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The co-pilot who deliberately downed an airliner over the French Alps this week, killing all 150 aboard, had told a girlfriend sometime last year that he would "do something" that would make people remember his name, a German newspaper reports.

Andreas Lubitz, 27, who reportedly had hidden a note declaring him medically unfit to fly on the day he crashed the Germanwings A320, told a former girlfriend and flight attendant, identified by Bild only as "Mary W." that: "One day I will do something that will change the whole system, and then all will know my name and remember it."

She was quoted by the newspaper as saying she didn't understand what he meant by the remark until she heard of the crash on Tuesday.

She also told Bild that Lubitz had nightmares and had woken up at night and screamed "We're going down!"

Meanwhile, prosecutors in Dusseldorf confirmed that they had found a torn-up doctor's note in Lubitz' apartment that pronounced him unfit to fly.

"Medical documents were found that indicate an ongoing illness and appropriate medical treatment," the prosecutors said in a statement. "The circumstance that torn-up current medical certificates – also pertaining to the day of the act – were found, supports, after preliminary examination, the assumption that the deceased hid his illness from his employer and his professional circles."

According to Euronews:

"Germanwings said Lubitz had not given them a sick note that would have grounded him on the day of the crash.

"German law requires workers to immediately tell their employers if they are unable to work."

But The New York Times reports that there remains "considerable confusion about the precise nature and severity of his psychiatric condition. A German hospital said it had evaluated Mr. Lubitz twice in the past two months but added that he had not been there for assessment or treatment of depression."

And, The Guardian writes:

"No suicide note or claim of responsibility had been found, the prosecutors said.

"Legal experts said that on the evidence that has emerged so far – which suggests the co-pilot may have had a history of depression and psychiatric problems – the airline would find it difficult to prove that the crash was not its fault."

germanwings Flight 4U 9525

Germany

The global aviation industry is moving swiftly to change policies to reassure the traveling public in the wake of the apparently deliberate crash of airliner into the French Alps, killing all 150 aboard.

Airlines from around the world have announced that they will begin requiring two crew members in the cockpit at all times after investigators on Thursday announced that the crash of Germanwings Flight 4U 9525 occurred when the co-pilot locked the pilot out of the cockpit and placed the Airbus A320 into a deliberate descent.

The changes include requiring two people in the cockpit at all times. In the U.S., the Federal Aviation Administration already requires this.

Germanwings crash prompts two-person cockpit rule: Several European airlines are planning a two-person cockpit... http://t.co/XzAmCrJkah

— DW | Germany (@dw_germany) March 27, 2015

Lufthansa, the parent of Germanwings, issued a statement today saying it was moving to the "rule of two" policy as a "precautionary measure."

"Under the new procedure, two authorized persons must be present in the cockpit at all times during a flight," the airline said.

The BBC says: "Air Canada, Westjet and charter airline Air Transat, Norwegian Air Shuttle, major German airlines including Lufthansa and Air Berlin, EasyJet, Monarch Airlines, Virgin and Thomas Cook have all confirmed they are changing their safety policies."

New Zealand's 3 News says: "National carrier Air New Zealand and Emirates – which flies to and from New Zealand – have both issued statements today, saying they would be making the change."

Canada's Federal Transport Minister Lisa Raitt announced that all airlines there will be required to abide by the two crew-member rule.

germanwings Flight 4U 9525

FAA

Airlines

Europe

Got a high-deductible health plan? The kind that doesn't pay most medical bills until they exceed several thousand dollars? You're a foot soldier who's been drafted in the war against high health costs.

Companies that switch workers into high-deductible plans can reap enormous savings, consultants will tell you — and not just by making employees pay more. Total costs paid by everybody — employer, employee and insurance company — tend to fall in the first year or rise more slowly when consumers have more at stake at the health-care checkout counter whether or not they're making medically wise choices.

Shots - Health News

Many Big Employers Plan To Offer Skimpy Health Options Despite Law

Consumers with high deductibles sometimes skip procedures, think harder about getting treatment and shop for lower prices when they do seek care.

What nobody knows is whether such plans, also sold to individuals and families through the health law's online exchanges, will backfire. If people choose not to have important preventive care and end up needing an expensive hospital stay years later as a result, everybody is worse off.

A new study delivers cautiously optimistic results for employers and policymakers, if not for consumers paying a higher share of their own health care costs.

More U.S. Companies Switch To High Deductible Health Plans

Researchers led by Amelia Haviland at Carnegie Mellon University found that overall savings at companies introducing high-deductible plans lasted for up to three years afterwards. If there were any cost-related time bombs caused by forgone care, at least they didn't blow up by then.

"Three years out there consistently seems to be a reduction in total health care spending" at employers offering high-deductible plans, Haviland said in an interview. Although the study says nothing about what might happen after that, "this was interesting to us that it persists for this amount of time."

The savings were substantial: 5 percent on average for employers offering high-deductible plans compared with results at companies that didn't offer them. And that was for the whole company, whether or not all workers took the high-deductible option.

Shots - Health News

As Big Employers Pinch Pennies, Health Savings Accounts Take Off

The size of the study was impressive; it covered 13 million employees and dependents at 54 big companies. All savings were from reduced spending on pharmaceuticals and doctor visits and other outpatient care. There was no sign of what often happens when high-risk patients miss preventive care: spikes in emergency-room visits and hospital admissions.

The suits in human resources call this kind of coverage a "consumer-directed" health plan. It sounds less scary than the old name for coverage with huge deductibles: catastrophic health insurance.

But having consumers direct their own care also requires making sure they know enough to make smart choices. That means getting vaccines and skipping dubious procedures like an expensive MRI scan at the first sign of back pain.

"What happens five years or 10 years down the line when people develop more consequences of reducing high-value, necessary care?"

- Amelia Haviland

Not all employers are doing a terrific job. Most high-deductible plan members surveyed in a recent California study had no idea that preventive screenings, office visits and other important care required little or no out-of-pocket payment. One in five said they had avoided preventive care because of the cost.

"This evidence of persistent reductions in spending places even greater importance on developing evidence on how they are achieved," Kate Bundorf, a Stanford health economist not involved in the study, said of consumer-directed plans.

"Are consumers foregoing preventive care?" Bundorf asks. "Are they less adherent to [effective] medicine? Or are they reducing their use of low-value office visits and corresponding drugs or substituting to cheaper yet similarly effective prescribed drugs?"

Employers and consultants are trying to educate people about avoiding needless procedures and finding quality caregivers at better prices.

That might explain why the companies offering high-deductible plans saw such significant savings even though not all workers signed up, Haviland said. Even employees with traditional, lower-deductible plans may be using the shopping tools.

The study doesn't close the book on consumer-directed plans.

"What happens five years or 10 years down the line when people develop more consequences of reducing high-value, necessary care?" Haviland asked. Nobody knows.

And the study doesn't address a side effect of high-deductibles that doctors can't treat: pocketbook trauma. Consumer-directed plans, often paired with tax-favored health savings accounts, can require families to pay $5,000 or more per year in out-of-pocket costs.

Three people out of 5 with low incomes and half of those with moderate incomes told the Commonwealth Fund last year their deductibles are hard to afford.

As in all battles, the front-line infantry often makes the biggest sacrifice.

health care costs

Affordable Care Act

Health Insurance

Some of the seafood that winds up in American grocery stores, in restaurants, even in cat food may have been caught by Burmese slaves. That's the conclusion of a yearlong investigation by The Associated Press.

The AP discovered and interviewed dozens of men being held against their will on Benjina, a remote Indonesian island, which serves as the base for a trawler fleet that fishes in the area.

AP correspondent Martha Mendoza was one of the lead reporters for the investigation. The men AP found unloading seafood in Benjina were mostly from Myanmar, also known as Burma. When they realized one of the AP reporters spoke Burmese, "they began calling out, asking for help, and explaining that they were trapped and that they were being beaten and that they were enslaved," Mendoza tells NPR's Renee Montagne.

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Thai and Burmese fishing boat workers sit behind bars inside a cell at the compound of a fishing company in Benjina, Indonesia. The imprisoned men were considered slaves who might run away. They said they lived on a few bites of rice and curry a day in a space barely big enough to lie down, stuck until the next trawler forces them back to sea. Dita Alangkara/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Dita Alangkara/AP

Thai and Burmese fishing boat workers sit behind bars inside a cell at the compound of a fishing company in Benjina, Indonesia. The imprisoned men were considered slaves who might run away. They said they lived on a few bites of rice and curry a day in a space barely big enough to lie down, stuck until the next trawler forces them back to sea.

Dita Alangkara/AP

When the reporter went to the island, she found men held in a cage so that they wouldn't run away. "They were trapped. They had no way to go home; they had not heard from their family in five, 10 years. They were in a desperate situation," Mendoza says.

The Salt

Why Slave Labor Still Plagues The Global Food System

How did the men wind up in this modern-day form of slavery? In some cases, they were lured by promises of a job by brokers in Burma, Mendoza says. The men had pledged to pay the brokers a fee for finding them the job, but when they arrived, they found out the work was in fishing, which they hadn't signed up for, she says. "And they were obliged to not only pay back the broker fee but now they're being told they must pay for food and shelter as they work 22-hour days. The debt becomes bottomless."

Others were kidnapped and forced to work. Still others signed up for the fishing work but decided it was not for them "because they weren't getting paid and it was a terrible situation," she says.

After the AP reporters made this discovery, they began tracking where the seafood went. They watched the seafood get loaded into a cargo ship called the Silver Sea Lion, then used GPS to track it to a port in Thailand.

"We followed as many as we could to the processing plants," Mendoza says. Literally. The seafood was offloaded into some 150 trucks. The reporters — in cars — followed as many of those trucks as they could, taking notes, shooting video and jotting down the names of the plants where the seafood was delivered.

