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Frank Mankiewicz, a longtime Washington insider who as press secretary to Robert Kennedy in 1968 announced the senator's death by an assassin's bullet and who later served as the head of NPR, has died at age 90.

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Mankiewicz, who also worked in President John F. Kennedy's administration and helped direct Sen. George McGovern's unsuccessful 1972 presidential campaign, went to work in public relations after leaving NPR in 1983.

NPR's David Folkenflik says Mankiewicz grew up as part of Hollywood royalty. His father, Herman Mankiewicz, co-wrote Citizen Kane (1941) with Orson Welles, and his uncle, Joseph Mankiewicz, directed the 1950 classic All About Eve.

"While he was growing up, frequent guests in his house would have included the Marx brothers, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald [and] Greta Garbo," David tells Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep.

Regarding his time as the president of NPR (1977-1983), David says Mankiewicz had "great ambitions" for the network, overseeing the creation of NPR's flagship news program Morning Edition, among other things.

But he also left a $6 million deficit and forced a bailout of the network by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting as well as its member stations.

Correction Oct. 24, 2014

An earlier version of this story incorrectly said that Frank Mankiewicz oversaw creation of All Things Considered.

In 2009, a man named Barry Beck suffered a series of strokes, which caused extensive damage to his right occipital lobe and to the brain stem. The geologist and author of several books was left completely unable to communicate, in a state known as locked-in syndrome.

The condition was famously described by Jean-Dominique Bauby in his memoir The Diving Bell And The Butterfly, which he dictated by blinking.

But thanks to a team of researchers and some technological advances, Beck had another option.

"When I first saw him, he had a little bit of eye movement and that was really the only way he could communicate," says Eric Sellers, who directs the Brain-Computer Interface Laboratory at East Tennessee State University. His lab studies how brain activity can be measured and used to control computers, helping people with severe motor disabilities to communicate.

Beck's wife heard about Sellers' research and contacted him. Ten months after Beck's strokes, Sellers and his team start started working with the patient, setting him up with a brain-computer interface.

Sellers describes the technology as a virtual keyboard: "It's basically, instead of using your hands to press keys on the keyboard, you're using brain waves to press the keys."

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To use the system, you wear a non-invasive electrode cap and sit in front of a monitor that has a picture of the keyboard. Groups of letters will flash at random.

"If you want to choose the A, you pay attention to the A and then every time the A flashes, your brain produces this response," Sellers explains.

That response is called a P300. "This P300 is like an 'aha' response, so your brain kind of says, 'Aha, that's the one I want to select.' "

The technology has been used to help people with Lou Gehrig's disease compose messages. It's also allowed people to control wheelchairs and prosthetic limbs, just by thinking.

But Beck was one of the first patients with a severe brainstem injury to use it successfully. Sellers' research about his work with Beck was published in October in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Sellers and his team started slow, with just four letters — Y for yes, N for no, P for pass, and E for end.

"The first major interaction we had was a 25-question dialogue that ended up in us determining that he wanted more information regarding his prognosis," Sellers says.

Once they knew he was able to use that, they fine-tuned the settings and eventually presented him with the full alphabet so he could spell out words.

"One of the first messages that he spelled was to his wife. He spelled out 'Thank you for all of your hard work,' " Sellers says. "He, on a couple of occasions, also asked me to make the system go faster. And I, of course, told him that I was trying — I'm doing my best."

“ One of the first messages that he spelled was to his wife. He spelled out 'Thank you for all of your hard work.'

- Dr. Eric Sellers

Still, the system is very slow. It took Beck 38 seconds to select each character.

Much of Sellers' research is focused on making the machine faster and more accurate; his lab has experimented with predictive spelling programs, like those found in many smartphones, which anticipate what words the user is trying to spell.

But for Beck, the painstaking task was worth it.

"In addition to helping him communicate, it was also something that gave his wife a lot of satisfaction knowing that he was still in there and for the most part, cognitively intact. His kids would visit while he used the BCI, so it had a really large effect on the family as well."

Sellers and his team worked with Beck for over 13 months, conducting therapy sessions in the nursing home where he lived.

Beck died in November 2011, at the age of 67. In those months before he died, he helped contribute to making this technology more accessible for other locked-in patients.

"For the people who are participating in our research program, they understand that they may not benefit from this technology, but they also realize how important it could be for people who are in similar situations," says Sellers.

Sellers imagines a future where BCIs are available in hospitals.

"If someone has some type of injury, automobile accident or something like that and they have to be intubated and on a respirator — you could imagine that emergency rooms, trauma wards would actually have these," he says.

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Brain injuries

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff was re-elected Sunday. The Associated Press reports that with 99 percent of the vote counted, Rousseff won 51.5 percent. Her challenger Aecio Neves got 48.5 percent of the vote.

NPR's Lourdes Garcia-Navarro has been covering the election. She says that the elections shows that the country is "divided over its future," and called the campaign "bitter, bruising" and "filled with attack ads and corruption scandals."

The AP also says this election was a contentious battle:

Rousseff and Neves have fought bitterly to convince voters that they can deliver on both growth and social advances. This year's campaign is widely considered the most acrimonious since Brazil's return to democracy in 1985, a battle between the only two parties to have held the presidency since 1995.

Neves has hammered at Rousseff over a widening kickback scandal at state-run oil company Petrobras, with an informant telling investigators that the Workers' Party directly benefited from the scheme.

