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I've always had a good time in Cuba. The people are friendly and funny, the rum is smooth, the music intoxicating and the beaches wide, white and soft.

But you're accompanied everywhere by government minders. They call them responsables. Any Cuban you interview knows your microphone might as well run straight to their government.

If you want to talk to someone with a different view, you have to slip out of your hotel in the middle of the night without your minder — though dissidents say other security people follow you.

Each trip I've made as a reporter has revealed a little more of what kind of society Cubans live in. It's a warm, sunny place, filled with industrious and accomplished people who laugh loudly in public but mutter or whisper under their breath about the government. And the government is everywhere.

In Cuba, the government is the news and the economy. It is the only voice in every broadcast or book. Every neighborhood has a local "Committee for the Defense of the Revolution," on watch for what they call "counter-revolutionary activities."

You still sometimes make a human connection with your responsable, and each trip, I've left with a light suitcase. Responsables beg — that is not too strong a word — for you to leave them your blue jeans, razor blades, toothpaste, or The Economist magazine, which they cannot get and often try to sell.

Government press people say, each trip, "Return as a tourist. Bring your family," and I've been tempted. Havana is beautiful, caught in a kind of pastel time capsule of a 1940's sea-breeze skyline and 1950's Chevies nosing noisily up the street. Havana would be something to see before new Hyatts, Starbucks, or Chase Bank buildings make it look like many other modern cities.

But tourists inhabit a separate Havana. They can spend dollars, eat lobster, and drink wine in beachside restaurants in which Cubans are not permitted. They can watch news from around the world and travel the Internet as Cubans can't.

And it is startling and sad to see legions of young women lined up behind tourist hotels, hoping, as Yoani Sanchez, the Cuban blogger, has written, to "snag ... a tourist to take them to a hotel and offer them, the next morning, a breakfast that comes with milk."

The largest hotel company in Latin America is the Grupode Tirismo Gaviota. It is owned by the Cuban military. So while I've been glad to go to Cuba as a reporter, I can't bring myself to return as a tourist.

Maybe now, more Americans will get the chance to see Cuba. And I hope they get to know what they're really seeing.

Latin America

tourism

Cuba

Pennsylvania's fracking boom has led to record-breaking natural gas production, but its neighbor, New York, announced Wednesday it was banning the practice. Industry and environmental groups say New York's decision could be good for Pennsylvania.

New York's ban comes six years after the state placed a temporary moratorium on fracking to study the gas drilling technique. Now, officials question fracking's economic benefits and cite environmental risks.

"There are many red flags because scientific issues have not yet been comprehensively studied through rigorous scientific research at this time," says Howard Zucker, New York's acting health commissioner.

George Stark, a spokesman for Houston-based Cabot Oil and Gas, says New Yorkers who fear the process just don't understand it. The company operates many of the most productive wells in Pennsylvania.

"Our industry — this entire episode — is saving many farms. So the farmers that I've been in contact with endorse and embrace hydraulic fracturing," Stark says.

Pennsylvania is now dotted with more than 7,000 active wells.

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A drilling rig in Butler County, Pa., in 2013. Pennsylvania is now dotted with more than 7,000 active wells. Jason Cohn/MCT/Landov hide caption

itoggle caption Jason Cohn/MCT/Landov

A drilling rig in Butler County, Pa., in 2013. Pennsylvania is now dotted with more than 7,000 active wells.

Jason Cohn/MCT/Landov

Christopher Robart, an analyst with IHS Energy, says New York's ban will have little to no impact on drillers already at work in nearby states.

"They can do things much more economically and efficiently in those parts where there already is money and already are investments in the ground than in New York, for instance, where they'd have to start from scratch," he says.

Industry groups say they've felt like New York has had an "unwelcome" mat out for years.

To Stephanie Catarino Wissman, who heads Pennsylvania's division of the American Petroleum Institute, New York's loss is Pennsylvania's gain.

"I mean, I would say to New Yorkers, 'Come to Pennsylvania and take advantage of these jobs that are available with this well-paying industry,' " she says.

Meanwhile, environmental groups in Pennsylvania cheered the decision.

"It's a great day for the people in the shale fields whose experience has been repeatedly denied by the industry," says Joanne Kilgour, who heads Sierra Club's Pennsylvania chapter.

Those experiences include things like tainted water supplies, unhealthy air emissions and the industrialization of rural landscapes.

The Fracking Boom: Missing Answers

With Gas Boom, Pennsylvania Fears New Toxic Legacy

Long After Fracking Stops, The Noise Lives On

How Fracking's Ups And Downs Affect Pennsylvania's Economy

Despite New York's decision, both sides of the drilling debate are worried about what's next for Pennsylvania. The state's newly elected Democratic governor, Tom Wolf, made his central campaign pledge about levying a new tax on the gas industry.

But Kilgour and other environmentalists worry that could make the state even more reliant on fracking.

"What we want to make sure that we don't do is continue to rely on these boom-bust, single-source economies that are inherent to the extraction of fossil fuels," Kilgour says.

The industry has lobbied heavily against the tax, calling it a job killer.

Wolf opposes a ban on fracking but wants to strengthen regulations. And he plans to create a new registry for public health complaints. "I think this could be a really great thing for Pennsylvania's economy. It could create great jobs," Wolf says. "So I want to have my cake and eat it, too. I don't want to do what New York did."

When he takes office next month, Wolf will face a $2 billion budget shortfall. He's counting on Pennsylvania's gas to help solve the state's fiscal woes.

Among the changes to U.S. restrictions on Cuba President Obama announced Wednesday was a relaxation of the rules barring U.S. banks from doing business there.

Americans traveling in Cuba will now be able to use their credit cards and ATM cards, but many U.S. banks see the new rules as something of a legal minefield.

Even before Wednesday's announcement, the trade embargo with Cuba wasn't absolute. The government allowed U.S. citizens to sell certain kinds of agricultural and medical products to Cuba under special license, but many companies were reluctant to do so.

The government has long barred U.S. banks from doing business in Cuba, meaning anyone hoping to sell products there had to find an intermediary bank in Cuba to process the trade. It's a complicated process, and Julia Sweig of the Council on Foreign Relations says a lot of banks decided it wasn't worth the trouble.

"Cuba has to tie itself in knots in order to find financial or business institutions that are willing to pay the additional markup to do business with it," she says.

The new rules will allow U.S. banks to form direct relationships with banks in Cuba. They will also make the process of paying for goods traded with the country a lot easier.

"So these changes are potentially seismic in that they would make a lot simpler, a lot more direct and a lot cheaper, all of these financial transactions," says Ted Henken, a professor at Baruch College and author of Entrepreneurial Cuba: The Changing Policy Landscape.

And yet, many banks are looking at these changes with caution.

The Two-Way

New Era For Cuba? Voices From Miami And Havana

The Two-Way

5 Defining Moments In The U.S.-Cuba Relationship

The U.S. has trade embargos against several countries including Iran and North Korea, and in recent years the U.S. government has pursued banks that violate them aggressively. In July, the French bank BNP Paribas agreed to pay a $9 billion fine for processing transactions for clients in several embargoed countries including Cuba.

The Two-Way

Polls Show Cuban-American Views On U.S.-Cuba Relations Are Nuanced

"In general, banks have been shaken very deeply by recent enforcement actions and are disinclined to dip their feet into what they see as shark-infested waters," says Clif Burns, an attorney who specializes in sanctions.

Right now many U.S. banks are waiting to see the text of the new regulations, says David Schwartz, president and CEO of the Florida International Bankers Association.

"Banks are going to analyze very closely the regulations that do come out to determine how much leeway that does give them, how does that reduce the risk of doing that business?" he says.

But Schwartz also acknowledges that the relaxation of the Cuban embargo is an opportunity for banks, even if they're cautious about taking advantage of it.

banking

Cuba

Thousands of people sentenced under the tough drug laws of the 1980s and 90s are still behind bars, serving mandatory minimum prison sentences requiring them to spend decades, if not life, in prison. Nowadays people convicted for the same crimes serve far less time.

One of them is a man named David Padilla. He lives inside a medium-security prison in Fairmont, N.J. He's lived here for eighteen years now, since his arrest in November 1996. A year later, a judge found him guilty of conspiracy and possession with intent to distribute cocaine. Padilla was arrested after he and his co-defendants moved drugs out of a Philadelphia hotel in a dark-colored suitcase. State police later found two handguns in a trap door in their borrowed van.

“ "There is no doubt in my mind that I feel I should have been punished ... But I don't agree that I should die in prison."

- David Padilla

Padilla had two previous drug charges. The prosecutor in his case asked the court to weigh those priors and the judge sent him to prison for the rest of his life.

Sitting on a tan-colored plastic chair in the visitors area, and looking back on that day he was sentenced in November 1997, he sighs. "There is no doubt in my mind that I feel I should have been punished," he says. "No doubt about it. But I don't agree that I should die in prison."

Lisette is Padilla's wife of 27 years and she says prison has made him "a better man."

They met as teenagers in Philadelphia, as neighbors. Back then, Padilla was kind of a celebrity on the block — high school prom king, a bit of a bragger. And though he was an honors student, he says college never crossed his mind.

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Padilla, seen with his wife Lisette, earned his associate's degree while in prison. Courtesy The Padilla Family hide caption

itoggle caption Courtesy The Padilla Family

Padilla, seen with his wife Lisette, earned his associate's degree while in prison.

Courtesy The Padilla Family

The years away, Lisette says, have changed him. "David is an amazing man, amazing father," she explains. "He worked so hard and I'm proud of what he has accomplished all these years. I think prison was a good thing for him."

In 1997, the judge branded Padilla a career offender who had squandered his potential. Here's a glimpse of what he accomplished since then. Behind bars, he found an unlikely passion—dentistry. He works in the prison lab, work that puts a smile on his face and a shine in his eyes.

"I never imagined that these hands would make a denture for somebody," Padilla says. "These hands, would make a prosthesis for someone. I never thought I can do that."

