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On showing experiences both in the military and at home

One of the things I'm most interested in, not only is that specificity of a singular life and following that with the long view — I'm [also] really interested in the proximity of violence as much in the side streets and living rooms of America as in the war zone.

On what Rath calls 'the way we fetishize war suffering'

It's the 30-second clip that you're going to get that's going to get your heart rate rising. And you won't change the channel. And so what I hope what the novel does a little bit here is hold the mirror up not only in the conflict sphere but in that domestic sphere.

On choosing to write about sexual assault

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I think as a writer approaching material I want to do justice to the characters. But at the same time, there's no doubt that there were certain topics that were really important to me, and in the writing of this book, tackling the issue of sexual assault in general, and specifically in the military, was absolutely important to me. We know sexual assault is an issue in our society at large and in the military specifically.

On the civilian/military divide

There's a lot of talk about the civilian/military divide. I think veterans and active-duty service members, we want to feel connection. We want to feel like our sacrifices and our service to the country, you know, is appreciated, and I think to a large extent it is.

The problem becomes, and it's a very complex problem, but one angle of it is from the military side those who have seen combat — it's such a difficult thing ... to work through and process.

But I think at the core of it, we just want a conversation about what our country asks of us. And not just what our country asks of our service members, but what it asks of their families, of their friends and of their communities.

Read an excerpt of I'd Walk With My Friends If I Could Find Them

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Veterans

Air Force

Barring a last-minute legal decision, as of July 1, the nation's for-profit colleges are going to be subject to a new Education Department rule known as gainful employment. That is: Do students end up earning enough to pay off their loans?

A trade group of career colleges is suing to stop the rule, but this is far from the only monkey on the sector's back. As recently as 2010, these schools enrolled one in nine college students. Today, some are shutting down, cutting back, tanking in the stock market, even going bankrupt. The bellwether was the giant Corinthian Colleges a year ago, but many others are in trouble as well. Even the University of Phoenix, which five years ago had 460,000 students, has seen that number fall by half.

Part of this is thanks to government crackdowns. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, formed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, is the new watchdog in town. And it has taken a particular interest in for-profits that market student loans directly to their own students, sometimes in misleading and aggressive ways.

Officials at the bureau sued Corinthian Colleges, alleging predatory lending and illegal debt collection tactics, and in the wake of the Corinthian shutdown they arranged for $480 million in private student loans to be forgiven.

Student activists have also been vocal in criticizing the industry and demanding relief from their loans.

But government enforcement and political debate is not the only reason that these colleges are having problems. Market forces should be considered too.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, if you were a working adult who needed flexibility, in most parts of the country, your best — or maybe your only option — for finishing your degree was probably an online program from a for-profit college. It was hard to ride public transit or turn on a TV during the day without seeing an ad for one of the schools, and they were sophisticated in online advertising as well.

Today, public institutions like Arizona State University and nonprofits like Southern New Hampshire University and Western Governors University have gotten into the game. They are trying to meet the needs of this same student population by offering online, go-at-your-own-pace programs.

They are enrolling tens of thousands of students. And they are partnering with employers, such as Starbucks with ASU, to defray tuition costs. Their tuition tends to be lower in any case than what the for-profits charge.

"I think the market's been educated," says Paul LeBlanc, the president of Southern New Hampshire. "People used to not be aware of the difference between for-profits and nonprofits."

Seven years ago he began the process of building a large online program at his regionally accredited private college. Today it enrolls 22,500 students and has partnerships with 78 employers. Recently Anthem, the health insurer, agreed to offer SNHU's College for America bachelor's program to employees for free.

About half of the company's 55,000 workers — call center employees, administrative assistants, and the like — may be eligible.

So what is the upshot for students and prospective students here?

There are still hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of current and former for-profit college students from over the last two decades who are saddled with high loan debt and degrees of potentially dubious value.

The Education Department says it's working to develop a process for providing debt relief to defrauded borrowers, including many at Corinthian. But critics say that these processes are too onerous and too slow.

At the same time, with the gainful employment rule, observers say the Department of Education is opening a can of worms. Right now, the rule applies only to for-profits. But there are a lot of public and nonprofit privates out there too that may be graduating too few students and leaving them with loans that are too high.

For example, across the country the graduation rate at public community colleges is still just one in five. Nor have the new big online institutions furnished hard evidence about the life experiences or employment prospects of their graduates.

Sitting in an air-conditioned Ola cab on Saturday evening in Bangalore's notorious traffic, I was heading to a friend's party when an older gentleman in a long white kurta and a white cap approached.

Clutching his long walking stick, he looked close to my grandmother's age — she's in her early 90s. His feeble back seemed about to give out. His hands and shoulders shook as he extended his hand to the cab window. He motioned between his mouth and my window, clearly asking for something to eat.

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My mind raced and so did my heart. I debated: to give or not to give?

