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It's not hard to reach presidential candidate Ryan Shepard.

He doesn't have a media relations office or a slick-tongued press secretary.

Shepard, 40, is a bartender at Roc Brewing Co. in Rochester while also working towards a bachelor's degree in creative writing at nearby SUNY Brockport. He plans to enroll in a MFA writing program after he graduates.

He is also just as much a candidate for U.S. president as Ted Cruz, who was billed by many as the first and only candidate to file so far.

"I'm doing something," says Shepard, when asked about his campaign. "People can complain about the government all you want, but you see very few people actually doing something. A lot of those people don't even vote."

Cruz got 13,000 re-tweets when he announced on Twitter. Shepard shared a photo announcing his campaign on Facebook, and got eight likes.

Shepard became a U.S. presidential candidate just two days after Cruz did, according to the Federal Election Commission. More than 200 others across the country have also filed to run for the big chair. Cruz was actually 194th to file, according to FEC records.

Is it that easy for a normal guy to become an official presidential candidate?

"I wanna say 4 minutes," Shepard said, when asked how long it took him to apply.

All you have to do is fill out a one page form called the FEC Form 2. If you want to receive campaign contributions that will eventually total more than $5,000, you fill out one more form, the FEC Form 1. Then you're set.

The majority of candidates so far are men and either Republican or independent.

Some of the applications are obvious pranks — "Sydney's Voluptuous Buttocks" officially filed on March 3 — but others are very serious.

Marc Feldman is a Libertarian candidate who filed in January. While he isn't a household name, he's also not completely new to the campaign trail. Feldman ran for attorney general in his home state of Ohio in 2010, and garnered more than 100,000 votes.

Feldman said he wants to balance the United States budget on day one in office. He added that he isn't going to accept campaign donations of more than $5 apiece.

"I think that raising a billion dollars and spending a billion dollars to run a presidential campaign is wrong."

Despite big hopes, the chances of candidates like Feldman or Shepard making even the smallest splash are slim or worse. Financial and credibility deficits are just two challenges in a long list the candidates would have to overcome said Tyler Johnson, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Oklahoma.

"Who knows how they're going to even get people to work for them, to go out into the field and spread their gospel," says Johnson. "They have so many deficits that I would say it's impossible for any of those individuals to have a serious shot."

That doesn't mean they won't try.

At least seven more people have filed to run since Shepard officially became a candidate on March 25.

2016 presidential election

2016 Presidential Race

Ted Cruz

election

The pope's doctors are telling him to lay off pasta and get more exercise.

The Italian news agency ANSA is reporting that the 78-year-old pontiff's doctors told him to get more exercise and cut back his pasta intake to twice a week. But Pope Francis, who reportedly eats a plate of spaghetti every day, has not taken well to the suggestions; one doctor tells ANSA the pope is an "undisciplined" patient.

The ANSA report notes the pope has gained weight recently and suffers from sciatica, a lower-back problem.

Focus on Francis' health comes as he himself has said in interviews that he feels occasionally tired.

"Do you know how many times I think about this: The weariness which all of you experience?" Francis said during his Holy Thursday meditation. "I think about it and pray about it often, especially when I'm tired myself."

Those comments come after remarks he made in an interview last month with Mexican broadcaster Televisa.

"I have a sensation that my pontificate will be short: four or five years, or two or three," he said.

In that same interview, he also noted that he missed the relative anonymity he had as a bishop when he could go out and get pizza. Just days after that interview, the pope had his wish fulfilled. As The Associated Press reports: "Pizza maker Enzo Cacialli had a pie on hand as Francis drove by the Naples waterfront ... during his one-day visit to the city famous for its pizza."

And as you can see in the picture below, Francis was only happy to accept it.

La consegna della nostra pizza al Papa.... #pizza #papa #napoli #pizzaperilpapa #donernesto #pizzanapoletana #PapaFrancesco #lapizzeriadelpapa

A photo posted by La Pizzeria del Papa (@don.ernesto) on Mar 21, 2015 at 11:36am PDT

The Crux, the Boston Globe's website that covers Catholic issues, adds: "So far, the Vatican has not reacted to the report about the pope's doctors urging him to take better care of himself. In such cases, the Vatican typically takes the position that such matters pertain to the pope's private life and thus declines to release any comment."

But while the Vatican may be tight-lipped, New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who appeared on NBC's Today show, had some useful advice for the pope: "Get a new doctor."

Pope Francis

Vatican

Updated at 9:10 a.m. ET

The U.S. economy gained just 126,000 jobs in March, a figure well short of economists' expectations and the weakest growth since December 2013, the Labor Department reports. The unemployment rate held steady at 5.5 percent.

The consensus among economic forecasters had been for 245,000 new jobs, which would have continued a 200,000+ monthly streak that has been the longest such spurt of job growth since the early 1990s. Over the last year alone, the U.S. economy has added 3 million jobs.

Robust jobs numbers from January and February were also revised downward by 69,000 total, according to the monthly Employment Situation Survey.

The labor participation rate remained nearly unchanged.

Despite the tepid news, average monthly salaries for nonfarm payrolls in March were up slightly, 7 cents to $24.86. The average hourly earnings of private-sector and nonsupervisory employees rose by 4 cents to $20.86.

The latest report bucks a trend that the BLS says say an average of 269,000 new jobs per month in the previous 12 months. However, with today's revisions factored in, the average for the last three months has been 197,000.

The Associated Press notes: "Economic growth has been hammered this year by winter weather, factory slowdowns and lackluster construction activity. The manufacturing, construction and government sectors each shed workers, while hiring at restaurants plunged from February."

Wall Street will have a long weekend to ponder the meaning of the latest employment figures because markets are closed today for Good Friday. But, the apparent deceleration in hiring could cause the Federal Reserve to hold off on raising interest rates.

Economist John Canally of LPL Financial tells NPR's John Ydstie that "the Fed wants wants to see, or hopes to see, is that all this growth in the job market will eventually begin to push up wages. And then wages are a prerequisite to get any kind of inflation to stick. So until you get some wage inflation, you're not likely to get very much overall inflation in the economy."

Sectors that added jobs in March include professional and business services (40,000); retail trade (26,000) and health care (22,000).

U.S. economy

Jobs

Unemployment

President Richard Nixon and Pat Nixon welcome South Vietnam's President Nguyen Van Thieu and his wife Nguyen Thi Mai Anh to a working dinner at the San Clemente home on April 2, 1973. Charles Tasnadi/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Charles Tasnadi/AP

After owning the estate for 35 years, retired Allergan CEO Gavin S. Herbert is selling the former home of President Richard Nixon for $75 million.

The estate is large. Its main residence is 9,000 square feet and the entire compound boasts over 15,000 square feet of living space. The Wall Street Journal has details:

The tranquil lot overlooks a popular surfing beach. It has flower and vegetable gardens, neatly trimmed hedges, and palm and cypress trees.

The home is designed in a Spanish Colonial style—white stucco and red-tile roof, and living spaces around a central courtyard with a fountain. An outside staircase leads to an office with a fireplace that Mr. Nixon added. The dining room overlooks the home's ornamental and English gardens on the opposite side.

The Orange County Register lists all the spaces on the compound. They include "a pavilion with a grand main room, bar, guest suite and den, a two-bedroom guest house, pool and pool terrace, lighted tennis court, gazebo on the bluff, expansive lawns, vegetable and succulent gardens, a greenhouse, catering facility, four staff residences, security annexes and a private well for landscaping water."

Nixon bought the estate in 1969 for $1.4 million, just six months into his presidency, according to The Journal. He named it La Casa Pacifica. During his presidency, Nixon hosted his family as well as world leaders. After resigning from office in 1974 because of the Watergate scandal, Nixon retreated to the estate, where he wrote his memoir.

The OC Register notes that Herbert, along with partners, bought the estate from Nixon in 1980, after the former president moved to New York. The Wall Street Journal says Herbert's life-long love of gardening led him to volunteer as head gardener for the estate even before he owned it.

Gathered in the living room of the president's home at the Western White House in San Clemente on Jan. 6, 1971 are Richard Nixon and guests. From left to right are Bob Hope; Tricia Nixon; Pat Nixon; Gerald Ford, then minority leader of the House; Dolores Hope, Nixon; Betty Ford; Henry Kissinger; and Arnold Palmer. Anonymous/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Anonymous/AP

Sierra Leone poured a lot of money into the battle against Ebola.

The government earmarked $18 million of treasury funds and public donations to combat the disease, which has claimed around 3,800 lives there.

That's an admirable commitment. But there's just one problem. A third of that money appears to have disappeared.

That was the finding of a February government audit, which determined that $6 million is unaccounted for and may have been used to pay "ghost" workers who do not exist. The audit also determined that there is no documentation for an additional $10.2 million.

The sad state of affairs in Sierra Leone is hardly a rare occurrence. According to Berlin-based Transparency International, a global anti-corruption coalition, on average a quarter of the total amount of money allocated for humanitarian assistance is lost to crime.

"There is a high risk of corruption," says Craig Fagan, TI's head of global policy, "because the countries that need it the most are the most susceptible." They're often impoverished and lack strong and open governments and the necessary systems of checks and balances to keep corruption at bay. In the case of Sierra Leone, it was internal money that went missing.

But it doesn't matter if the aid is from local or international sources, he says. It's all at risk of being lost to theft or mismanagement: "This is a problem with funds from all sources," including money from local and foreign government agencies, the United Nations and charities.

