebola is very, very dangerous because it kills and has no boundaries," he says. "But people don't know what to do. They go to bed hungry because jobs have stopped."

The trim man is wearing a tan baseball cap, pressed khaki shorts and a spotless white T-shirt. He will admit to being "something over 60 years old."

Gbarzeki says Ebola has hit at a particularly bad time for Liberians. It's one of the world's 10 poorest countries. But things had started to look up. A little more than a decade after a brutal civil war had brought the impoverished nation to its knees, authorities say Liberia was beginning to stabilize. The gross national income, for example, has been on a slow but steady upward trend.

Then came the outbreak. Unemployment has soared. Today, Liberia has become a nation of peddlers.

Gbarzeki is standing among a small crowd in front of the Daily Talk news board. The board, which stands 10 feet high and 15 feet wide on busy Tubman Boulevard in Monrovia, is an innovative and low-tech approach to sharing news in a nation where many don't own a television or a radio and can't afford a newspaper.

The board is the brainchild of Alfred Sirleaf, a journalist who created it in 2000, three years before the war ended. He updates the blackboard by hand several times a week, writing headlines in white chalk. A river of people flows past including pedestrians, laborers and multiple vendors of food, clothes, clocks, eyeglasses, kola nuts, shoes. Many stop to look at the day's news.

The headlines on Dec. 2 include: "AFTER KILLING NEARLY 6,000 PEOPLE IN AFRICA, DEATH RATE DROP WITH EBOLA ON THE RUN; DUE TO KILLER EBOLA FEAR SUPREME COURT HALTS ELECTIONS, ORDERS CANDIDATES TO STOP ACTIVITIES; CRIMINALS ENTER PRES SIRLEAF'S COMPOUND FROM BEACH SIDE STEAL WINDOW GLASSES.

Gbarzeki is stunned by this last bulletin.

"This is very astonishing," he says. "Because a president is supposed to have maximum security. If criminals can do this, it's very astonishing"

Gbarzeki says he is not a daily visitor but has been stopping by the board recently for updates on elections due to be held Dec. 16. Liberia's Supreme Court is reviewing a petition that the elections be postponed due to Ebola. But President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf's government wants them to go ahead, even though it has banned mass gatherings.

Gbarzeki reflects the opinion of many standing around him when he says he doesn't understand the logic.

"According to our president, because of Ebola we should not assemble," he says. "Now they are saying elections should be held."

Gbarzeki says life was hard before Ebola.

Now?

"If Ebola closes everything, where do people get money to feed their family?," he asks. "People can hardly put food on the on table for their family. We are hurt."

ebola

Liberia

On Christmas, a slew of Oscar hopefuls will hit theaters, taking on the kind of important topics you might expect from such prestige pictures: corruption in contemporary Russia, the psychological aftereffects of war, the struggles of the civil rights movement. In their company, the eccentricities of Alexandre Rockwell's Little Feet, which is getting a digital release on Vimeo and Fandor as well as a theatrical run in New York, stand out even more than normal. Shot in 16mm black-and-white and clocking in at a snappy 60 minutes, the movie could almost function as an opening short, certainly as a refreshing appetizer, for the more ambitious films receiving award chatter.

That's not to suggest the film is slight or shallow. Cutesiness and whimsy do feature prominently, but that's impossible to avoid given that the movie is about two siblings, Lana and Nico (played by Rockwell's children of the same names), who, upon discovering that one of their two goldfish has died, embark on a journey across Los Angeles to set the second one free in the Pacific Ocean. In fact, in its own understated way and without undermining the film's otherwise lighthearted mood, Little Feet broaches some serious topics of its own.

Nico and Lana, we surmise in the film's opening scenes, have recently lost their mother. The death of one of their goldfish affects them deeply, then, although it's evident that the two kids regularly process their lives through the lens of fantasy even before that — at one point, Lana tells Nico a story about a panda that becomes depressed after the death of his best friend. The moment comes only shortly after the brief appearance of their father (played by Rockwell), who we see passed out on the couch with a bottle of vodka.

Nico and Lana's journey, then, carries metaphorical weight, but it's not overwhelmed or defined by it. Little Feet doesn't merely explore escapism; it channels it. Not in the style of Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom, which may come to mind watching these children, but in a way much more ramshackle in its construction, more immediately and obviously a product of a child's imagination, with all the digressions and disorganization that entails.

Little Feet's end titles, in fact, give a story credit to "Lana and Dad," which is appropriate for a film that feels very much like a home movie, with father, son, and daughter playing dress-up around the city. Lana at one point walks around in a skeleton jumpsuit. Nene (Rene Cuante), a neighbor who joins Nico and Lana on their journey, dons a captain's hat and 3D glasses. Together, they look like they've just finished cleaning out the local thrift store.

A similarly disordered style permeates much of Little Feet, but of course, when dad is a renowned indie filmmaker, the results are a touch above what the rest of us might hope to produce in similar circumstances. Rockwell's presence is also felt in the occasional spurt of more provocative adult humor, such as when the three kids, in an attempt to get enough money for the bus to the ocean, collect empty liquor bottles off the street to cash in the deposit.

But what's most striking, in the end, are the kids themselves: Nico's rambunctious energy, his devotion to Lana, her tender protection of him. ("I love you Lana. In my brains and my heart," Nico says in one of the movie's more aww-inspiring moments.) They, along with a propulsive soundtrack, hold the film together, if only by a string. Shagginess is the movie's definitive trait, after all, which ultimately only further signals why Little Feet offers a compelling antidote to most other movies on the release calendar this month: Far from being precisely molded to elicit an emotional response, Little Feet is content to let the pieces fall more haphazardly and to seek resonance in small moments rather than grand, dramatic gestures.

It's lunchtime at a company called LifeSize in Austin, Texas. A dozen employees are playing beach volleyball on a sand court next to the parking garage behind their offices. Corrine Heery, a 28-year-old financial analyst, says she loves the "midday endorphin rush." And, that it enhances her bragging rights when discussing her work with friends, stating, "it's not just the business side, it's this side too — people getting along and playing fun sports."

Lunchtime volleyball is part of the new image that the company – which sells video conferencing technology — is trying to cultivate to attract millennials like Heery. Her generation is highly sought after in today's technology sector for their dexterity with devices and their ability to adapt to constant change.

Join The Conversation

Use the hashtag #newboom to join the conversation on social media.

LifeSize CEO and baby boomer Craig Malloy says that two years ago his company's culture and its products were outdated. The clunky big-screen televisions and swiveling cameras it manufactured were being replaced by computer and phone applications. Malloy says he needed millennials to help create smaller and simpler technology.

"People in my generation will never be as comfortable, and as up to speed with what's happening on social media and web applications," he says.

So Malloy instituted a company facelift modeled after Silicon Valley start-up companies. He introduced employee perks that appeal to young people, like group exercise and free food. And Malloy says the changes are paying off.

"We're seeing more interest from a younger generation of software and hardware developer maybe that would consider a company like Nest or Google," he says. "And now we're able to compete for that talent."

Changes Spark Generational Protests

The company now focuses on mobile apps, and software that requires minimal technology to use — like a remote control with one button. But not all of the changes at LifeSize have been embraced. One in particular has been divisive across generations of employees.

i i

CEO Craig Malloy sits at his work station. One of the transitions he's made at LifeSize includes giving up offices — including his own — in favor of a more open design. Nicole Beemsterboer/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Nicole Beemsterboer/NPR

CEO Craig Malloy sits at his work station. One of the transitions he's made at LifeSize includes giving up offices — including his own — in favor of a more open design.

Nicole Beemsterboer/NPR

By next year, nearly all LifeSize employees will be moved out of their offices, sitting at work stations that have just a few feet of sheer glass separating colleagues, leaving minimal privacy.

Malloy says that kind of office set up fosters collaboration, and he hopes, innovative ideas. But baby boomer employees protested so much, he decided to be the first to make the transition. "I knew that if I moved out of my office into the open area, no one would have a leg to stand on complaining that they can't get their job done," he says.

Larry Danko's dissatisfaction with the new floor plan isn't just about getting work done. "I earned a window. That was important to me," he says.

