Albert Rad, a mobile phone wholesaler who fled religious persecution in Iran decades ago, said that he fully backs President Trump's decision to assassinate Iran's top military commander. ; Credit: Josie Huang/LAist

Los Angeles is home to the largest Iranian population outside of Iran. The killing of top Iranian commander Qassem Suleimani is generating some strong emotions here. KPPC’s Josie Huang reports from Persian Square in Westwood. 

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Homeless advocates erected a line of tents outside the Echo Park office of City Councilman Mitchell O'Farrell Feb. 12, 2020 to pressure him into meeting with them.; Credit:

Members of several groups of homeless advocates from across Los Angeles converged on a homeless encampment at the north end of   Echo Park Lake on Feb. 12 to protest the routine weekly litter collection.

A cleanup crew assisted by park rangers and city police officers did a once-through the campsite for miscellaneous trash, followed closely by a chanting and critical crowd of protesters.

The homeless advocates had erected extra tents that morning in protest of what they consider invasive cleanups. They also were trying to get City Councilman Mitchell O'Farrell to agree to meet with them as a group, same as he has met with other local organizations of homeowners and residents.

O'Farrell's spokesman Tony Aranga had insisted staffers were willing to meet with individuals to address their housing and other support needs.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Deputy Chief Patricia Cassidy of the Jersey City Police Department has blood drawn to test for coronavirus antibodies in Jersey City, N.J., on Monday.; Credit: Seth Wenig/AP

The Food and Drug Administration is stiffening its rules to counteract what some have called a Wild West of antibody testing for the coronavirus.

These tests are designed to identify people who have been previously exposed to the virus. The FDA said more than 250 developers have been bringing products to the market in the past few weeks.

In a rush to make antibody tests available as quickly as possible, the FDA had set a low standard for these tests. Manufacturers were supposed to submit their own information about the accuracy of their wares, but the agency had no standards for what would be acceptable. Companies weren't allowed to claim the tests were authorized by the FDA, under initial guidance issued in mid-March.

Now the FDA is telling manufacturers that if they want their tests to remain on the market, they must meet minimum quality standards and submit a request for emergency use authorization, a temporary route to market for unapproved products when others aren't available. The EUA involves a lower standard than the usual FDA clearance or approval.

The FDA said 12 manufacturers have already opted to request EUA's for their products. More than 100 other producers have been talking to the agency about using this process, said FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn. He spoke on a press call Monday. Companies have 10 days to submit that request.

"Our expectation is that those who can't [meet the new standard] will withdraw their products from the market and we will be working with them to help them do that," he said.

These tests are now so widespread that people can order them from lab giants Quest or LabCorp. The tests can cost more than $100. Though the FDA's original guidance calls for these tests to be run by a certified lab, the kits themselves are simple to use and have been readily available.

Despite the enthusiasm surrounding these tests, they have substantial limitations. Though people who test positive for antibodies have in most cases been exposed to the coronavirus, scientists don't know whether that means those people are actually immune from the coronavirus, and if so for how long.

"Whether this is the ticket for someone to go back to work [based solely on an antibody test result], my opinion on that would be no," Hahn said.

The tests may be more useful when combined with information from a standard coronavirus diagnostic test, or in someone who has symptoms, or if the results have been confirmed with a different antibody test. That "would dramatically increase the accuracy of those tests," said Jeffrey Shuren, director of the FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health

Antibodies are a potentially valuable research tool, and can be used to determine the prevalence of a disease in a population. In that circumstance, individual false results are less important. New York State used antibody tests to determine that about 20 percent of people in New York City have already been exposed to the coronavirus.

In California, researchers have attempted to measure the prevalence of the coronavirus in Los Angeles County and Santa Clara County in the Bay Area. Those unpublished results have garnered criticism because even a test that's more than 99 percent accurate can produce many false positive results when used to survey hundreds or thousands of people.

In the face of this criticism, the authors of the Santa Clara study have posted revised results acknowledging the high degree of uncertainty in their findings. Those findings haven't been peer-reviewed.

The emergency use authorization is only valid during the time of the national emergency. "Once the national emergency ends, the EUA authorizations end as well," Shuren said. Companies that want to keep marketing these tests will need to get them approved through the regular, more stringent FDA process.

FDA officials say they will continue to crack down on companies that falsely claim their tests are approved by the FDA, or that market them for home use, which isn't currently allowed.

You can contact NPR Science Correspondent Richard Harris at rharris@npr.org.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Rick Bright, former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, is seen here in 2018.; Credit: Toya Sarno Jordan/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Updated at 6:14 p.m. ET

The federal scientist who was ousted from his role as director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority has filed a whistleblower complaint with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel.

Rick Bright was a high-ranking federal scientist focused on vaccine development and a deputy assistant secretary with the Department of Health and Human Services. Last month, Bright said he was transferred to a "less impactful position" at the National Institutes of Health after he was reluctant to promote the use of drugs such as hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19 patients.

In the complaint, Bright alleges a range of government wrongdoing by Dr. Robert Kadlec, the assistant secretary of preparedness and response at the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, and others. Bright's boss was Kadlec, who in turn reported to HHS Secretary Alex Azar.

At the time of his removal, Bright said he had been ousted because of his "insistence" that the government spend funds on "safe and scientifically vetted solutions" to address the coronavirus crisis and not on "drugs, vaccines and other technologies that lack scientific merit."