Global humanitarian efforts to help people devastated by the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami were marked by corruption, according to a 2006 TI working paper. So were relief efforts to combat a drought in Kenya in 2011. And it's not just a problem overseas.

The New York Times reported in 2006 that $2 billion in tax dollars sent to aid New Orleans after it was leveled by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 was sucked away by waste and fraud.

The answer to the problem is simple: Keep good records! Of course that's easier said than done, but one good example, says Fagan, is the Foreign Aid Transparency Hub, an online tracking service set up by the government of the typhoon-prone Philippines. It tracks the status and amounts of foreign relief aid — cash and in-kind — donated to the country.

Moreover, humanitarian groups are banding together to share information about their programs. The International Aid Transparency Initiative is an online resource for organizations to publish financial and other data on their projects. Begun in 2011, it now has 324 members, including the African Development Bank, European Investment Bank and United Nations Children's Fund.

Fagan credits Sierra Leone for at least making an effort to keep tabs on the funds, noting that a government audit found the missing millions. But now, he adds, it's a question of whether it will follow through with an investigation to determine whether the missing money is attributable to crime or mismanagement and will bring to justice any criminals involved.

If past is prologue in Sierra Leone, then justice may not be in the offing. A few years ago, Fagan relates, after a cholera epidemic struck the country, a similar government audit of assistance funds "found holes in the money trail. But no one was ever held accountable."

humanitarian aid

Sierra Leone

ebola

This Passover holiday marks the end of an era for an iconic matzo factory in New York City.

Streit's has been baking matzo — the unleavened bread that Jews eat during the eight days of Passover — in the same factory on the Lower East Side for 90 years. But the company announced it will move production to a new, modern factory after the holiday.

That's a blow to Streit's loyal customers, who insist it tastes better than other brands.

"The supermarkets don't have the stuff, you could come here," says Hedy Weinberger, who says she's been doing her Passover shopping at Streit's factory for more than half a century. "And you smell the matzo," says Weinberger. "You're gonna miss that."

"It was sort of the last holdout in the neighborhood," says Megan Schlow, who's lived on the Lower East Side for 30 years. "It was, I guess, sort of inevitable."

Streit's did hold out — for decades, even as other Jewish-owned businesses moved away from the neighborhood – which was the "capital of Jewish America," as the Library of Congress put it, at the turn of the 20th century. These days, the kosher butchers and grocers have been replaced by high-end restaurants, bars and apartments. But Streit's stayed put, in a factory carved out of four tenement apartment buildings.

i

Edwin Caballeros loads fresh-baked matzos into a packaging machine at the Streit's factory in New York, March 4, 2015. Seth Wenig/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Seth Wenig/AP

Edwin Caballeros loads fresh-baked matzos into a packaging machine at the Streit's factory in New York, March 4, 2015.

Seth Wenig/AP

Founder Aron Streit moved the company to Rivington Street in 1925. The matzo is still baked in ovens that date from before World-World II. The factory is now way too small by modern standards. So the company spends hundreds of thousands of dollars a year just to ship matzo to its own off-site warehouse.

"We could absorb some of the cost," says Aron Yagoda, Streit's great-grandson, and one of several cousins who own and run the business today. "But the real problem is we can't fix the ovens anymore. And every day we come in, it's a blessing the ovens even turn on."

Shortly after Passover, the company will shut off these ovens for good. But co-owner Aaron Gross insists the Streit family recipe will move with them.

"We're the butt of a lot of jokes with matzo," says Gross. "It's the bread of affliction. People say it's tough to eat for eight days. But we have many consumers that [say], forget Passover. They eat it because they choose to eat it."

Still, there are reasons to worry that something may be lost in the move.

"The water we use is New York City water, which is the best water in the world," longtime employee Tony Zapata says in an interview from the documentary film, Streit's: Matzo and the American Dream. "You want Jersey water?" asks Zapata. "Fine — you buy matzos from Jersey. That's on you. We have quality."

He's alluding to Manischewitz, the biggest matzo company in the world, based in New Jersey. To see if anyone else could tell the difference, we enlisted taste-tasters: Sarah Lowman, a food writer and educator who writes the blog at Four Pounds Flour, and Annie Polland, senior vice president at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. And we gave them Matzo No. 1.

i

A worker stacks matzo wafers at Streit's matzo factory on the Lower East Side of New York, May 2012. Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images

A worker stacks matzo wafers at Streit's matzo factory on the Lower East Side of New York, May 2012.

Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images

"That's a good snap," Lowman says. But Polland isn't impressed. "As my grandmother would say, this is as dry as my life," she says of the first option.

Then we gave them Matzo No. 2. "It has a little bit of a toasty flavor," Polland says. Lowman agrees. "It tastes more like a cracker, No. 2," Lowman says, "whereas [No.] 1 kind of just tastes more like dry flour."

Matzo No. 2 – as they both guess correctly — is Streit's.

Polland says the closing of the factory is a real loss for the neighborhood.

"For so long, for decades, Jews have been coming back here at springtime to kind of do this Passover shopping," Polland says. "And Streit's was like a central part of that pilgrimage, if you will. So I think it not being here, there's something really sad about it."

But as Lowman points out, the Lower East Side has changed many times before. And Streit's isn't going out of business. "We aren't really losing this product, or this family, or this business," she says. "It's still very much a part of New York history and Jewish history in America."

Streit's owners won't say exactly where in the New York area they are planning to move. But if they do it right, they say that next Passover, their customers won't even notice the difference.

matzo

jewish food

foodways

Passover

This Passover holiday marks the end of an era for an iconic matzo factory in New York City.

Streit's has been baking matzo — the unleavened bread that Jews eat during the eight days of Passover — in the same factory on the Lower East Side for 90 years. But the company announced it will move production to a new, modern factory after the holiday.

That's a blow to Streit's loyal customers, who insist it tastes better than other brands.

"The supermarkets don't have the stuff, you could come here," says Hedy Weinberger, who says she's been doing her Passover shopping at Streit's factory for more than half a century. "And you smell the matzo," says Weinberger. "You're gonna miss that."

"It was sort of the last holdout in the neighborhood," says Megan Schlow, who's lived on the Lower East Side for 30 years. "It was, I guess, sort of inevitable."

Streit's did hold out — for decades, even as other Jewish-owned businesses moved away from the neighborhood – which was the "capital of Jewish America," as the Library of Congress put it, at the turn of the 20th century. These days, the kosher butchers and grocers have been replaced by high-end restaurants, bars and apartments. But Streit's stayed put, in a factory carved out of four tenement apartment buildings.

i

Edwin Caballeros loads fresh-baked matzos into a packaging machine at the Streit's factory in New York, March 4, 2015. Seth Wenig/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Seth Wenig/AP

Edwin Caballeros loads fresh-baked matzos into a packaging machine at the Streit's factory in New York, March 4, 2015.

Seth Wenig/AP

Founder Aron Streit moved the company to Rivington Street in 1925. The matzo is still baked in ovens that date from before World-World II. The factory is now way too small by modern standards. So the company spends hundreds of thousands of dollars a year just to ship matzo to its own off-site warehouse.

"We could absorb some of the cost," says Aron Yagoda, Streit's great-grandson, and one of several cousins who own and run the business today. "But the real problem is we can't fix the ovens anymore. And every day we come in, it's a blessing the ovens even turn on."

Shortly after Passover, the company will shut off these ovens for good. But co-owner Aaron Gross insists the Streit family recipe will move with them.

"We're the butt of a lot of jokes with matzo," says Gross. "It's the bread of affliction. People say it's tough to eat for eight days. But we have many consumers that [say], forget Passover. They eat it because they choose to eat it."

Still, there are reasons to worry that something may be lost in the move.

"The water we use is New York City water, which is the best water in the world," longtime employee Tony Zapata says in an interview from the documentary film, Streit's: Matzo and the American Dream. "You want Jersey water?" asks Zapata. "Fine — you buy matzos from Jersey. That's on you. We have quality."

He's alluding to Manischewitz, the biggest matzo company in the world, based in New Jersey. To see if anyone else could tell the difference, we enlisted taste-tasters: Sarah Lowman, a food writer and educator who writes the blog at Four Pounds Flour, and Annie Polland, senior vice president at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. And we gave them Matzo No. 1.

i

A worker stacks matzo wafers at Streit's matzo factory on the Lower East Side of New York, May 2012. Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images

A worker stacks matzo wafers at Streit's matzo factory on the Lower East Side of New York, May 2012.

Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images

"That's a good snap," Lowman says. But Polland isn't impressed. "As my grandmother would say, this is as dry as my life," she says of the first option.

Then we gave them Matzo No. 2. "It has a little bit of a toasty flavor," Polland says. Lowman agrees. "It tastes more like a cracker, No. 2," Lowman says, "whereas [No.] 1 kind of just tastes more like dry flour."

Matzo No. 2 – as they both guess correctly — is Streit's.

Polland says the closing of the factory is a real loss for the neighborhood.

"For so long, for decades, Jews have been coming back here at springtime to kind of do this Passover shopping," Polland says. "And Streit's was like a central part of that pilgrimage, if you will. So I think it not being here, there's something really sad about it."

But as Lowman points out, the Lower East Side has changed many times before. And Streit's isn't going out of business. "We aren't really losing this product, or this family, or this business," she says. "It's still very much a part of New York history and Jewish history in America."

Streit's owners won't say exactly where in the New York area they are planning to move. But if they do it right, they say that next Passover, their customers won't even notice the difference.

matzo

jewish food

foodways

Passover

China is strongly protesting the apparent emergency landing of two U.S. Navy F-18 fighters at an airbase in Taiwan — the first time such an incident has occurred in three decades.