The 66-year-old manager has accepted that he will lose his office in the transition, but he is not looking forward to it. Like many Baby Boomers, he views a private office as symbolic of a person's level of achievement, and value.

Danko says he has accepted he will lose his office in the transition, but that he is not looking forward to it. Like many baby boomers, he views a private office as symbolic of a person's level of achievement, and value.

Tony Vida, a 31-year-old IT manager, feels differently. "I think change is inevitable," he says.

Vida doesn't see the changes at his office as being about one generation or another. Instead, he says it's part of the natural evolution of how work gets done over time.

“ I knew that if I moved out of my office into the open area, no one would have a leg to stand on complaining that they can't get their job done.

- Craig Malloy, LifeSize CEO

"I'm sure everyone that used to have an in and out folder on their desk waiting for paper notes didn't want to do the whole e-mail thing," he says.

But some experts say evolution that happens too quickly can cause problems.

"What happens is a lot of over correcting. [Employees] try too hard to focus on that young demo. Often I think they not only alienate the older [employees], but sometimes it backfires," says Sharalyn Orr, a management consultant with Frank N. Magid Associates, a firm that advises companies on public relations, marketing and management.

Malloy acknowledges that the changes at his company have been too much for some older staff members.

"We have lost baby boomer employees. No one has said to me 'there's no way I'm going to move into an open floor plan environment, I'm out of here.' But we have had some push back. On the other hand most businesses are not a democracy. I like to say they're a benevolent dictatorship."

And Malloy — the benevolent dictator — says his company needs to change with the industry. Even if that means leaving some people behind.

As the CIA and Senate Intelligence Committee clash over whether so-called enhanced interrogation techniques are considered torture, another question arises: Have depictions of torture on TV and film helped convince us that it works?

Consider this warning that recently greeted viewers of ABC's political soap opera, Scandal:

"The following drama contains adult content. Viewer discretion is advised."

That label was slapped on the episode because of scenes like the moment when trained torturer Huck prepared to ply his trade on colleague (and soon-to-be girlfriend) Quinn Perkins.

"Normally, I'd start with the drill or a scalpel," he told Perkins, who was bound and gagged, looking on in terror. "Peeling off the skin can be beautiful. Or removing fingers, toes; I like the feeling of a toe being separated from a foot. ... I'm so sorry, because I'm going to enjoy this."

Scenes like that have become a regular part of some popular TV shows and movies. People may disagree in real life, but in Hollywood, torture works.

From Kiefer Sutherland as hard-nosed government agent Jack Bauer on Fox's 24, growling this threat to a bad guy: "You probably don't think that I can force this towel down your throat. Trust me, I can."

To Liam Neeson's ex-CIA operative Bryan Mills, shocking a man for information in the movie Taken: "You either give me what I need, or this switch stays on until they turn the power off for lack of payment on the bill."

There's just one problem with these scenes, according to former FBI agent and interrogation expert Joe Navarro: "None of it works," he says. "I've done thousands of interviews, and I can tell you, none of [the TV torture stuff] works."

Navarro spent 25 years in the FBI, with much of that time spent training others in interrogation techniques. He says treating terrorists humanely and empathizing with them works better than abusing them.

But those softer tactics often surprise trainees raised on TV police dramas and spy movies. "Some of the younger guys were I think really surprised when we came in and talked about rapport-building, establishing friendships, sharing food," says Navarro, who recalled one fateful meeting where fellow interrogation experts talked about what some people were doing to interrogate terrorism suspects after Sept. 11, only to realize they had seen similar techniques on fictional TV programs. "They were shocked ... because they had seen so many hundreds of hours of television."

TV Torture Changes Real Interrogation Techniques

Torture's Depiction on TV

Navarro joined a group of interrogation professionals in 2006 who asked producers of 24 to tone down their torture scenes. Another expert who talked to them was Tony Camerino, an Air Force veteran who played a key role in tracking down terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

"What we want to do is more educate," Camerino says. "[We] tell people, look ... some of the real-life situations we can give you would be even more exciting, but they don't involve your protagonist, the person we're supposed to be rooting for, torturing people, and then telling us that that's heroic."

Camerino now works as a writer and technical consultant on CBS's adventure drama Person of Interest.

"Two years ago, I wrote an episode in which a detective was interrogating one of our main characters, accusing him of having committed a murder," the writer says. "Essentially, the approach he used is one we call 'we know all.' "

The scene, from an episode titled "In Extremis," features an Internal Affairs officer telling corrupt officer Lionel Fusco, "You see, when dirty cops want to eliminate DNA from a scene, they use bleach. But bleach stains things. Like the carpet in the trunk on the vehicle that you signed out on the day Stills disappeared."

Camerino explains: "He presented all the evidence that he had to make the subject feel as if it was worthless to resist, because he already knew everything."

Have these efforts to change TV torture had an effect?

Two producers from 24 who met with Navarro and Camerino in 2006 say those talks affected work on their current series, Showtime's Homeland. That program won an award in 2012 from Human Rights First for its depiction of the so-called war on terror.

"They all told us that even, apart from the moral and legal objections, torture is a not a reliable way to produce intelligence," 24 and Homeland producer Howard Gordon said during his acceptance speech. "And over time, their way of thinking became ours and at the very least, we became more sensitive to the 'we're just doing a television show' defense."

Still, the episode of CBS's Person of Interest with Camerino's interrogation scene also featured a guest character threatening to shoot someone to get information.

And the revival of 24 this summer showed Jack Bauer interrogating a suspect by saying this: "I can assure you, full immunity is not on the table. But your hand is," just before using a gun butt to smash the suspect's left hand multiple times.

Sometimes, it seems, the drama of torture is too great to resist; even when producers know how dangerous and damaging it is in the real world.

When you donate to a food drive, do you ponder the nutritional labels of the can in your hand? Or do you grab a packet of ramen or a bag of marshmallows from the dark corners of your pantry and hope it hasn't expired?

Healthfulness isn't typically a well-intended food donor's top concern, says hunger advocate Ruthi Solari. The ramen and marshmallows, along with a container of Crisco and a few other items, were basically the entire contents of a food box delivered to one of her volunteer's grandmothers who received food aid, Solari says.

"What would she even make with this?" she notes.

Solari's nonprofit, SuperFood Drive, works with food banks and pantries, schools and individuals on food drives that focus on nourishing, nutritionally dense nonperishables. And it offers materials, available for free download on its website, that groups and individuals can use to host their own healthful food drives.

"People think if it's nonperishable, it must be unhealthy," says Solari. "Instead of reaching in the back of the pantry for what's expired or undesired, we're asking people to really think about health."

That means donating items like lentils, canned tuna or canned salmon, peanut butter without added oils or sugars, brown rice, quinoa or kidney beans. With these sorts of pantry staples, she says, "you can have amazingly healthy food as the basis of any meal."

i i

Peanut butter, canned tuna and canned fruits in natural juices are among the "superfoods" on Feeding America San Diego's list of requested donations. Courtesy Feeding America San Diego hide caption

itoggle caption Courtesy Feeding America San Diego

Peanut butter, canned tuna and canned fruits in natural juices are among the "superfoods" on Feeding America San Diego's list of requested donations.

Courtesy Feeding America San Diego

Though many people may not realize it, eating this way – with a focus on whole, unprocessed or minimally processed foods – can also be a lot cheaper, when you look at the cost per serving, Solari notes. A cost-comparison chart on Superfood's website shows how swapping in raisins for fruit snacks or rolled oats for instant oatmeal will get you a much better (and healthier) bang for your buck.

Giving food pantry clients this type of price information is key to helping them make better nutritional choices when they're shopping, too, says Jennifer Gilmore, executive director of Feeding America San Diego, a hunger-relief organization that serves some 480,000 people in San Diego County, Calif. She says 67 percent of families who frequent food banks make their food purchases "based on dollars, instead of anything having to do with nutrition."

One in 7 Americans visited a food pantry in 2013, according to a national survey conducted by Feeding America.

"These are the elderly, single parents, they're returning veterans," notes Solari. "They're people just like us, our neighbors who hard times have forced to choose between paying for utilities and food."