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A 3,000-ton cargo ship at Thajeen Port in Samut Sakhon, Thailand, 15 days after it set sail from Benjina, Indonesia. The company that owns the ship said it is not involved with the fishermen. "We only carry the shipment and we are hired, in general, by clients," said owner Panya Luangsomboon. "We're separated from the fishing boats." Wong Maye-E/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Wong Maye-E/AP

A 3,000-ton cargo ship at Thajeen Port in Samut Sakhon, Thailand, 15 days after it set sail from Benjina, Indonesia. The company that owns the ship said it is not involved with the fishermen. "We only carry the shipment and we are hired, in general, by clients," said owner Panya Luangsomboon. "We're separated from the fishing boats."

Wong Maye-E/AP

Then AP dug into customs records "to see which of those companies was shipping seafood into the United States, on what date, under what label," Mendoza says.

Those labels included Iams, Meow Mix, Fancy Feast, and other types of cat food shipped to the U.S. "And the distributors in the United States who are receiving some of the seafood from these factories also sell to Wal-Mart, Kroger, Albertson's, Safeway and others," Mendoza says.

The response from cat-food makers, grocers, fish sellers and others in the U.S. has "really been remarkable," she says, from "the National Fisheries Institute on down."

They've "all said that they appreciate the information that we brought to them and that they want to do something about this," Mendoza says. "Nobody denied what we found. Everybody wanted more information."

human trafficking

Seafood

In Havana, Cuba, old cars have filled the streets since the U.S. embargo began. Now enterprising Cubans have begun renting cars out to tourists who are hungry for the cars of their youth.

During a tough Israeli election campaign, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu managed to antagonize, among others, the White House, Israel's Arab citizens and the Palestinians.

Now that Netanyahu's Likud Party has come out on top, the prime minister has sought to ease tensions with a series of gestures.

The latest move came Friday as Israel announced that it would transfer tax revenues it owes to the Palestinian Authority. Israel suspended the transfers — a crucial source of revenues to the impoverished Palestinians — three months ago when the Palestinians moved to join the International Criminal Court.

Israel did not say how much money it would be sending over, but it collects more than $100 million a month in taxes and other fees on behalf of the Palestinians.

"Given the deteriorating situation in the Middle East, one must act responsibly and with due consideration alongside a determined struggle against extremist elements," Netanyahu said in a statement.

The Israeli leader has made related moves in recent days.

He came under criticism for an election day message urging his supporters to vote because Arab Israelis were going to the polls "in droves."

Many Arab Israelis, who make up about 20 percent of the Israeli electorate, described the remark as racist. This past Monday, Netanyahu apologized.

"I am sorry for this," he said. "I view myself as prime minister of each and every one of you."

And just before the election, Netanyahu said that a Palestinian state would not be created while he was prime minister. The statement was seen as an appeal to right-wing voters in Israel, though it went against his previous position and the stance of the U.S. and the international community.

In interviews with NPR and others after the election, Netanyahu said he still supported a two-state solution, but claimed a Palestinian state could not be established under current conditions.

"What I said was that under the present circumstances, today, it is unachievable," Netanyahu told Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep. "I said that the conditions have to change."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Palestinians

Israel

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, who said he won't seek re-election in 2016, says he is backing Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the Senate's No. 3 Democrat, to succeed him in the leadership position.

"He [Schumer] will be elected to replace me in 22 months," he told Nevada Public Radio. "One reason that will happen is because I want him to be my replacement."

Separately, Reid told The Washington Post that Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat, would stand down in place of Schumer.

"Harry is one of the best human beings I've ever met," Schumer said in statement quoted by the Post. "His character and fundamental decency are at the core of why he's been such a successful and beloved leader. He's so respected by our caucus for his strength, his legislative acumen, his honesty and his determination."

For more on this story, please visit our It's All Politics blog.

sen. chuck schumer

Sen. Harry Reid

The crash of Germanwings Flight 9525 into the French Alps earlier this week appears to have been a deliberate act carried out by a co-pilot.

As investigations continue, the incident raises questions about whether better mental-health screening could have prevented a person with suicidal tendencies from taking charge in the cockpit in the first place. Is there any surefire way to know that a pilot is in danger of going down and taking the ship with him?

Unfortunately not, says Gregory Simon, a psychiatrist at the Group Health Research Institute in Seattle. There are basic questionnaires that can help identify people at risk of suicide. But these surveys routinely miss a major percentage of people who later kill themselves.

Co-Pilot Deliberately Crashed Germanwings Plane, Investigators Say March 26, 2015

Report: Germanwings Co-Pilot Treated For Depression March 27, 2015

What's more, if a routine screening test were offered to a pilot, who knew he might lose his job if he admitted that he was thinking frequently about death, the chances of identifying someone at risk drops even more.

"For more than half of suicide attempts or deaths, we don't have any clue or signal ahead of time," Simon says. "Another important thing is that these [questionnaires] work in situations where people are seeking help and have some assurance of confidentiality. This would be different in a situation where someone's livelihood is at stake."

In the United States, there are some 500,000 known suicide attempts each year and 40,000 people die at their own hands, making suicide the 10th most common cause of death in this country. And it's not just an American problem. Three-fourths of the world's 800,000 yearly suicide deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries.

But preventing suicide is extremely difficult, in part because the people who succumb often die before anyone knows something was wrong.

Studies that have analyzed millions of suicides show that only about 55 percent of people who kill themselves had any previous contact with a mental-health professional. For those who seek help, basic questionnaires can be useful: People who say they spend more time thinking about death and harming themselves, Simon says, are more likely to kill themselves during the next year or two.

But even among people who take these surveys, results flag only about 30 percent who later kill themselves. Instead, studies show that suicidal actions are often impulsive.

"There's a very interesting phenomenon of people who actually saw health-care providers and filled out questionnaires and said no to questions about thoughts of death or harming themselves and then made suicide attempts," Simon says. "It's not an infrequent occurrence."

The lack of knowledge about suicides that involve violent events is a further obstacle to predicting an act like a pilot suicide. Of those who survive a suicide attempt – and can possibly be interviewed by researchers — 80 percent tried to overdose on pills. It's possible that people who choose to act violently have different behavior patterns.

For now, there are no brain scans, hormonal screenings or other technologies that can distinguish a suicidal person from anyone else. Instead, within certain populations, self-policing is the primary method for catching mental health issues. And for pilots, that strategy can work pretty well, says Dave Funk, a retired Northwest Airlines captain who now works as an aviation security consultant at Laird & Associates in Reno, Nevada.

It's a small industry, he says. Pilots tend to work with each other repeatedly. And they keep an eye on how their colleagues are doing. In his 40 years as a pilot, Funk adds, mental-health incidents in the cockpit have been exceedingly rare. Out of tens of millions of flights that have over the last four decades, there have previously been only five cases worldwide of a commercial pilot who was believed to have intentionally caused an airplane accident.

Instead of more mental-health screening, he argues, airlines around the world need to be more vigilant about regulating what happens in the cockpit. Since 9/11, the FAA has required that a flight attendant sit up front whenever one of the pilots has to use the bathroom. If the Germanwings crew had followed the same protocol, maybe the flight attendant could've opened the door from the inside and called out for help.

"The real issue here isn't this guy's mental health," Funk says. "Why was he in the flight deck by himself?"

Attempting to screen pilots more aggressively could also have the unintended consequence of driving people with mental-health problems deeper underground, adds Simon. Before 2010, the FAA prohibited flying for any pilot who took antidepressants or related drugs.

As a result, plenty of pilots either lied about their medications or avoided getting treatments they needed.

"Back in the day, I had a situation where a commercial airline pilot was referred to me for treatment," Simon says. "He said he would never take medication because he would lose his license."

Germanwings Flight 9525

suicide

The FX series Justified, which is in its sixth and final season, is based on the novella Fire in the Hole by Elmore Leonard. Leonard was an executive producer of the series until his death in 2013. The show's creator and showrunner, Graham Yost, says he has made it his mission to stay as true as he can to Leonard's vision and storytelling style.

"Ultimately I look at this show as Elmore Leonard's show, and we're all in service of him and his view and his way of writing and creating these characters," Yost tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "So whatever feels like it works within that world is something we're open to."

Set in Harlan County, Ky., which is coal mining country, the story revolves around two men who have known each other since they were in the mines together as teens: Raylan Givens, played by Timothy Olyphant, and Boyd Crowder, played by Walton Goggins. Raylan is now a deputy U.S. marshal and Boyd is an outlaw whose criminal activities include robbing banks. Raylan wants to move to Florida to reconnect with his ex-wife and their 5-month-old child, but first he wants to bring Boyd down, which means catching him when he pulls off his next heist.

The show is violent, but Yost says he and the writers have to walk a line to keep the network happy.

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Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens (Olyphant, left) meets with security expert Ty Walker (Garret Dillahunt, center) and gangster Avery Markham (Sam Elliott). Yost says the show is violent but it can't be too violent because of the network's parameters. Byron Cohen/FX hide caption

itoggle caption Byron Cohen/FX

Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens (Olyphant, left) meets with security expert Ty Walker (Garret Dillahunt, center) and gangster Avery Markham (Sam Elliott). Yost says the show is violent but it can't be too violent because of the network's parameters.

Byron Cohen/FX

"Elmore's world is a violent world," he says. "In the best Elmore scenes, you think that something is either going to take a hard turn into romance and some kind of liaison, or it's going to take it the other way and go into violence. There's often something oddly humorous about the violence in Elmore's movies and in his books."

The show relies so heavily on Leonard's vision that Yost says fans who want a peek into how the show might end should read Leonard's works.

"Not because that will tell you how the series will end," he says, "but because it's always a good idea to read some Elmore Leonard. But there is, in his world, a certain way of ending things, and we aim for that."

Yost is also a producer of the FX series The Americans.