Beijing has long considered Taiwan part of its territory and the presence of U.S. warplanes there has caused unease.

"We have already made solemn representations to the U.S. side," China's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Hua Chunying, told a regular news briefing.

"We require the U.S. to abide by the 'One-China Policy' ... to prudently deal with the relevant issue," Hua added.

Media in Taiwan have portrayed the incident as a first since the mid-1980s.

Taiwanese military expert Lin Yu-fang, who is also a member of parliament with the ruling Kuomintang party, was quoted by Agence France-Presse the two jets were escorting an EA-6B Prowler, an electronics warfare aircraft, en route to the Philippines.

"Taiwan must have been considered by the United States a trusted place to make the emergency landing," Lin told AFP.

Reuters offers a bit of background:

"U.S. weapons sales in recent years to Taiwan, or indeed any formal contact between the two armed forces, have provoked strong condemnation by China, but have not caused lasting damage to Beijing's relations with either Washington or Taipei.

"China views Taiwan as a renegade province and has not ruled out the use of force to bring it under its control.

"While Taiwan and China have signed a series of landmark trade and economic agreements since 2008, political and military suspicions still run deep, especially in democratic Taiwan, where many fear China's true intentions."

taiwan

U.S. Navy

China

Dubai took on a Mars-like glow Thursday, after a major sandstorm descended upon the city in the United Arab Emirates. Conditions forced airlines to delay or cancel flights in Dubai after the sandstorm arrived from Saudi Arabia early this morning.

High-res satellite imagery from @NASA shows the extent of the #sandstorm on Thursday http://t.co/D59ppHuaVr pic.twitter.com/U66prObPZ8

— Capital Weather Gang (@capitalweather) April 2, 2015

For a sense of the scale of the sandstorm's impact, consider that Dubai is a city of more than 2 million people. Earlier this year, Dubai International Airport was named the busiest in the world, supplanting London's Heathrow.

#burjkhalifa #Dubai - before, during and after the apocalypse! @MyDowntownDubai pic.twitter.com/UzBJLw5MAv

— Robert Scott (@rascottdotcom) April 2, 2015

After strong winds blew the sandstorm into the city today, the dusty haze is expected to persist through Friday. More than 100 cars were reportedly involved in accidents in Dubai.

"With severely reduced visibility, many motorists found themselves in fender benders prompting a flurry of police officers to respond to accidents in all corners of the nation," Gulf News reports.

i

A woman and two children wear medical masks as they cross a street amid a sandstorm in Dubai. Marwan Naamani/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Marwan Naamani/AFP/Getty Images

A woman and two children wear medical masks as they cross a street amid a sandstorm in Dubai.

Marwan Naamani/AFP/Getty Images

The news agency published a list of Do's and Don'ts, largely to recommend covering up and staying hydrated. It also warned against heaving use of air conditioning, which could bring fine dust in. Gulf News added, "Do not eat any food catered outdoors in restaurants or cafes."

i

A Dubai metro train is seen driving through a sandstorm that engulfed the city Thursday, setting off travel delays. Marwan Naamani/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Marwan Naamani/AFP/Getty Images

A Dubai metro train is seen driving through a sandstorm that engulfed the city Thursday, setting off travel delays.

Marwan Naamani/AFP/Getty Images

sandstorm

Dubai

Updated at 11:04 a.m. ET

German prosecutors say the co-pilot of the Germanwings plane who crashed the aircraft into the French Alps on March 24 apparently used his tablet computer to search the Internet for ways to commit suicide and for the safety features of cockpit doors. Separately, French prosecutors say the second black box of Flight 4U 9525 has been recovered.

The Internet searches covered the dates March 16 to March 23. One search was related to "medical treatment ... and the possibilities of [committing] suicide," German prosecutors said. They added: "On at least one day, the person also spent several minutes trying out search terms for cockpit doors and their security protection."

Investigators say they believe co-pilot Andreas Lubitz, 27, deliberately crashed Flight 4U 9525 into the French Alps, killing himself and 149 others. They came to that conclusion after the recovery last week of the flight's voice recorder near the scene of the crash.

Today, French prosecutors said they had recovered the aircraft's second black box – the data recorder.

Together, the two black boxes – the voice recorder and the data recorder — will give investigators more insight into what happened inside the cockpit of the plane that was flying from Barcelona, Spain, to Duesseldorf, Germany.

You can find our full coverage of this story here.

Germanwings Flight 9525

germanwings Flight 4U 9525

Driving from Baghdad north to Tikrit, we speed up a main road Wednesday through small towns that have been won back from the self-declared Islamic State, or ISIS. Some still have smoking buildings.

On the outskirts we pass through places that have obviously seen heavy fighting. Half-built houses are pocked with bullet holes, their windows shattered.

As we move into Tikrit proper, the excited fighters begin celebrating, Iraqi style, with gunshots into the air. They have reason to celebrate. A hard-fought battle appears to be nearing a conclusion.

But it's still not clear what's coming next.

For a month, Iraqi government troops, Shiite militias backed by Iran, and U.S. airstrikes have pounded ISIS in Tikrit, a Sunni Muslim city where former dictator Saddam Hussein was raised.

i

Iraqi security forces and allied Shiite militiamen look for Islamic State extremists in Tikrit on Tuesday. Iraqi forces were going house-to-house in search of snipers and booby traps. Khalid Mohammed/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Khalid Mohammed/AP

Iraqi security forces and allied Shiite militiamen look for Islamic State extremists in Tikrit on Tuesday. Iraqi forces were going house-to-house in search of snipers and booby traps.

Khalid Mohammed/AP

The battle for Tikrit is part of the larger effort to move against ISIS in other parts of Iraq, including the big prize of Mosul, farther north.

Iraq's Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared Tuesday that Tikrit had been "liberated," making it the first major city retaken from ISIS since the extremist group swept through northern and western Iraq last year.

But conditions in Tikrit on Wednesday suggest that the prime minister's claim is at least a bit premature.

As we ride through Tikrit, we pass a nicer part of town with villas, though here, too, there are potholes, bullet holes in walls, and collapsed lampposts and cinderblock walls.

We head to a provincial council building, right in the center of Tikrit, which government troops and their allies are very proud of taking. The building is a charred wreck, though the mood is jubilant. Religious leaders are praying; parliament members and Shiite militias are milling around. Rafa Abdullah, a policeman from Tikrit, has just arrived back for the first time in nine months.

i

Iraqi Shiite fighters flash the victory sign in Tikrit on Wednesday. Ahmad Al-Rubaye/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Ahmad Al-Rubaye/AFP/Getty Images

Iraqi Shiite fighters flash the victory sign in Tikrit on Wednesday.

Ahmad Al-Rubaye/AFP/Getty Images

"We're happy," he says. "We've been suffering since June and my house was blown up by ISIS."

He expects it will be about 10 days before even parts of the city are habitable. He thinks about half of the infrastructure for electricity and water has been destroyed. But more importantly, parts of the city are still not cleared of ISIS fighters or bombs.

Still, morale is high. Militiaman Riyadh al-Zaidi says he's sure ISIS will be defeated.

"We will smash them under our feet, and even if they have all of the control in the world we are (tough) enough to stop them," he says. "Not just stop them, we will smash them."

There will be challenges. Central Tikrit is a ghost town with no civilians in sight. There are lots of soldiers, graffiti, flags and bullet casings. But it seems that the retaking of the city is not yet complete.

We are surrounded by bursts of celebratory gunfire. There are louder noises in the distance, which Iraqi commanders say are ongoing battles with ISIS fighters. They are still present, houses are still booby-trapped and the roads are still mined. There's still some way to go.

Iraq

Matamoros, which sits across the bridge from Brownsville, Texas, used to be a laid-back border town famed for margaritas and manufacturing.

But for at least the last five years, it's grown more and more violent: first, when the Zetas broke away from the Gulf Cartel, and more recently as a new feud has broken out between two factions within the Gulf.

It's the current hotspot in the mafia wars that seem to shift every few years up and down the U.S.-Mexico border. A feud between rival drug gangs has terrorized the citizens of this historic border city — officially known as Heroica Matamoros.

In February, the U.S. State Department warned consulate personnel to stay indoors to avoid the daytime convoys of cartel gunmen, some armed with grenade launchers.

Throughout this city of a half-million, people are tense and wary. And they have reason to be. Matamoros periodically erupts in fearsome gun battles between militias of coked-up narcos in muscle trucks or between the narcos and ski-masked soldiers.

Public life and commerce have withered in this once vibrant tourist town on the lower Rio Grande.

For instance, the violence is hurting the trade in used cars, known as chocolates.

Mexican brokers used to tow broken cars across the bridge from Texas to Matamoros, mechanics would fix them, and buyers from elsewhere in Mexico would travel to the border to get a good deal on a used car.

"Today, people don't come from the interior ... to buy cars because they're afraid," says Carlos Alberto, owner of a grease-stained garage. He, like everyone else in this story, asked that we not use his last name.

"Most of the mechanics here in Matamoros depended on selling used cars. Now we're all struggling," he says. "Today the situation is very tense. We really don't know what's going to happen tomorrow."

Carlos Alberto says life has not stopped. People still go to Mass, baby showers, and quincieneras, but then they go straight home.