He also finished an associate's degree. Ask, and he'll give the credit for his close-knit family, and his own turnaround, to his wife.

"I really owe it all to my wife Lisette. She's been mommy, she's been daddy, she's been a supportive wife. She's been my everything. She had options, I gave her options," Padilla adds.

Lisette says she never considered leaving her husband. "The day of the sentencing he turns around and tells me, 'go on with your life.' I told him 'no,' I told him 'no, I'm here for you you now. Things get hard, I got to be there for you regardless.' We're his voice, we're his voice in the outside world. I believe that when two people get married, it's forever."

All these years, every year, Lisette says she takes her vacation around their wedding anniversary in August, so she can visit him multiple times in a week.

And though their children were young when he was sentenced, he's remained a big part of their lives, nudging and even nagging them about school and doing the right thing. Padilla said he had two choices when he got sent to prison for life: continue on the road to destruction, or be a model for his three kids.

"I have to show them that I can be good, that I can do what I'm telling them to do. So every time I'd get my grades...I would send them my grades, 'this is what daddy got, these are my grades, show me your grades.'"

David and Lisette's oldest daughter, Sasha, is now 26.

"I remember this project on Italy," she says. "It was one of my biggest projects and he actually went to the library, he got the encyclopedia, printed out pages for me and while I'm looking at the photocopies, he has the book so we're conversing back and forth on what's more important, what should I write, what should my thesis be."

Sasha says she's always felt a deep attachment to her dad.

Padilla, now 47, also mentors young offenders. And just as he's been preparing himself in prison, Lisette says she and the children have been preparing themselves too, for a day they can only hope for.

During Padilla's long incarceration, she squirreled away anything that could document her husband's transformation.

"Letters and certificates and recommendations," Lisette remembers. "I started making copies, I'm going to make 20 booklets. And I told Sasha, I said 'Sash, you need to come over and help me because this is a lot of paper.' We had papers all over the table, all over the floor."

Finally, last winter, Padilla heard about about a new effort, known as Clemency Project 2014, to help people serving long sentences for non-violent drug crimes. Authorities held out the promise of pardons or early release for inmates who would have been sentenced to less time if they committed crimes today.

And pro bono lawyers were looking for prisoners who might make model cases. Attorney Jeremy Klatell describes why he took this case.

"The consistency over the 18 years of David's incarceration with which he has dedicated to rehabilitating himself as a person can't really be faked," Klatell says. "He's never had a single disciplinary infraction and we are utterly convinced that David is a different person than he was 18 years ago."

Padilla's petition is now under review. And though he's excited, prison has taught him to temper his emotions.

"Everything is hurry up and wait," he says. "Wait for the phone lines, wait for the computers, wait to get to commissary, patience is so important here."

He says he's in no rush. He's been waiting for 18 years. And he doesn't want to set expectations too high.

"My hope is to be with my family once again, to reestablish my household, to be the so-called captain of the ship one more time, that's my hope," Padilla says.

Lisette has simple dreams, she says.

"Hopefully we rebuild a new beginning," she says. "Be able to go hold hands, or take a walk in the park, walk down the beach, you know, things that we miss."

Lisette wants to show him the colors she painted the living room and the hard wood floors she sanded.

She wants a new kitchen, but she says she's saving that job for him.

Jeff Williams, Apple's senior vice president for operations, has responded to a BBC report that workers at Asian suppliers for the iPhone 6 are mistreated and overworked, saying he's "deeply offended" by the accusations.

In an email to some 5,000 Apple staff in the United Kingdom, Williams hit back at the British broadcaster's Panorama program, which sent in undercover reporters to observe conditions at the Pegatron factory, near Shanghai, where iPhones are assembled.

The BBC's report "implied that Apple isn't improving working conditions," said Williams in the email published by The Telegraph, the authenticity of which NPR confirmed with Apple.

"Let me tell you, nothing could be further from the truth," he wrote.

"We know of no other company doing as much as Apple does to ensure fair and safe working conditions, to discover and investigate problems, to fix and follow through when issues arise, and to provide transparency into the operations of our suppliers," Williams wrote to employees.

But, he added, "We can still do better. And we will."

Panorama has stood by its reporting that rules on workers' hours, ID cards, dormitories and work meetings were routinely breached, according to the BBC. the documentary alleged that workers fell asleep during 12-hour shifts on the iPhone production line and that some of them were required to work 18 days at a stretch.

Williams responded that Apple had tracked the weekly hours of more than 1 million workers in its supply chain and that 93 percent were in compliance with a limit of 60 hours per week.

Panorama also reported that child labor was being used in Indonesia tin mines, where some of the raw materials for iPhones are procured.

In response, Williams said in the email: "Apple has publicly stated that tin from Indonesia ends up in our products, and some of that tin likely comes from illegal mines.

"Tens of thousands of artisanal miners are selling tin through many middlemen to the smelters who supply to component suppliers who sell to the world," Williams wrote. "[There] is widespread corruption in the undeveloped supply chain. Our team visited the same parts of Indonesia visited by the BBC, and of course we are appalled by what's going on there."

Williams said Apple had two options: either buy tin only from outside Indonesia, which he called "the lazy and cowardly path," or else "stay engaged and try to drive a collective solution."

iPhone 6

Indonesia

China

Apple

The sun'll come out tomorrow
Bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow, there'll be sun

There is a thing that happens with songs where when you've heard them enough times, you stop hearing them at all. They are less pieces of music than cultural baubles that pop up to stand for styles or sentiments or eras. Long ago, "Tomorrow" became not just the song that stood for Annie, but for many people – both those who like musicals and those who don't – a song that stood for precocious children belting earnestly to the patient exhaustion of nearby adults. Consider the scene in Nora Ephron's You've Got Mail where the wealthy family of Joe Fox (Tom Hanks) listens to its charming preteen sing the song with nervous, imperfect happiness. It's not just a song; it's an anthem of young girls with big voices, and young girls with small voices who dream of having big voices.

I was six years old when Annie opened on Broadway in 1977. I was in the sweet spot: a generation in which a lot of girls took that music to heart – "Tomorrow" and "Maybe" and "Hard-Knock Life." We had the cast album, and I knew all the words, and I still do, because that's how it works. I can't remember TV shows that aired in 2012, but if I play "You're Never Fully Dressed Without A Smile" in the car, my mind and my voice retrieve it intact, like a warm blanket from a cedar trunk. I didn't even know what a lot of these words meant then – "Who cares what they're wearing on Main Street or Saville Row?" – but they're in there anyway.

It would never have occurred to me at that age that I might have more easily seen myself in that record, that show, that iconic image of the little girl with the big voice, because like practically every little girl I saw in popular culture, she was white. The original musical Annie is a period piece set during the Great Depression, but aside from the one scene where she put on the fluffy red hair, the Annie in the photos I saw looked a lot like me. Don't get me wrong – plenty of little girls loved Annie who weren't white, and plenty of boys loved Annie, and so forth. But when you're a little kid, it doesn't hurt to have commonality with the people being presented to you as cultural icons. Or maybe it's better to say it can hurt, I think, to almost never have it.

There is already a perfectly good filmed version of Annie that's charming, straightforward, well-executed, and quite faithful to the original musical, if that's what you're after. It's not the 1982 film directed by John Huston – that one is pretty bad. It's the 1999 version made for television, starring Victor Garber as Daddy Warbucks, Audra McDonald as Grace, Kathy Bates as the mean Miss Hannigan, Alan Cumming and Kristen Chenoweth as her rotten brother and his girlfriend, and Alicia Morton as Annie. (Note: It was directed by Rob Marshall, whose Into The Woods is about to open.) That is a good production, and we don't necessarily need another along those lines.

The new film is not along those lines; it is pretty radically different. Directed by Will Gluck, it stars Quvenzhane Wallis as Annie, Jamie Foxx as Warbucks replacement and tech mogul/mayoral candidate Will Stacks, Rose Byrne as Grace, Bobby Cannavale as a political consultant who functionally takes the place of Rooster, and Cameron Diaz as Miss Hannigan. It's been doubly updated: the musical was a 1977 piece about 1933; this is a 2014 piece about 2014. Here, Annie is not living in an "orphanage," per se, but in a crowded foster home where Hannigan, still an alcoholic and now a refugee from a busted music career, warehouses kids in exchange for meager assistance checks. (Diaz is a hoot, and I had to respect the way the joke about her past in a band pays off with one late joke that seems to justify the entire runner.) When Stacks and Annie have a chance encounter, Cannavale's conniving operator persuades him that taking a foster kid into his home for a while will win him votes.

If you love the original musical, know that this is not that. The music has been largely transformed into sweetened, highly produced modern radio pop, which I personally find enormously less pleasurable than the original songs. Some songs have survived largely intact, particularly the opening trio of "Maybe," "Hard-Knock Life" and "Tomorrow." But beyond that, it's mostly numbers that nod at the original music before veering off into songs that are either entirely new for the film or so different that you'll barely recognize them. "You're Never Fully Dressed Without A Smile," for instance, is here only as a Sia pop rendition used to score a fantasy scene. The score frequently includes pieces of songs that are never actually heard, as if to reassure the audience that this is not forgetting the show's roots, but specifically acknowledging them and setting them aside. Whether you find that actually reassuring probably has a lot to do with your perspective.

It seems fair to point out, though, that if the new music is vulnerable to the accusation that it sounds too produced and synthetic, the original presentation of Annie on Broadway was vulnerable to musical digs of its own. Certainly, your classical singers would have dropped their teeth at young Andrea McArdle's high belting chest voice, which really does sound at times like it would hurt to sing that way for very long. Returning to the original cast album makes me warmly nostalgic, but also makes me sympathetic to adults who felt at the time that they were listening to entire songs made up of children yelling. We may be in a time of enthusiastic snark, but we did not invent the tsk-tsking of the displeased, particularly in the case of entertainment for children.