Interview Highlights

On the character of Boyd, who starts the show as a white supremacist

It's more interesting to me if [Boyd] is using the skinheads as cannon fodder in his desire to rob banks. And ... in the pilot, Boyd doesn't go into the bank, he sends two other guys in. He blows up a car first to distract the law enforcement and then drives up to the bank [while] two other guys go in and do the dirty work and come out with the money. I just liked him as this character who was manipulating other people.

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Walton Goggins plays Boyd Crowder on Justified. His character almost died in the pilot, but the writers liked his chemistry with actor Tim Olyphant, so they decided to keep him alive. Prashant Gupta/FX hide caption

itoggle caption Prashant Gupta/FX

Walton Goggins plays Boyd Crowder on Justified. His character almost died in the pilot, but the writers liked his chemistry with actor Tim Olyphant, so they decided to keep him alive.

Prashant Gupta/FX

When we decided to keep Boyd alive, that was a big decision. When we shot the pilot, Boyd was dead at the end of [it]. And then we tested the show and we had all just fallen in love with Walton [Goggins] and the chemistry between Walton and Tim [Olyphant], so we decided to keep him alive.

So what emerged was the notion of this character, Boyd, as being someone who will come up with a new scheme, a new way of looking at the world, and he'll seem to totally believe it. But it can be very different from what he had been doing in the past.

On creating authentic bad guys

We didn't do any research down in Harlan before we started writing the first season. But between the first and second season, a group of us — I think five or six of the writers and [the producers] — we all went down to Lexington and met the marshals. And then we went down and spent a few days in Harlan.

And one of the first things we heard — I remember [we] were out on an ATV tour up in the hills, and one of the guys [said] that he recognized a lot of the characters that we had created in the first season, and that gave us a big collective sense of relief that we weren't so far off the mark.

"We were always trying to apply Elmore's rules of making characters interesting and having them speak well and be smart and clever."

- Graham Yost, creator of 'Justified'

Again, we were always trying to apply Elmore's rules of making characters interesting and having them speak well and be smart and clever. Yes, we've filled that part of the world with a lot of bad guys, far more than there actually are, but I was always hoping that people in Harlan would view our show in the same way that people in New Jersey view The Sopranos, which is, "OK, it's not reality, but it's fun." We didn't want to ever insult people so we always tried to keep our bad guys pretty clever. I think if you create a lot of stupid characters, that's insulting, but if they're interesting bad guys, I think that's sort of fun.

On the "verbal fireworks" of the show's dialogue

I think to a degree over the course of the seasons we've kind of gone farther even than Elmore might have into the colorful nature of the language. But I have to say, we just had so much fun doing it. [The] particular line, "You're a card in fate's right hand," that's [writer] Chris Provenzano — I can see his fingerprints on that one. ...

There are certain characters, specifically Boyd — Boyd is just a blast to write. There was a line, in fact, that I wrote in season four where a character says to Boyd, "Man, you'll use 40 words when four would do." It can be a bit of a trap for writers — we can kind of get into it almost too much and have to peel it back a little because we don't want to go way over the top, although I'm sure at times we have. But it's a great freedom.

On working with Elmore Leonard

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Timothy Olyphant: 'Justified' In Laying Down The Law

[Leonard] had spent probably 10 years in the '60s and '70s writing screenplays for Hollywood and he got out of that business because he didn't like getting notes: ... change this character, move this scene around, do this, do that. ... So he lived by that: He didn't give us notes. The only tussle ... we had over the pilot was the hat — that he saw much more of what's called a "businessman's Stetson" on Raylan, basically the kind of hat that the troopers were wearing escorting Lee Harvey Oswald when Jack Ruby shot him. We tried that hat on Tim and it just didn't look great — it didn't look as [good as] a more regular cowboy hat did. That was about the only big fight we had with Elmore on the whole thing.

I joked with him after he had seen the pilot and he really liked it, and I said, "Of course you really like it, 90 percent of the dialogue is from you." Because I felt if you're going to adapt Elmore Leonard, [you should] use as much as you can of him.

On how Justified will end

I was on a showrunner's panel several seasons ago and [Terence] Winters [of Boardwalk Empire and The Sopranos] was talking about Boardwalk [and] said he wanted Nucky to live long enough that he could go into a New Jersey diner and kill Tony Soprano. I said, "I don't know how Justified is going to end, but I think I know what song is going to be playing somewhere toward the end." ... We got hooked on playing this great country song "You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive" — we used it at the end of the first season and the second season, I think we skipped the third season, but we know that will play a part of it. ... It's just the question of who will live and who will die.

Back in August, scientists published a worrisome report about Ebola in West Africa: The virus was rapidly changing its genetic code as it spread through people. Ebola was mutating about twice as fast as it did in previous outbreaks, a team from Harvard University found.

The study spurred a bunch of concerns. Could the virus evolve into a more dangerous pathogen? Could it start spreading through the airborne route?

Virologists said neither scenarios were likely. Past outbreaks showed that pathogens don't easily change their mode of transmission. And sometimes they become less deadly as they adapt to people.

Shots - Health News

No, Seriously, How Contagious Is Ebola?

But there was one legitimate concern: Diagnostic tests and experimental treatments could stop working if Ebola changed its genetic code too quickly.

Now scientists at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases have new data that alleviate these concerns.

Nine months into the epidemic, Ebola wasn't mutating any faster than in previous outbreaks, Heinz Feldmann and his colleagues report Thursday in the journal Science.

In fact, Ebola's genes remained relatively stable between June and November 2014, the team found, despite the extensive human-to-human transmission taking place during that time.

"Our data indicate that EBOV [Ebolavirus] is not undergoing rapid evolution in humans during the current outbreak," Feldmann and his colleagues write. At the same time, there's no evidence the virus has become more deadly.

Goats and Soda

How Ebola Kills You: It's Not The Virus

The team came to these conclusions after sequencing the genomes of four Ebola viruses taken from patients in Mali from October and November. They compared the genetic codes of these strains to those sequenced in June from Sierra Leone and from other outbreaks in the past. The strains weren't as different as previous studies predicted they should be.

"This is some good news for the development of interventions," says Dr. Anthony Fauci, who directs the NIAID but wasn't directly involved with the study. "The data also indicate it's quite unlikely the virus will mutate and change its way of transmission."

One study, of course, can't give the whole picture. To date, the world has recorded nearly 25,000 cases. The study analyzed only four genomes — just a tiny slice of the virus strains circulating in West Africa. Other versions of the virus may be evolving more rapidly.

And with viruses, Fauci says, you never know what will happen. "One should not be surprised that RNA viruses, like Ebola, mutate," he says. "They do that all the time. The questions are how much are they mutating and are there functional consequences of those mutations."

The few mutations observed in the Mali sequences don't look like they would effect Ebola tests, potential vaccines or treatments, Fauci says.

It's unclear why the current study disagrees with the previous one from Harvard University. One possibility is that the two teams used different computer models to estimate the mutation rate. When the NIAID team applied its model to the earlier data from Harvard, the team also came up with the lower mutation rate — the one that matches the rate observed in previous outbreaks in Central Africa.

ebola

genetics

evolution

Global Health

The very first time we encounter Dong Nguyen, one of several hotly-debated characters in Tina Fey's The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, he's just introduced himself to Kimmy in their GED class. And as surely happens to Dong constantly since he immigrated to New York from Vietnam, she's stifling a giggle over his name.

"Nice to meet you, (chuckle) Dong (chuckle), I'm Kimmy," she spits out. But this time, Dong, played by Ki Hong Lee (The Maze Runner and a whole bunch of Wong Fu videos), has his own reason to snort. "In Vietnam, Kimmy means penis!" he says, leaving her stumbling for words.

It's a completely disarming scene. The irony that Dong is the one teasing Kimmy about her name floats completely over his head, which is partly what makes him such an endearing character: he unwittingly reclaims the gag. The joke is an equalizing force; depending on the context, both of their names can read as ridiculous.

But for a lot of viewers, including a lot of Asian-American ones, the traits that make Dong such a classic Fey-sian misfit also make him a dull, even infuriating Asian stereotype: his thickly accented, broken English; his gig delivering Chinese food by bike; his aptitude for math; his deportation-anxiety story line. So which is it: does Dong push back against Asian stereotypes, or does he just prop them up?

So which is it: does Dong push back against Asian stereotypes, or does he just prop them up?

Here too, it's all about context. In the bigger, bird's-eye view of Asian-Americans on-screen, the squickiness people feel over Dong is completely understandable, since the landscape was so desolate until so very recently. But within the universe of this show, Dong's foreignness completely makes sense, and it makes him a stronger character.

Unbreakable, after all, is all about foreignness. Everyone we come to care about is an outsider-misfit. Kimmy just spent the past 15 years in an underground bunker, trapped by an Ariel Castro-inspired doomsday cult, and is as new to the city as Dong. She's possibly the last person in New York still using the classified ads. She eats candy for dinner. Her struggling actor roommate finds he gets treated better in a werewolf costume than as a gay, black man. Her boss, a wealthy Native American woman, is purposely passing as white.

They're all delightfully awkward, and I think we're meant to like them more for the strangeness that binds them together. Their social ineptitudes are invitations to empathize, as the Atlantic's Megan Garber has put it.

Code Switch

What's So 'Cringeworthy' About Long Duk Dong in 'Sixteen Candles'?

And when it comes to Dong and Kimmy — and their budding romance — I think we're meant to root for them to bond over their shared outsiderness, not in spite of it.

Code Switch

A Brief, Weird History Of Squashed Asian-American TV Shows

But when I polled folks on Twitter about how they viewed Dong, some said they don't buy the "It's great satire!" or the "Hey, an Asian is a romantic leading man, be happy!" readings of this character.