The Salt

More Military Families Are Relying On Food Banks And Pantries

The Salt

A Glimmer Of Hope In The Fight Against Hunger In America

Many of these people are also struggling with diet-related diseases like diabetes. So in recent years, hunger-relief groups have been putting an increasing emphasis on healthful eating, says Gilmore, who worked with Solari to revamp her organization's nutritional policies. That involved changing not only the types of foods that pantries solicited from donors, Gilmore says, but also educating volunteers and staffers about healthier cooking, so they can pass that knowledge on to the people they serve.

"It's one thing to distribute brown rice and quinoa and bok choy," says Gilmore. "It's a whole other thing to get families to taste it and cook it and eat it at home." Her group now hands out recipes with food boxes.

The goal, says Solari, is to make healthful eating approachable and "really debunking the idea that it's an elitist thing."

"It's not enough to fill empty stomachs," she says. "The opposite of being hungry isn't being full – it's being healthy."

Planning to donate to a food drive this holiday season? Here's SuperFood Drive's suggested shopping list. It's also just as efficient to give money to your local bank online.

food pantries

food banks

food insecurity

As the holiday buying season approaches, retailers remain open to the same attack — called a "point of sale" attack — that hit Target and Home Depot, security experts say. Those analysts say that retailers have their fingers crossed, hoping they're not next.

And leading companies are keeping very tight-lipped about what, if anything, they're doing to protect customers.

Is This Store Hackerproof?

It's easy to spot a scratched face on a watch. It's much harder to tell if the checkout machine that you swipe to pay for that watch is defective.

But Davi Ottenheimer knows how. He's a security researcher at EMC, a Hopkinton, Mass.-based data storage company. He's been auditing retail for a decade. And we're looking at how "hackerproof" stores are this holiday shopping season.

We walk into a Rolex Store in San Francisco, and the diamond-studded watches don't catch Ottenheimer's eye. A tablet that's sitting by the counter, with a little square card reader plugged in, does.

All Tech Considered

Banks Reluctant To Use 'White Hat' Hackers To Spot Security Flaws

Your Money

The Holidays Bring A New Season For Credit Card Breaches

The Two-Way

Kmart Says Its Store Registers Were Hacked, Exposing Credit Cards

"They're not even looking at us," he says as a sales representative walks away. "We could replace the card reader with our own card reader. I have several of those at home."

Never mind that an armed guard is patrolling the door. This store is ripe for a microscale cyberattack. Sure, it would just get a few dozen customers. But, Ottenheimer says, "they spend a lot of money, so if I want to get high-value cards, this would be a place where I could get them."

Rolex and Tourneau, the company managing the store, did not respond to NPR's request for comment about on-site security.

Over at Macy's, Ottenheimer wanders over to an empty corner and stares at a lonely register. He points to a little green icon that's blinking on the hard drive. "It has a network light on the front," he says.

That means it's speaking to other machines that are grabbing card numbers.

Ottenheimer is concerned that crooks could use this unprotected machine to try to break in. "They came over to help us with the jewelry but not with the fact that we're standing and staring at a PC in the corner," he says.

NPR reached out to Macy's to ask what it's doing to protect the customer information feeding into these machines. Is the retail chain scrambling and encrypting card numbers? Is it cordoning off the financial data, so that people with access to one point of entry can't break into others?

Macy's declined to provide a single detail about the most general security measures it's taking.

'Security By Obscurity'

Orla Cox, a security expert at Symantec, helps retailers behind the scenes. And while she can't name her clients because of nondisclosure agreements, she criticizes companies for acting like they can achieve "security by obscurity."

"A lot of times, a lazy approach to security is just to make information difficult to get," she says. "Just because you're not talking about it isn't actually making you any more protected."

According to a recent Symantec report, hacks have gotten bigger and more frequent. Cox and other security insiders say that just about every retailer remains open to the exact same attack — a point-of-sale attack that lifts information from credit card readers — that got Target and Home Depot.

“ Just because you're not talking about it isn't actually making you any more protected.

- Orla Cox, a security expert at Symantec

It's not clear if or when that'll change. NPR contacted two dozen of America's largest retailers — which include Sears, Kohl's, Best Buy, Dollar General, the TJ Maxx company — and none of them would indicate whether their budget for online security has increased in this last year of megabreaches.

"I would think that it's fairly innocuous information anyway," Cox says. "Giving a number out there shows that you're taking it seriously."

A Lack Of Incentives

Visa and MasterCard are nudging retailers to take on a bit more liability. By October 2015, merchants who don't have the more up-to-date EMV chip card readers could have to pay for certain credit and debit card theft in stores.

"There is no silver bullet," says Ellen Richey, Visa's chief risk officer, who's on a national campaign to get retailers to invest.

But, many say, there aren't enough incentives for retailers to address the issue.

Retailers make tiny margins — say 2 percent. They don't want to spend on IT support. When credit card data are stolen, they don't typically have to pay. Even if the retailers' lax network security is at fault, financial institutions typically pick up the bill.

That includes credit unions, like LGE Community Credit Union in Georgia. Its president, Chris Leggett, says he is tired of paying for replacement cards after a hack. "It sure would be nice if the merchants would be willing to share in the cost of cleaning it up due to their lax security," he says. "The issuers are paying the brunt of the expense."

The Credit Union National Association is asking lawmakers to intervene, so that retailers are held to stricter security and disclosure rules.

Card Thefts Become Routine

Among victims, a kind of fatalism has set in. People have come to expect the theft.

Kate Anderson in Minnesota has had to replace her cards five times in the past year. "It always seems to happen on a Friday or a Saturday. So usually that's kind of when I kind of really get like, 'Well, should I really go shopping or not?' " she says.

Now, she and her husband know the drill: "Reset all of our passwords and our PIN numbers and every place that we do auto debits from."

Texas resident Hunter Hargrave has replaced his cards twice following hacks. "I wouldn't be surprised if it happened again," he says.

The 25-year-old is turning away from the world of plastic and using old-school money a lot more. "Whenever I get paid, I take out the vast majority in cash, and then I put the rest on a debit card. But the debit card's only for emergencies," he says.

Even if people ditch their cards, they're not ditching the stores. While the cost of cleaning up a hack is climbing, according to a recent survey by the Ponemon Institute, the cost of doing nothing — and hoping for the best — is not.

Sales at Target and Home Depot have been exceeding expectations. Experts say that as long as we're spending, retailers don't have to spend on protecting us.

This story is part of the New Boom series on millennials in America.

If Noelle Johnson had a bachelor's degree, she'd be able to live closer to work, she says. She wouldn't have to spend so much of her free time hustling for baby-sitting gigs. She'd shop at the farmers market. She'd be able to treat her sister to dinner for once. She and her husband could go on trips together — they'd be able to afford two tickets instead of one.

There are dozens of ways that not having a college degree and dealing with student loans affects Johnson's life.

Johnson, 27, lives in Manassas, Va., and commutes 90 minutes each way by bus and train to Arlington, Va. She likes her job as an office manager at a nonprofit and makes around $40,000 a year. That compares with a national median income of about $34,000 for households led by young adults with some college. The capital region has a higher cost of living as well.

But households led by young college graduates have a median income of about $58,000. And after nine years of changing schools, trying to choose a major, dealing with an illness and managing tuition costs, Johnson has about $20,000 in student loan debt and no degree to show for it.

Millions of millennials are in the same boat. More than 40 percent of households headed by young adults with some college are dealing with student loans. And without the increased earnings that usually come with a college degree, managing even just a few thousand dollars in loans can be a huge challenge.

Richard Fry, a senior researcher at the Pew Research Center, says the real impact of student loans for those with no degree isn't even on how much money they make — it's on their overall wealth.

"The 'some college educated' household that doesn't have the student debt? Their net worth is about $10,000, $11,000," he says. "As opposed to that, for the ones that are still sort of servicing their student debt? They have a net worth of about a grand. So you're looking at about a tenfold difference."

Fry says households with student loans are also more likely to have other kinds of debt, like credit card debt and car payments.

That's true of Johnson and her husband. "We've done payday loans, and, you know it just — it gets out of control," she says. The couple also dipped into their rainy day fund. "We had so much more in savings, but we had to put a lot of that toward school."

That's savings, earnings and debt, all going toward tuition — which is higher than ever, and still rising.

That means lots of students like Johnson have to make calculations: Draw school out so there's time to save up — putting yourself at risk for dropping out altogether? Or take on more student loan debt?