Despite any reservations about the music, it is a charming, lovely little movie. Wallis, who was nominated for an Oscar for Beasts Of The Southern Wild, remains a naturally affecting young actress, and her Annie retains the ingenuity and resilience that is more important to the character, in the end, than the Depression setting and the red hair. What has always been most poignant to me about Annie was her conviction, deep and real, that her parents were gone only temporarily and would return for her. And the film's way of conveying that, which takes Annie back over and over to the only place she can think of to wait for them, is quite touching.

What they do with Jamie Foxx as a germophobic entrepreneur (he's quite funny) is necessarily different from the model of Daddy Warbucks, old-school rich dude. But there are interesting trade-offs that come out of the updating process. While I much prefer the original's "N.Y.C." to the new film's "The City Is Yours" when it comes to songs about the draw of New York, the song isn't the only thing about that scene that changes here. In the original, "N.Y.C." is a comfortable rich man's salute to the city he loves, sung as he wanders through it: "The city's bright as a penny arcade; it blinks, it tilts, it rings." Warbucks represents established royalty; in order to capture New York's appeal to strivers, they throw in a verse from an aspiring actress: "N.Y.C., tomorrow a penthouse that's way up high; tonight, the Y."

Here, "The City Is Yours," on the other hand, finds a black billionaire in his helicopter arguing the city's promise to a young black foster kid: "Now's the time you've gotta stand tough; cause if you work hard, you can rise up." Life is, of course, not that simple. But while I don't love the new song, that new dynamic between the characters is perhaps more interesting and relevant than revisiting the New Deal would have been. (The original show actually features FDR making the cabinet sing "Tomorrow" and has a song called "A New Deal For Christmas," which is literally about ... the New Deal.) Stacks is sort of both Warbucks and the actress in that sequence – speaking to both the dream and the hustle it takes to get it. He is having a more substantive conversation with Annie than comes out of just showering a kid with stuff. "Rise up." "Stand tough." There's a consciousness in that scene of the odds Annie is actually facing that's largely missing from the fully fantasy-bound original.

Gluck is a director with a history of making films that are better than they could have been in other hands: 2011's Friends With Benefits, starring Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis, is a solid contemporary romantic comedy, and 2010's Easy A, with Emma Stone as a high school student dealing with rumors about her sex life, is terrific. I don't think Annie is quite as interesting as either of those, but it's fun, and it's funny.

The endearing thing about "Tomorrow," despite all that's happened to it over the years, is that when you actually listen to it, its ideas are elemental: Most things are not the end of the world. There are chances for things to go better. Hope is real. I could be possessive and sniffy and negative and I could catalog the differences between what I loved more and what I loved less. But every generation deserves its own Annie, pressing that idea that hope is real in whatever way reaches them the best. Different ways at different times, hopefully looking like different little girls. Is it a great movie? No. Am I glad they made it, and did I enjoy it? Yes.

This week's historic agreement between the U.S. and Cuba to reinstate diplomatic relations after decades of silence could launch a digital revolution in the island nation.

According to the White House, only 5 percent of Cubans have access to the open Internet, comparable to North Korea. As part of the deal, that could change overnight.

Status Check

Maribel Fonseca a teacher in Miramar, Cuba, has never seen the Internet. A few of her more privileged students have been online.

"I work in a school where members of the military and foreigners and top people in the country are," she says over a terrible (and very expensive) phone connection. "They use it. They go shopping, they see things I haven't seen."

What she wants to see most is her family. Fonseca's sister lives in the United States, and it's been more than a decade since they've seen each other. Her voice lights up at the idea video-chatting with her.

"I can guarantee if I could have Internet at home, I'd talk to my sister every single day. I wouldn't miss a minute of her life. I love her so much," she says.

Aidil Oscariz, a Cuban who lives in Miami, says students back home ask people abroad, like her, for the latest research papers, and even for news about Cuba. State-owned media doesn't report reliably on crime or corruption, but underground bloggers leak stuff out.

"Sometimes I have actually found out things that are happening in Cuba before some of my family members [there] have," Oscariz says.

Government Influence

Cuba's only telecommunications company, ETECSA, is government-controlled. This week's announcement could mark the end of that monopoly, and pave the way for free-market competition and growth.

"I don't know that the Castros are ready for an information revolution," says Alec Ross, who was a senior adviser on tech issues for the U.S. State Department. "But they're a couple old men. They're going to die sooner than later. And I think that they're trying to salvage something."

Ross, now a fellow at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, says Cuba won't just light up with bandwidth immediately. The government has to start a bidding process. Mobile operators (presumably foreign-owned) will buy leases and build networks, putting in hundreds of millions of dollars in capital. That's step one.

"Step two is determining and seeing whether, once Cubans actually go online, are they allowed free expression?" he says, "Or is the Internet more like it is in Iran?"

It's a hot question — though interestingly, it's also somewhat peripheral. In plenty of countries, Ross says, government control has a chilling effect on online speech. But as seen during the Arab Spring, if a wireless signal is there, citizens will use it.

Role of U.S. Tech Companies

U.S. tech companies like Google, Facebook and CISCO are watching how commercial policy shapes up.

Kenth Engo-Monsen with the European telecom operator Telenor says these companies can play a huge role in keeping the Internet free: If and when a government asks for a secret surveillance deal, they can say no.

"That's not part of being a mobile operator," he says, "because you have your relationship with your customers, and that is built on the trust that you have with them."

Engo-Monsen says that he's happy for Cuba, and that he views the Internet as a human right.

Nathan Eagle, a mobile technology analyst with Jana, says companies are going to compete fiercely to get the Cuba telecom contract, and that will help Cubans.

"Once third-party mobile carriers come in, they bring tariff plans — they price connectivity in a competitive way" so the average Cuban can afford service, he says.

digital divide

internet access

Raul Castro

Cuba

It took a few hours for some Cubans to realize the magnitude of President Obama's announcement on Wednesday about changes in the relationship between the U.S. and Cuba, according to Cuban blogger Yoani Snchez.

Why? Because they were at the market, buying fish. "It is important to also say that the news had fierce competition, like the arrival of fish to the rationed market, after years of disappearance," wrote Sanchez, who is perhaps the most celebrated dissident on the island.

As you've probably heard — or seen, if you've traveled to Cuba — food (and, at times, the lack thereof) remains one of the most striking emblems of Cuba's dysfunctional economic system. Let's just say that the agreement between Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro will probably eventually mean big changes for the food supply in Cuba.

But if you're picturing Cubans sipping Frappuccinos at Starbucks in Havana, or a Carnival cruise ship full of American tourists unloading in the port and filing into a gleaming new McDonald's, hold your horses. Such massive changes are, in theory, more possible than they were on Tuesday, but not before our two governments work out a huge number of issues embedded in our super complex trade relationship, analysts say.

Obama and Castro's speeches were significant and expansive, says John Kavulich, president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, but "the details are what matter. What people tend to forget is it's not what the U.S. wants to do to or for Cuba. It's about what Cuba feels is in its interest."

Most Cubans depend on monthly rations (limited amounts of deeply subsidized food) of rice, beans, coffee and a few other staple foods for their sustenance. There's also a thriving black market for food, supplying the wealthy and the foreigners with gourmet items like blue cheese and smoked salmon smuggled in by suitcase. (I traveled to Cuba in 2003 and 2007, first on a person-to-person license and then on a freelance journalist visa. Like so many other American visitors, I was utterly bewitched by the people, the music, the rum. But I lost weight there — probably because candy bars and other snacks were so hard to come by.)

Of course, Cuba is far more food secure than many of its similarly impoverished neighbors in Latin America like Honduras and Haiti. But animal (and fish) protein is in extremely limited supply, and to buy food, Cubans have to wrestle with a "jigsaw puzzle" — different markets and currencies for different food products.

Cuba imports about 80 percent of its food, which costs the government $2 billion a year. Since 2000, a solid chunk of that has come from the U.S. In 2013, American firms sold $348 million worth of agricultural goods to Cuba, according to the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council. The top three products? Frozen chicken, soybean meal (for animal feed) and corn.

Wednesday's announcement was not the end of the embargo, of course. But Obama's new approach to Cuba includes "expanded sales and exports of certain goods and services from the U.S. to Cuba." That includes agricultural products, from commodities like rice and beans to butter.

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Banana growers at a market on the outskirts of Havana, Cuba, on Sept. 30, 2013. Cuba currently imports few fruits and vegetables from the U.S., but the American Farm Bureau says the change in relations may allow for new trade opportunities. Ramon Espinosa/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Ramon Espinosa/AP

Banana growers at a market on the outskirts of Havana, Cuba, on Sept. 30, 2013. Cuba currently imports few fruits and vegetables from the U.S., but the American Farm Bureau says the change in relations may allow for new trade opportunities.

Ramon Espinosa/AP

And for U.S. agricultural producers, the most important part of Wednesday's announcement was Obama's call to lift restrictions on financial transactions for food products, says David Salmonsen, a trade specialist with the American Farm Bureau.

Currently, any agricultural producer who wants to sell to Cuba has to get cash upfront from the Cuban government before shipping, and the money exchange must be handled through a third-party bank, which means all kinds of extra transaction costs.

If the Treasury Department and Commerce Department go along with Obama's order, then those producers will now be able to do business more directly with the Cuban government and its banks, says Salmonsen.

Without those extra transaction costs, certain U.S. producers that don't currently sell to Cuba — like fruit and vegetables producers — may finally be able to offer the Cuban government a competitive price. Or rice from the Southeast U.S.: Cuba used to buy it, until we were out-competed by Brazil and Vietnam.

Cargill, for one, says it's optimistic about the opportunities. So is the American Soybean Association.

"Depending on how it develops, it could put our producers back into a more normal trading relationship with Cuba, so that the whole supply chain evolves, and demand rises as barriers are reduced and eliminated," says Salmonsen.

But as Kavulich points out, food isn't necessarily Cuba's biggest priority: Investments in infrastructure may be more desperately needed.

Still, "there are opportunities" for food companies, he says, but what happens when the "Cubans say, 'That's all well and good, but we need help with financing?' The risk of doing business with the Cuban government is huge."