Code Switch

You'll Be Seeing More Asian-Americans On Network TV This Fall

"Too early to tell," Ren Hsieh tweeted at me. "Asians have been mostly one-dimensional caricatures in TV/movies for so long, they don't know what to satire yet."

Over at the Wall Street Journal, Jeff Yang fleshes out a major source of the anxiety over Dong: the inescapable comparisons to Sixteen Candles' infamous Long Duk Dong, whose catch-phrases became the stuff of playground taunts for Asian-Americans growing up in the '80s. He's a foreign exchange student from some vaguely Asian country who exists solely to weird out the white suburbanites he's landed among. Everything about this Dong is portrayed as wrong, from his accent to his size to his choice in women, and viewers are never asked to see their world through his eyes.

But in Unbreakable, Dong is the one who's constantly thrown by Kimmy's antics. In one scene, she unwittingly makes a bunch of hand gestures that mean a parade of vulgarities in Vietnam. "What's wrong with you?" he asks, shaking his head. Dong is flipping the script, as Yang puts it, something his predecessor never got to do.

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The gesture Kimmy's making doesn't mean the same thing to Dong. Eric Liebowitz/Netflix hide caption

itoggle caption Eric Liebowitz/Netflix

The gesture Kimmy's making doesn't mean the same thing to Dong.

Eric Liebowitz/Netflix

And while we don't know what's next for Kimmy and Dong — the season ends on a romantic cliffhanger — we already know it'll look way different from Sixteen Candles's final scene, where Samantha shares a kiss with the studly all-American Jake Ryan. Kimmy's already told her Jake Ryan-esque suitor, a blonde trust-fund beau named Logan Beekman, to shove off when he reveals a few unsavory details, including that his British accent is fake. I get the feeling she dug the accent not for the reason Logan intended — it made him sound posh — but because it made him a little more of an outsider.

That's why I doubt viewers who have qualms with Dong would be satisfied if he'd been written as a sort of anti-stereotype, a Don Draper-esque smooth talker, perhaps, or a Jesse Pinkman-like hustler instead of the model minority type he's telegraphing. After all, in Unbreakable, as Yang puts it, the "non-WASP, nonstraight, nonmale characters, as mad and antic as they are, serve as the series' empathic anchors." In a show like this, would we root for a character like that?

If there were simply more Asian-American male characters on-screen, would Dong activate so many viewer's spidey senses?

On the other hand, if there were simply more Asian-American male characters on-screen, falling along a wider personality spectrum, would Dong — with his accent, his name, his job, and his math savviness — activate so many viewer's spidey senses? I happen to have a name people poke fun at, I'm pretty OK at math, and I used to work at a Chinese restaurant. The problem with Dong isn't that he's unrealistic. It's that we've seen the broad strokes of this character before, and in a landscape this limited, that grates, even if this show is doing something interesting with him.

"You're kind, you're funny, and both our names mean 'penis,' " Kimmy tells Dong when she admits she has a crush on him. The things that make him attractive to Kimmy, and a great character in this show, are the very things that make a lot of viewers wildly side-eye him. And that's totally understandable in a world where you can name the notable Asian-American men on-screen without running out of breath — and two of those characters are socially inept, hyper-foreign outsiders named Dong. In the context of the greater history of Asian-Americans on screen, any character named Dong is going to bring up a lot of complicated feels. Maybe in a perfect world, with plenty of sitcoms with Asian-American romantic leads, it'd be possible to read this character without the weight of everything that came before.

And at this point in the novel (which comes fairly early), you have to make a choice as a reader: Do you believe that Henry is suffering through an increasingly destructive mental illness? Or do you believe that his love for Val was so strong, his need for her so great, that the loss of her has shattered the structural underpinnings of the universe? That he has, in his misery, been given the ability to move back and forth through time in order to try and win her back?

Which side of that line you fall on may surprise you. You'll believe in the reality of Henry's smashed-up timeline(s) one minute, then know for sure that the 80-year-old Henry at the kitchen table and the 41-year-old Henry in the park are just figments generated by the unbalanced mind of a 19-year-old Henry. The line between fantasy and reality will be completely blurred before you're done.

And this, in turn, will allow you to sink into the clean, precise style of Ferguson's writing. He has a way with the language (in particular the lyrical bits of it, the odd, dangly details of lived-in lives), but the cleverest trick he pulls is in never modulating his voice or tone. Any contextual clues as to the reality (or unreality) of any given moment have been scrubbed from the text, and it all plays out in a constant state of fluttering, haloed authenticity. You can taste the weedy, sour first beers that Val and Gabe share months after Henry's disappearance, hear the jangling syncopation of the songs in Henry's head, and smell the mold in the shower. Ferguson never shies away.

And whether the narrative is tracking Val's very real present, Gabe's guilt-stricken, infected, half-fantastical now, or any of the multitude of Henrys populating the past, present and future, Ferguson does not judge. He does not coddle. He simply tells his tale and lets it lie there, as beautiful and broken as anything else in the world, its veracity to be judged by those who can only look in from the outside.

Jason Sheehan is an ex-chef, a former restaurant critic and the current food editor of Philadelphia magazine. But when no one is looking, he spends his time writing books about spaceships, aliens, giant robots and ray guns. Tales From the Radiation Age is his newest book.

Read an excerpt of The Lost Boys Symphony

Doctors who treat Medicare patients will face a huge cut, 21 percent, if Congress doesn't act by the end of the month. This isn't a new problem. While Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill agree that the formula that pays doctors who treat Medicare patients has long been broken, over the years they've been unable to pass more than temporary patches.

But the leaders of the House from both parties have come up with a plan that they think can fix a problem that has bedeviled Congress since 1997. On Thursday, it goes to the House floor for a vote.

If Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Speaker John Boehner win and their plan becomes law, it would kill what's known on Capitol Hill as the "doc fix," a near-annual exercise. Here's how it works: It would repeal what's called the sustainable growth rate formula, or SGR. Instead, Medicare would increase payments to doctors by one-half of one percent each year through 2019. After that, a system would kick in where doctors would receive bonuses and penalties depending on performance scores from the government.

"We as physicians, look we want to be paid on basically how well our patient does and that creates some challenges because you've got to have buy in for the patient but we know these systems work and they save money," said GOP Rep. Phil Roe (R-TN) is a long-time physician who heads up the House Republican Doctors Caucus.

"I can almost say that with this passage I will have had a successful Congressional career up to date. I really believe it's that important," Roe, who said he was involved in the negotiations, said. "It's the first real change to Medicare in almost the last 20 years."

Boehner and Pelosi's plan would also extend funding for the Children's Health Insurance Program for two more years.

And on Wednesday it gained a powerful ally: President Obama.

"As we speak Congress is working to fix the medicare physician payment system," Obama said during an event marking the fifth anniversary of the federal health care law. "I've got my pen ready to sign a good bipartisan bill"

Later in the day, the administration followed up with a formal statement of support.

Though the bill has the White House's backing and bipartisan support in the House, it hit a snag in the Senate where some Democrats worry about language that would restrict abortions at community health centers.

Pelosi has said that the restrictions included in the bill are not a change in current policy. The bill also has the support of the chairs of the House Pro-Choice Caucus, which boasts 170 members.

"The language included in the bipartisan compromise does not further restrict women's access to abortion and the provisions expire along with funding – just as the current Hyde Amendment does," Reps. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) and Diana DeGette (D-CO) said in a joint statement. "We will be supporting this bipartisan compromise, and we encourage other members of the Pro-Choice Caucus to do the same."

Still groups like NARAL Pro-Choice America and Planned Parenthood Federation of America remain opposed to the bill.

Lingering over the debate on the Medicaid provision was another fight in the Senate, over a human trafficking bill currently being blocked by Democrats over abortion language.

But this week, some Senate Democrats including Democratic Leader Harry Reid looked to differentiate between the two. Reid told reporters Tuesday that "the two provisions in the two bills are different. They're not the same, dealing with abortion."

California Sen. Dianne Feinstein said that she planned to support the Medicare bill too

"My objection in the trafficking bill is that this is private money, not a government fund, so it would establish a new precedent and that's what I don't want to do," she said.

While the debate over abortion-related language was the sticking point among Senate Democrats, there is also the question of cost.

According to a Congressional Budget Office estimate, the bill would cost more than $200 billion over the next decade. The bill would add more than $140 billion to the federal budget deficit. And that's despite some savings that would come from higher premiums for some Medicare beneficiaries and cuts to providers like hospitals and nursing homes.

This tax season, for the first time since the Affordable Care Act passed five years ago, consumers are facing its financial consequences.

Shots - Health News

State Lawmakers Keep Busy While Supreme Court Weighs Obamacare

Shots - Health News

Justices Roberts And Kennedy Hold Key Votes In Health Law Case

Whether they owe a penalty for not having health insurance , or have to figure out whether they need to pay back part of the subsidy they received to offset the cost of monthly insurance premiums, many people have to contend with new tax forms and calculations.

Christa Avampato, for example, bought a silver plan on the New York health insurance exchange last year. Initially, the 39-year-old was surprised and pleased to learn that she qualified for a $177 premium tax credit that is available to people with incomes between 100 and 400 percent of the federal poverty level. The tax credit, which was sent directly to her health insurer every month, reduced the monthly premium she paid for her $400 plan to $223.

But a big check from a client at the end of last year pushed the self-employed consultant and content creator's income higher than she had estimated. When she filed her 2014 income taxes earlier this month she got the bad news: She must repay $750 of the tax credit she'd received.

Shots - Health News

Obamacare 'Glitch' Puts Subsidies Out Of Reach For Many Families

Avampato, who has moved to Florida, paid the bill out of her savings. Since her higher income meant she also owed more money on her federal and state income taxes, repaying the tax credit for her health plan was "just rubbing salt in the wound," Avampato says.