My heart said yes, YES!

But my mind ran through phrases I have heard: "You give him a handout or a hand up. Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day, but teach him how to fish and he will eat for a lifetime. Does he really need food, or will he use the money for alcohol or drugs?"

Before I could decide what to do, the traffic cleared and the cab sped away. I glanced back at the man, now struggling to cross the busy highway, tightly clutching his walking stick, taking one step at a time.

I have had many sleepless nights lately not just about him but about everyone I see in poverty around me. I hail from Uganda but am living in Bangalore, India now. Both countries have about the same economic and social challenges. I thought I had figured this begging thing out. I do what I can to help. For children I either buy them food or buy the pens, pencils and other paraphernalia they are selling. For the elderly, the differently abled, the hungry barefoot man on the street, I try to share a meal the way I would with my friends — to the bemusement of onlookers and the confusion of the restaurant owner.

But on Saturday night, I faltered when I faced the elderly man.

My cab fare was 350 Indian rupees. That's about $6. I keep thinking how I surely could have spared a meal for this man. I could hardly hold my tears back thinking about him. What if this were his last day and all he needed was a decent meal? What if he were truly hungry and begging was his only option? What if? What if?

Where is my humanity? What has happened to me?

Many of us struggle with these questions. For me, I feel a personal tie to the people I see begging and selling trinkets. I have been in a similar position.

While my paternal grandfather had wealth in the form of cattle and land from serving as a royal guardsman for the King of Ankole, my dad and his siblings lost it all during political turmoil in the late 1970s. They were forced to squat on other people's lands. My mother had cattle and land, but both of my parents and four of my siblings died by the time I was 10 years old. My uncle kept all but four cattle from me. I had almost nothing.

Fortunately, I had my grandmother, whom I went to live with.

But what if I had not?

What if when I went to sell eggs and milk to earn money for school fees, passersby looked the other way?

What if I was afraid to travel 300 miles alone to ask the president of Uganda for a high school scholarship?

What if I never met American sponsors who afforded me a college education?

So much of life is chance, and sometimes you can be the chance for someone else. You can help make their life better.

For this reason, I give to people I see on the streets. And I don't just give pennies. For a grown man or woman, I give enough for a meal. For a child selling merchandise, I buy enough so the child can afford that book or uniform so he or she won't be kept out of school.

I don't presume to be building a different social order by offering alms to the poor. I know that to eliminate poverty, many issues must be addressed. But I hope that by opening my heart, I let others know I am unhappy about the injustice in the world and I am doing my part.

Some people may think I am gullible. Perhaps I am, in some cases. But that is the choice I make to show solidarity with all human beings.

The next time I see someone like the man at my cab, I will not hesitate but will listen to my heart and give. What will you do?

James Kassaga Arinaitwe is an Aspen Institute New Voices Fellow and a Global Fellow at Acumen. He is currently working with LabourNet, a nongovernmental organization in Bangalore, India, that seeks to improve the lives of workers.

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charity

What if there were an app where a user could have all of the news he was interested in, from the outlets he trusted, all in one place?

That's the goal of Apple's new iOS 9 feature, called, simply, News. It will be a permanent fixture on the iPhone and iPad home screen, just like Calendar, Maps and Weather.

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If that app sounded familiar before it was unveiled Monday, that's because other apps are already doing the same thing — Facebook, Flipboard, Twitter, Yahoo News and NYT Now are trying to become the gateway between news consumers and information.

Apple, which announced the app during its debut of iOS 9, is just the latest company to throw its hat into the ring, and it has a distinct advantage over the competition: The News app will automatically be an undeletable part of any Apple mobile device running iOS 9 starting in the fall.

News will be on the radar of millions of Apple users, making it one of the most salient apps on the market. As the Washington Post points out, News could quickly become a contender.

"If the algorithm is good and expansive enough, this could eat market share from Flipboard, Twitter and even, theoretically, those daily newsletters people send around. Not to mention from those outside the ecosystem."

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News won't necessarily be a big success. Its predecessor, Newsstand, turned out to be unpopular with publishers.

Instead of making a home for news apps, as Newsstand did, Apple is partnering with publishers including BuzzFeed, CNN, Conde Nast, The New York Times, Time Inc. and more, displaying their content within the News app in a customizable wrapper. (NPR is among the media organizations that intend to make news available for the News app.)

In an article for NiemanLab, Joshua Benton explained this new relationship between Apple and publishers:

"Individual news apps and individual news brands aren't the primary point of contact with news any more. They're raw material, feeding into broader platforms. The loss of power for publishers in that exchange is obvious; the potential benefits remain mostly undiscovered."

Publishers are trying to keep up as these platforms explore new ways to distribute information to consumers, but the future of News (the app, and the content) has yet to be determined.

Paige Pfleger is an intern with NPR Digital News.

Apple Inc.

news industry

applications