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Matamoros had a reputation as a laid back border town and was relatively quiet when NPR paid a visit last year. Now, a feud between rival drug gangs keeps citizens inside and visitors away. Kainaz Amaria/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Kainaz Amaria/NPR

Matamoros had a reputation as a laid back border town and was relatively quiet when NPR paid a visit last year. Now, a feud between rival drug gangs keeps citizens inside and visitors away.

Kainaz Amaria/NPR

"I lived through part of the civil war in my native country, El Salvador. When I came here, compared to El Salvador, I thought Mexico was a piece of heaven," he says. "But all this ended, little by little. Today, Matamoros is one of the most dangerous cities in Mexico. But we never see it on television."

It's a maddening reality. There were 883 homicides in Tamaulipas state in 2013, most of them victims of the drug war.

But local TV, radio and newspapers do not report them, due to strict censorship by the Gulf Cartel. Last month, the editor of the leading daily, El Manana, was abducted and beaten because his newspaper published a front-page account of cartel clashes. He has since fled the city.

Reporting on cartel violence on social media can be dangerous, too. Four years ago, a blogger in Nuevo Laredo was beheaded, and last October, a Twitter user in Reynosa was murdered. Both were killed for saying too much.

Yet, people keep doing it in Matamoros because it's the only news they can use.

"The newspapers only publish simple things like car accidents. They don't publish what's really happening," says a clothes vendor named Hugo. "My daughters monitor Facebook, and they'll call me and say, 'Papi, don't go near 18th and 20th streets, there's a shootout there!' And so I don't go out."

Affluent residents of Matamoros have another fear: kidnapping.

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Juan is a portly, 29-year-old Mexican-American who used to own a jewelry shop in Matamoros. One day two years ago when he was closing up shop, two thugs armed with guns showed up and told him to climb into their van.

Then began a week-long nightmare. He was beaten every day. He was kept in a squalid, evil-smelling room with no toilet and blood-stained walls.

"I actually start thinking they feel pleasure when they hit me," he says, sitting in a friend's curio shop in Matamoros.

His parents paid a half-million pesos, nearly $42,000, for their son's life.

On the eighth day, his captors pulled a sack over his head, put him back in the van, and drove for two hours. They took him out of the van and hit him in the head so hard that he passed out.

When he came to, he realized, first, that he was alive, and, second, that his hands were untied. He untied his ankles and walked for hours until he heard traffic and spotted a farmhouse. The person there called an ambulance.

"I woke up in the hospital," Juan remembers. "The first person I saw was my mom and my dad. I just start crying."

Like many Mexican families who can afford it, Juan and his family fled Matamoros for Brownsville. He says Matamoros has changed, and the narco bosses are different now.

"In past years, you just see guys in white trucks. 'Oh, that's the members of the cartel,' but they don't mess with the people," Juan says. "What I see right now is that these guys are just looking for money. They are not doing their straight business that is the (drug) trafficking. They see that they can get money from the people."

The details of Juan's story could not be independently verified, but a fellow merchant confirmed the fact of his kidnapping. And it's consistent with the rash of kidnappings that has plagued this region in recent years.

Cartel members are preying on local residents for alternative income.

First, the killing and capture of major drug capos has led to the fragmentation of criminal syndicates — in Tamaulipas state as it has elsewhere in Mexico. A power struggle is under way within the Gulf Cartel between Los Ciclones in Matamoros and Los Metros in Reynosa, and no one is safe.

Second, trafficking drugs is just harder these days, so criminals are turning to kidnapping and extortion.

The U.S. side of the river is guarded by federal agents, state troopers and the National Guard, while Mexico has flooded Matamoros and Reynosa with military troops. The harder the Mexican government fights the cartels, it seems, the more misery it creates for the people.

Mexico's drug wars

U.S. Mexico drug wars

Mexico

Gary Ross Dahl, the creator of the wildly popular 1970s fad the Pet Rock, has died at age 78 in southern Oregon.

Dahl's wife, Marguerite Dahl, confirmed Tuesday that her husband of 40 years died March 23 of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

The smooth stones came packed in a cardboard box containing a tongue-in-cheek instruction pamphlet for "care and feeding." Dahl estimated he had sold 1.5 million of them at roughly $4 each by the time the fad fizzled. The Pet Rock required no work and no time commitment.

Born Dec. 18, 1936, in Bottineau, N.D., Dahl was raised in Spokane, Washington.

In 1975, he was a Los Gatos, Calif,, advertising executive when he came up with the Pet Rock idea.

Dahl also penned Advertising for Dummies.

In 2000, he was a grand prize winner in the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for dreadful prose. His winning entry: "The heather-encrusted Headlands, veiled in fog as thick as smoke in a crowded pub, hunched precariously over the moors, their rocky elbows slipping off land's end, their bulbous, craggy noses thrust into the thick foam of the North Sea like bearded old men falling asleep in their pints. "

He and his wife retired and moved to Jacksonville, Ore., in 2006.

The Pet Rock craze "was great fun when it happened," his wife recalled in a telephone interview. Over time, however, "people would come to him with weird ideas, expecting him to do for them what he had done for himself. And a lot of times they were really, really stupid ideas."

By 1988, Dahl told The Associated Press he had avoided interviews for years because of what he called "a bunch of wackos" appearing out of nowhere with threats and lawsuits.

Of the little rock that became a household word, he said, "Sometimes I look back and wonder if my life wouldn't have been simpler if I hadn't done it."

Dahl designed and built the Carry Nations Saloon in Los Gatos, his wife said.

In addition to his wife, he is survived by a sister, Candace Dahl of Spokane; daughters Chris Nunez and Samantha Leighton; son Eric Dahl; stepdaughter Vicki Pershing and grandchildren.

Dahl and his wife were avid sailors on San Francisco Bay, where she plans to sprinkle his ashes in May.

A controversial law in Indiana has made its way into the 2016 presidential race. Supporters praise the Religious Freedom Restoration Act's for protecting religious convictions, but the law has drawn wide criticism from those who say it allows businesses to discriminate against gay and lesbian patrons.

Would-be candidates on the GOP side mostly defended the law. "I don't think Americans want to discriminate against anyone," Sen. Marco Rubio said on Fox News. "I think the fundamental question in some of these laws is should someone be discriminated against because of their religious views?"

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker took a different approach, saying he doesn't intend to get involved with it or anticipate a similar bill coming to his desk. "In our state there's a balance between wanting to make sure that there's not discrimination [and] at the same time respecting religious freedoms. ... We do that in different ways than what they've done in Indiana," he said at a press conference.

And on the lonely Democratic side, Hillary Clinton weighed in, tweeting her opposition to the law.

Here's what the 2016 presidential contenders have said:

Jeb Bush, to conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt

"I think if you, if they actually got briefed on the law that they wouldn't be blasting this law. I think Gov. Pence has done the right thing. Florida has a law like this. Bill Clinton signed a law like this at the federal level.

"This is simply allowing people of faith space to be able to express their beliefs, to have, to be able to be people of conscience. I just think once the facts are established, people aren't going to see this as discriminatory at all."

Ben Carson, to Breitbart News

"It is absolutely vital that we do all we can to allow Americans to practice their religious ways, while simultaneously ensuring that no one's beliefs infringe upon those of others. We should also serve as champions of freedom of religion throughout the world."

Hillary Clinton, on Twitter

"Sad this new Indiana law can happen in America today. We shouldn't discriminate against ppl bc of who they love #LGBT"

Sad this new Indiana law can happen in America today. We shouldn't discriminate against ppl bc of who they love #LGBT http://t.co/mDhpS18oEH

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) March 27, 2015

Ted Cruz, on Twitter

"I'm proud to stand with Gov. @mike_pence for religious liberty, and I urge Americans to do the same."

I’m proud to stand with Gov. @mike_pence for religious liberty, and I urge Americans to do the same http://t.co/cWidDW2zpg

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) March 31, 2015

Sen. Marco Rubio, to Fox's The Five

"I don't think Americans want to discriminate against anyone. I think the fundamental question in some of these laws is should someone be discriminated against because of their religious views? So no one here is saying it should be legal to deny someone service at a restaurant or a hotel because of their sexual orientation. I think that's a consensus view in America. The flip side of it is, though, should a photographer be punished for refusing to do a wedding that their faith teaches them is not one that is valid in the eyes of God."

Gov. Scott Walker, in a press conference

"In our state there's a balance between wanting to make sure that there's not discrimination [and] at the same time respecting religious freedoms. ... We do that in different ways than what they've done in Indiana.

"Certainly that's going to be part of the debate here and across the country."

Updated at 5:40 p.m. E.T.

Two liberal watchdog groups are challenging the strategy that four presidential hopefuls — Republicans Jeb Bush, Scott Walker and Rick Santorum, and Democrat Martin O'Malley — are using to avoid legal contribution limits and disclosure requirements.

In complaints filed at the Federal Election Commission, the Campaign Legal Center and Democracy 21 say that while the four politicians all maintain that they're not even considering running for president, they all have crossed the legal line that defines a candidacy or a "testing the waters" phase in campaign finance law.

The complaints cite examples in federal regulations of conduct that turns a politician into a candidate. Three examples seem to describe what's gone on this winter and spring, when un-candidates have:

Referred to themselves as candidates. So far, it's always seemed to be by accident or reflex.

Demonstrated an intention to run for president over a "protracted period of time."

Raised more money than is needed to explore a candidacy, or launched "activities designed to amass" a campaign warchest. All four of the un-candidates have SuperPACs for which they raise unlimited contributions — a level of soliticitation that would be forbidden if they threw their hats in the ring.