Rousseff rejected those allegations and told Brazilians that a vote for Neves would be support for returning Brazil to times of intense economic turbulence, hyperinflation and high unemployment, which the nation encountered when the Social Democrats last held power.

And the BBC reports developments from candidates besides Rousseff and Neves also made this election a dramatic one:

The election comes after weeks of intensive campaigning by the two candidates and a presidential race that took a tragic turn after Eduardo Campos, a main opposition candidate, was killed in a plane crash in August.

His running mate, a renowned environmentalist, Marina Silva, was thrust into his place, vowing to become the South American country's first "poor, black" president.

Silva came in third after the first round of voting.

The AP reports that before voting in the runoff in southern Brazil, Rousseff said, ""We've worked so hard to better the lives of the people, and we won't let anything in this world, not even in this crisis nor all the pessimism, take away what they've conquered."

After the election results were announced, Rousseff tweeted "Thank you very much" to her followers in Portuguese.

Muito obrigada! #Dilmais4anos pic.twitter.com/LcPPKMOgHz

— Dilma Rousseff (@dilmabr) October 26, 2014

aecio neves

Dilma Rousseff

Brazil

At 5 feet 3 inches, Tyrone Bogues, better known as Muggsy Bogues, holds the record as the shortest player in NBA history.

He was drafted by the Washington Bullets in 1987, but he's best known for playing with the Charlotte Hornets alongside Alonzo Mourning and Larry Johnson.

Bogues says he comes from a family of "five-footers," so when he stopped growing, it was no surprise.

"I always tell people, I think my mom had me when I was 5' 3" — I don't remember ever growing," Bogues says.

'Little Ty'

Raised in Baltimore's Lafayette projects, Bogues loved to play basketball — but he always had to prove himself. The other kids didn't take him seriously on the court, saying he was too short to play.

Tyrone Bogues had a passion for basketball at an early age. Growing up in Baltimore's Lafayette projects, he earned the nickname "Muggsy" for his scrappy, aggressive defense. Courtesy of Tyrone Bogues hide caption

itoggle caption Courtesy of Tyrone Bogues

"I was Little Ty, Little Tyrone. I always got this negative feedback from the game of basketball," he says. People told him he was wasting his time; he'd never play basketball. He remembers thinking, " 'Why were these people saying this? I know I could play.' "

When the team captains picked their players, Bogues was always left out.

"The game is being played and we got to sit over there and watch," he says. "You get tired of just watching."

So he and his friends found empty milk crates and cut the bottoms out to make baskets.

"We tied the milk crates on each end of the fence and we had our own milk crate basketball pickup game and it was a good time cause we could jump off the fence and dunk the basketball," he says. "You had to be creative in order to play and I wanted to play."

Even back then, Bogues was an aggressive defender.

"I had to play that way because I was small," he says. "A little kid that just was out there trying to create havoc, just trying to disrupt a lot of things."

That's when the older kids started to notice him.

"All of a sudden, little Muggsy started getting a little reputation in the neighborhood," he says.

Rolling With The Punches

Throughout his teenage years, Bogues continued to build that reputation on the court. He even became a star player on the Dunbar High School basketball team.

"We were the No. 1 team in the nation," he says.

Yet he still overheard his skeptics in the crowd questioning his ability to play.

"People still didn't believe: 'Well, he played in high school, he had success in high school, but it's a whole other world when you get to college.' "

Luckily, not everyone saw it that way.

Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, a school that's produced several NBA players, offered Bogues a four-year basketball scholarship.

"Wake Forest came knocking on the door and I accepted that offer," he says. "It changed my life completely."

Still, his critics were relentless.

Even the commentators at games openly criticized Wake Forest for taking a chance on Bogues.

" [They would say] 'Why did they waste a four year scholarship on a little kid that's only 5 foot 3, who can barely see over a table?' " Bogues says. "All this negativity started coming from so many directions."

It was almost too much to handle, but Bogues' talent was undeniable.

"We had the chance to play a national televised game against [North Carolina State University]," he says.

Finally, this was his chance to shine at Wake Forest. And it was one of his best games.

i i

Chicago Bulls' Michael Jordan (left) looks down on Muggsy Bogues during a game in 1995. Bogues, who stands at 5' 3", is the shortest player in NBA history. Ruth Fremson/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Ruth Fremson/AP

Chicago Bulls' Michael Jordan (left) looks down on Muggsy Bogues during a game in 1995. Bogues, who stands at 5' 3", is the shortest player in NBA history.

Ruth Fremson/AP

"I had 20 points, 10 assists," Bogues says. "From that moment on, I continued to keep building that reputation."

The stage was set for Bogues' professional career. By the time he graduated, he had a real shot at the NBA.

The Draft

On the night of the 1987 NBA Draft, Bogues was one of the many prospective players sitting in the crowd in New York. He had no idea what his future in basketball would look like.

NBA Commissioner David Stern said from his podium, "The Washington Bullets select" — pause — "Tyrone Bogues of Wake Forest."

"It felt like the whole world was lifted off your shoulders," Bogues says. "You felt like, 'I have arrived.' "

The 22-year-old, 140-pound, 5-foot-3 Tyrone "Muggsy" Bogues became the shortest player in league history — a record he still holds.

"All the naysayers, the people saying that you'll never [play]. Why are you even thinking about it? A guy my size wanting to pursue a game that was supposed to be meant for the big guys," Bogues says. "That was a special, special moment."

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Basketball