When Johnson hit the $20,000 mark, she realized she needed to step back.

"I had to say, 'Well, I can't take out any more loans and I definitely don't have the cash for it.' So I have to stop, and then save, and then pay for that semester, and then do that all over again," she says.

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Johnson decided against taking out more money when her student loan debt reached $20,000. "So I have to stop, and then save, and then pay for that semester, and then do that all over again," she says. James Clark/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption James Clark/NPR

Johnson decided against taking out more money when her student loan debt reached $20,000. "So I have to stop, and then save, and then pay for that semester, and then do that all over again," she says.

James Clark/NPR

She's still at it, and she has a plan to get to graduation. Her job has a tuition reimbursement program, she says, "but that means I do need to be able to pay first, so we're just working on getting some money together so I can pay for my next semester, and then it'll be reimbursed."

She has about 1 1/2 years to go to finish her bachelor's in nonprofit management at Liberty University. "I think I'll be able to knock it all out pretty easily," Johnson says.

Fry of Pew says it's a good idea for students not to drag out attaining a degree for too long. "Most people who are going to finish bachelor's degrees, they've got 'em by age 30."

Ultimately, though, how long it takes you to finish matters less than whether you do.

"For a bachelor's degree, you're looking at at least an extra $600,000, $800,000 over a working life, compared to if you'd stopped your education at high school," Fry says. "College is expensive, but it's a good investment."

Johnson has no illusions that finishing her degree is going to make her rich or solve all her problems. "I don't expect, because I have a B.A., I'm going to make an exorbitant amount of money."

But she does think it will relieve some of the paycheck-to-paycheck pressure she and her husband feel every month. They'll be able to build their nest egg back up and think about having kids.

"I really want it to work. We really want to be able to be successful," she says. "I know that having my degree is definitely going make the difference. ... It's going to do everything for us."

Correction Nov. 21, 2014

In the audio of this story, as in a previous Web version, we incorrectly say that Noelle Johnson makes about $10,000 more than the national average for people with some college education and that young college graduates make an average $58,000 a year. The story should have said that the median income for households led by young adults with some college education is about $34,000. And it should have said households led by young college graduates have a median income of about $58,000.

Millennials

student loans

paying for college

college loans

debt

college tuition

Samuel Gbazeki is fed up.

"How can we cope?" he asks.

The university professor, who teaches freshmen and sophomore English, has been out of work since July when Liberia's government suspended schools because of the Ebola outbreak.

"Ebola is very, very dangerous because it kills and has no boundaries," he says. "But people don't know what to do. They go to bed hungry because jobs have stopped."

The trim man is wearing a tan baseball cap, pressed khaki shorts and a spotless white T-shirt. He will admit to being "something over 60 years old."

Gbazeki says Ebola has hit at a particularly bad time for Liberians. It's one of the world's 10 poorest countries. But things had started to look up. A little more than a decade after a brutal civil war had brought the impoverished nation to its knees, authorities say Liberia was beginning to stabilize. The gross national income, for example, has been on a slow but steady upward trend.

Then came the outbreak. Unemployment has soared. Today, Liberia has become a nation of peddlers.

Gbazeki is standing among a small crowd in front of the Daily Talk news board. The board, which stands 10 feet high and 15 feet wide on busy Tubman Boulevard in downtown Monrovia, is an innovative and low-tech approach to sharing news in a nation where many don't own a television or a radio and can't afford a newspaper.

The board is the brainchild of Alfred Sirleaf, a journalist who created it in 2000, three years before the war ended. He updates the blackboard by hand several times a week, writing headlines in white chalk. A river of people flows past including pedestrians, laborers and multiple vendors of food, clothes, clocks, eyeglasses, kola nuts, shoes. Many stop to look at the day's news.

The headlines on Dec. 2 include: "AFTER KILLING NEARLY 6,000 PEOPLE IN AFRICA, DEATH RATE DROP WITH EBOLA ON THE RUN; DUE TO KILLER EBOLA FEAR SUPREME COURT HALTS ELECTIONS, ORDERS CANDIDATES TO STOP ACTIVITIES; CRIMINALS ENTER PRES SIRLEAF'S COMPOUND FROM BEACH SIDE STEAL WINDOW GLASSES.

Gbazeki is stunned by this last bulletin.

"This is very astonishing," he says. "Because a president is supposed to have maximum security. If criminals can do this, it's very astonishing"

Gbazeki says he is not a daily visitor but has been stopping by the board recently for updates on elections due to be held Dec. 16. Liberia's Supreme Court is reviewing a petition that the elections be postponed due to Ebola. But President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf's government wants them to go ahead, even though it has banned mass gatherings.

Gbazeki reflects the opinion of many standing around him when he says he doesn't understand the logic.

"According to our president, because of Ebola we should not assemble," he says. "Now they are saying elections should be held."

Gbazeki says life was hard before Ebola.

Now?

"If Ebola closes everything, where do people get money to feed their family?," he asks. "People can hardly put food on the on table for their family. We are hurt."

ebola

Liberia

In Southeast Asia, the battle against malaria is growing even more complicated. And it's all because of monkeys, who carry a form of malaria that until a few years ago wasn't a problem for people.

"According to the textbooks there are only four species of plasmodium parasites that cause malaria in humans," says Balbir Singh, the director of the Malaria Research Center at the University of Malaysia in Sarawak. Now a fifth malaria parasite, called plasmodium knowlesi, has become the leading cause of malaria hospitalizations in Malaysian Borneo.

"At some hospitals in Malaysian Borneo," Singh says, "Up to 95 percent, even 100 percent of the cases are actually this monkey malaria."

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Drones Are Taking Pictures That Could Demystify A Malaria Surge

The knowlesi parasite used to be found only in monkeys. But as farmers have cleared more land for palm oil plantations and new hydroelectric dams are built, the area's long-tailed macaques are being squeezed out of their original habitats. So the monkeys end up living closer to people. And the mosquitoes that transmit the parasite are now biting and infecting humans.

It's a tough malaria to deal with. The mosquito that carries monkey malaria, Anopheles leucosphyrus, feeds mainly at night and outdoors. So the traditional anti-malaria campaigns, which hand out bed nets and spray homes with insecticides, won't help.

What's more, lab technicians in Malaysia often misidentify this new parasite as the more benign plasmodium malarie. The milder form can be treated with pills; monkey malaria often requires hospitalization and a regimen of intravenous drugs. That's because of its aggressive nature. The knowlesi parasite reproduces every 24 hours in the patient's blood while the milder plasmodium malarie takes 3 days to replicate. So monkey malaria comes on fast and can quickly make a person terribly sick. It also has the potential to kill, as do some other strains of malaria. But plasmodium malarie does not.

The fact that the plasmodium knowlesi parasite resides in monkeys also makes it difficult to stop the spread of the disease. In the other forms of malaria, wiping out the parasite in humans can bring transmission in an area to a halt.

With monkey malaria this isn't possible because of the large number of long-tailed macaques in the Malaysian jungle. Singh notes that they're a protected species so any temptation to attack the disease by reducing the monkey population probably isn't feasible.

Singh predicts that the number of cases of monkey malaria will only go up as human development pushes further into the habitat of the long-tailed macaque. The parasite doesn't make the macaques sick, so the parasite and the monkeys get along peacefully. The problems arise when the people are linked to the monkey malaria chain.

Malaysia

monkeys

Malaria

Nazila Fathi covered turbulent events in her native Iran for years as The New York Times correspondent. She learned to navigate the complicated system that tolerates reporting on many topics, but can also toss reporters in jail if they step across a line never explicitly defined by the country's Islamic authorities.

Fathi recalls one editor telling her what journalists could do in Iran: "We have the freedom to say whatever we want to say, but we don't know what happens afterwards."

Five years ago, Fathi was covering the aftermath of Iran's hotly contested 2009 presidential election, when demonstrators flooded the streets to protest a vote they said was rigged in favor of the incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The government warned journalists to stop covering the street demonstrations, which often turned violent, yet Fathi continued to file stories for the Times.

But one day, a government source told her that the authorities had given her photo to snipers who were believed to be shooting the protesters. Soon after, intelligence officials appeared on the street outside her apartment.