The complaints also cite regulations on the activities that define a "testing the waters" committee — the status the un-candidates are avoiding. Two stand out:

Spending money on polling to determine the candidate's "name recognition, favorability or relative support level."

Paying employees, consultants or vendors, and opening offices in states where primaries and caucuses will be held. In Iowa, where the first caucuses are scheduled for next February, Walker and O'Malley already have staff on the ground, while Bush and Santorum have Iowa consultants on retainer.

Lis Smith, spokeswoman for O'Malley's superPAC, O'PAC, said there was no merit to the complaint against the Democrat. She said, "We are confident that — whatever the case may be with the other potential candidates — that is what the FEC will find."

Walker is using the "issues-based" superPAC to talk about "his reform-minded principles in Wisconsin," said Kirsten Kukowski, spokeswoman for Walker's superPAC, Our American Revival. She didn't directly address the complaint but added, "If there are any announcements about his future he will do it in accordance with the law."

Spokesmen for the other un-candidates did not respond before deadline.

Paul Ryan, senior counsel to the Campaign Legal Center, said his group may also file complaints concerning other undeclared presidential hopefuls. So far, only Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, of Texas, has announced his candidacy.

Ryan said the strategy of not declaring fails to exempt politicians from "election laws passed by Congress to keep the White House off the auction block."

Gov. Martin O'Malley

Gov. Scott Walker

Jeb Bush

Rick Santorum

campaign finance

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that private Medicaid providers cannot sue to force states to raise reimbursement rates in the face of rising medical costs. The 5-to-4 decision is a blow to many doctors and health care companies and their complaint that state Medicaid reimbursement rates are so low that health care providers often lose money on Medicaid patients.

In 2009, Idaho centers that provided care for some 6,200 mentally disabled children and adults went to court to challenge the state's Medicaid reimbursement rates. They contended the state had adopted a Medicaid plan with reimbursement rates set at 2006 levels, despite the fact that costs had gone up significantly over the three intervening years. The lower courts agreed and raised the state's reimbursement rates. But the Supreme Court reversed that ruling, declaring that private Medicaid providers have no right to sue under the Medicaid law. If a state is not providing fair reimbursement rates, the court said, the only recourse Medicaid providers have is to ask the federal Department of Health and Human Services to withhold all Medicaid funds from the state — a step so punitive that it has never happened.

The 5-to-4 vote crossed the court's usual ideological lines, with the liberal Justice Stephen Breyer joining four of the court's conservatives to provide the fifth and decisive vote against such provider lawsuits and the conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy joining three of the court's liberals in dissent.

The majority opinion, written by Justice Antonin Scalia, said that Congress, in creating the Medicaid rate-setting scheme, did not explicitly authorize private suits like the one at issue here. Instead, he said, the law mandates that state reimbursement plans are "consistent with efficiency, economy, and quality of care," all the while "safeguarding against unnecessary utilization of ... care and services."

"It is difficult to imagine a requirement broader and less specific" than that, wrote Scalia. "Explicitly conferring enforcement of this judgment-laden standard upon the Secretary [of Health and Human Services] alone establishes, we think," that Congress wanted to make the agency cutoff of funds the "exclusive" remedy. With such a big financial club, Scalia said, "we doubt that the Secretary's notice to a state that its compensation scheme is inadequate will be ignored."

Joining Scalia in the majority were Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Breyer.

In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the ruling would have "very real consequences." Previously, she said, "a state that set reimbursement rates so low that providers were unwilling to furnish a covered service" could be ordered by the courts to provide adequate resources to meet federal requirements. But now, said Sotomayor, "it must suffice that a federal agency, with many programs to oversee, has the authority to address such violations through the drastic and often counterproductive measure of withholding the funds that pay for such services." Joining the dissent were Justices Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan.

Latonya Suggs says she borrowed thousands of dollars in student loans to attend the for-profit Corinthian Colleges but has nothing to show for it. Most employers don't recognize her criminal justice degree.

"I am completely lost and in debt," Suggs says. And now she's doing something about it: She's refusing to pay back those loans.

Suggs and 106 other borrowers now saddled with Corinthian loan debt say their refusal to re-pay the loans is a form of political protest. And today, the U.S. government gave them an audience.

Representatives of the "Corinthian 100" met with officials from the Department of Education and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Rohit Chopra, the CFPB's student loan ombudsman, said in a letter to the strikers that the CFPB would like to "discuss further" potential "ways to address the burden of their student loans."

This saga began last July, when Corinthian Colleges, a for-profit chain with 70,000 students across more than 100 campuses, ceased operations in response to a federal regulatory crackdown.

In September, the CFPB sued Corinthian, accusing it of predatory lending practices. Weeks later, roughly half of its campuses were sold to the Educational Credit Management Corporation, a financial company with no prior experience operating colleges.

Finally, in February, the CFPB and the Department of Education announced the forgiveness of $480 million in private student loans held by former Corinthian students.

But those are just the private loans. Borrowers are still on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars in federal student loans — money that the Department of Education expects to be paid back. That's true even for students who never earned their degrees, on campuses that are being shut down.

Behind this protest is a group called the Debt Collective with roots in the Occupy Wall Street movement. Last September it announced that it had bought up some of the loans made to Corinthian students. When commercial debts go unpaid, they are sometimes written off and sold, often for pennies on the dollar. That campaign, in total, erased $3.9 million in private student loan debt.

Now the group is trying a different tactic: Recruiting Corinthian students who are willing to refuse to pay their loans outright, calling for all loans — both private and federal — to be discharged.

Refusing to pay back a student loan can have serious consequences. Wages and tax refunds can be garnished. It can also sink a credit score; limit access to a credit card, auto or home loan; and hurt your chances of getting a job. The "Corinthian 100" could well suffer the consequences of their protest.

Laura Hanna, an organizer with the Debt Collective, says her group's doing everything it can to make sure strikers like Suggs are informed.

"After we made our initial announcement [looking for strikers] we had a flood of interest. We set up a system to intake and walk through people's financial situations and look at their credit. The people who step up are taking a risk and they understand the repercussions."

Hanna points out that many of the strikers, 14 of whom appeared at today's meeting, are single mothers living hand to mouth. "They've been negatively affected already. They're choosing to give voices to some of the issues that they're facing regardless."

In addition to the borrowers who are refusing to pay, some 400 members of the Debt Collective have signed on to a legal strategy called "defense to repayment," pursuing legal action against Corinthian for fraud under state law. The goal is the same: To get their debts written off.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau declined to comment for this story, citing its ongoing suit against Corinthian.

Denise Horn, a spokesperson for the Department of Education, says borrowers should continue to pay back their federal student loans, knowing that the department is taking a "series of actions to hold Corinthian accountable."

And it's not just Corinthian in the hot seat. Today, the Feds released a list of more than 500 colleges and universities that they're placing under financial monitoring. 290 are for-profits.

For Suggs, that's not enough.

"Not only did the school fail me, but the Department of Education failed me," she said in a statement on her group's website. "It is their responsibility to make sure that these schools provide a quality education at an affordable cost."

In his 20 years in the business, Gilliam has seen it all.

"One of the guys came in one day with a hand grenade," he says. It turned out to be a fake.

Contamination is a bigger problem. Mixing everything together is convenient, but leads to wet paper and bits of broken glass that can't be sorted.

"As we often say, you can't unscramble an egg," says Susan Collins, director of the Container Recycling Institute, a nonprofit research and advocacy group. She says what single-stream wins in volume, it sacrifices in quality.

"In terms of preserving the quality of materials so that the maximum materials collected can actually be recycled, single-stream is one of the worst options," she says.

Planet Money Episode 613: Trash!

13 min 51 sec

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Collins adds that about a quarter of single-stream recycling goes to the dump. For glass, that loss can be as high as 40 percent.

Even so, in the constant tug-of-war between quality and convenience, convenience wins. But as single-stream processing continues to increase in popularity, the trade-off will be fewer recyclables recycled.

landfill

recycling

energy

Missouri

Zahra Karimi Nooristani, 18, cautiously works her way down a rock face high above Kabul as her coach, Farhad Jamshid, guides her.

It is hazardous for his top female student to be rappelling here, not only because of the steep drop, but because she is using a frayed, nine-year-old rope handed down from the men's mountaineering team.

Another danger she faces is the prospect of her neighbors finding out she's climbing at all.

Afghanistan is a mountainous country, but scaling the peaks for sport is a new concept here. Mountaineering is considered an odd pastime for men, let alone women whose modesty Afghan society demands be protected at any cost – even death.

Zahra says her father, who carves gravestones for a living, has told her he is prepared to move the family to protect her and her three sisters, who are also budding climbers. He and his daughters are adamant they be allowed to practice their new skills.

The dedication of the Nooristani girls and the devotion of their father inspires Marina Kielpinski LeGree — the force behind the girls' training. In the image below, she's sitting with Afghan colleague Faisal Naziry (center), and Malang Darya, a well known Afghan climber (far left).

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Sandra Calligaro for NPR

Sandra Calligaro for NPR

LeGree, a 36-year-old resident of Norfolk, Va., who has spent years shepherding development projects in northeastern Afghanistan, directs a non-profit called Ascend that funds and organizes not only the training, but leadership classes for the Nooristani sisters and a handful of other Afghan girls recruited to be mountain climbers.

LeGree says her goal is to create a crop of Afghan heroines passionate about improving their country and who inspire other women here to break barriers.

