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It's harvest time in the coca fields of southern Colombia. Using his bare hands, Franklin Canacuan expertly strips the bright green leaves from his 5-foot-tall coca bushes.

But over the years, Colombian police planes have sprayed his fields with a powerful weed killer.

It's part of a government program to destroy coca leaves, which are used to make cocaine. Since it began in 1994, the program has received more than $2 billion in U.S. funding.

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Franklin Canacuan strips the leaves from his coca bushes in southern Colombia. He says his daughter became ill after she was doused with weed killer while playing outside. John Otis for NPR hide caption

itoggle caption John Otis for NPR

Franklin Canacuan strips the leaves from his coca bushes in southern Colombia. He says his daughter became ill after she was doused with weed killer while playing outside.

John Otis for NPR

Now, due to health concerns, the Colombian government has decided to ground the spray planes.

Canacuan, the coca farmer, says his 8-year-old daughter became ill briefly after being doused by the rain of defoliant while playing outside.

"It makes people sick. It gives them a fever and skin rashes on their arms." he tells me. "It happens right after the planes pass over."

It's impossible to verify Canacuan's claims. However, misgivings about glyphosate, the active ingredient in the herbicide used to kill coca, are growing.

Daniel Mejia directs the Drug and Security Research Center in Bogota. He conducted a four-year study of coca-growing regions and found that such health problems increased immediately after these areas were fumigated.

"In our own study we find that exposure to glyphosate used in the spraying campaigns in Colombia causes respiratory, dermatological problems and miscarriages," he says.

The Word Health Organization has raised an even bigger red flag. In March, its cancer research arm concluded that glyphosate "is probably carcinogenic to humans."

That prompted the Colombian government on Thursday to order a phasing out of the program. Justice Minister Yesid Reyes said the crop-dusting flights will probably end by October.

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Janeth Cuaran picks coca leaves in her 2-acre field in southern Colombia. Most coca growers sell their crops to FARC guerrillas. John Otis for NPR hide caption

itoggle caption John Otis for NPR

Janeth Cuaran picks coca leaves in her 2-acre field in southern Colombia. Most coca growers sell their crops to FARC guerrillas.

John Otis for NPR

Still, it's an awkward time for Colombia to holster a key weapon in its war on drugs.

"For first time in more than eight years, the United States government concluded that coca cultivation and cocaine production in Colombia has increased and increased rather dramatically," says William Brownfield, the U.S. State Department's top anti-drug official.

Colombia's coca crop expanded by 39 percent last year, he says. That means cocaine production may have jumped from 185 tons to 245 tons. Brownfield said a more aggressive spray campaign might have reduced those numbers.

The program is dear to the hearts of U.S. officials because they helped invent it. FARC guerrillas control many of the coca fields and frequently attack ground-based eradication teams. So Colombia opted for aerial eradication with American crop-dusters and glyphosate, which is used by agro-industry all across the globe.

"To the best of our knowledge there is not one single verified case of cancer being caused by glyphosate," Brownfield says.

Monsanto, which manufactures of glyphosate, points to many scientific studies showing that the herbicide poses no risk to humans. It claims that the World Health Organization report ignored this research.

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As it turns out, coca farmers routinely handle toxic chemicals. Near the town of La Hormiga, I meet Sandra Trejo, a former coca farmer who has switched to growing black pepper. She got out of the drug trade, in part, because turning coca leaves into cocaine requires mixing powerful solvents, like acetone and sulfuric acid.

"People use very strong chemicals without protection, like goggles, overalls or facemasks," Trejo says. "So we can't blame all the problems on glyphosate."

But Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos says there are other reasons for scrapping the spray program. He says that going after big-time smugglers rather than peasant coca farmers can be a more effective way to fight drugs.

drugs

Colombia

Lawmakers working on fixes to the justice system say that unrest in places like Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore is pushing them to act.

"The whole idea of a young man dying in police custody, the confrontations with police, the looting and burning of innocent minority owned businesses," Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn said on the Senate floor this month. "The question arises, what can we do?"