Fearing arrest, she remained in her apartment until she and her husband, along with their two small children, left for the Tehran airport in the middle of the night and took a flight out of the country.

Fathi has not gone back to Iran and now lives in suburban Washington, D.C. She's written about the challenges of reporting in Iran in a new book, The Lonely War: One Woman's Account Of The Struggle For Modern Iran.

Speaking with NPR's Steve Inskeep, Fathi says she believes that some journalists are arrested not for their reporting, but to serve as a pawn in a complex power struggle. It could involve Iran and a foreign country or it could be an internal feud between two Iranian government agencies, she says.

The Lonely War

One Woman's Account of the Struggle for Modern Iran

by Nazila Fathi

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Here are the highlights of the interview:

Was the government monitoring you because you were a journalist?

Yes, from the beginning. There was a guy, who I call Mr. X in the book, he became my handler. He was the handler of all foreign reporters. Some of my [journalist] friends had very bad experiences with him. I can't say I got along with him, but I found a way to deal with him in a way that he was never mean to me, and I think toward the end, he was even quite respectful.

Where did you meet with Mr. X?

At different places. The first time it was at one of the Intelligence Ministry headquarters. The he started inviting me to meet him at hotel rooms, which was extremely creepy in the beginning. I was terrified.

(Later, Mr. X invited her to an apartment) When I went there, I searched the entire house and I went into the kitchen and I took a knife and I hid it in my pocket. I was so embarrassed when I walked in because I kept thinking, 'How was I going to use that knife.'

I wrote under very tight deadlines, so I just didn't have time to think about him. But when he called and summoned me, he always came with a big file. So there were always questions about the stories I had written.

'Why did you draw this conclusion? Why did you write this?' But the good thing about Mr. X, or at least the way he treated me, was he listened.

Why did you think you had to leave Iran?

It was about two-and-a-half weeks after the (presidential) election in 2009. All reporters received a letter that said the ones who worked out of an office were not allowed to leave their offices. I worked out of home, so I ignored the ban, I kept going out, and of course I was writing my stories under my byline, and I think that embarrassed the regime.

One day I got a call from a (militia) commander ... he said that he had heard they had given my photo to snipers to shoot me if they saw me. I continued covering the story and I sort of ignored what he had said.

But then I was on my way to see a (political) analyst and I noticed there were people right outside my apartment building sitting in a car and as soon as they saw me, I noticed another car behind me and two motorcycles. I went back home and I never left my apartment building until the night that we left the country.

After I left the country, I found out that the Intelligence Ministry and people in the judiciary were quite divided over whether they should arrest me or not. So it had taken them a while to issue an arrest warrant for me.

You've said there's a lot of free expression in Iran but that there are things you can't write about. What's going on there?

I've always wondered, how come this regime, after 35 years despite all its efforts, all the money it has spent, all the repressive measure that it has taken, how come it hasn't been able to raise the ideological generation that it desired.

I don't know. That's my question too. Iran has changed in very important ways and the (1979) revolution has been responsible for it. It was the revolution that drew people who lived on the margins of society, people who were in the rural areas, into the center, because they were the regime's support base. It rewarded them by giving them jobs, but giving them good salaries and they moved up in society. And they are exactly the same people who are calling for change and reform now.

Tailgating, camping trips and wedding receptions are just some of the occasions when many Americans down a few beers in one sitting. For those who prefer high-alcohol microbrews and other craft beers, that can lead to trouble.

But a growing trend is offering another option: Session beers emphasize craft-beer taste with alcohol as low or lower than big-brand light beers.

Chris Lohring has been brewing craft beer professionally for more than two decades. In 2010, he founded Notch Brewing. The company's lineup includes a Czech pilsner, a Belgian saison, and an India Pale Ale. All of the brews are session beers – meaning their alcohol by volume, or A.B.V., is less than 5 percent.

"The only thing in the United States previous to session beer being available by smaller brewers was the light beers of the world, which are mass-marketed, flavorless beers," Lohring says. "You could call them a session beer, but to me, a session beer needs to have some flavor. It needs to entice you for that second pint."

Lohring likes to say, "One and done's no fun." That concept might sound familiar. In the 1960s and '70s, Schaefer Beer ran countless ads with the slogan, "The one beer to have when you're having more than one."

But when Lohring first started making craft session beers, other brewers told him he was crazy. Stronger brews, including Sierra Nevada's Torpedo Extra IPA with 7.2 percent alcohol, were getting all the ... well, buzz. But today, Lohring and Notch Brewing have plenty of company. That includes Founders Brewing in Grand Rapids, Mich., which introduced its first session beer in 2012.

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All Day IPA, from Founders Brewing, is sold in a 15-pack, instead of the traditional 12-pack. Founders Brewing Co. hide caption

itoggle caption Founders Brewing Co.

All Day IPA, from Founders Brewing, is sold in a 15-pack, instead of the traditional 12-pack.

Founders Brewing Co.

"We've had this great, broad stable of really well-respected, well-recognized beers and then later in the game, All Day IPA came, and that's the one that's risen to the top for us now," says Chase Kushak, chief operating officer for Founders.

All Day IPA is Founders' first session beer. It's sold in 15-packs instead of the traditional 12-pack. Kushak says Founders isn't promoting longer drinking sessions, but when they do come up, All Day IPA — with its 4.7 percent alcohol — is an alternative.

"Those situations where people were drinking throughout the day already existed. And so our goal was to take a very responsible approach to that," Kushak says.

The history of session beers is like an unfiltered microbrew – a little hazy. Most versions trace the term "session" to British legislation during World War I that cut pub hours to one lunchtime and one evening session. But others argue it's a more casual reference to a long stay at the bar. Wartime rationing also limited ingredients, making it harder to produce boozier brews.

But can today's low-alcohol offerings earn high marks for flavor? To answer that, I turned to Jason Alstrom, who has been reviewing beers for nearly 20 years. He's the co-founder of Beer Advocate, one of the top craft beer websites and magazines. On a warm November afternoon, I met him in Boston on the patio at Deep Ellum, a bar that serves session beers from around the world.

We ordered a Guineu Riner, a golden beer brewed in Barcelona. By any standard this a low-alcohol beer. Bud Light and Coors Light clock in at 4.2 percent. Gineu Riner has an alcohol by volume of just 2.5 percent.

"It's just packed with hops," Alstrom says after his first sip. "It's perfectly balanced, but it's really hard to think that it's 2.5 percent. Just an amazing beer."

The experts are convinced, but the customer is always right. And standing at the bar, Newton, Mass., resident Marcin Kunicki told me he recently had a memorable weekend — that he can actually remember — thanks to a session beer.

"We had a half keg of it amongst four guys. We played cards all day. It was a weekend away with the guys," Kunicki says. "And, you know, not to call ourselves alcoholics, but we drank all day."

Kunicki's friend Rob Ross was on that trip. Ross is a home brewer, so he has a hands-on appreciation for the art of making a flavorful, low-octane beer. But he also understands the main appeal.

"You can have a few of them and not be totally drunk," Ross says, laughing.

And whether you sip or swig, the best session beers will leave with you something to savor.

session beer

craft beer

Beer

Cho Hyun-ah, whose family runs Korean Air, caused a stir over the weekend after she demanded that a Korea-bound jetliner return to a gate at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, where it had been preparing to take off.

The reason? Seated in first class, Cho was angered that a junior steward served her macadamia nuts — in a bag instead of on a plate, and without asking first. When a senior steward struggled to cite the proper regulations, Cho had him kicked off the flight, forcing the plane holding some 250 passengers to return to the gate before they could depart for Incheon, South Korea.

Cho is the daughter of Korean Air Chairman and CEO Cho Yang-ho. Fallout from the incident has forced Cho, who's also known by the first name Heather, to resign her post as a vice president at the airline, where her duties included cabin service and in-flight sales.

"I will step down to take responsibility over the incident," Cho said Tuesday, according to the Korea Herald. "I also beg the forgiveness of those who may have been hurt by my actions, and offer my apologies to our customers."

But it's unclear whether Cho's resignation is from a single post or from the entire airline. Reuters reports that she "will remain a vice president with the South Korean flag carrier, the airline said late on Tuesday."