Cuba's government has considerable trade deficits with other nations, but little with the U.S. If American businesses want to sell more to Cuba, they might find themselves waiting a while to get paid, he says.

The big trade picture aside, the outlook for Cuban cuisine is also a bit murky. As I reported in 2012, Cuban chefs haven't been able to incorporate many modern cooking techniques, or exotic ingredients. (I don't think sous vides machines can get past the embargo.) So chefs may have to wait a while before they can import some of the American ingredients they covet.

As Sanchez wrote, Wednesday's announcement "is just the beginning." It's tempting to get excited about the future of Cuban food, but "keep the corks in the bottles," she says.

cuban food

Among the changes to U.S. restrictions on Cuba President Obama announced Wednesday was a relaxation of the rules barring U.S. banks from doing business there.

Americans traveling in Cuba will now be able to use their credit cards and ATM cards, but many U.S. banks see the new rules as something of a legal minefield.

Even before Wednesday's announcement, the trade embargo with Cuba wasn't absolute. The government allowed U.S. citizens to sell certain kinds of agricultural and medical products to Cuba under special license, but many companies were reluctant to do so.

The government has long barred U.S. banks from doing business in Cuba, meaning anyone hoping to sell products there had to find an intermediary bank in Cuba to process the trade. It's a complicated process, and Julia Sweig of the Council on Foreign Relations says a lot of banks decided it wasn't worth the trouble.

"Cuba has to tie itself in knots in order to find financial or business institutions that are willing to pay the additional markup to do business with it," she says.

The new rules will allow U.S. banks to form direct relationships with banks in Cuba. They will also make the process of paying for goods traded with the country a lot easier.

"So these changes are potentially seismic in that they would make a lot simpler, a lot more direct and a lot cheaper, all of these financial transactions," says Ted Henken, a professor at Baruch College and author of Entrepreneurial Cuba: The Changing Policy Landscape.

And yet, many banks are looking at these changes with caution.

The Two-Way

New Era For Cuba? Voices From Miami And Havana

The Two-Way

5 Defining Moments In The U.S.-Cuba Relationship

The U.S. has trade embargos against several countries including Iran and North Korea, and in recent years the U.S. government has pursued banks that violate them aggressively. In July, the French bank BNP Paribas agreed to pay a $9 billion fine for processing transactions for clients in several embargoed countries including Cuba.

The Two-Way

Polls Show Cuban-American Views On U.S.-Cuba Relations Are Nuanced

"In general, banks have been shaken very deeply by recent enforcement actions and are disinclined to dip their feet into what they see as shark-infested waters," says Clif Burns, an attorney who specializes in sanctions.

Right now many U.S. banks are waiting to see the text of the new regulations, says David Schwartz, president and CEO of the Florida International Bankers Association.

"Banks are going to analyze very closely the regulations that do come out to determine how much leeway that does give them, how does that reduce the risk of doing that business?" he says.

But Schwartz also acknowledges that the relaxation of the Cuban embargo is an opportunity for banks, even if they're cautious about taking advantage of it.

banking

Cuba

Pennsylvania's fracking boom has led to record-breaking natural gas production, but its neighbor, New York, announced Wednesday it was banning the practice. Industry and environmental groups say New York's decision could be good for Pennsylvania.

New York's ban comes six years after the state placed a temporary moratorium on fracking in order to study the gas drilling technique. Now, officials question fracking's economic benefits and cite environmental risks.

"There are many red flags because scientific issues have not yet been comprehensively studied through rigorous scientific research at this time," says Howard Zucker, New York's acting health commissioner.

George Stark, a spokesman for Houston-based Cabot Oil and Gas, says New Yorkers who fear the process just don't understand it. The company operates many of the most productive wells in Pennsylvania.

"Our industry — this entire episode — is saving many farms. So the farmers that I've been in contact with endorse and embrace hydraulic fracturing," Stark says.

Pennsylvania is now dotted with more than 7,000 active wells.

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A fracking rig in Butler County, Pa., in 2013. Pennsylvania is now dotted with more than 7,000 active wells. Jason Cohn/MCT/Landov hide caption

itoggle caption Jason Cohn/MCT/Landov

A fracking rig in Butler County, Pa., in 2013. Pennsylvania is now dotted with more than 7,000 active wells.

Jason Cohn/MCT/Landov

Christopher Robart, an analyst with IHS Energy, says New York's ban will have little to no impact on drillers already at work in nearby states.

"They can do things much more economically and efficiently in those parts where there already is money and already are investments in the ground than in New York, for instance, where they'd have to start from scratch," he says.

Industry groups say they've felt like New York has had an "unwelcome" mat out for years.

To Stephanie Catarino Wissman, who heads Pennsylvania's division of the American Petroleum Institute, New York's loss is Pennsylvania's gain.

"I mean, I would say to New Yorkers, 'Come to Pennsylvania and take advantage of these jobs that are available with this well-paying industry,' " she says.

Meanwhile, environmental groups in Pennsylvania cheered the decision.

"It's a great day for the people in the shale fields whose experience has been repeatedly denied by the industry," says Joanne Kilgour, who heads Sierra Club's Pennsylvania chapter.

Those experiences include things like tainted water supplies, unhealthy air emissions and the industrialization of rural landscapes.

The Fracking Boom: Missing Answers

With Gas Boom, Pennsylvania Fears New Toxic Legacy

Long After Fracking Stops, The Noise Lives On

How Fracking's Ups And Downs Affect Pennsylvania's Economy

Despite New York's decision, both sides of the drilling debate are worried about what's next for Pennsylvania. The state's newly elected Democratic governor, Tom Wolf, made his central campaign pledge about levying a new tax on the gas industry.

But Kilgour and other environmentalists worry that could make the state even more reliant on fracking.

"What we want to make sure that we don't do is continue to rely on these boom-bust, single-source economies that are inherent to the extraction of fossil fuels," Kilgour says.

The industry has lobbied heavily against the tax, calling it a job killer.

Wolf opposes a ban on fracking but wants to strengthen regulations. And he plans to create a new registry for public health complaints. "I think this could be a really great thing for Pennsylvania's economy. It could create great jobs," Wolf says. "So I want to have my cake and eat it, too. I don't want to do what New York did."

When he takes office next month, Wolf will face a $2 billion budget shortfall. He's counting on Pennsylvania's gas to help solve the state's fiscal woes.

Sophie Fillires' uneven relationship drama If You Don't, I Will opens with a scene of biting dialogue between Pierre (Mathieu Almaric) and Pomme (Emmanuelle Devos), whose marriage is seemingly on its last legs.

At once discomfiting in its cruelty and laughable in its absurdity, the scene begins with Pierre impatiently demanding that he and Pomme leave a photography exhibit shortly after arriving. Pomme points out she still hasn't talked to her friend, the photographer. "He knows you came. Isn't that what matters?" Pierre answers. Their short argument ends when Pomme knocks one of the photographs off the wall, and the two run out of the gallery having purchased the expensive work out of guilt. "Consider it a birthday gift," Pierre says before running to catch a bus, almost leaving Pomme behind on the street, and then denying any wrongdoing.

"What have we become?" Pomme asks as they ride home, seemingly opening the door for an emotional disclosure on Pierre's part.

"Your parents," Pierre curtly responds.

It's worth recounting the scene in detail what is present here is what's absent in the rest of the movie. Only the film's ending, which also consists of a long conversation between Pomme and Pierre, holds a viewer's attention and proves as incisive as this opening. You might conclude from just these two scenes that If You Don't, I Will documents a married couple's journey from denigration and mistrust to mutual understanding and honesty. But between these endpoints, that journey is poorly conceived.

Some of the problems along the way, for instance, come in the form of hollow secondary characters. An awkward conversation that Pierre and Pomme have with a friend-of-a-friend at a party and a series of interactions between Pierre and Mellie (Josphine De La Baume), a young single mom with whom Pomme suspects he is having an affair, suffer from similarly overworked attempts at humor. There are repeated stabs at juvenile, almost slapstick comedy that, apart from one or two exceptions, like the shattered photo in the opening, never land. More often than, the style clashes with the otherwise dour mood of the movie's failing-marriage narrative, in large part because many of the jokes, like the ones launched at the expense of Mellie's son's psychomotor problems, aim at the easiest targets, leaving the final products simplistic if not offensive.

The film also stumbles over Pomme's period of reflection on the future of her marriage. After fighting with him for the umpteenth time on an afternoon hike, Pomme refuses to go home with Pierre and instead spends the next several nights camping out in the woods, surviving off the meager supplies she had with her. Her decision feels illogical, if not ludicrous—as does Pierre's refusal to respond to the situation for several days—but most of all it feels contrived, written in to the script for the sake of a broad thematic point. Rather than proceeding reasonably from Pierre and Pomme's conduct in the first half of the movie, this feels like a slapdash representation of the stubborn behavior that marital disputes can produce.

Given all that, it's a testament to Amalric and Devos as actors, and also to Fillires as a dialogue writer, that the final scene of the movie still strikes a satisfying emotional tone, one that puts a fitting capstone to the relationship that we saw on display in the film's first scene. And like that opening, the ending makes you wonder what kind of film might have arisen had Fillires stuck Pierre and Pomme in a room together for an extended period, a la Before Midnight. Such hypotheticals, though, are worthless. In art, like in marriage, we're stuck with the story at hand, not the one we hoped for at first impression.

The advertisement, which depicts a black child in the role of a dog (to make the point that some animals in South Africa are better fed than some children), drew widespread criticism.

A pretty blonde lady gives a crumb of food to a black child who sits begging by her feet.

That's one of the images in a fund-raising video from the nonprofit group Feed A Child South Africa, which depicts the youngster in the role of a dog to make the point that some animals in South Africa are better fed than some children.

The video has now won an award — though it's a dubious honor.

Each year, a group in Norway gives the Rusty Radiator to the charitable fund-raising video deemed most offensive or most stereotypical in its portrayal of the developing world, particularly Africa. Feed A Child is this year's winner (or loser).