There's an unusual bipartisan consensus in Washington on the need to overhaul the justice system. Presidential candidates from both political parties are talking about how to reduce the prison population and lawmakers are negotiating on legislation designed to do just that. But those proposals may not go far enough for many advocates.

In the Senate, Cornyn and Judiciary Chairman Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican, are considering a slate of reform proposals.

"The expectations are very high," says Christine Leonard of the Coalition for Public Safety. The group includes unlikely allies such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the Koch Brothers. And Leonard says it's advocating for changes to the corrections system.

"The whole idea of a young man dying in police custody, the confrontations with police, the looting and burning of innocent minority owned businesses," Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn said on the Senate floor this month. "The question arises, what can we do?" Molly Riley/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Molly Riley/AP

"I would argue that we have already waited too long and that the cost for the American taxpayers of $80 billion a year toward corrections is not the appropriate level of investment that people want when there are other things our communities need," she adds.

Now, this is where things get complicated. There are two sets of ideas about how to move ahead. One set of reform proposals puts more weight on changing federal sentencing laws at the front end. That means, fewer people get sent to prison in the first place to serve long mandatory sentences for drug crimes.

President Obama, the deputy attorney general and other top Democrats are pressing for that option. But key Republicans on Capitol Hill seem to favor another approach. They want to change the law to make it easier for low-risk inmates to earn credits to leave prison months or years early. They also want to create a federal commission to study all the other problems, such as rebuilding confidence in police.

Law enforcement supports the idea of a commission. But many advocates say the problems have been studied already — and they worry a commission could cost even more money yet lead nowhere.

"We have to think big right now," says Marc Mauer of the Sentencing Project, a nonprofit working to change sentencing laws and seek alternatives to incarceration. "Our sentencing policies have become so excessive that tinkering around the edges is not going to get us very far."

Mauer says if Congress wants to help restore minorities' trust in police, it should go big on sentencing reform.

"Half the people in federal prison are there for a drug offense, a substantial majority of those are African-American or Latino," Mauer says. "All the evidence we have shows that the war on drugs has had an unwarranted, disproportionate racial effect and there's nothing we could do that would help to reverse that more than substantial sentencing reform across the board."

Cornyn and Grassley have been skeptical about dialing back penalties for drug crimes, though, in favor of legislation that would require federal prison officials to assess the risk many types of inmates pose and to provide them classes and training that could lead to their early release.

With a limited amount of time for the Senate to act this year, the question is whether the Obama administration and its allies in Congress can convince Republicans to agree to some modest changes in drug sentences. They're seeking, among other ideas, to limit the 10-year mandatory minimum penalty for many drug offenses to the leaders or organizers of drug rings, U.S. sources tell NPR. That change could apply to thousands of defendants every year.

Longtime advocates say Congress has only weeks to move on criminal justice reform before the presidential race brings action to a halt.

The crows freaked out. The dogs howled. And just as the sun was beginning to set, a second earthquake struck Nepal.

Animals react to earthquakes before they strike. People react after they hit. And in Nepal, Tuesday's 7.3 magnitude earthquake, coming almost three weeks after the April 25 quake, prompted a primal response.

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"You could hear chunks of buildings just falling," says Cindy Stein, director of global programs at the Real Medicine Foundation, speaking from Nepal. "People were saying this prayer you say when you're dying. A lot of the people around us were volunteers [from Nepal] and their families were not with them. The women were hysterical."

The prayer Stein is talking about is a Buddhist chant usually heard only during funerals, says Venerable Metteyya Sakyaputta, a monk in his 20s from Lumbini, Nepal. At that moment, everyone, fearing the end of their lives, was chanting. He and other volunteers had been working with Stein to gather supplies for remote villages and nunneries when the earthquake struck.

"It was a very powerful experience, and just seeing the panic and chaos was heart-wrenching," Sakyaputta says. "It had been more than two weeks [since the initial earthquake] and people were just trying to get back to their lives. I could see they were on the verge of their nerves."