But she's not complaining. The tax credit made her health insurance much more affordable. Going forward, she says, she'll just keep in mind that repayment is a possibility.

It's hard for many people to perfectly estimate their annual income in advance, and changes in family status — such as marriage or divorce —can also throw off that estimate. The size of the premium tax credit is based on a family's income.

Like Avampato, 52 percent of people who enrolled in health insurance plans on the exchanges had to repay part of the subsidy they'd received to offset premiums. That's according to an analysis by H&R Block of the first six weeks of returns filed through the tax preparer. The average repayment was $530, while about a third of marketplace enrollees got a tax credit refund of $365, on average, according to H&R Block.

The amount that people have to repay has a cap that's based on their income. People whose income tops 400 percent of poverty ($45,960 for an individual) have to repay the entire premium tax credit.

The message for taxpayers is clear: If your income or family status changes, go back to the insurance marketplace now — and as necessary throughout the year — to make adjustments so you can minimize repayment issues when 2015 taxes are due.

Shots - Health News

How The Affordable Care Act Pays For Insurance Subsidies

Some people owe a penalty for not having health insurance. For 2014, the penalty is the greater of $95 or 1 percent of income. The H&R Block analysis found that the average penalty people paid for not having insurance was $172.

Consumers who learn they owe a penalty when they file their 2014 taxes can qualify for a special enrollment period to buy 2015 coverage, if they haven't already done so. That would protect them against a penalty on their next return.

Also, tax filers may be able to avoid the penalty by qualifying for an exemption.

Tax preparers often use software to help them complete people's returns, and the software includes the forms to apply for exemptions. For the most part, the software is up to the task, says Tara Straw, a health policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities who manages a Volunteer Income Tax Assistance site in the District of Columbia. But it comes up short with some of the more complicated calculations, she says.

A case in point: applying for the exemption from the health insurance requirement because coverage is unaffordable. Under the health law, if the minimum amount people would have to pay for employer coverage or a bronze level health plan is more than 8 percent of their household's income they don't have to buy insurance. That situation is likely to be one of the most common reasons for claiming an exemption.

But to figure out whether someone qualifies, the software would have to incorporate details such as the cost of the second lowest-cost silver plan available in that region, as well as the lowest cost bronze plan. The software can't do that, so tax preparers must complete the information by hand.

"That one, in particular," Straw says, "has been vexing."

Health Care

Affordable Care Act

taxes

Health Insurance

Here's what we know this morning about the German jetliner that crashed Tuesday into a mountainside in the French Alps, killing 150 people on board.

— French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve says the cockpit voice recorder from Germanwings Flight 4U 9525 is damaged, but could still tell us why the plane went down. Segolene Royale, France's energy minister, said the key to the investigation was what happened in the two-minute span that began at 10:30 a.m. local time Tuesday. That's when the plane began to descend after reaching cruising altitude. And Transportation Minister Alain Vidalies told Europe 1 radio that investigators will focus "on the human voices, the conversations" on the voice recorder, followed by the cockpit sounds.

— Cazeneuve reiterated today that it was unlikely the plane was blown up.

"Every theory must be considered while the inquiry goes on," he said. "An explosion is not the No. 1 suspected cause because the debris from the plane is concentrated in an area of about 1 hectares. It's certainly a wide area because of the violence of the impact, but it shows that the plane probably didn't blow up."

— Ground crews are slowly making their way through new snow and rain to the scene to recover the bodies of the victims of the flight that was traveling from Barcelona, Spain, to Duesseldorf, Germany.

— Francis Hermitte, the mayor of Seyne-Les-Alpes, a town close to the site of the crash, says families are expected to arrive at the town today. The leaders of France, Germany and Spain will meet them there, he said.

— We learned on Tuesday that the victims of the crash included two babies, 16 German high-schoolers and their two teachers. Two opera singers were among the victims, multiple news reports say. Britain's Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said at least three Britons were among the victims. He said that number could rise. The Israeli Foreign Ministry said an Israeli citizen who lived in Spain was among the victims.

— Employees of Germanwings and Lufthansa, the low-cost carrier's parent company, around the world will hold a minute of silence at 10.53 a.m. today, Lufthansa said. That's when the contact with the flight was lost.

germanwings Flight 4U 9525

air crash

Germany

Spain

France

Imagine, for a moment, that every Web search gave only accurate, verified information. Imagine that questions concerning real facts about the real world returned lists of websites ordered by how well those site's facts matched the real world.

Search for "Barack Obama's nationality," and websites claiming "Kenya" would be banished to the 32nd page of the list. Search for "measles and autism" and you'd have to scroll down for 10 minutes before you found a page claiming they were linked.

Imagine a world in which information on the Web had to be accurate. Well, you don't have to imagine very hard, because that world now seems entirely possible.

In today's world, Web searches rank sites based on their popularity — in terms of links made from other sites to the site in question — as well as the "quality" of those links. Recently, however, researchers at Google published a remarkable paper demonstrating how rankings in a Web search can be driven by something entirely different: the veracity of the facts the sites contain.

The new paper instantly caused a stir. Advocates and detractors argued over what constitutes a "fact" as they pondered the far-reaching consequences of a truth-based Internet.

Before we consider those consequences, however, it's important to see the research itself as a fascinating measure of how powerful the growing field of "data science" has become. As the authors state in their introduction:

"In this paper, we address the fundamental question of estimating how trustworthy a given web source is. Informally, we define the trustworthiness or accuracy of a web source as the probability that it contains the correct value for a fact (such as Barack Obama's nationality), assuming that it mentions any value for that fact ..."

To achieve their goal, the researchers devised a "knowledge-based trust" evaluation algorithm to define any site's accuracy. They write:

"We extract a plurality of facts from many pages using information extraction techniques. We then jointly estimate the correctness of these facts and the accuracy of the sources using inference in a probabilistic model. Inference is an iterative process, since we believe a source is accurate if its facts are correct, and we believe the facts are correct if they are extracted from an accurate source. We leverage the redundancy of information on the web to break the symmetry. Furthermore, we show how to initialize our estimate of the accuracy of sources based on authoritative information, in order to ensure that this iterative process converges to a good solution."

Thus, the whole process is repetitive, drilling down to an ever-better link between claims and verifiable knowledge about the world. It works via the researchers' use of Google's giant Knowledge Graph and Knowledge Vault projects, which have been using the Web to build links between facts and reference works for an insane amount of information. "Facts" are actually represented in the study as "knowledge triples" such as (Albany, New York, capital) or (Barack Obama, nationality, American). By comparing a specific knowledge triple found in any given Web page against the giant databases, the algorithm can determine any website's accuracy in relation to established facts.

It's a powerful and clever approach, but more to the point, it appears to work. Applied to 2.8 billion facts, the researchers were able to evaluate the trustworthiness of more than 119 million websites. Thus it appears that, yes, accuracy can be used as a criterion for ranking Web-searches.

But to understand what this means as compared to the old link-based rankings, consider this from The Washington Post's Caitlin Dewey:

"In one trial with a random sampling of pages, researchers found that only 20 of 85 factually correct sites were ranked highly under Google's current scheme. A switch could, theoretically, put better and more reliable information in the path of the millions of people who use Google every day. And in that regard, it could have implications not only for [search engine design] — but for civil society and media literacy."

Google has been explicit that this is only research and there are no plans to implement the system anytime soon. Still, the reaction to the paper makes it clear that, for some, even the ideas in the paper present significant problems.

As Anthony Watts, who runs a popular climate skeptic website, told Fox News, "I worry about this issue greatly. ... My site gets a significant portion of its daily traffic from Google." He added, "It is a very slippery and dangerous slope because there's no arguing with a machine."

If such accuracy-based Web searches were ever to become the norm, it seems clear that the Internet — as a public space for information distribution — would be fundamentally changed. And with that possibility, we can see how even the discussion around Google's research raises two fundamental questions for society: Do we believe there are actual facts about the world? Do we believe there are ways to judge them to be so?

There is a lot riding on our answers.

Adam Frank is a co-founder of the 13.7 blog, an astrophysics professor at the University of Rochester, a book author and a self-described "evangelist of science." You can keep up with more of what Adam is thinking on Facebook and Twitter: @adamfrank4.

civil society

accuracy

web search

facts

Google

California's system of direct democracy — the voter initiative process — has produced landmark laws reducing property taxes, banning affirmative action and legalizing medical marijuana.

Now there's a bid to declare that "the people of California wisely command" that gays and lesbians can be killed.

You read that right.

The "Sodomite Suppression Act," as proposed, calls sodomy "a monstrous evil" that should be punishable "by bullets to the head or any other convenient method."

The act would punish anyone who distributes "sodomistic propaganda" to minors with a $1 million fine, and/or up to 10 years in prison, and/or the possibility of a lifetime expulsion from California.

The proposal comes from a Huntington Beach-based attorney, Matt McLaughlin. He did not return calls for comment, and his voice mailbox is full.

Now maybe you're thinking there's no way such a blatantly illegal measure would ever be approved by California voters.

But here's the rub: We might get a chance to find out, because it appears that there's no legal way for state officials to stop the author of this proposal from collecting enough voter signatures to put it on the ballot.

Legal experts are left shaking their heads.

Vikram Amar, a constitutional law professor at the University of California, Davis, said he is almost reluctant to even get drawn into the discussion "to give this guy the attention he wants."

Still, Amar noted there are at least two big issues at stake.

One, given that it costs only $200 to submit an initiative and start the signature-gathering process in California, perhaps the fee should be higher to discourage people from abusing the process. (On the other hand, that could make it prohibitive for legitimate grass-roots petitions to gain traction without well-off backers.)

Two, some advocate that the state attorney general, the official whose job duties include writing a title and summary for any proposed initiative, should have the authority to kill a proposal that would conflict with superseding law — like murder. (Of course, then elected partisan officials with their own political agendas would be the filters.)