The group that issues the award, the Norwegian Students' and Academics' International Assistance Fund or SAIH, runs projects related to education and international development. Here's how it explains the rationale behind the award.

"For decades now, we've seen the same stereotypical images of Africa in both the media and in fund-raising campaigns. It reinforces the image of Africans as an 'exotic other.' We believe that these images create apathy, rather than action." To bolster its point, SAIH cites a study by Oxfam showing that three out of four people had become apathetic to images of hunger, drought and disease.

The SAIH statement goes on to say that many videos give people a warped view of both the causes of poverty and the best strategies to combat it:

"[The ads] are constantly feeding us to believe that we — the 'Westerners' — are the ones who can save the world ... without looking into the real reasons and structures which uphold an uneven world ... debt, responsible investments, worker rights, tax havens, climate politics, tourism and trade policies."

Discussing this year's pick, the judges wrote: "The poor are already depicted as incapable of their own rescue, now they are being compared to dogs. What next?"

Feed A Child later "retracted" the video (while noting that this is effectively impossible to do once a video has gone viral).

"We acknowledge the fact that the advert could be seen as insensitive or distasteful and we take heed to the fact that many perceived the advert as racist. This was most certainly not the intention, and again we apologise," says a statement on their website.

But a videotaped apology from the organization's president also defends the video, suggesting that it could have motivated people to donate money to a worthy cause.

Here's a runner-up video from Concern Worldwide, a UK-based aid organization:

The SAIH judges were not impressed by the video, which was shot in Chad. "What mother would put their suffering kid in the middle of the sun and just sit there? This is straight-up staged, with shocking images of children in HD," they wrote.

Radiator Award runner up was produced in Chad.

Concern Worldwide responded with an emailed statement from spokeswoman Sarah Molloy: "The footage used reflects the harsh reality of life for those people and for the 3 million children who died last year from hunger-related causes. We strongly feel we need to show a balance: some of the imagery we use is positive and some isn't."

SAIH doesn't just point the finger. It also celebrates videos that inspire people to give without resorting to clichd or potentially offensive images through its Golden Radiator award. Here's this year's winner, from Save the Children, an international aid organization that focuses on childhood health.

The SAIH judges write: "You feel for the little girl as if she was someone you knew next door or your children went to school with. It emphasizes the universality of suffering and empathy, and breaks racial stereotypes about who suffers."

The awards are only in their second year but are already gaining steam. A mock video about volunteering in Africa, as well as this spoof in which Africans send radiators to Norway — both produced by SAIH – have been shared thousands of times on Facebook. And both organizations that I contacted about their Rusty Radiator awards were well aware of the dubious distinction.

All of this means a group of Norwegians just might be influencing the way we see the developing world.

Golden Radiator award winner, 2014.

fund-raising

Rusty Radiator

videos

Africa

A version of this story was originally published on Dec. 23, 2011.

If you happen to spend Christmas Eve in Canada — especially Quebec — you might be lucky enough to be invited to a festive dinner after midnight Mass. The feast is an old tradition from France called reveillon, and it's something to look forward to after a long day of fasting.

"They'll have a huge feast, with sweets and lobster and oysters, everything," says Thomas Naylor, executive chef to the Canadian ambassador to the U.S. "But in Quebec, at least, you'll always have tourtiere. It will be the center of the reveillon."

NPR's All Things Considered visited Naylor in the kitchen of the ambassador's residence in Washington, D.C., to learn how to make tourtiere.

Naylor knows about this Christmas Eve custom because many years ago, it traveled with French emigres across the Atlantic to Canada (and to New Orleans). The tourtiere is a savory, spiced meat pie, which both French- and English-speaking Canadians love to serve around the holidays.

More In This Series

This is the third in a series of stories exploring the rich diversity of Christmastime edibles around the world, and the stories behind the food.

The Salt

About This Series: The 12 Days Of Quirky Christmas Foods Around The Globe

The Salt

Japan's Beloved Christmas Cake Isn't About Christmas At All

The Salt

A Holy Land Christmas Porridge Honors A Damsel In Distress

The pie is so beloved in Canada that it has spread far beyond Quebec. "The recipe has been altered so many times," he says.

Along the coast, it's made with salmon. And even within Quebec there are different variations, Naylor says. There's a ground pork version in Montreal, while some in Quebec City prefer game meats. Even within a family you might find different recipes.

I have been at events with Canadians around Christmastime where there can be a little tourtiere competition, and everyone brings their own. Naylor agrees: "It's like hockey rivalry."

One thing that's usually the same is the four spices: cinnamon, clove, allspice and nutmeg. Naylor likes to add savory and rosemary to his pie. "It's a very festive flavor," says Naylor. "The use of spices goes back to medieval times. They used to serve them along with sweets."

But the first step in creating a perfect tourtiere, says Naylor, is to make a buttery, flaky pastry shell.

Then Naylor moves on to the meat mixture — he adds pork, water, onion and celery to a pan. Then he adds the spices.

Naylor lets that mixture simmer for an hour and a half. At the end he mixes in a cup of rolled oats, which binds the meat and makes it easier to slice a piece of the pie later on. Once the meat filling has cooled, he spoons it into the pastry shell and covers it with a crust. Then it's time to decorate with some of the leftover dough.

Once the tourtiere is ready, says Naylor, it is usually served with some kind of tasty condiment or sauce. It could be cranberry sauce, pickled beets, something sweet and sour, or "something with a kick to it to pair with the spiced meat and flaky crust." (I like to serve a chili sauce with my tourtiere; you can find Naylor's recipe and my chili sauce recipe here.)

All in all, it's a memorable dish. And it's "one of Canada's better contributions to the culinary world," says Naylor.

tourtiere

Christmas foods

Holidays

Christmas

When Mohammed Taha Yaseen recalls the day that Islamic militants swept through Iraq's northern city of Mosul this past summer, he chokes up.

"The army ran away," he says, and pauses to gain control of his voice. "We didn't run, the police stayed and fought ISIS."

Yaseen, an officer in the Mosul police force, tells his story at an isolated training camp in northern Iraq, less than 20 miles from the front lines with ISIS, also known as the Islamic State.

More than 4,000 officers of Nineveh Province security force are based in the training camp, including a 250-man Swat or Special Forces unit.

The forces are gearing up with the aim of retaking Iraq's second largest city, seized by militants who have declared Mosul the capital of a so-called caliphate.

These police officers want to lead that fight. The future role for these officers, mostly Sunni Arabs, will say a lot about the political future of Iraq, a country deeply divided between Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.

The self-proclaimed Islamic State is already preparing for the counter attack. The group recently cut phone lines. Bridges into Mosul have been mined, according to Kurdish officials. In a return to a tactic of ancient war, the militants are digging a moat around the city. They know the attack is coming, but not when.

Iraqi officials and U.S. advisers aren't sure either. There are differences over when the Iraqi army will be trained and ready. There are debates about who will be armed to join the fight.

Training, But No Weapons

For now, the Mosul officers live in tents with dirt floors, and train without weapons. On the day I visited the camp, they sloshed through rivers of mud for a meal of steaming rice and chicken ladled out of aluminum pots from the back of a pickup truck.

On one row of tents, the word "SWAT" is written, in English. The Special Forces teams are housed together. It is also a reminder of better times, when the U.S. spent billions in a multi-year program to strengthen the Iraqi police. These men worked alongside Americans to kill or capture Islamist militants in Mosul.

"All the police of Nineveh trained with the coalition at the time," says Gen. Wathiq Hamdani, the head of Nineveh Security Forces until 2008, now with Iraq's Ministry of Defense. "In this camp, about 4,375 men, all of them had trained with the coalition forces at that time."

For these men the fight against ISIS is personal, they say, because the militants have targeted their families.

"All of these police officers, Da'esh killed some of their family members," says Hamdani, using the Arabic term for ISIS. "They killed my son." He quickly looks down to scroll through his phone to find a picture of a smiling young man killed by the militants last year.

SWAT members, shown here at mealtime, live in tents with dirt floors and train without weapons. Deborah Amos/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Deborah Amos/NPR

Now, he adds, the militant group is holding his brother.

The other men in the room say they were targeted, too. A detective, who says his name is Major Mohammed, chief of Interpol in Mosul, rolls up his sleeve to show the scar from a bullet and points to his leg.

"They shot me, 2005 and 2008," he says.

Waiting For The Americans

They are angry at the loss, frustrated that the battle for Mosul is on hold and that Baghdad has failed to support them. In the meantime, they have backing from the Americans who have visited this camp and offered to start training soon.

"Maybe in the next week. Maybe," says Hamdani. But the Americans have made no promises to provide the weapons Hamdani says he needs. "The weapons come from Baghdad."

For many of the men, including Gen. Wathiq Hamdani, the fight is personal. ISIS killed the Iraqi defense official's son and is still holding his brother. Deborah Amos/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Deborah Amos/NPR

So far, Baghdad has delivered one small shipment of 1,000 Kalashnikov rifles and 30 heavy machine guns. It's not nearly enough, says Hamdani, against a dangerous enemy that is well-armed with U.S. weapons seized in Mosul when the Iraqi army collapsed in June. The fleeing Iraqi army left behind millions of dollars worth of U.S. armaments.

Why can't the police get proper weapons?

Hamdani believes it's a matter of trust, another example of the Sunni-Shia divide in Iraq.

The Mosul Police force is mostly Sunni, which is a plus in any battle for Mosul, a majority Sunni city.

But the central government in Baghdad is dominated by Shiites. They accuse Sunnis of welcoming the Sunni militants of ISIS, joining the movement as they swept across north and central Iraq.

Overcoming Mistrust

Shiite officials in Baghdad are reluctant to arm Sunnis, even these officers, for fear they will join ISIS or sell their weapons to the militants. The government suspended police salaries in June.

But Hamdani points out that the Mosul police force is diverse. Major Mohammed adds that the force reflects every community in Mosul and they all volunteered to fight.

"You find Christian, Muslim, Kurdish and Arabic officers," he says. "We have Shiites from Mosul in the police," says Hamdani. He introduces two Shiite Muslims from Mosul who fled south to Najaf in June, and have now arrived at the camp to rejoin their police unit.

