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Samuel Gbazeki is fed up.

"How can we cope?" he asks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gbazeki is stunned by this last bulletin.

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

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

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

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

Gbazeki says life was hard before Ebola.

Now?

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

ebola

Liberia

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Malaysia

monkeys

Malaria

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Lonely War

One Woman's Account of the Struggle for Modern Iran

by Nazila Fathi

Hardcover, 297 pages | purchase

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Here are the highlights of the interview:

Was the government monitoring you because you were a journalist?

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

Where did you meet with Mr. X?

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

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

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

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

Why did you think you had to leave Iran?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

itoggle caption Founders Brewing Co.

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

Founders Brewing Co.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

session beer

craft beer

Beer