But both of those ideas raise their own problems, Amar said.

"Anyone who has 200 bucks for an initiative, probably can raise 2,000 bucks," he said. "But raise it to something meaningful like [10,000] or 20,000 bucks, then you're sending a message about the accessibility of direct democracy."

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California Attorney General Kamala Harris Richard Vogel/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Richard Vogel/AP

California Attorney General Kamala Harris

Richard Vogel/AP

Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation, favors raising the fee, even though she said, "It won't stop people from submitting crazy ideas."

Like Amar, Alexander does not favor the idea of allowing an elected official, in this case Attorney General Kamala Harris, to block the measure outright by calling it illegal.

The initiative process "needs to be kept at arm's length from the Legislature and the politicians who frequently want to usurp its power," Alexander said.

The initiative's author has provoked discussion and controversy. In fact, there have been calls for McLaughlin to be disbarred for advocating murder.

But, in the end, Amar doubts his idea will ever get enough voter signatures to qualify for the ballot. It's estimated that a ballot-initiative campaign in California costs about $1 million to collect the 365,888 signatures to qualify.

It will take several million dollars more to get enough signatures for such a controversial idea, Amar contends.

"But if I get approached by someone asking me to sign this thing," Amar said, "that will spoil my day having to think about this guy."

California ballot

gay rights

Once again, the question of the NFL's pre-eminence — even existence — has been raised with the retirement of Chris Borland, a very good player, who has walked away from the game and millions of dollars at the age of 24 in order to preserve his health, or more specifically, his brain.

As always in these well-publicized anti-football cases, observers pop up to note that the other mainstream sport identified with brain damage — boxing — has dramatically declined in popularity, and therefore is an antecedent to predict football's downfall.

This common analysis is simple, but facile, because while individual sports and team sports are both athletics, they are as different, as, say, comedy club stand-ups are from huge Hollywood studios in the entertainment world.

Besides boxing, all sorts of individual sports have seen their popularity wane, even die out. Been to a six-day bicycle race lately? Even those individual sports that continue to thrive, like tennis and golf, are faddish, vulnerable to the whims of a public that becomes interested because of one big celebrity star, then turns away to another amusement when the fashionable hero of the moment fades.

But team sports are founded on lasting commitment. Fans show a life-long allegiance to their old school, their college, their hometown professional team — entities that are also well-established financial firms, bound into leagues. Popular professional team sports, once established, have been immune to the sort of capricious popularity that individual sports fall prey to. Individual sports are our buddies, team sports are our family.

Of course, yes, football is brutal, and probably even morally indefensible, but football is not only an American passion, it can be an extremely rewarding financial endeavor for those who're willing to play. All over the world, boxing has always drawn its gladiators from the poorer economic classes, who have been willing to gamble health for wealth. Now in America, football more and more fills that risky wish.

Borland is atypical. He grew up middle class, he earned his history degree in four years and plans to attend grad school. But there are plenty of other young men from lesser circumstances with lesser opportunities willing to pick up his fallen battle flag and play on a team before those dedicated life-long fans.

The Borland Effect, if we may call it that, will most surely have no impact whatsoever on the NFL. It will, however, cause more parents who are aware of the risks, and more boys who have other options, to steer clear of football. As such, what the Borland Effect is, is an influence upon our social class system, not upon the NFL player dream pool.

traumatic brain injury

Football

NFL

sports

The Supreme Court hears a challenge Wednesday to Obama Administration rules aimed at limiting the amount of mercury and other hazardous pollutants emitted from coal and oil-fired utility plants. The regulations are being challenged by major industry groups like the National Mining Association, and more than 20 states.

The regulations have been in the works for nearly two decades. Work on them began in the Clinton Administration, got derailed in the George W. Bush Administration, and then revived and adopted in the Obama Administration.

The regulations were subsequently upheld by a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., last year.

They stem from 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act, which ordered the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, to expedite limits on power plant emissions of mercury and 188 other dangerous air pollutants.

Mercury is considered one of the most toxic pollutants because studies show when it falls from the atmosphere, it readily passes from fish and other sources to a pregnant woman's unborn fetus and fetal brain, causing neurological abnormalities and delays in children. The EPA estimated that seven percent of American women of childbearing age — millions of women — were being exposed to the pollutant in dangerous amounts.

The process for establishing limits, however, is multi-stage. First, the EPA must complete studies to determine whether regulation of these plant emissions is "appropriate and necessary." And only after that does the agency set limits on the pollutant amounts that can be emitted.

Both sides in Wednesday's case agree that cost should be considered in setting pollutant limits. The question is when and how much of a factor cost should be.

At the first stage — deciding whether regulation should be considered at all — the government contends that costs cannot be considered under the law, and it notes that costs are not considered in other similar threshold determinations.

Industry counters that these power plants were meant to be treated differently. It notes that under the regulations issued in the second stage, the estimated price tag is $9.6 billion a year — so it's reasonable for the EPA to balance costs and benefits right from the start.

Industry also maintains that there should be a far more aggressive consideration of costs than the Administration subsequently used in setting the actual limits at the second stage.

Coal-fired utility plants, and to a lesser extent oil-fired plants, are by far the largest source of mercury and other listed air pollutants in the country.

Most utility plants already have pollution controls that comply with the EPA regulations, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. But an estimated 20 percent of existing plants would face the choice of upgrading or shutting down.

Environmental Protection Agency

Kraft Foods is going through a rough patch.

This week, Kraft recalled nearly 2.5 million boxes of macaroni and cheese that were potentially contaminated with metal pieces.

Also, Kraft Singles, a pre-sliced processed cheese product, earned a nutritional seal from the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. The seal prompted outrage from nutritionists.

"I am really shocked that this would be the first thing that the academy would choose to endorse," children's nutrition advocate Casey Hinds told the New York Times.

The academy said the seal is not an endorsement, but recognition that Kraft supports its Kids Eat Right program. Kraft declined to comment.

Kraft is one of a number of processed food companies that are facing challenges from many directions.

The company specializes in cheeses, salad dressings and Oscar Mayer meats — things that are typically used to make sit-down meals. But sit-down meals are not what consumers are buying, says Jared Koerten, senior food analyst with market-research firm Euromonitor.

"When you look sort of at the broader U.S. food landscape, you're seeing a big shift toward snack foods," Koerten says. "Some people have called it the 'snackification of U.S. food.' "

Another challenge: a younger generation that prefers artisanal brands with a healthier image.

Koerten says the trend toward healthier foods is a challenge for all packaged products, which may still dominate supermarket shelves, but which are losing ground when it comes to social-media marketing. Some, like Campbell's Soup, are trying to adapt their brands toward more organic or healthy options, says Barry Weinstein a food-manufacturing consultant based in Fullerton, Calif.

"They're taking the Campbell's line, that's a brand that's been around for a long time, and they're just trying to update it and make it appeal to evolving consumer tastes," Weinstein says.

Weinstein helps independent food startups manufacture in small batches, and says his business has increased 30 or 40 percent since 2008. He says the big players are also buying into the new markets.

"I think Kraft and other larger firms are addressing this through acquisition," he says.

General Mills, for example, bought organic mac and cheese brand Annie's last year. Coca-Cola acquired Honest Tea four years ago.

But, Weinstein says, mainstream brands are still king, and although consumers are clearly more skeptical about processed foods, given the volume, he says the vast majority are safe to eat.

"You're talking about a situation where the lines are running [and] producing anywhere from 250 to 1,000 units per minute," he says.

He says the U.S. still has the safest food manufacturing in the world, and the fact that Kraft identified and recalled all that mac and cheese means the system worked.

After the sun sets on Havana on weekends, G Street turns into a kind of runway.

Blocks of the promenade — which is very colonial with its big, beautiful statues and impeccable topiaries — swell with crowds of young Cubans. For the most part, they just walk up and down, greeting each other with kisses.

It's a spectacle: Everyone, it seems, is here to impress. They're perfectly coiffed, perfectly matched; they're splayed on benches, arms wrapped around each other.

We stop to talk to Tatiana, 17, and her group of friends. We ask her what she hopes will come of a new relationship with the U.S.

"We're going to be able to travel. We're going to have Internet," she says, growing excited. "Unlimited Internet. Finally."

What you quickly find out here in Cuba is that the Internet has become an object of desire: something as rare and valuable as strawberries that everybody wants.

By any measure, Cuba's Internet penetration rate is dismal. The government says that about 25 percent of Cubans have access to the Internet. But Freedom House, a watchdog that promotes freedom globally, says that number refers to Cubans who have access to a government-run intranet. According to Freedom House's experts, only about 5 percent of Cubans have access to the open Internet.

That's why Facebook and the World Wide Web have become a kind of promised land.

As we walk through G Street, we notice that many of the kids clutch smartphones. Out here, they're essentially useless, because the only real way to get on a Wi-Fi network is to pay $5 an hour at a tourist hotel.

We ask the group why they think Cuba doesn't have widely available Internet — and if they accept the government explanation that the lack of infrastructure is the result of the U.S. embargo.

They laugh. Christian, an 18-year-old drummer, answers. He looks like a typical teenage skater with long hair, baggy pants and Vans shoes.

"Cuba does not want us to know the things that happen in other countries," he says.

Daniel, 18, interjects: "Only they," he says, making epaulets on his shoulder with his fingers, "can have Internet." Then he tugs at an imaginary beard, Cuba's universal symbol for Fidel.

"Only Fifo can have Internet access," he says.

We point out that what's going on here on G Street is actually kind of nice: a bunch of kids talking to one another, without having their heads buried in a screen. If indeed there is new openness in Cuba and the island is flooded with foreign investment, and with it Internet connectivity, this scene would probably cease to exist.

The moment they hear that, they erupt with giddy laughter, imagining a future in which they would lie on their beds and still be able to connect with friends and the world.