"It's a profound thing that's been missing for a while in Afghanistan throughout the war and chaos and everything else," LeGree says. "It doesn't mean the housewife who is in her compound in Kandahar is going to go start climbing mountains, but she will know another Afghan woman did it and that message is really important."

Credit: Alyson Hurt/NPR

The new team's ultimate test will come later this year, when Ascend takes the young women to the remote, northeastern corner of Afghanistan to scale the country's highest peak. Mt. Noshaq. Only two Afghans have ever made it to the 24,580-foot-high summit and they were men. One was Darya.

But the climb itself may prove less difficult than organizing a viable team.

Afghanistan's national mountain climbing federation, which claims authority over the women's team and coaches, has refused to formalize an agreement with Ascend. Its board has demanded the American NGO turn over all funds and gear to them. That's something LeGree and her Afghan employees refuse to do because they fear the money could be misappropriated. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani recently ordered audits of all Afghan sports federations on suspicion of corruption.

The federation's demands are hardly unique. Some Afghans assume "when an ex-pat becomes involved in a project they may have lots of money," says Naziry, Ascend's operations manager. "The money becomes their priority."

In Ascend's case, the roughly $30,000 LeGree says has been spent so far has largely come from her own pocket.

LeGree also had a hard time finding Afghan girls who can commit to the rigorous training and the eventual climb, so the current Mt. Noshaq team only came together last fall.

The 12 members are a diverse ethnic and socio-economic mix. They are also from the national Taekwondo and mountain climbing teams. The new joint team trains at Kabul's main sports complex, called Ghazi Stadium.

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Sandra Calligaro for NPR

Sandra Calligaro for NPR

Building up the girls' strength and stamina is a top priority. They are supposed to train for 90 minutes three or more times a week in this Spartan gym with no bathroom or showers. In keeping with Afghanistan's conservative heritage, they train in loosely fitting track suits and most of the girls cover their hair with headscarves or caps while exercising.

Sandra Calligaro for NPR

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Sandra Calligaro for NPR

Sandra Calligaro for NPR

While the federation has on occasion paraded the girls in front of Afghan television cameras, Ascend has taken pains to keep them out of the limelight. The NGO has blocked its Facebook page in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan, plus kept the date of the Mt. Noshaq climb secret to try to protect the girls from the Taliban or other extremists here who might try to harm them.

The risk isn't keeping the four Nooristani sisters away. The coaches say they come to training more than any of the other girls.

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Sandra Calligaro for NPR

Sandra Calligaro for NPR

There is Rabia (top left), 17, who's still in high school; Zahra (top right), the high school senior; Farnaz, (bottom left) 20, who has applied to go to medical school; Niloofar (bottom right), 21, who has applied to midwifery school.

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Sandra Calligaro for NPR

Sandra Calligaro for NPR

Zahra is painfully shy, but also fearless, and her trainers say she is the team member most likely to make it make it to the top of Mt. Noshaq.

The sisters live with their parents and other siblings in two rooms in a hilly, impoverished, Kabul neighborhood called Chehel Sotoon or Forty Columns. It's widely said to be home to Muslim extremists who fly the black flags of the self-described Islamic State.

The women of this ultra-conservative neighborhood rarely leave the mud-walled compounds in which they live.

The girls describe mountain-climbing as liberating. "There's freedom up there," Rabia says with a nervous giggle, adding that she's amazed at how much stronger she feels than when she began training last fall. Back then "my lungs were burning," she says. "The first time up was really hard. Someone had to pull me up the mountain by my hand."

The girls say their role model is their cousin, Sediqa Mayar Nooristani, 22. She became something of a celebrity after learning to climb when she was 14, when European mountaineers were training her father and other Afghan men.

She now heads the national mountain climbing federation, but rarely trains with the Ascend team, which is why you don't see her in these pictures. But she does go on most practice climbs and says she plans to scale Mt. Noshaq.

In the Chehel Sotoon neighborhood, few know the four sisters are training to be mountain climbers. If anyone asks where they go every day, the family says they are taking English classes. The girls have no workout clothes other than the blue tracksuits and sneakers Ascend bought them.

"We know they partially come because we feed them and provide transportation and that's totally fine with me," LeGree says. "That's how lots of scrappy athletes developed. They want it. Any day, give me people who want something and are willing to work for it and we can provide them (with) everything else."

And as LeGree discovered, the Afghan women's team needs everything, including food.

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Sandra Calligaro for NPR

Sandra Calligaro for NPR

Ascend arranged with several local restaurants to send lunches with fresh vegetables and lean meats to the girls after their workouts. The daily, $5 per climber investment has dramatically improved attendance at the training sessions.

All 12 girls showed up and wolfed down the spinach stew and roasted chicken. It was the first meal that day for many of them. They eat inside the mountain climbing federation office at Ghazi stadium, where pictures of the men's team adorn the wall.

LeGree says the space is not ideal, given the steady stream of interruptions by male federation members. She wants to keep the girls focused on their training, so she is searching for a house or apartment to accommodate them.

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Sandra Calligaro for NPR

Sandra Calligaro for NPR

But for now, training continues in earnest at Ghazi Stadium, where they sprint up the bleachers and rappel down 23-foot-high walls.

One of the trainees is Ascend Program Coordinator Nargis Azaryun, who says the stadium visits are bittersweet. When she was a young child, the Taliban used the facility for public executions – most memorably of women.

She thinks of the Taliban's victims every time she enters the gates.

Azaryun recalls being frightened the day the Taliban fell in 2001. To celebrate, a male cousin put a burka on a broom and lit it on fire. Azaryun says she was convinced the militants would return and punish them.

Fourteen years later, the 22-year-old college student revels in pushing boundaries. Pictured below, she is one of the few women in Afghanistan who drives and refuses to wear a headscarf.

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Sandra Calligaro for NPR

Sandra Calligaro for NPR

She's sort of den mother to the girls, whom she joins on a bus that takes them to one of the team's weekly practice ascents on the outskirts of Kabul.

"It feels amazing," she says of the climbs. "It feels like you are just born and you have a chance to conquer the world."

But the team is missing every kind of apparel and equipment needed to scale a mountain, something LeGree says she's desperately trying to rectify.

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Sandra Calligaro for NPR

Sandra Calligaro for NPR

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Sandra Calligaro for NPR

Sandra Calligaro for NPR

At this army base, the girls line up before the hike in everything from sneakers to cheap knockoffs of brand-name hiking boots purchased at the "Bush Bazaar (named for the former U.S. president)," a market that once traded in goods acquired from the U.S.-led coalition. Some of the girls aren't even wearing socks.

But shabby shoes and falling snow don't stop the girls. They take less than two hours to hike up the trail-less slopes. Once on top, they pose for selfies and dine on kebabs – rappelling is out because of the bad weather.

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Sandra Calligaro for NPR

Sandra Calligaro for NPR

Sandra Calligaro for NPR

LeGree joins them on the hikes when she's in the country, and is visibly fond of the girls. But she's not sure any of them will reach the summit of Mt. Noshaq.

She says rag-tag practice climbs aren't enough. She's also frustrated that most of the girls aren't showing up to every training session.

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Sandra Calligaro for NPR

Sandra Calligaro for NPR

"I've been worried from the very beginning about a baseline of physical fitness because technical skills or not, you are not going to be getting up that mountain if you are huffing and puffing," LeGree explains. "And there's a strong possibility that at least half of them just won't be able to get to the top."

The Afghan Mt. Noshaq climber, Malang Darya, put the odds even lower, predicting only a third will make it.

That's why LeGree has decided to recruit six new girls from Wakhan region, where Mt. Noshaq is located. They are expected to arrive in Kabul to begin training next month.

Editor's Note: The mountain climbing federation office at Ghazi Stadium in Kabul — where the girls were eating their meals — was destroyed early Sunday in a fire caused by a wood-burning stove. The men's and women's teams both lost equipment in the fire, but no one was hurt.

Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson, NPR's Berlin correspondent, was previously based in Afghanistan.

Sandra Calligaro is a photographer who frequently works in Afghanistan. You can see more of her work here.

Afghan women

Afghanistan

If pushing a cart up and down the lengthy aisles of your neighborhood supermarket — past dozens of brands of packaged cereal and crackers lit by fluorescent lights — feels overwhelming and soul-sucking, you're not alone.

But there's some good news: The days of shopping this way may be numbered.

Here's why: Traditional grocers are increasingly losing market share — some 15 percent in the last 10 years — to more nimble competitors like smaller markets, convenience stores, farmers markets and even dollar stores. That, along with the rise of online food shopping, is forcing the old-school grocers to innovate in ways that should yield a better overall experience for consumers down the road.

"The bottom line is that for the supermarket to survive and prosper and grow, it's going to have to offer more services," says Phil Lempert, a consumer behavior analyst who tracks these trends on his site SupermarketGuru.

He spoke about the "grocery wars" and where the sector is headed in the next 10 years earlier this month at SXSW. (We couldn't make it to his panel, so we got him to bend our ear afterward.)

The Salt

'Old-School' Food Shopping Feels New As U.S. Cities Revive Public Markets

Lempert illuminated for us five ways in which grocery chains are evolving (that don't involve fluorescent lights).

Some companies are adapting faster than others. But Lempert says most big grocery chains have realized that if they're going to win back some of the shoppers who've drifted away, they're going to have to get a lot more creative and flexible.

1. The "groceraunt:" Maybe you've seen delis and cafes flanked by seating areas pop up in national chains like Safeway and Whole Foods. But what about a full-service restaurant?