Outside Hamdani's office, men in uniforms huddle inside the tents to shelter from the rain. They sing traditional Iraqi songs, clap, drink sugary tea, and smoke.

They keep up their spirits on a cold and soggy day. They've served together for years and now wait for attitudes in Baghdad to change.

"When they voluntarily come to fight, that means they are credible," says Dr. Rafea al-Eissawi.

He is a former deputy prime minister, a Sunni Arab doctor who practiced in Fallujah, in the western province of Anbar. His mission is to get Sunni fighting forces recognized by the central government.

"They have to pay for them and give them really good weapons in order to fight against Da'esh," he says. "Without arming the Sunnis, nothing can move."

The Iraqi army and government-backed Shiite militias are distrusted and feared by the Sunnis. The Mosul police and Sunni Arab tribes have street knowledge and ties to the local communities. But Baghdad remains reluctant.

Good News From Baghdad

At the police camp, a phone call to Hamdani signals a small shift in Baghdad.

The Interior Minister has agreed to re-start salaries for the Mosul police. Hamdani beams as he announced the news.

"Very good," he says as the room erupts in congratulations and the laughter of relief.

"Now, the government has changed, it's not like before. That is a good for us," says Major Mohammed. "For example, the minister of defense, he is from Mosul."

"The people of Mosul are waiting for us," he says. "I know the people and how they think."

He is convinced they will only turn against ISIS when a Sunni force comes to liberate the city.

But even as these officers savored the turnabout in Baghdad, there was no word on weapons deliveries, or an order to begin preparations for the battle for Mosul. The longer it takes, the better the Islamic State militants can prepare for the assault.

Iraq

By a 44-5 vote, Chicago's City Council set a minimum-wage target of $13 an hour, to be reached by the middle of 2019. The move comes after Illinois passed a nonbinding advisory last month that calls for the state to raise its minimum pay level to $10 by the start of next year.

The current minimum wage in Chicago and the rest of Illinois is $8.25. Under the ordinance, the city's minimum wage will rise to $10 by next July and go up in increments each summer thereafter.

The legislation includes several findings of a focus panel that examined the wage issue in Chicago earlier this year.

The bill states that "rising inflation has outpaced the growth in the minimum wage, leaving the true value of lllinois' current minimum wage of $8.25 per hour 32 percent below the 1968 level of $10.71 per hour (in 2013 dollars)."

It also says nearly a third of Chicago's workers, or some 410,000 people, currently make $13 an hour or less.

The timing of the vote reflects a political reality, as Emanuel and other Chicago leaders are maneuvering ahead of the next election cycle.

"Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel wants to pre-empt state action on local minimum wages," Northern Public Radio reports, adding that among those who approve the pay hikes, "Officials are worried business groups will push for Springfield legislation that prohibits municipalities raising their minimum wage higher than the state's."

As NPR's Marilyn Geewax reported after the midterm elections, voters in Alaska, Arkansas, Nebraska and South Dakota approved binding referendums that raise their states' wage floor above the federal minimum.

Chicago

minimum wage

We are well into the Christmas season, and if you live in Japan, that means sponge cake.

The traditional Japanese Christmas dish is served with strawberries and cream, and it is rich, thanks to lots and lots of butter. But the Japanese have been using even more butter for their Christmas cakes this year, exacerbating what was already a national butter shortage.

Elaine Kurtenbach, a reporter for the Associated Press in Tokyo, says climate change and an aging farming industry have led to the butter crisis. (Here's her Thursday story for the AP.)

i i

A man prepares a Japanese-style Christmas sponge cake at the Patisserie Akira Cake shop on Dec. 23, 2011 in Himeji, Japan. Buddhika Weerasinghe/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Buddhika Weerasinghe/Getty Images

A man prepares a Japanese-style Christmas sponge cake at the Patisserie Akira Cake shop on Dec. 23, 2011 in Himeji, Japan.

Buddhika Weerasinghe/Getty Images

"The weather up in Hokkaido, which is the main dairy region in Japan, is getting very hot in the summer and extremely cold in the winter, so the cows are stressed, and they don't produce enough milk," Kurtenbach tells NPR's Audie Cornish on All Things Considered. "And on top of that, the average age of farmers is about 70 now, and not many young people want to do the work."

Some cake shops in Japan have switched to margarine and other shortenings, but cake lovers are still left longing for the taste of butter, Kurtenbach says.

"Traditionally the Japanese aren't big consumers of dairy products apart from say, the elite," she says. "But when it comes to modern Japanese, they certainly eat a lot of Western food, they eat a lot of pastries and chocolates and cakes, and especially at Christmas time, not having enough butter on the shelves is kind of galling to many people."

For more from the interview, click on the audio link above.

Christmas foods

butter

Japan

A 44-year-old Northern White Rhino named Angalifu died this week at the San Diego Zoo of old age.

Now only five animals remain in this subspecies, all in captivity. Four are females. The one male lives in the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya.

So it would seem the Northern White Rhino is doomed to extinction. Poachers are to blame — they've slain thousands of Northern White Rhinos to get their horns, which are hawked in Asia as a health tonic.

But there may still be a way to bring back this two-ton creature. The Ol Pejeta Conservancy is contemplating an idea. It's a bit complicated. But who knows?

First, a bit of history. There have been efforts to save the Northern White Rhino before. Rhino rarely breed in captivity, so just before Christmas in 2009, four Northern White Rhinos were airlifted from a zoo in the Czech Republic to Kenya's Ol Pejeta. They were placed in the heavily guarded 600-acre enclosure designed to mimic their natural environment. The half-a-million dollar operation was dubbed "Last Chance To Survive." The CEO of Ol Pejeta, Richard Vigne, says the rhino regained wild habits like nocturnal feeding. Although it took more than two years till the happy day that a duo was spotted mating behind a bush.

"I don't think there was champagne uncorked," says Vigne. But those in the know kept watch and said the female was "definitely pregnant ... so you know we convinced ourselves pretty well that this was working."

It was a false alarm. There would be no pitter-patter of little hooves. Vigne wondered if maybe those years in a zoo cage had permanently knocked out the ability to reproduce.

In-vitro fertilization is an option. But what takes ten minutes for dairy cows is expensive and experimental in rhino.

"You're dealing with semi-wild, what, 2 ton animal?" he says. "Which is very different than dealing with completely domesticated cattle."

Now another plan is being considered: To extract a northern white rhino egg, fertilize it with frozen northern white rhino sperm and implant it the surrogate womb of a genetically different subspecies: Southern White Rhino.

The Southern White Rhino look almost identical to the Northerns, though they have a larger front horn, and they also prefer a grassy environment while the Northerns like denser bush.

But perhaps the biggest difference between the Southern and Northern White Rhino is their epic comeback story.

At the turn of the last century, Southern White Rhino had been hunted down to a mere 20 animals. The last of the Southerns were collected, protected and bred. Now they number more than 14,000.

"I have bred over 700 rhinos," says John Hume, a private rhino owner/breeder who has been an advocate for legalizing rhino horn, "and the Southern White Rhino is a relatively user-friendly animal. It wants to cooperate, it wants to breed, it does not want to go extinct."

Hume breeds them the old-fashioned way: he brings some males and females together and lets biology do the rest.

Why did the Southern breeding efforts succeed where the Northern attempts have so far failed? The Southern White Rhino attempts began when the animals were younger. They were also wilder. 100 years ago, when those 20 last Southern White Rhino were collected and bred, they were taken straight from the savannah, not from a zoo.

Perhaps what enabled them to breed is that little bit of wildness that never left them.

If plans for a surrogacy attempt are approved, the Southern knack for survival might give a ray of hope to their near-extinct Northern cousins.

angalifu

northern white rhino

More In This Series

This is the second in a series of stories exploring the rich diversity of Christmastime edibles around the world, and the stories behind the food.

The Salt

About This Series: The 12 Days Of Quirky Christmas Foods Around The Globe

The Salt

Japan's Beloved Christmas Cake Isn't About Christmas At All

The winter holidays are a time of abundance, but for Christians in the Middle East, the official start of the Christmas season is marked by a decidedly rustic dish: porridge.

Archbishop Swerios Murad of the Syriac Orthodox Patriarchate in Jerusalem says his congregation will eat boiled wheat kernels this week to mark the Feast of St. Barbara, or Eid el-Burbara in Arabic.

"It's is a simple porridge," Murad tells The Salt, "but it's very important that it be sweet."

St. Barbara was an early convert to Christianity in the town of Nicomedia, today Izmit in modern Turkey, Murad explains. She was the daughter of an over-protective father who built her a home in a tower to cloister her from the outside world. Yet, while her dad was traveling, Barbara converted to Christianity in secret. When her father found out, he tried to kill her.

Barbara fled her tower to the nearby hills. Murad says a shepherd tried to help her by keeping her hidden and feeding her simple porridge. But soldiers on patrol in the area found her and dragged her back to her father. Barbara's father had Barbara tortured and beaten, and when she refused to renounce Christianity, he cut off her head. In divine punishment, he was struck by lightning and died. Because of this lighting, Barbara became the patron saint of those who faced death by fire and later, artillery. Some folklorists have suggested that Barbara may have also helped inspire the Brothers Grimm's Rapunzel tale many centuries later.

Murad says his congregation serves a porridge of boiled wheat, called burbara, to remember the food the shepherds gave to the young convert – and to recall the lessons of Barbara's fate.

"She obeyed our God, and not her father, as the Bible told us," Murad says. "First of all we must obey the words of God, and after that we respect our parents."

The feast is celebrated on Dec. 17 according to the Julian calendar, which is followed by Orthodox Christians in the Holy Land, including about 700 families in Israel and the West Bank. This tiny Syriac sect traces its roots to the earliest days of Christianity. Syriac is a dialect of the ancient language Aramaic, and it is still used in liturgical services held in St. Mark's Church, tucked into an alleyway of Jerusalem's Old City.