"I'm already an expert texter," Tatiana says.

A Limited Internet

For years, Cuba accessed the Internet using satellites. It meant that the connection was slow and sluggish and had severe limitations on the amount of data that moved in and out of the island.

At the beginning of 2013, Doug Madory, of Dyn, an Internet performance company, noticed that the Internet speed on the island had become significantly better. He figured out that Cuba had turned on a huge underwater fiber optic cable that Venezuela had run from its shores to the eastern end of Cuba. Madory says the cable — called the ALBA-1 — has the capacity to move a huge amount of data to and from Cuba.

He says that right now, Cuba's lack of Internet has little if nothing to do with the embargo.

"We've been making the case that if Cubans really want to do this, they have a good model in Myanmar," Madory says.

Myanmar, also known as Burma, turned its ruling military junta into a nominally civilian government in 2011. That's given rise to a more open society and an improved relationship with the United States.

Madory says that shortly thereafter international telecoms lined up to provide Myanmar with the infrastructure to access the Internet. Because of the advancement in mobile Internet, the deployment has happened rapidly.

Madory says Cuba could follow suit even if the U.S. embargo against it continues.

Non-American "telecoms would be lining up around the block to work in Cuba if they were allowed," Madory says. "Not only that but they would be willing to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for that right and Cuba could probably use that money."

Long Waits To Get Online

One of the ways to get online in Havana is to visit the offices of the state-owned telecom monopoly, ETECSA.

We find an office, painted blue and white, in a leafy neighborhood called Miramar. Two priests from the Ecumenical Catholic Church of Christ, Monsignor Stefanos and Father Fanurios, are sitting on the porch.

This is their second time in line. Earlier in the day, they had traveled 45 minutes to the office and then waited outside for another 45 minutes, only to be told finally that the connection was down.

Stefanos says that he comes to ETECSA to check his email every few days. That's the only way he can keep in touch with his leadership in Central America.

Cubans wait in line to use four computers connected to the Internet at the offices of Cuba's state-owned telecom monopoly. Eyder Peralta/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Eyder Peralta/NPR

So, they sit patiently as people are called by the police officers to walk inside the air-conditioned building and use one of the four computers connected to the Internet.

At the end of the day, the clerics will have accomplished one thing: checking their email.

"We're Cuban," says Fanurios, resigned. "We're Cuban and with needs."

A Special Case

Without a doubt, the Internet in Cuba is tough. But there is an oasis in the midst of this digital desert.

It's in a poor neighborhood in Havana called El Romerillo. That's where the artist Kcho (pronounced "CAH-cho") built his studio.

Kcho is a bear of a man, bearded and wearing a Rolex watch. As he walked through his vast complex, which also houses a cafe, a library and a gallery, a group of young girls followed, giggling as he expounded on being a son of the Cuban revolution.

He's a superstar; his paintings and sculptures, often made with pieces of boats, have been exhibited worldwide — in Spain, in Italy and even at the Marlborough Gallery in New York City.

The prominent artist Kcho provides free Internet at his studio in Havana. Eyder Peralta/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Eyder Peralta/NPR

Because he's an artist, the Culture Ministry allowed him to have an Internet connection. He told us that when he first moved into this space, a 2-megabit Internet connection was too broad just for him to use. So, in 2013, he connected a few computers to the Internet and made them public, and in January, he installed wireless routers to share the connection more widely.

"The Internet was invented for it to be used," he says. "There's this big kerfuffle here in Havana that Kcho has Internet at his place. There's nothing to it. It's just me, who is willing to pay the cost and give it to the people. It's about sharing something with people, the same way my country does. I've always worried that people have what they need, just like the revolution did, and so I'm trying to give people a place to grow spiritually. A library, an art studio — all those things are important."

Kcho says that bringing Internet to the masses is not the responsibility of the government. It is, he says, an "entrepreneurial responsibility."

"And if it's so important for young people to have Internet, my dream is to bring more of it to them and to have a space here where they can travel the world without spending a dime, a place where they can travel from India to Burundi, to Antarctica, to the Library of Congress," he says.

i

Miracle, a work by Kcho that hangs in his studio, shows Jesus crucified on a cross made of oars. Eyder Peralta/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Eyder Peralta/NPR

Miracle, a work by Kcho that hangs in his studio, shows Jesus crucified on a cross made of oars.

Eyder Peralta/NPR

When asked if the Internet could be detrimental to the revolution, he says that a shift away from socialism is simply not on the table.

"But it's also not an option for me to renounce what I'm doing," he says. "It's not an option for me to take back what I've already given to Cubans."

The Internet at Kcho's place is Cuba's first free hot spot, and it's on 24 hours a day.

That means that the place is a hive of activity: There are people leaning on the outside walls, staring at their smartphones. In the library, people get on a waiting list to watch funny videos on Yahoo.

Yoan Istameyer, 29, is sitting along a concrete retaining wall. He is with his friend Yendy Rodriguez, 20, but they aren't talking. They're glued to a screen.

Istameyer says he has been there since the night before.

Yoan Istameyer, 29, in the black shirt, and Yendy Rodriguez, 20, wearing orange, spend hours at Kcho's studio, which is connected to the Internet. Istameyer says that when his girlfriend asked him to choose between her and his Wi-Fi connection, he chose the Internet. Eyder Peralta/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Eyder Peralta/NPR

"I never leave," he says. The Web and especially Facebook keep him hooked.

He says that there are only two places in Havana with free Internet: Kcho's place and the U.S. Interests Section along the Malecon. He'd gone to the Interests Section twice before, he says, but he decided to stop because of the political baggage that comes with stepping foot inside a U.S. installation.

Rodriguez says that he had just heard of this place and is thrilled. We ask him if the Internet had changed his life in any way. Rodriguez shakes his head: not really.

Then Istameyer cuts in. He's young. He's brash. He'll hand you his email address as soon as he can.

"I even left my girlfriend for Wi-Fi," he says, eliciting laughter from his friend.

The Internet — and the social connections across the world that it gave him the freedom to make — had drawn Istameyer in so much that his girlfriend gave him an ultimatum: Wi-Fi, which Cubans pronounce "wee-fee," or me.

Istameyer chose the Internet.

Cuba

Internet

The U.S. is providing surveillance flights over the besieged Iraqi city of Tikrit, where militants from the self-proclaimed Islamic State remain holed up, protected by a defensive network of explosives and snipers.

NPR's Alice Fordman reports that a senior military official from the U.S.-led coalition against the militants, also known as ISIS, says the U.S. has been conducting reconnaissance missions over Tikrit since Saturday.

Until now, she says, the weeks-long military operation around Tikrit has been dominated by Iraqi security forces and allied paramilitary forces strongly backed by Iran. But Alice reports that the operation to take back Tikrit from the militants has stalled, and some Iraqi military officials have told reporters they need U.S. air support to take the city.

Tikrit, about 90 miles northwest of the capital, Baghdad, is the hometown of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Pushing militants from the city would be considered both a military victory and a symbolic victory over ISIS — and a prelude to a battle to retake Mosul, where the jihadist group has set up a major base.

Reuters news agency says the surveillance flights are a lead-up to U.S. airstrikes on Tikrit. The news agency quotes a senior Western diplomat who is part of the coalition as saying that a formal request from the Iraqi government for airstrikes is "imminent."

Still, Alice says one leader of an Iranian-backed militia, Hadi al Ameri, gave a speech over the weekend in which he strongly condemned the idea of U.S. military assistance, calling those who sought American air support weaklings.

Iraqi security officials say their force of 20,000 is made up of mostly Shiite militiamen. It succeeded in pushing militants out of surrounding villages, but hasn't been able to uproot them from the center of Tikrit, according to The Wall Street Journal.

As NPR has reported, ISIS has dug up the streets and planted mines. They've also booby-trapped cars and have snipers protecting the militants.

Sky news says Iraq's interior minister announced last week that the operation had been halted temporarily to avoid casualties and protect infrastructure in the city.

Islamic State

Tikrit

United States

Iraq

i

Luis Henry Robles Higinio, 19, has XDR-TB. His right lung was removed due to the extent of the disease, and he had a port implanted in his chest for his twice-daily drip of TB drugs. With the end of IV treatment just two weeks away, he's in a positive frame of mind. Jason Beaubien/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Jason Beaubien/NPR

Luis Henry Robles Higinio, 19, has XDR-TB. His right lung was removed due to the extent of the disease, and he had a port implanted in his chest for his twice-daily drip of TB drugs. With the end of IV treatment just two weeks away, he's in a positive frame of mind.

Jason Beaubien/NPR

i

Diana Corolina Huamani Pasion is a TB nurse with Partners in Health in Lima, Peru. She'll greet a patient with a kiss on the cheek — levels of bacteria are very low after the drug regimen begins, she says. Jason Beaubien/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Jason Beaubien/NPR

Diana Corolina Huamani Pasion is a TB nurse with Partners in Health in Lima, Peru. She'll greet a patient with a kiss on the cheek — levels of bacteria are very low after the drug regimen begins, she says.

Jason Beaubien/NPR

You sure don't want to get tuberculosis. You'll cough a lot, maybe cough up blood, have fever, chills and chest pain. But most cases of the bacterial disease are curable after taking the two first-line drugs for four to six months.

You really don't want to get multiple-drug resistant TB. That's a strain of the bacteria that resists the front-line drugs. So nastier drugs and a longer treatment span are required. There are roughly 480,000 cases of MDR-TB, as it's called, each year; nearly half of the people with MDR-TB die from the disease.

Worst of all is XDR-TB, or extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis. It's estimated that 9 percent of people with multiple-drug resistant TB are in the XDR category. The treatment is hellish: two daily infusions of IV drugs through a port implanted in the chest, each session lasting about an hour. This goes on for a year. The drugs have horrible side effects, including nausea, permanent dizziness and permanent hearing loss. People are often depressed at the seeming endlessness of it all.