Traffic came to a complete halt and people ran into the streets of Kathmandu, panicking. Half an hour later, yet another quake hit. This one registered 6.3. Tremors continued throughout the night and into the next day.

The second wave of earthquakes came just as the country was starting to transition into the rebuilding phase, Stein says.

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Cindy Stein, from the nonprofit Real Medicine Foundation, was working in Kathmandu when the second earthquake struck. Courtesy of Real Medicine Foundation hide caption

itoggle caption Courtesy of Real Medicine Foundation

Cindy Stein, from the nonprofit Real Medicine Foundation, was working in Kathmandu when the second earthquake struck.

Courtesy of Real Medicine Foundation

The situation is even more difficult than before, she tells Goats and Soda. Procuring helicopters remains a challenge, and many roads that had been cleared in the past two weeks are now blocked again.

Oxfam America, which has about 100 mostly Nepalese volunteers already on the ground, plans on getting more help to Nepal. The group has 35 tons of equipment — including tents, water and sanitation supplies — to deliver by truck, says Darius Teeter, vice president of program. That will be even harder because of new landslides.

"We are in a race against time [with] monsoon season coming in June," he says. "We're adding more people, not subtracting."

But the first thing the agency did, he says, was to send local volunteers home to check on their families.

"The second earthquake has increased the already desperate need [for permanent housing]," says Jonathan Reckford, CEO of Habitat for Humanity International.

"We're really focused on the long-term rebuilding of communities," he says. "Our volunteers are out there helping families clear rubble and salvage any materials that can be used for rebuilding."

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Community members have also stepped up for search and rescue efforts. "It's a hard job," Stein says. "We had Matteya and other monk leaders bring them snacks. And we told [the local volunteers], 'If this is what you want to do you need to be committed because we're going to be here for a while.' "

Even those who didn't have training.

"We had some friends within the Nepalese mountain biking communities who just sort of stopped what they were doing," she says. The professional cyclists used their mountain bikes to deliver supplies to hard-to-reach areas. Families shared what food and other household items they had gathered from their homes with others.

"We realized after an hour [of] continuous tremors that it was going to be dark soon and nobody was going to sleep inside," Stein says. People were camping out in open spaces all over Kathmandu. She and her team decided to set up a camp in an open field at the Nepal Academy that would shelter nearly 350 people. The majority, she says, are families who were too afraid to sleep at home.

They needed food but the local supermarket was closed for repairs and guarded by security. Stein says she didn't know what to expect as she approached the guards to let her in. "I went up to them and asked nicely, that there is a camp and we needed supplies," she says. "We were just going to get in and grab some things."

The guards were amazing, she beams. "We had a big pot to make tea, and we had biscuits and noodles."

People are extremely hopeful, Stein says, but not naive. They're frustrated with the government, and they want assistance from the outside. But ultimately, she says, they want to be the ones to rebuild their country.

relief efforts

Nepal

Earthquake

Here's a map of a system of roads that links the suburbs within a city. The map shows the travel time in minutes at 7:00 a.m. on each section of road.

Question: Julio lives in Silver, Maria lives in Lincoln and Don lives in Nobel. They want to meet in a suburb on the map. No one wants to travel for more than 15 minutes. Where could they meet?

Mathematics: Charts

CD SALES OECD hide caption

itoggle caption OECD

In January, the new CDs of the bands 4U2Rock and The Kicking Kangaroos were released. In February, the CDs of the bands No One's Darling and The Metalfolkies followed. The following graph shows the sales of the bands' CDs from January to June.

Question: In which month did the band No One's Darling sell more CDs than the band The Kicking Kangaroos for the first time?

A) No month

B) March

C) April

D) May

Financial Literacy: Shares

GRAPHING SHARES OECD hide caption

itoggle caption OECD

Question: Which statements about the graph are true:

The best month to buy the shares was September: True or false?

The share priced increased by about 50 percent over the year: True of false?

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Take A New Test Aimed At The World's English-Language Learners

Answers: Park or Silver; April; first statement is true, second is false

For more questions, take a look at the sample test.

Education