The airline did not assuage its critics when it insisted, at first, that the JFK incident was merely a case of maintaining standards.

"News of Cho's outburst spread quickly on social media," Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo reports, "causing the carrier major embarrassment and confirming every suspicion Koreans entertain about the spoiled brats from big conglomerate families."

Many South Koreans are uneasy with the country's "chaebol" giants, The Financial Times says, referring to international conglomerates that are often operated under a family's centralized authority. The newspaper says relatives "often wield undue influence over management of group companies in spite of their small direct shareholdings."

The case also raised concerns about a possible breach in the airline's safety regulations, which place each plane under the pilot's responsibility. The Chosun Ilbo says a government regulatory agency's early report found that the chief steward reported the problem to the pilot, and that the pilot then orchestrated the return to a gate at JFK.

As aviation buffs will recall, Korean Air served as one of writer Malcolm Gladwell's examples of the dangers of hierarchical traditions in his 2008 book Outliers: The Story of Success.

Airlines

South Korea

As part of Sierra Leone's broader effort to contain the deadly Ebola virus, the country opened a new ambulance dispatch center in September in the capital, Freetown. Along with a new Ebola hotline, the center is considered an important step forward in the war on Ebola.

But on the center's second day of operation, a series of errors put the life of an apparently healthy 14-year-old boy at risk.

The dispatch center is situated in a meeting room at the Cline Town hospital just north of downtown Freetown. Inside the room, a group of men and women are huddled around a table full of laptops. Safa Koruma, a technician, points at a message on a screen. It describes a possible Ebola patient, reported through the hotline, with the words "vomiting and very pale."

Koruma forwards this message — along with hundreds of others — to the nearest health official. A community health worker is then supposed to evaluate the patient and assess the likelihood of Ebola.

"Probable" Ebola cases end up on a large whiteboard on the other side of the meeting room. It's the master list for ambulance pickups.

Victoria Parkinson, of the Tony Blair African Governance Initiative, is one of the directors of the center. She points at a name on the board with the number five written next to it, indicating the number of cohabiting family members.

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"We want to get that [person] quickly, because there's many people in the home that could be infected by," she says.

One of Parkinson's colleagues, Ama Deepkabos, writes down an address and hands it to an ambulance driver. "It's 7 Hannah Street, 555 Junction. Do you understand?" she says, imitating the local Krio accent. "Go directly to the patient. No other stops!"

The driver nods and hustles out to the dirt parking lot, along with a nurse. I attempt to speak with the driver and nurse, but neither speaks good English. They step into a white Toyota SUV with the word "Ambulance" in large red letters, and pull out of the parking lot.

Sierra Leone is in the midst of a three-day national lockdown, intended to slow the spread of Ebola, so the roads are clear. The ambulance speeds across town and is waved through multiple police checkpoints.

After two wrong turns and several stops for directions, it eventually bounces down a long dirt road in Waterloo, a rural suburb 15 miles southeast of Freetown.

The driver and nurse spot the person they believe to be the patient: a 14-year-old boy in a blue T-shirt slouched on a white lawn chair.

They get out and put on glimmering white protective suits, surgical masks and rubber gloves. They walk over and escort the boy, who is able to walk on his own, into the back of the ambulance without touching him. They kick the door closed behind him.

The boy's guardian, Suleiman Espangura, is the principal of a nearby high school. He recently took the boy, Ngaima, into his custody because his family was moving to a rural part of Sierra Leone, and Ngaima wanted to stay at his current high school near Freetown.

"He likes to play football," Espangura says of the boy. "And he's very clever. We [teachers] like children who are clever."

Espangura says he's unclear why Ngaima is being taken away in an Ebola ambulance. He says the boy doesn't have any signs of Ebola — no fever, no vomiting, no diarrhea. He just has a headache and a slight loss of appetite.

But because Espangura had heard multiple public service announcements encouraging people to report any signs of illness, he contacted a health official and was told a community health worker would come to evaluate Ngaima. Instead, an Ebola ambulance showed up.

Espangura says the ambulance driver and nurse asked him if Ngaima was "the patient." Espangura said yes, thinking the men were here to evaluate him. Instead, they ushered the boy into the ambulance and whisked him away.

The ambulance rushes across town to a military hospital with an Ebola isolation unit set up outside — a series of white plastic tents with a blue tarp stretched around the perimeter.

The hospital guards, in military fatigues, tell the ambulance driver and nurse that Ngaima is not on their list of expected patients. A heated argument ensues. The driver insists that he is merely following instructions, and that this is the correct patient.

One of the guards eventually calls the head of the hospital, who consents to admitting Ngaima. The driver and nurse spray the back of the ambulance with chlorine and open the door to let him out. Ngaima steps out of the vehicle and disappears behind the blue tarp fence, into the Ebola ward.

A few minutes later, another Ebola ambulance arrives. The military guards are expecting this patient. But they say the beds beds are now completely full — Ngaima has taken the last one. The new patient is admitted anyway.

It's not clear exactly what went wrong here. But now, a 14-year-old boy with a headache is sitting inside an Ebola isolation center.

REPORTER'S NOTE: Peter Breslow, my producer, and I didn't realize what had happened until the following day, when we were reviewing recordings of the event. We noticed that the names given to the ambulance driver did not match the names of Ngaima or his guardian, Suleiman Espangura. We immediately contacted the ambulance dispatch center and Espangura to explain what we thought had happened. The ambulance dispatch center neither confirmed nor denied having made an error.

Ngaima was kept at the isolation unit for the next six days, despite being told that he would get his Ebola test results within 24 hours. Ngaima eventually tested negative for Ebola and was discharged. But it was possible that, between the time his blood was taken and the time he was discharged, he could have been infected by another patient.

Since we returned to the U.S. in late September, I have been unable to reach Espangura for further updates.

Sierra Leone

ebola

If you're able and eager to write an annual check for roughly $100,000, you might expect to be hearing soon from the Republican and Democratic national committees.

In another small step on behalf of big money in politics, Capitol Hill lawmakers agreed Tuesday afternoon on a small provision to be added to the omnibus spending bill, allowing the two party committees to raise money for their presidential nominating conventions. The limit per donor would be $97,200 a year, on top of each party committee's existing limit of $32,400 per year.

The provision is intended to ease money anxieties at the national party committees. Since 1976, the conventions have gotten public financing — $18.2 million for each side in 2012. It was little more than a pittance in the grand spectacle of the party conventions, yet party leaders howled last March when Congress eliminated that public financing. (Lawmakers said the money should go into pediatric medical research.)

The Federal Election Commission provided some comfort to the parties, letting them solicit cash for newly created convention accounts. But that was a stingy move compared to what Congress intends to do.

The $97,200-per-year year limit comes to $388,800 for a four-year presidential election cycle. If the new provision had been available in 2012, just 94 donors could have matched the public financing for both conventions. Or put another way – as the pro-regulation groups would – regular contributions and the new convention account would enable a donor and spouse to funnel more than $500,000 to a party each two-year congressional election cycle.

The new provision also allows the party committees to create building funds. As recently as the 1990s, both party committees had building funds, and there was little accountability for the cash in them. On Tuesday afternoon there was no word on how the building funds would be regulated, or what their contribution limits would be.

The changes in campaign finance law surfaced without fanfare during negotiations when either Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid or Minority Leader Mitch McConnell could have vetoed them.

Six groups that advocate tighter regulation of campaign cash blasted a terse letter to lawmakers: "Our organizations strongly urge you to oppose any campaign finance riders on the Omnibus Appropriations bill that will increase the opportunities to corrupt members of Congress."

Democratic National Committee

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Republican National Committee

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Republican National Convention

"The key is to make the most of the crop, which all supermarkets are doing," she tells The Salt in an email. "This could be using the best of the crop for bagged or loose produce, but [also] looking for alternative uses for those that don't make the grade — i.e. pre-prepared produce (a growing trend), ready meals and soups."

So what's driving the interest? The European Union relaxed strict rules governing the sale of imperfect fruit in 2009. But Tristram Stuart, a food waste activist with the group Feeding the 5000, says growing consumer awareness was also crucial.

"Supermarkets will cater to what public demand requires," he says. And, he notes, "there are not a lot of environmental measures out there that are going to save you money, but stopping wasting food is one of them."