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Palestinian Christian Issa Kassissieh, in a Santa Claus costume, rings his bell and wishes everyone a Merry Christmas in the Christian Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City, Dec. 22, 2013. Nir Alon/Demotix/Corbis hide caption

itoggle caption Nir Alon/Demotix/Corbis

Palestinian Christian Issa Kassissieh, in a Santa Claus costume, rings his bell and wishes everyone a Merry Christmas in the Christian Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City, Dec. 22, 2013.

Nir Alon/Demotix/Corbis

On Tuesday night Nadia Ishaq stirred a soup pot full of fresh burbara in her home in Jerusalem's Old City. She decorated the dish with ground chickpea flour, ground coconut heaped across the bowls in the shape of a cross, and candied fennel seeds scattered across the top. Ishaq says she and her neighbors mark the holiday by bringing bowls of their porridge to each other. Syriac Orthodox Christians will celebrate Christmas this year on Jan. 7.

In total, there are nearly 200,000 Christians in the Holy Land. Catholics in the Holy Land — and around the world — marked the holiday earlier this month, on Dec. 4, according to the Western church calendar. Bernard Sabella, a retired associate professor at Bethlehem University, says that in his Roman Catholic family, the porridge tradition actually had an air of luxury when he was growing up. Boiling the wheat kernels takes between two and three hours, and the pot sends a rich, cinnamon aroma throughout the house.

"Breakfast was usually a cup of tea with a piece of bread and that's it," he recalls. "And therefore, making burbara was something out of the ordinary for us kids at the time."

In Bethlehem, he says, families often cook more than two pounds of wheat for the holiday, well exceeding what the household can eat. Workers take portions of burbara to the office to share with Christian and Muslim colleagues alike. Often, the burbara pot lasts a full week. Along with eating porridge, Eid Al-Burbara is also the time when families put up the Christmas tree.

"It's a celebration of the season," Sabella says. "And for us, when we prepare and eat the burbara porridge, it's really preparing for Christmas."

While there's some doubt about whether St. Barbara actually existed as a historical figure, she is known and celebrated throughout the Christian world. She is the patron saint of the Italian navy. Santa Barbara, Calif., got its name because its founder, the Spanish explorer Sebastian Vizcaino, survived a storm just offshore on the eve of the St. Barbara feast day.

Archbishop Murad says that even though the Jerusalem Christmas season opens with porridge, the food of the holiday gets far richer, with chicken baked in sumac, colorful vegetable salads, and sumptuous meat.

"The first thing we think about on Christmas is lamb with rice," he says. "Most Christian families will have it."

Daniella Cheslow is a journalist based in Tel Aviv. She hosts a weekly radio show about food called The Tel Aviv Table.

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Updated at 9:21 a.m. ET

Alan Gross, the American contractor who spent five years in Cuban detention, has been freed and is on his way back to the United States. A senior administration official said Gross was released on humanitarian grounds in exchange for three Cubans jailed in the U.S.

As we previously reported, Gross, a subcontractor for the U.S. Agency for International Development, had been working on a program to improve Internet access for Jewish Cubans.

He was covertly distributing laptops and mobile phones while traveling in Cuba on a tourist visa. He was arrested on Dec. 3, 2009. A Cuban court found him guilty of crimes against the state in 2011, and sentenced him to 15 years in prison.

In December 2013, Peter Wallsten of The Washington Post told NPR Gross was being detained in a 10-foot by 12-foot room, with two other prisoners.

This month, Gross' wife, Judy, said her husband had lost more than 100 pounds during his detention. "He can barely walk due to chronic pain, and he has lost five teeth and much of the sight in his right eye," she said in a statement.

In an interview in June with NPR, Judy Gross said her husband was "despondent and very hopeless." She warned that he had said he would "take drastic measures if he's not out very shortly."

Gross had staged a nine-day hunger strike earlier this year.

Alan Gross

Cuba

Only about 1 percent of the Japanese population is Christian. But you might not realize that if you visited a major metropolitan area during Christmas time. Just like in America, you'll find heads topped with red Santa hats everywhere and elaborate seasonal displays: train sets, mountain scenes and snow-covered trees. Often, these are set inside of bakeries hawking one of the highlights of the holiday season in Japan: Christmas cake.

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"It's basically sold on practically every street corner," says anthropologist Michael Ashkenazi from the Bonn International Center for Conversion, who studied Japanese culture and tradition.

The dessert is a snow-white sponge cake, delicately covered with whipped cream and topped with perfectly shaped, ruby red strawberries. It's a beloved December-time treat on the island nation — and not just because it's delicious. In fact, Christmas cake is now a symbol of commercialism and prosperity, its story intertwined with Japan's rise from ruins after its defeat in World War II.

To understand why, we need to take a little historical detour.

After World War II, American soldiers led the work of rebuilding an occupied Japan. The Japanese economy was in shambles and food shortages were common. Even rarer were sugary sweets. The sweet treats from the U.S. that the Americans handed out were a memorable luxury to a people still recovering from the ravages of war.

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A man in a reindeer costume hawks Christmas cake outside a bakery in Kobe, Japan, Dec. 23, 2011. Buddhika Weerasinghe/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Buddhika Weerasinghe/Getty Images

A man in a reindeer costume hawks Christmas cake outside a bakery in Kobe, Japan, Dec. 23, 2011.

Buddhika Weerasinghe/Getty Images

"Sweet chocolates, above all, given by American soldiers epitomized the utmost wealth Japanese children saw in American lives," cultural anthropologist Hideyo Konagaya wrote in a 2001 paper on the history of the Christmas cake published in the Journal of Popular Culture. Sweets created a longing for wealth and a desire to Americanize, he says.

But it wasn't just soldiers that came to Japan. Christian missionaries also made the journey, bringing gifts and the concept of Christmas to Japanese schools and families. Missionaries had actually introduced Christianity to Japan as early as the 16th century. But Christmas didn't catch on as a popular holiday until these post-war years, when the Japanese embraced a glitzy, commercial version of the holiday that was less about religion than about prosperity, explains Konagaya.

"The Christmas celebrations gave the Japanese the most tangible pictures that could convey images of prosperous modern lives in America," Konagaya writes.

And so Japan embraced the trappings of a picture-perfect, American-style Christmas — including Santa Claus, an ornament-bedecked tree and a sugar-filled cake. As David Plath, a renowned Japan-scholar, writes in a paper on the popularity of Christmas festivities in Japan, "Family Christmas gatherings do not center around dinner, as in the American ideal, but rather upon mutual partaking of a Christmas cake."

So why cake?

Well, sponge cake had been available in Japan since the 17th century, but the items needed to make it — sugar, milk and butter — were rarities on the island nation, so the cake was a luxury reserved for the elite. After WWII, Japan's economy rebounded, the ingredients became more widely available, and Japan's newly formed middle-class adopted this once-exclusive dessert as a symbol that they had finally made it.

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Japanese Christmas cake: It's even in your smartphone, on the emoji keyboard. NPR hide caption

itoggle caption NPR

Japanese Christmas cake: It's even in your smartphone, on the emoji keyboard.

NPR

And so, inspired by America, a wholly Japanese tradition was born. "The Christmas cake became a center of attention in the whole festival [of Christmas]," writes Konagaya.

Even the cake's shape and colors are symbolic: It's red and white, echoing the Japanese flag. And traditionally it's round. "Anything that's white and round would normally be associated with shrines," says Ashkenazi.

These days, Christmas cake has become so ingrained in Japanese culture that you can even find some in your smartphone: There are two versions of the cake on the emoji keyboard. (Emoji, as the name suggests, originated in Japan.) The cakes go on discount once Dec. 25th rolls around – a fact that's given birth to an unfortunate bit of Japanese slang: "Christmas cake" is used to refer to an unmarried woman who is over 25 and thus, considered past her prime. (Sigh. We know.)

However, while the cake has become firmly entrenched in Japanese culture, Christmas itself hasn't – it's not a national holiday in Japan. In fact, it's celebrated more like Valentine's Day is in America, and it's often thought of as a day for romantic couples to share. (It's also a big day for chowing down on KFC, but that's an entirely different story.)

Says Ashkenazi: "This [cake] is part of a whole complex of things that the Japanese adopted from the West, modified to their own needs, and have completely different meaning and different implications for Japanese society than from whatever host society they borrowed it from."

We haven't tried whipping up a Christmas cake ourselves, but if you're curious, this video from a Japanese cooking show called Cooking With Dogs has a recipe. Because nothing says Christmas like a dog chef in a Santa hat.

Alison Bruzek is a former intern with NPR.

Japanese food

Cake

Japan

Holidays

Christmas

Marvel Comics has provided some of Hollywood's biggest box office characters ever: The Avengers, the X-Men, the Guardians of the Galaxy, Iron Man, Spider-Man, all starring in gargantuan special effects blockbusters.

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And like every super hero, Marvel Comics has an origin story. It begins in New York City, in 1939.

To compete against DC Comics' new Superman character, what was then called Timely Publications began selling 10-cent magazines with the illustrated adventures of its own champs: Captain America (a superhuman soldier), the Human Torch (a test-tube created android created who would catch fire around oxygen), and the Sub-Mariner (an undersea prince who hated humans).

World War II was on, so "naturally the big enemy we would have would be Hitler," says Stan Lee, Marvel's revered writer, editor, publisher, former president and chairman. "Captain America," he says "was always beating Hitler up every chance he had."

Lee's almost 92 years old now, but he started at Marvel when he was just 17. From office boy, he quickly graduated to writing the stories. Lee was a pen name for Stanley Martin Lieber.

"I wanted to save that name for the great novel that I would never write," he muses. "In the very beginning I was embarrassed to be writing comics 'cause most people had a very low opinion of them. But it was a living." A few years later, Lee enlisted in the Army and didn't return to Timely Comics till the war ended.

At that point, the company ditched its superhero stories, says longtime Marvel writer and editor Roy Thomas, author of a colossal new book that chronicles the company's history. Thomas says the superhero stories just weren't selling well. "After you've been fighting Nazis for several years, somehow fighting a bank robber isn't as exciting," he says. "They just had run out of steam. And there were newer things that came in."

