Most Recent Posts

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

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

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

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

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

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

i i

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

itoggle caption Jason Cohn/MCT/Landov

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

Jason Cohn/MCT/Landov

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

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

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

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

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

Meanwhile, environmental groups in Pennsylvania cheered the decision.

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

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

The Fracking Boom: Missing Answers

With Gas Boom, Pennsylvania Fears New Toxic Legacy

Long After Fracking Stops, The Noise Lives On

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Your parents," Pierre curtly responds.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Radiator Award runner up was produced in Chad.

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

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

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

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

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

Golden Radiator award winner, 2014.

fund-raising

Rusty Radiator

videos

Africa

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

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

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

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

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

More In This Series

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

The Salt

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

The Salt

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

The Salt

A Holy Land Christmas Porridge Honors A Damsel In Distress

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

tourtiere

Christmas foods

Holidays

Christmas