And consumers will scoop up these tasty uglies when they know the story behind their unfortunate looks, says Waitrose spokesperson Jess Hughes.

"We always find these products are popular with customers — they always sell well," Hughes tells The Salt via email.

For now, there appear to be limits to just how much imperfection retailers will take.

"The experience of retailers in the U.K. is that customers naturally select, they always pick the cream of the crop," Ejaz says.

And even Intermarche has said its promotion of inglorious produce can only be occasional, as problems with suppliers occur.

Nonetheless, the fever is also making the leap across the pond: In Canada, Safeway is experimenting with "misfit produce" displays. And your local U.S. farmers market might just have "seconds" of peaches, tomatoes or apples for sale. Stay tuned: Plenty of activists stateside are hoping to bring ugly fruit to a supermarket or CSA near you soon.

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The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled unanimously that companies do not have to pay workers for time spent in anti-theft security screening at the end of a shift.

The decision is a major victory for retail enterprises and manufacturing businesses that could have been on the hook for billions of dollars in back pay for time spent in security screenings.

The Court's ruling came Tuesday in a case involving Amazon warehouses and a temp agency, Integrity Staffing Solutions Inc., which screened workers for warehouses in Nevada. The workers were paid hourly wages to fill customer orders and package them to ship. But, after they clocked out at the shift change, they were required to wait in line for an average of 25 minutes, as some 1,000 workers were processed through just two machines.

They sued the temp agency in charge of the screening, seeking pay for the time in line. But the Supreme Court ruled that under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, a company is required to compensate workers only for duties that are "tied to the productive work" that employees are hired to perform. Writing for the Court, Justice Clarence Thomas said that it matters not that an employer requires an activity; the activity must be "indispensable," and "tied to the productive work" that the employee is hired to do.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Elena Kagan, concurred in the decision, noting that while the screenings may have been related to the warehouse work, the employer could "skip them altogether" without the safety or effectiveness of the workers' principal duties being substantially impaired. Therefore, the screenings were not "integral" or indispensable" to work duties or worker job safety.

Cho Hyun-ah, whose family runs Korean Air, caused a stir over the weekend after she demanded that a Korea-bound jetliner return to a gate at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, where it had been preparing to take off.

The reason? Seated in first class, Cho was angered that a junior steward served her macadamia nuts — in a bag instead of on a plate, and without asking first. When a senior steward struggled to cite the proper regulations, Cho had him kicked off the flight, forcing the plane holding some 250 passengers to return to the gate before they could depart for Incheon, South Korea.

Cho is the daughter of Korean Air Chairman and CEO Cho Yang-ho. Fallout from the incident has forced Cho, who's also known by the first name Heather, to resign her post as a vice president at the airline, where her duties included cabin service and in-flight sales.

"I will step down to take responsibility over the incident," Cho said Tuesday, according to the Korea Herald. "I also beg the forgiveness of those who may have been hurt by my actions, and offer my apologies to our customers."

But it's unclear whether Cho's resignation is from a single post or from the entire airline. Reuters reports that she "will remain a vice president with the South Korean flag carrier, the airline said late on Tuesday."

The airline did not assuage its critics when it insisted, at first, that the JFK incident was merely a case of maintaining standards.

"News of Cho's outburst spread quickly on social media," Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo reports, "causing the carrier major embarrassment and confirming every suspicion Koreans entertain about the spoiled brats from big conglomerate families."

Many South Koreans are uneasy with the country's "chaebol" giants, The Financial Times says, referring to international conglomerates that are often operated under a family's centralized authority. The newspaper says relatives "often wield undue influence over management of group companies in spite of their small direct shareholdings."

The case also raised concerns about a possible breach in the airline's safety regulations, which place each plane under the pilot's responsibility. The Chosun Ilbo says a government regulatory agency's early report found that the chief steward reported the problem to the pilot, and that the pilot then orchestrated the return to a gate at JFK.

As aviation buffs will recall, Korean Air served as one of writer Malcolm Gladwell's examples of the dangers of hierarchical traditions in his 2008 book Outliers: The Story of Success.

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South Korea

Leonel Kaplan, an Argentine jazz musician, often has to travel abroad.

Before a recent trip to Europe, he went to a bank in Buenos Aires to change money and then went to get a haircut. Kaplan felt happy and relaxed and took the bus home after what had been an uneventful trip.

That, however, was about to change.

"As I get down from the bus, a motorcycle with two people wearing helmets cuts me off," he recalls. "One gets off and takes out a gun and says to me directly, 'Give me the 500 euros you got in the bank.'"

They knew exactly how much money he had changed. It was, he says, a pretty professional job.

Distrust Of Banks

In the region, Brazil, Venezuela and Honduras have the lock on murders – they are some of the most violent countries in the world. Argentina is still comparatively safe.

But according to an annual United Nations report on crime in Latin America, Argentina's robbery rate is 41 percent higher than even Mexico's, which comes in second.

To understand this unexpected and very specific surge in crime, you have to look at the country's recent economic history.

“ I would never put my money in a bank. Because I know it could disappear. A bank is no more secure than underneath my mattress.

- Leonel Kaplan, Argentine jazz musician

Robberies in Argentina started soaring after the 2001 default — when the country, in effect, declared bankruptcy. And that would seem to be logical: financial crisis equals more poverty and more thefts.

But that's not the whole picture. A number of analysts provide another explanation and it has to do with what Leonel Kaplan told me at the end of our interview.

He says he doesn't have a bank account.

"I would never put my money in a bank. Because I know it could disappear," he says. "A bank is no more secure than underneath my mattress."

People in Argentina don't trust the banks. That means they carry around cash — a lot of it — to pay for what they need, says Alan Ciblis, the chair of the political economy department of the National University of General Sarmiento.

"You can keep it in a safety box that they have in the vaults – that's probably the safest place," he says. "People have it under the mattress."

Ciblis says most people keep their savings these days in cash in a variety of places because of recent experience.

After the 2001 default, banks were locked down and accounts raided, which wiped out the savings of ordinary Argentines. Many people lost a lifetime of accumulated funds.

Related NPR Stories

The Two-Way

Argentina's Default: 5 Headlines That Tell The Story

Parallels

The Man Argentines Love To Hate Is An American Judge

The Inflation Factor

There's another reason Argentines don't want to put their money in banks – inflation.

"When inflation begins to creep up and you have some extra pesos and you put it in a certificate of deposit in a bank, but the interest rate is below the inflation rate, then you have negative rates and you're losing money," Ciblis explains.

Let's say inflation is at 40 percent a year in Argentina. The government doesn't provide reliable figures, but that's what most economists estimate is the current annual rate.

The bank, meanwhile, may only be giving you 20 percent interest. That means your money is losing its value.

As a result, most people would rather risk the possibility that a thief get into the house and steal the money hidden in the drawer, than face the near certainty that they will lose money in the banking system these days.

"In my opinion, the lack of trust in the banking system which is part of the Argentine culture now is an influence," says Alberto Binder, who studies crime. "But there are other issues – drug crime is growing."

"Argentina is basically a tranquil country, but that conceit is being used as a kind of opium," he says. "I think if you are a calm country surrounded by troubled ones, that should put you on maximum alert."

Crime in Latin America

Latin America

Argentina

Drones, drones, drones.

Everybody wants one. Amazon, to deliver packages, Hollywood to shoot movie scenes, agriculture interests to monitor crops.

And everyone is waiting for the FAA to issue regulations as to how commercial drones might be allowed to operate in the U.S. Those regulations are supposed to come out by the end of the month.

The FAA has been struggling to write the rules for unmanned aircraft for several years. In 2012, Congress told the agency to get on with it and set a deadline for final regulations by September 2015.

According to sources, the FAA is considering requiring operators of commercial drones to get a license; the drones could be flown only as far as the operator could see them, and only in daytime.

That's a lot more restrictive than commercial groups want. But John Villasenor, a senior fellow at Brookings Institution who teaches at UCLA, says the FAA is in a tough spot. "If they come out with rules that are not protective enough and then there's some sort of an accident then they will be criticized for not having been more careful with this technology," he says.

"On the other hand, if they come out with rules that are viewed as overly restrictive in the name of safety then they are going to be criticized as impeding the growth of the industry, so it's a very difficult balancing act that they have to navigate.