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Stan Lee — shown here in 2002 — helped create Marvel mainstays like Spider-Man and the Avengers. Reed Saxon/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Reed Saxon/AP

Stan Lee — shown here in 2002 — helped create Marvel mainstays like Spider-Man and the Avengers.

Reed Saxon/AP

Marvel began putting out mysteries, horror comics, detective stories, fictionalized crime tales, even bible stories. And romances, most of which Lee wrote. "They were suppose to be confession stories by girls," says Lee. "So I came up with what I thought was a clever idea. I wrote 'as told to Stan Lee.' So I was able to get my name on all the stories."

Timely Publications became Marvel comics, and Lee says the genres came in waves. "The publisher, Martin Goodman, would just look at the sales figures, and he'd say "oh, Western books seem to be selling better this year, let's just do a lot of westerns." It'd work like that," says Lee. "It was funny, he had a fetish for certain names; he loved the word 'kid' for the westerns. So we had Kid Colt, Outlaw; the Texas Kid, the Rawhide Kid, the something else Kid, I can't even remember all the names but there were a lot of Kids."

By then, Lee was working with a group of artists, including Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. In 1961, the publisher asked them to create a superhero team to rival DC Comics' new Justice League of America. Marvel's response was the Fantastic Four: The Thing, Mr. Fantastic, Invisible Girl and new — actually human — Human Torch.

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In 1941, superheroes like Captain America were big business for Marvel publisher Martin Goodman. But after the war, as superhero popularity faded, Goodman favored Westerns and romance comics. Courtesy Jason Goodman and Taschen hide caption

itoggle caption Courtesy Jason Goodman and Taschen

In 1941, superheroes like Captain America were big business for Marvel publisher Martin Goodman. But after the war, as superhero popularity faded, Goodman favored Westerns and romance comics.

Courtesy Jason Goodman and Taschen

"You could tell from the beginning this just wasn't going to be like all the other super hero comics," says Thomas. "They fought and argued. They didn't wear costumes at first. And when they did wear costumes, the Thing said "I ain't wearing this thing" and he throws it away. They start hitting each other. They talked with slang."

Lee and Kirby also created Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, the X-Men and Daredevil: Superheroes with flaws, living — and sometimes quarreling amongst themselves — in New York City, in a shared universe. "I kept it all local," says Lee. "They could all meet each other and guest star in the stories and it made them more fun for me. I think more surprising and more fun for the readers."

Lee's favorite superhero was an awkward adolescent. "I went into my publisher's office," Lee recalls, "I said I want to do a hero called Spider-Man, I want him to be a teenager and I want him to have a lot of personal problems, I think that will make it interesting. Well, this is the reception I got: 'You can't call a hero Spider-Man because people hate spiders, he can't be a teenager because only a sidekick can be a teenager and he can't have personal problems. Stan, don't you know what a superhero is? They don't have personal problems.'" But Spider-Man was a hit.

Join the Merry Marvel Marching Society!

Marvel's complex heroes set them apart from DC Comics. They were popular, says Thomas, because of their human emotions. "Not just sock, bam, pow. But real problems they had," he says. "You know, Spider-Man can't get a date and his aunt is having a heart attack. The heroes fight amongst themselves. This was what teenagers could relate to."

Lee remembers the company's Manhattan office were so tiny, there was no room to store the original artwork; secretary Flo Steinberg was tasked with giving or even throwing it away, to the chagrin of later comics collectors.
Most of the artists were freelancers working from home. But in every issue, Lee published letters to and from fans. Just like his Marvel universe, Lee says he wanted to create the illusion the staff was working in a boisterous bullpen.
In 1965, they made a promotional record, where Lee and his staff joked amongst themselves. "Well, well, Jolly Jack Kirby," Lee says in the recording. "Say a few words to the fans."

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"A few words," quips Kirby.

And there was a fan club called The Merry Marvel Marching Society, complete with its own theme song: "March along, march along, march along, march along with the Merry Marvel Marching Society," Lee sings from his office in Beverly Hills. He adds, "I wanted it to be like we're all in the same club and having a good time with it. Everything was for the fans."

Over the years, Thomas notes in the book, Marvel struggled financially; at one point the company was bailed out by rival DC, and later, by publishing Star Wars comic books before the movie franchise premiered. In the 1970s, Marvel characters began getting their own TV shows like The Incredible Hulk, and Saturday morning cartoons. And in recent years, Hollywood has begun unleashing its blockbuster hits based on Marvel superheroes.

Marvel's universe expanded, and developed legions of fans of all ages. Some of them showed up recently at the Hammer museum in Los Angeles, where Lee and Thomas signed autographs.

Among the admirers was Stanley West, a 58-year-old stock trader. "Stan, thank you very much," he told his idol. "I want to let you know I really appreciate what you've done, especially for black folk, when you had the first black comic book character."

"Damn right," answered Lee, who penned the Black Panther back in 1966.
Lee shows no signs of slowing down. With his company, Pow Entertainment, he's now working on Chinese, Indian and Latino superheroes for the movies. He's the subject of Roy Thomas' next book for Taschen. And he's making yet another cameo appearance in the upcoming Avengers movie.

As Marvel celebrates its 75 years, Stan Lee himself remains a comic book hero.

Candles, latkes, action: It's "Hanukkah Lights," with stories of the season from NPR. Join hosts Susan Stamberg and Murray Horwitz for original work from Andy Borowitz, Theodore Bikel, Anne Burt and Debra Ginsberg, plus a classic from the "Hanukkah Lights" vault by Erika Dreifus.

Whether you like your Hanukkah tales humorous or historical, magical or true-to-life, there's something for you in this brand-new collection of holiday stories.

Listen to the full hour-long special above, or hear individual "Hanukkah Lights" stories below.

Hear The Stories

"The First Hanukkah"

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7 min 7 sec

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Courtesy of the author

by Andy Borowitz

Andy Borowitz is a New York Times best-selling author and a comedian who has written for The New Yorker since 1998. In 2001, he created the Borowitz Report, a satirical news column with millions of readers around the world, for which he won the first-ever National Press Club award for humor. The Borowitz Report was acquired by The New Yorker in 2012. He has published two recent best-selling books: The 50 Funniest American Writers, which became the first title in the history of the Library Of America to make the Times best-seller list, and a memoir, the No. 1 best-seller An Unexpected Twist, which Amazon named the Best Kindle Single of 2012. He has been called a "Swiftian satirist" (Wall Street Journal), "America's satire king" (The Daily Beast), "the funniest human on Twitter" (The New York Times), and "one of the funniest people in America" (CBS News' Sunday Morning).

Borowitz's "Hanukkah Lights" story lives up to his billing: It's a comic attempt at a better-late-than-never Hanukkah.

"For The Ghosts"

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12 min 50 sec

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Courtesy of the author

Courtesy of the author

by Anne Burt

Anne Burt's fiction has appeared in Meridian Literary Magazine (2003 Editors' Prize In Fiction), among other literary publications, including the Fall 2014 issue of Referential Magazine. She has published numerous essays, including commentary for NPR's All Things Considered and Talk Of The Nation. She is the editor of the essay collection My Father Married Your Mother, as well as co-editor (with Christina Baker Kline) of the essay collection About Face. Burt received a B.A. from Yale University and an M.A. in Creative Writing from New York University. She is currently working on two connected novellas, titled The Collectibles.

Burt's "Hanukkah Lights" story, "For The Ghosts," describes every Jewish mother's nightmare (and her dream).

"The Only Miracle"

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11 min 29 sec

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Courtesy of the author

Courtesy of the author

by Debra Ginsberg

Debra Ginsberg is the author of three memoirs, including Waiting: The True Confessions Of A Waitress and Raising Blaze, and four novels, including Blind Submission and the award-winning The Grift. She reviews books for The San Diego Union-Tribune, The Washington Post Book World and Shelf Awareness, and has contributed to NPR's All Things Considered. Ginsberg has worked as a freelance editor for more than 20 years. She lives in San Diego, literally surrounded by family. When not writing, editing, reading, walking on the beach or bantering with her son, she bakes world-famous confections and tarts.

Ginsberg's contribution to "Hanukkah Lights" is a dream of a story, evoking the wonder of a miracle and the heartbreak of miracles that don't take.

"The City Of Light"

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6 min 56 sec

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Courtesy of the artist

by Theodore Bikel

There's nowhere near enough room here to list Theodore Bikel's accomplishments. A legendary folksinger; theater, film and television actor; radio host; president of Actors' Equity; political activist; Jewish spokesman; and author, Bikel has traveled the world into his 90s, performing, speaking and singing. From The African Queen to Star Trek: The Next Generation, his versatility speaks for itself.

For "Hanukkah Lights," Bikel offers a new story that recalls a Marc Chagall painting.

"Fidelis"

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14 min 6 sec

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Courtesy of the author

by Erika Dreifus

Two years after Pearl Harbor, exhausted Marines on a tiny Pacific island find hope in a moment of unexpected light. Dreifus is the author of Quiet Americans, a story collection inspired by the experiences of her paternal grandparents, German Jews who came to the U.S. in the late 1930s.

Jeb Bush, the former Republican governor of Florida and the brother and son of two former U.S. presidents, has essentially kicked off the 2016 presidential campaign with pre-announcement announcement on Facebook.

Saying he had conversations with his family about the future of the country, Bush said he had decided to "actively explore" a presidential run.

He went on:

"In January, I also plan to establish a Leadership PAC that will help me facilitate conversations with citizens across America to discuss the most critical challenges facing our exceptional nation. The PAC's purpose will be to support leaders, ideas and policies that will expand opportunity and prosperity for all Americans.

"In the coming months, I hope to visit with many of you and have a conversation about restoring the promise of America.

"Best wishes to you and your families for a happy holiday season. I'll be in touch soon."

On the Democratic side, everyone is, of course, waiting on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to make a move.

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Jeb Bush