Meet the "groceraunt," where the food is supposed to be tempting enough to get you to sit down to a meal before or after you pick up the milk and eggs. At Market Grille, the restaurant inside several locations of the Hy-Vee chain in the Midwest and Great Plains, you can order sushi, steak, brunch and maybe even on-tap apple cider.

In Illinois, the Mariano's grocery chain now features an oyster bar and a barbecue stall, which the Chicago Reader described as "supermarket barbecue that's better than it should be."

And in the Twin Cities, the Lunds and Byerlys chain has its Minnesota Grille, along with a Lunds & Byerlys Kitchen with "prepared food offerings, a wine and beer bar, a tailored selection of groceries and more all in one space."

2. Smaller stores: The average grocery store size started shrinking from about 45,000 square feet three years ago, after decades of increasing year after year.

As we've reported, part of that trend is about the return of green grocers to cities: new versions of the neighborhood market or bodega that stock mostly high-end and local foods in spaces smaller than the produce section of the supermarket.

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Each Peach Market in Washington, D.C., is one of a growing breed of small, urban greengrocers. Maanvi Singh/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Maanvi Singh/NPR

Each Peach Market in Washington, D.C., is one of a growing breed of small, urban greengrocers.

Maanvi Singh/NPR

Why is this format taking off? Turns out, consumers may not actually want to have to choose between 10 brands of olive oil that are all pretty much the same (and unlikely to make us happier, a la The Paradox of Choice). Rather, it may be more pleasing to choose between two bottles that are distinct in quality, flavor or price.

The big retailers have noticed these small markets encroaching on their turf, and are making moves to get smaller, too. According to Lempert, Wal-Mart, Lunds and others are prototyping smaller stores. And Cincinnati grocery-store chain Kroger has been experimenting with a 7,500-square-foot format in Columbus, Ohio, that's a sort of hybrid between a supermarket and a convenience store.

3. More services: Lempert notes that many consumers don't need or want all their food under one roof anymore — they're willing to go from the farmers market to the wine shop to the butcher.

How can grocery stores stay relevant then? Maybe by hiring a really good fishmonger.

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Big grocery chains like Kroger are beginning to experiment with smaller format stores, says Lempert. Nicholas Eckhart/Flickr hide caption

itoggle caption Nicholas Eckhart/Flickr

Big grocery chains like Kroger are beginning to experiment with smaller format stores, says Lempert.

Nicholas Eckhart/Flickr

Most chains sell meat and fish that's been filleted and sliced and wrapped up off-site. But more are starting to install skilled butchers and fishmongers to cut meat right there in the store. They're also hiring trained chefs, sommeliers and registered dieticians to guide shoppers to healthier choices. Lempert points to Hy-Vee Market, which has hired several chefs trained at the Culinary Institute of America to cook its prepared food, and two dieticians that lead weight management programs.

4. Catering to millennials: Corporate America is smitten with millennials, who seem to be leading food trends. And grocery chains are no different.

According to Lempert, the big chains are trying entice millennials with the foods they want — local, craft and fermented foods, and big international flavors (i.e. kimchi) — when they want them. Millennials also want "connection and community," which stores can foster with seasonal events, tastings and cooking demos, Lempert says.

The Salt

Ordering Food Online? That'll Be More Calories, Cost And Complexity

5. More ways to get your groceries delivered: Another thing about millennials: They may want to avoid the store entirely and have their groceries dropped off.

To keep them and other online shopping enthusiasts as customers, grocery chains are partnering with tech companies like Instacart, Google Express, Amazon and Uber, which send couriers to stores to pick up groceries and then deliver them within an hour.

And while most consumers will continue to go to the store to select their tomatoes and bread themselves, Rosenheim Advisors reported in December 2014 that the food tech sector is booming. "More than $1.6 billion was invested [in 2013] into food-related tech companies, up 33 percent from $1.2 billion in 2012," it noted.

Will all these efforts win customers back? That's unclear, says Lempert. "To be successful, a retailer has to know its consumer. And these days, every neighborhood is different. The days of every store having an identical assortment of food are over."

grocery delivery

grocery stores

We learned Monday morning what will become of The Daily Show on Comedy Central after Jon Stewart departs: it will be hosted by Trevor Noah, a 31-year-old South African comedian who joined the show as a contributor in December of last year, where he opened with a joke about fearing the police in the United States more than the police in South Africa. We won't know much about the shape of the new (or at least different) show for a while, but there are a few things to chew over in the wake of this news.

1. Noah has a couple of demographic characteristics not in common with Stewart or with much (but not all) of the rest of late-night comedy: he's young (only 31), he's biracial, and he's not American. He's also a guy who does a lot of comedy about race in his own standup, as in a set from London where he talks about how the marriage of his parents (as well as his birth) was actually illegal, and how his mother had to drop his hand and pretend not to be his mother in front of the police. ("I felt like a bag of weed.") It's not just the fact that Noah is biracial that makes him feel like a choice relevant to the moment; it's the fact that he's a performer who does a lot of very pointed material about race who's taking over the show at a time when Stewart, too, was spending a lot of time talking about it.

Picking Noah also means the show's coverage of the upcoming presidential election — historically some of its most-discussed work — will be headed up by someone who isn't an American. That would have seemed like more of a headline, perhaps, prior to the ascendancy of John Oliver, who not only was a star on The Daily Show, but has now established himself as a commentator on American politics over on his own show on HBO, Last Week Tonight.

2. It might seem surprising that they would have Noah take over after such a short time with the show, but they undoubtedly vetted him pretty thoroughly before they added him in the first place. In a lot of ways, it's probably smart to pick somebody who is of the show, but not too much of the show. Had they chosen one of the veteran correspondents who was so closely associated with Stewart's version of The Daily Show, the old host's absence might have felt more glaring. This pick provides some continuity but also a solid break between the old and the new, and perhaps some chance at making it his own.

3. Coverage of The Daily Show has historically treated it as a pure expression of Stewart's sensibility, despite the fact that he's supported by a staff of writers and producers. (Honestly, it's a common problem with visible hosts and their invisible collaborators.) With Noah being so much younger and newer to the scene than Stewart has been for many, many years — and so much less familiar to much of the audience — we may see a shift toward the show being treated as less of a tour de force and more of a collaboration, which probably represents it more honestly, particularly while he's getting himself established.

4. Speaking of writers, it will be interesting to see whether the existing writing staff sticks around without Stewart. Having to populate that writers' room with new people would represent both a huge challenge and a huge opportunity.

5. And finally, for perspective's sake, it's important to remember that Jon Stewart today is an institution, but Jon Stewart when he took the show over from Craig Kilborn in early 1999 was not. David Letterman was coming off a canceled daytime show when he got into late night, and Conan O'Brien was a little-known camera presence when he got Letterman's old job. The goofy idea of clear trajectories — that informed, crowdsourced, listicled speculation ought to be able to produce the most logical person to occupy every job based on publicly available lists of accomplishments and pro/con rundowns — is one that we're probably lucky people don't actually pay attention to.

A Bangladeshi blogger has been hacked to death in the country's capital, Dhaka, and police have arrested two students at an Islamic seminary in connection with the slaying. Washiqur Rahman's killing comes a month after a deadly attack on another blogger in the capital by Islamists.

Rahman, 26, was attacked at 9 a.m. (local time) by three men who used meat cleavers, a local police official told the Dhaka Tribune. He was taken to Dhaka Medical College Hospital where he was declared dead on arrival, the newspaper reported.

The newspaper said Rahman was apparently targeted for his writings about Islam. Two of his alleged attackers were arrested, and a third suspect fled.

The Tribune reported that Rahman's Facebook page contained posts that opposed what he called irrational religious belief. It said one of the Facebook groups he belonged to was called Atheist Bangladesh.

Rahman had apparently expressed solidarity on Facebook with Avijit Roy, the Bangladeshi-American blogger who was hacked to death Feb. 27 in Dhaka for "crime[s] against Islam." On Facebook, Rahman had posted #iamavijit after Roy's killing.

Blogger Rajeeb Haider was hacked to death on Feb. 15, 2013, for apparently the same reason.

Muslims make up about 90 percent of the country's 166 million people.

Bangladesh

South Carolina Congressman Trey Gowdy's Benghazi Select Committee announced Friday in a statement that Hillary Clinton had wiped her private email server clean; the committee is getting no additional emails from her; it's leaving open the possibility of a third-party investigation; and Republicans are promising to bring Clinton in for more questioning.

Much of what the committee reported was already known. But the drama is likely to continue to play out — with questions of what she knew and when she knew it — over the next year right smack in the middle of a presidential campaign.

To be sure, the email controversy has not been good for Clinton. Instead of sitting back, watching Republicans duke it out, working on her presidential launch and trying to tailor her message, she has had to defend her exclusive use private email to conduct business as secretary of state.

But for all the attention it's gotten, not much has changed in the polls — so far.

In the nearly three weeks since Clinton's hotly watched press conference at the United Nations, there have been three major polls conducted dealing with Clinton and the emails specifically — CNN/ORC, CBS, and Reuters/Ipsos.

CNN's, conducted March 13-15 — less than a week after Clinton's news conference – showed Clinton continued to lead Republican contenders in similar numbers to before the news broke, and she saw just a slight decline in her favorability ratings from the prior poll.

She beats former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie 55-40 percent in hypothetical head-to-head matchups. She beats former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, 55-41 percent; Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, 55-42 percent; Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, 54-43 percent; and neurosurgeon Ben Carson, 56-40 percent.