Because the treatment is so harsh, some countries write XDR-TB patients off, don't offer them treatment and just leave them to die. That approach heightens the risk that XDR-TB will be passed on to others. (Like regular TB, XDR-TB is spread when a patient coughs, sneezes or spits, sending bacteria into the air.)

Partners In Health, the global health nonprofit, wants to show that XDR-TB is not a death sentence. So the agency is currently treating 55 XDR-TB patients in Lima, Peru. We spoke with Jason Beaubien, NPR's global health correspondent, who is in Peru reporting on tuberculosis.

How bad are the side effects from treatment?

It knocks some people on their butt. They are exhausted for a year.

It must be hard to convince people to take debilitating drugs for so long a period.

Oscar Ramirez, the PIH coordinator here, said to me, "It's not just about the drugs." It's about nurses coming to visit, talking with them. It's about setting up support groups so these people don't get so depressed. Some patients just drop out.

And if they drop out?

The TB would come back.

How do people earn a living during treatment?

In a lot of places where you've got XDR-TB, there's not a social safety net. Partners In Health has this microfinance loan program to help patients. One woman is now knitting things and selling them. One woman with multiple drug resistant TB got a loan and opened a corner store.

How could she run a store if she's contagious?

Soon after you start treatment, you actually aren't contagious anymore.

That's surprising.

I was astounded. I put on a mask when I went to the first XDR-TB patient house, and the nurse was kissing him on the cheek. She said: "Don't worry. The levels of bacteria once he's been in treatment are so low that he's not contagious."

Can you tell me about some of the people you met?

One woman lives so far out of the capital — 6 1/2 hours away by bus — that PIH is renting a small apartment for her in Lima.

She's Jenny Tenorio Gallegos. She's 35 and her kids are 3 1/2 and 13. She was really heartbreaking. I asked her, "What's the worst part of the treatment?" She said, "I miss my children." She saw them in December and will see them again next month, during holy week.

Were there other patients in a better frame of mind?

I met a guy, Luis, who's 19. His TB was so bad they had to take out an entire lung. He was just two weeks away from finishing one year of the IV treatment. He's just about through the worst. Then there's another year, on pills. He was very upbeat. He had been driving a mototaxi — a three-wheeled jitney cab. He's hoping next year he'll be able to go to school and study to be a professional.

Shots - Health News

What It Takes To Cure Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis

Related NPR Stories

'How Unromantic It Is To Die Of Tuberculosis In The 21st Century' March 22, 2015

What kind of professional?
I asked him. He said, "Anything other than driving taxis!"

tuberculosis

Infectious Disease

Global Health

General Motors announced last week that it's closing its auto plant in St. Petersburg, and Volkswagen says it will lay off workers and reduce shifts at a plant in central Russia.

The latest auto industry troubles highlight a dismal picture for foreign investment in Russia, which could see a 35 percent drop in sales this year.

Seven years ago, GM was looking at a bright future in the Russian market. Cars sales were taking off and would eventually grow at a rate more than 10 percent a year.

The company promoted its newest auto plant with a video that praised Russian government cooperation with the industry, which had already attracted companies such as Ford, Nissan and Toyota.

Related NPR Stories

The Two-Way

Kerry Warns More Russian Sanctions Possible Over Ukraine

Parallels

Sanctions Intensify Russia's Free Fall Into Economic Crisis

Now, GM has announced that it will close that plant and take a $600 million charge to pay for the restructuring. Like many foreign automakers in Russia, GM is facing a car market that's near collapse.

Low oil prices and Western sanctions, imposed on Russia for its annexation of Crimea last year, drove the ruble down by 40 percent, and with it, consumer buying power, says Mark Adomanis, an analyst who has covered the subject for Forbes.

"Given what Russians' average incomes are," he says, "big-ticket items like cars have never been easy to afford. But if all of a sudden, you make that car 50 percent more expensive, 30 percent more expensive, it's just beyond people's reach."

GM's costs rose more than many other automakers in Russia because the company imported many of its parts, Adomanis says, instead of sourcing them locally.

GM workers in St. Petersburg say the company failed to address a problem that many people saw coming.

Pyotr Letkeman, chairman of the union shop committee, say the workers feel they are being made to pay for management's mistakes.

"As far back as 2013, it was clear that sales were declining in Russia," Letkeman says. "GM had very little localization of production in Russia, so foreign parts became expensive when the ruble lost value. GM couldn't compete."

i

A security guard at the General Motors factory outside St. Petersburg. Opel, the European arm of GM, announced last week it was withdrawing from the Russian market, where sales are falling. Olga Maltseva/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Olga Maltseva/AFP/Getty Images

A security guard at the General Motors factory outside St. Petersburg. Opel, the European arm of GM, announced last week it was withdrawing from the Russian market, where sales are falling.

Olga Maltseva/AFP/Getty Images

But GM isn't the only foreign carmaker having problems in Russia. Volkswagen announced that it's cutting back. The Korean company Ssangyong says it didn't ship any cars to Russia in January and February, because there simply wasn't a market for them.

The Russia government announced plans to provide carmakers with $166 million in subsidies to help tide them over.

Letkeman says the workers are angry and scared by a closure that will affect thousands of people.

"It's very painful," he adds. "People are calling me, asking 'what should I do? How will I feed my kids? How will I pay my mortgage?' "

Adomanis, the analyst, says that although it's very hard on people who lose their jobs, the overall job loss probably won't be felt in an economy where many people are employed by the government.

He says the real danger is the signal this sends to potential foreign investors.

"The automobile industry is one of the very few where they did a good job of attracting foreign investment," he says, "and to see one of the few industries where they have some real success stories to tell — to see people slashing production or in GM's case, pulling out entirely — is very worrying."

Adomanis says it's a sign that foreign investors no longer see the costs of doing business in Russia as being worth the benefits.

GM's plant closure will stop production of Chevrolets in Russia and wind down production of its German-designed Opel brand.

During its hot-selling days in Russia, Opel hired supermodel Claudia Schiffer to appear in an ad touting the car's engineering.

The ad closes with Schiffer speeding down a ramp in a parking garage.

These days, that downward spiral could just as well represent the auto market in Russia.

auto industry

Russia

General Motors announced last week that it's closing its auto plant in St. Petersburg, and Volkswagen says it will lay off workers and reduce shifts at a plant in central Russia.

The latest auto industry troubles highlight a dismal picture for foreign investment in Russia, which could see a 35 percent drop in sales this year.

Seven years ago, GM was looking at a bright future in the Russian market. Cars sales were taking off and would eventually grow at a rate more than 10 percent a year.

The company promoted its newest auto plant with a video that praised Russian government cooperation with the industry, which had already attracted companies such as Ford, Nissan and Toyota.

Related NPR Stories

The Two-Way

Kerry Warns More Russian Sanctions Possible Over Ukraine

Parallels

Sanctions Intensify Russia's Free Fall Into Economic Crisis

Now, GM has announced that it will close that plant and take a $600 million charge to pay for the restructuring. Like many foreign automakers in Russia, GM is facing a car market that's near collapse.

Low oil prices and Western sanctions, imposed on Russia for its annexation of Crimea last year, drove the ruble down by 40 percent, and with it, consumer buying power, says Mark Adomanis, an analyst who has covered the subject for Forbes.

"Given what Russians' average incomes are," he says, "big-ticket items like cars have never been easy to afford. But if all of a sudden, you make that car 50 percent more expensive, 30 percent more expensive, it's just beyond people's reach."

GM's costs rose more than many other automakers in Russia because the company imported many of its parts, Adomanis says, instead of sourcing them locally.

GM workers in St. Petersburg say the company failed to address a problem that many people saw coming.

Pyotr Letkeman, chairman of the union shop committee, say the workers feel they are being made to pay for management's mistakes.

"As far back as 2013, it was clear that sales were declining in Russia," Letkeman says. "GM had very little localization of production in Russia, so foreign parts became expensive when the ruble lost value. GM couldn't compete."

i

A security guard at the General Motors factory outside St. Petersburg. Opel, the European arm of GM, announced last week it was withdrawing from the Russian market, where sales are falling. Olga Maltseva/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Olga Maltseva/AFP/Getty Images

A security guard at the General Motors factory outside St. Petersburg. Opel, the European arm of GM, announced last week it was withdrawing from the Russian market, where sales are falling.

Olga Maltseva/AFP/Getty Images

But GM isn't the only foreign carmaker having problems in Russia. Volkswagen announced that it's cutting back. The Korean company Ssangyong says it didn't ship any cars to Russia in January and February, because there simply wasn't a market for them.

The Russia government announced plans to provide carmakers with $166 million in subsidies to help tide them over.

Letkeman says the workers are angry and scared by a closure that will affect thousands of people.

"It's very painful," he adds. "People are calling me, asking 'what should I do? How will I feed my kids? How will I pay my mortgage?' "

Adomanis, the analyst, says that although it's very hard on people who lose their jobs, the overall job loss probably won't be felt in an economy where many people are employed by the government.

He says the real danger is the signal this sends to potential foreign investors.

"The automobile industry is one of the very few where they did a good job of attracting foreign investment," he says, "and to see one of the few industries where they have some real success stories to tell — to see people slashing production or in GM's case, pulling out entirely — is very worrying."

Adomanis says it's a sign that foreign investors no longer see the costs of doing business in Russia as being worth the benefits.

GM's plant closure will stop production of Chevrolets in Russia and wind down production of its German-designed Opel brand.

During its hot-selling days in Russia, Opel hired supermodel Claudia Schiffer to appear in an ad touting the car's engineering.

The ad closes with Schiffer speeding down a ramp in a parking garage.

These days, that downward spiral could just as well represent the auto market in Russia.

auto industry

Russia