In fact, the industry does think that, based on the initial reports, the FAA rules are unrealistic. Take for instance the line of sight requirement. Michael Drobac is executive director of the Small UAV Coalition, which includes companies like Google and Amazon. Drobac says technology will allow drones to be operated far from where their operator is based, making use of tablets or mobile phones to control them. "The reality is that the technology is there but the FAA doesn't necessarily know it or spend enough time with it."

Right now, commercial drones are being tested at six FAA-designated locations across the U.S. Drobac says companies don't much like that restriction either, because companies are in the process of designing their drones, "and they certainly do not want to share their proprietary data with others." He says the testing at the remote locations is also expensive for companies. "It's illegal for companies to test outdoors near their headquarters", Drobac says "and so they can't bring their entire teams."

Meanwhile the FAA is dealing with another drone issue. The agency says it's receiving about 25 reports per month from pilots who have seen unmanned or model aircraft operating near their planes. The consequences of even a small drone colliding with an airplane or getting sucked into its engine could be catastrophic. Everyone from an Alitalia flight landing at New York's JFK airport to NYPD police helicopter pilots have reported seeing small drones near their aircraft.

The New York incident led to the arrest of two men on reckless endangerment charges.

When they do come out, the FAAs proposed regulations will start a lengthy comment and debate period, with industry, privacy and other interests likely to weigh in. It may eventually fall to Congress and the White House to sort it all out and decide how restrictive drone policy should be.

African-American clergy, academics and activists will hold a march on Washington this week, protesting the grand jury decisions in Ferguson, Mo. and New York City and call on the federal government to intervene in the prosecutions of police officers accused of unjustified use of force.

I talked with Reverend Raphael Warnock and Eddie Glaude, Jr., two prominent African-American religious thinkers, about the role of black churches in the wake of major protests and demonstrations inspired by events in Ferguson and New York City. Warnock is the senior pastor at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Ga. — a pulpit once held by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. — and was in Washington to attend a conference hosted by the Black Church Center for Justice and Equality. Glaude is a professor of religion and chair of the Center for African American Studies at Princeton University. In 2010, he wrote an attention-grabbing essay called "The Black Church is Dead."

Interview Highlights

How did the black church form? Why is it significant that black churches stay involved right now?

Rev. Raphael Warnock: The black church, born fighting for freedom, is that church among the American churches that has seen justice-making as central to its Christian identity. Now, the black church, like most institutions has always been a mixed bag. And so even though I'm a leader and pastor in the black church and the church of Martin Luther King, Jr., there's a kind of radical trajectory that comes out of the black church that I do think is distinctive, and for obvious and good historic reasons. It literally is a church organized by slaves as they responded to that primary contradiction in their lives.

What is your response to the news that the NYPD officer who killed Eric Garner won't be indicted?

Prof. Eddie Glaude, Jr.: I'm stunned. You know, I keep thinking about my son. He's a freshman at Brown. A few weeks ago, I got a text from my son saying that he was stopped by the police in Providence. He was doing an assignment and they stopped him and told him that he needed to get out of that park and they had their hands on their guns. So here we are with video footage of Eric Garner saying "I can't breathe," and I just go back to how vulnerable my child was and I'm just rageful. I can't put it in any other way. I feel like its open season and I'm trying to find resources to think carefully and deliberately about this moment, but I'm just worried about my baby and I'm worried about our babies. And it's hard to put it in words.

i i

Rev. Raphael Warnock, senior pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church, pictured at a gathering last week of African-American clergy, academics and activists outside Washington D.C. Charles Pulliam-Moore/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Charles Pulliam-Moore/NPR

Rev. Raphael Warnock, senior pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church, pictured at a gathering last week of African-American clergy, academics and activists outside Washington D.C.

Charles Pulliam-Moore/NPR

Rev. Warnock: It's a painful moment and somehow we've got to recognize where we are and how we respond in this minute. I don't have any easy answers to this. I heard the president say the other day that he's going to dedicate millions of dollars for more video cameras, for more body cameras, and this is on video tape. It doesn't matter if you're in Ferguson or New York; doesn't matter whether its on video tape or not; doesn't matter if you're running away from the police — Michael Brown — or literally standing there trying to reason with the police — Eric Garner. The message from both is that the life of a black man is less valuable than a handful of cigarillos. This is a slap in the face, a kick in the stomach because we're not talking about a conviction, we're talking about an indictment. I'm not a lawyer, but I paid attention in civics class; they told me in ninth grade that a good lawyer could indict a ham sandwich. And so apparently a black man's life is worth less than a ham sandwich.

What role do black clergy play given this news?

Prof. Glaude: I think to role of black churches in this moment is varied. One has to do with tending to the souls of people. These are trying times. I'm thinking about that wonderful line in Toni Morrison's Beloved, and I'm going to paraphrase here: "How much are we supposed to take?" So it's in these moments that churches and ministers ought to find a way to comfort the spirit, not to get us adjusted to the injustice, but to understand that we are justified in our rage and anger. Black churches have always been and continue to be wonderful resource institutions where we can build capacity in order to speak back and respond to crises. They should open their doors in order to provide folks a safe space in order to engage in the deliberative process. How are we going to mobilize in response to what seems to be open season on our babies?

Rev. Warnock: My role is not unlike it is at any other time; it's just that it's extremely difficult right now. We pastors have a two-fold role: priestly and prophetic. On the priestly side, our jobs is comfort the afflicted. On the prophetic side, our job is to afflict the comfortable. And the question becomes how can one remain true to both in this moment.

Incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says one of his top priorities will be to make the Senate work the way it used to — which would include the use of filibusters to block presidential appointments. But would that improve the way the Senate works? Republicans will be debating that question behind closed doors Tuesday. Many were furious when Democrats eliminated the filibuster for nearly all confirmation votes last year — a change some called the "nuclear option." But now that the GOP will be in the majority, they're not all that eager to go back.

The drama over which party has the dirtier hands when it comes to blocking nominations has gone on for years as the majority party has changed. When Democratic Sen. Harry Reid decided to get rid of the filibuster on confirmation votes last year, it wasn't all that surprising, given how bad things had become.

So, why should anyone care about this moment now? Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine says it matters because it's about restoring integrity to the Senate.

"The Senate has always been known for its protection of minority rights, and I think it was wrong for the Democrats to break the rules of the Senate in order to change the rules of the Senate," Collins said.

So she wants to return to the old rules — when it took 60 votes to confirm rather than a simple majority. Because the Senate is supposed to be different from the more populist House — it's meant to be more deliberative.

But many Republicans ask, why bother changing things again? There's less drama with majority rule. Even those who would rather restore the filibuster — like Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona — understand that some people are tired of fighting.

"Because I think a lot of our colleagues realize we shouldn't politicize these nominees," Flake said.

Actually, there are very political reasons for Republicans not to resurrect the filibuster. Especially if a Republican gets elected president in 2016.

"If you get a Republican president, then he's not going to have nearly the troubles that we've always had with Democrats in getting judges through," said Senate Republican Orrin Hatch of Utah.

And Hatch says even if his party brought back the filibuster for tradition's sake, it could be short-lived.

"I used to be in this camp, who think we need to get back to the old rule. But the Democrats will break that rule anytime they want to, if they get back in the majority," Hatch said.

Besides, even without the filibuster, there are many ways Republicans can easily block nominations.

"The whole filibuster debate is a bit of a red herring. It's not unimportant, but it certainly doesn't explain anywhere close to all of the reasons that a president's confirmation rate is not going to be 100 percent," said Russ Wheeler of the Brookings Institution.

As the party in control, Republicans can refuse to schedule committee hearings for nominees. Or the new majority leader can simply refuse to hold floor votes.

But law professor Carl Tobias at the University of Richmond says Republicans may well restrain themselves.

"They are coming into power and want to show that they can actually do something. Sen. McConnell is talking about making the Senate functional again. I think they want to start off on a positive note," Tobias said.

If you look at the past three two-term presidents, each was able to get at least some of his nominations through in his last two years — all with a Senate controlled by the opposing party. So maybe McConnell will be satisfied with returning to those examples of Senate tradition.

nuclear option

judicial nominees

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