Her favorability stood at 53 percent positive, 44 percent negative, down from 59-38 percent in November. But that plus-9 rating was better than the entire Republican field. Jeb Bush, for example, was minus-16 (31/47 percent), Walker was even (21/21), and Christie was minus-19 (25/44).

Some of the tightening happening with Clinton's ratings is to be expected as the campaign gears up. When she ran for president in 2007-2008, her positive-to-negative numbers were about even. When she was seen as non-political, as secretary of state, her ratings ballooned. And now, as she is about to likely embark on another presidential bid — as the far-and-away front runner for the Democratic nomination — she is being viewed more politically, and her numbers are returning to somewhere close to split.

In the CBS poll, conducted a little more than a week after the CNN one — from March 21 to 24 — about two-thirds said the email scandal did not change their opinion of Clinton. For fewer than 3-in-10, their opinion of her worsened. About the same percentage of independents also said so.

The poll also found Clinton would not be hurt at all in a primary. (There were no general election head-to-heads either asked or revealed.) In February, 81 percent of Democrats said they would consider voting for her. A month later — and after the news of the emails — it's exactly the same. Two-thirds of Democrats, though, do say they would prefer she have a strong primary.

Clinton's favorability ratings, though, were not strong in the CBS poll. Just 26 percent had a positive view of her, while 37 percent had a negative one. That is a 12-point drop since the fall of 2013 and an even steeper 31-point decline since her high of 57 percent favorable rating as secretary of state. Clinton's ratings, though, have taken a harder hit the CBS poll than in most other polls with a higher percentage of people saying they are undecided about Clinton, someone who has been in the public eye for more than two decades.

Reuters/Ispsos' tracking poll was conducted online — and therefore, is considered by the statistical community to be less reliable than live-caller polls — but a majority said the email story has had no impact on whether they will vote for her in a general election. Similar to CBS, just less than one-in-three said the emails story makes them less likely to vote for her. The poll did, however, find some softening of support among Democrats and support for a third-party investigation.

All of this is to say that this far out from an election, it's important to take a step back and take in all the data. Unquestionably, this email story is far from finished, but, at this point, it doesn't look like it's had a major impact on Clinton's standing.

Ben Carson

2016 Presidential Race

Scott Walker

Chris Christie

Jeb Bush

Democrats

Mike Huckabee

Marco Rubio

Rand Paul

Hillary Clinton

Republicans

Interview Highlights

On becoming interested in his great-great-grandfather's porcelain collection

Although I wasn't really interested in my family history, I always liked to dig, literally — like I dug lots of holes in my mom's backyard looking for dinosaur bones or arrowheads or, you know, anything a little kid thinks he's gonna find. And I think that compulsion manifested itself as a writer and as a journalist wanting to dig for stories.

So, while I was working for a newspaper in Seattle, I had to go to the Seattle Art Museum for a story and when I was there I stumbled into their porcelain room and I saw this little red porcelain dish in the shape of a chrysanthemum with gold lettering on it. And the museum couldn't tell me what the gold lettering said so I called my dad to help me translate it and as we were getting off the phone he said, "Well, you know, if you're actually interested in porcelain you should talk to your mom, because her family had some porcelain."

So I talked to my mom and she told me the story of my great-great grandfather's buried porcelain and she knew pretty much that — that my great-great-grandfather was a porcelain collector and had buried his porcelain and couldn't answer any questions that I had in terms of how much there was — How much was it worth? When was it buried? Where was it buried? Had anyone ever gone to look for it?

And she said, "Well, you know, the person who would know this is your grandmother, who grew up at that house." Eventually my grandmother said to my mom, "Well, if he really wants to hear this story, he should just come here." And so I did.

On being an "ABC" — American-Born Chinese — in China

When I think of myself, I don't think of myself as Chinese, I guess. And so when I got to China I found myself really perturbed that I didn't get that knowing glance from other expats when I passed them on the street. And I found myself trying to project my American-ness as much as possible. When they were in earshot I would speak my English much louder than I needed to. I would look for like any excuse to be like, "Hey! Hey! I'm American, too." ...

The local Chinese love to ask, "Do you feel Chinese or American?" And I guess in America, I feel kinda Chinese and in China I feel really American. I think the younger generation gets it, but the older generation just — they don't accept it because they just want you to say, "Oh yeah, I have Chinese blood and I love China and I'm really happy to be back in the motherland," and things like that.

On what he learned from his years in China

The whole experience just kind of made me more OK with me. I was always really envious of Americans who could trace their lineage really far back — who could kind of place themselves in a tradition. And so I think going to China and understanding more about where I came from — I mean, this sounds a little clich — but that kind of gave me a better sense of who I am. And just about everybody's family history is interesting and I think they're really precious things that should be remembered.

China

The Arab League has agreed in principle to establish its own military force designed to combat the threat from Islamist extremists in the region, as the 22-member grouping said that Saudi-led airstrikes against Yemeni Shiite insurgents would continue until the rebels "withdraw and surrender their weapons."

Egypt's state-run news agency says that Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi and leaders of the other states in the League agreed on broad details for forming a joint force that could be rapidly deployed in hot spots to restore peace and security. Participation in the force would be optional, however.

The Wall Street Journal reports that al-Sissi and "other leaders from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have in recent weeks called for such a force to fight extremism in countries such as Libya, Syria and Iraq, and counter the regional threat of Shiite Iran. Egypt is part of a Saudi-led, U.S.-backed coalition that last week began a campaign of airstrikes against Iranian-backed Houthis rebels in Yemen."

However, Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. Adel bin Ahmed al-Jubeir tells NBC's Meet the Press: "We haven't made the decision to send ground troops in so far. So far, it's been an air campaign. And we have a plan in motion. And we're executing this plan," adding that his country was "determined to protect the people of Yemen. And, so, we will continue this campaign until those objectives are achieved."

The Associated Press has a bit of background:

"The decision by the Arab League puts it on a path to more aggressively challenge Shiite power Iran, which is backing the Yemeni rebels, known as Houthis.

"A Saudi-led coalition began bombing Yemen on Thursday, saying it was targeting the Houthis and their allies, which include forces loyal to Yemen's former leader, Ali Abdullah Saleh. Current and former Yemeni military officials have said the campaign could pave the way for a possible ground invasion."

Arab League

Yemen

Saudi Arabia

The Howard Project

NPR's Weekend Edition is following four college seniors from Howard University in Washington, D.C., as they think about their futures. Catch up on their stories here: The Howard Project.

Part One

A Crossroads At The End Of College: Meet The Students

Part Two

Imagining The Future: The Students Look Forward

Part Three

Education May Be Priceless, But A College Degree Isn't

Spring has arrived and young people's fancies might be turning (lightly or not-so-lightly) to thoughts of love.

With that in mind, NPR's Weekend Edition asked the college students of The Howard Project — who have spent the last few weeks giving us insights into their lives during their last semester of college — about how dating and romance fit into their college experience.

Click on the audio link above to hear their stories, to a soundtrack of their favorite love songs — or read some of their answers below.

Leighton Watson

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Emily Jan/NPR

Emily Jan/NPR

On meeting his first college girlfriend before he even arrived on campus

"We were talking over the summer, just over the phone, but the first time I met her in person was at Howard. I had seen her Facebook picture. I actually, I thought she was so pretty that I thought she was fake, because I had been seeing these fake Facebook girls pop up. But no, when we got to campus, [we] met up on the first day, and we actually ended up staying together for two and a half years."

On handling breakups

"The way that I always cope with a breakup is a little childish, I'll admit. But it's always to better myself in a way that makes it crystal clear to the other person that they made a mistake with leaving me."

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Emily Jan/NPR

Emily Jan/NPR

Ariel Alford

On bonding with her first crush, an upperclassman, over a book in class

"I was just like, 'Oh, wow. We're going to talk about this book and it's going to be so cool.' And also, he would always hold doors for me. So, I don't know, I just started having a crush on him."

On the frustration she's felt on some dates, and what she knows she needs from a partner

"It's like,'What are we talking about? I want to talk about Gaza, and you want to talk about, I don't know, the new iPhone?'

... Whoever I'm with has to care about my people ... has to care about Africa and the diaspora, has to care about things that are happening across the globe. I'm definitely looking for somebody where that's intrinsic."

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Emily Jan/NPR

Emily Jan/NPR

Taylor Davis

On using a journal to express her romantic troubles

"It also allows me to vent, endlessly, because I think, you know, you don't want to go to the same person every single time you have an issue. So I think it's good to go to blank pages that can't complain about your problems — that will listen to you endlessly, and allow you to revisit it, whenever you feel like it."

On owning her singleness

"I am a woman who loves to be affirmed, and I got to a point when I realized that I can't rely on other people to affirm me, because sometimes they won't. And I can't allow my life to be deterred because someone didn't tell me I was pretty, or someone didn't tell me they liked me. So when I'm owning my singleness, I might write myself love notes. ... I just appreciate what God has created, because he has said that it is good, and surely, it is good."

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Emily Jan/NPR

Emily Jan/NPR

Kevin Peterman

On enjoying being single after his relationship with his high school girlfriend ended

"There was this Cali-cool girl from California, there was a Southern belle, there was the ambitious, fast-talking girl from Chicago or Detroit. So sometimes you're happy about being single because it gives you time to really — not necessarily play the field, but time to really look out and see what else is on the field."

On learning he needs to be with someone whose ambition matches his own

"That lesson really became clear to me in the last few months, and I have to attribute that to the person I'm with right now, who really showed me how someone can truly be your other half."