Bright says in the complaint that he raised concerns about the need to prepare for the coronavirus in January but encountered opposition from Trump administration officials. He says he was transferred out of BARDA in retaliation.

According to the complaint, relations between Bright and Kadlec had been strained since 2018 or so, when Bright began "raising repeated objections to the outsized role Dr. Kadlec allowed industry consultants to play in securing contracts that Dr. Bright and other scientists and subject matter experts determined were not meritorious."

"Once the COVID-19 pandemic hit, however, Dr. Bright became even more alarmed about the pressure that Dr. Kadlec and other government officials were exerting on BARDA to invest in drugs, vaccines, and other technologies without proper scientific vetting or that lacked scientific merit," the complaint continues. "Dr. Bright objected to these efforts and made clear that BARDA would only invest the billions of dollars allocated by Congress to address the COVID-19 pandemic in safe and scientifically vetted solutions and it would not succumb to the pressure of politics or cronyism."

The complaint alleges that Bright made repeated efforts to get the U.S. government to make adequate preparations for coronavirus, but was stymied by political appointees leading the HHS, including Azar.

HHS did not immediately respond to NPR's request for comment.

Bright says that in an effort to get the word out to the public about the risks associated with hydroxychloroquine, he shared with a reporter nonclassified emails between HHS officials that "discussed the drug's potential toxicity and demonstrated the political pressure to rush these drugs from Pakistan and India to American households." He says Azar and Kadlec removed him from his post within days of publication of an article about chloroquine because they suspected he was the article's source.

Bright says he stopped receiving a paycheck on April 20 and has not been assigned any further duties.

News of the whistleblower complaint was made public by his attorney on Tuesday.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Coronavirus deaths in the U.K. have passed those in Italy. Workers in the intensive care unit at the Royal Papworth Hospital in Cambridge are shown gearing up to care for COVID-19 patients.; Credit: Neil Hall/AP

Over 32,000 people have died from the new coronavirus in the United Kingdom, according to the Office for National Statistics, marking the first time in the pandemic that it has led Europe in the number of deaths.

The country has surpassed Italy in COVID-19 deaths. The U.S. still leads the world in the highest number of coronavirus deaths; over 70,270 had died from the disease as of Tuesday.

The number of total deaths recorded in the U.K. is "higher than we would wish, I think is all I can say," Angela McLean, chief scientific adviser of Ministry of Defence said during the country's press briefing Tuesday.

McLean also emphasized that deaths in U.K. care homes have been steadily rising and said the trend was something the country "need[s] to get to grips with."

"I don't think we'll get a real verdict on how well countries have done until the pandemic is over," British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said Tuesday. "And particularly until we have comprehensive international data on all causes of mortality."

Since different countries collect and report coronavirus data using different methods, the comparisons between regions are not perfect. As more time passes and more tests are conducted and more data comes in, coronavirus death rates will become more precise.

The peak in deaths comes as other European countries, including Italy and Spain, are easing shelter-in-place restrictions, while U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is expected to modify Britain's orders in the next week.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Two workers approach the entrance to Life Care Center in Kirkland, Wash., on March 13. An association that represents nursing homes is asking for billions of dollars in federal relief funds to cope with the coronavirus crisis.; Credit: Ted S. Warren/AP

With more than 11,000 resident deaths, nursing homes have become the epicenter of the COVID-19 crisis. Now, they're asking the federal government for help — $10 billion worth of help.

The American Health Care Association, the trade organization for most nursing homes, called the impact on long-term care facilities "devastating." In a letter sent this week to the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, they ask for the federal government to designate relief funding from the CARES Act for nursing homes the way it has for hospitals.

The money would be used for personal protective equipment, salaries for expanded staff, and hazard pay. In addition, some of the funds would make up lost revenue for nursing homes that have been unable to admit new residents because of the outbreak.

The AHCA also wants nursing homes to have more access to testing and some members of Congress want that too. This week, 87 members of the House of Representatives sent their own letter to Azar, as well as to Seema Verma, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which regulates nursing homes. The letter asks those agencies to direct states — which have received billions of dollars for increased testing — to give priority to long-term care facilities.

The letter also notes that nursing homes are now required to report their numbers of COVID-19 infections and deaths to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but that they can't meaningfully do this unless they can test everyone in the facility.

Democrats in both the House and the Senate have also introduced legislation intended to make things safer for both nursing home staff and residents. The bill would require nursing homes to take a range of actions, from providing better infection prevention, to supplying sufficient protective gear, to protecting a resident's right to return to the nursing home after they've been treated for COVID-19 at a hospital.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

The serious inflammatory syndrome sending some children and teens to the hospital remains extremely uncommon, doctors say. But if your child spikes a high, persistent fever, and has severe abdominal pain and vomiting that doesn't make them feel better, call your doctor as a precaution.; Credit: Sally Anscombe/Getty Images

Sixty-four children and teens in New York State are suspected of having a mysterious inflammatory syndrome that is believed to be linked to COVID-19, the New York Department of Health said in an alert issued Wednesday. A growing number of similar cases — including at least one death — have been reported in other parts of the U.S. and Europe, though the phenomenon is still not well-understood.

Pediatricians say parents should not panic; the condition remains extremely rare. But researchers also are taking a close look at this emerging syndrome, and say parents should be on the lookout for symptoms in their kids that might warrant a quick call to the doctor — a persistent high fever over several days and significant abdominal pains with repeated vomiting, after which the child does not feel better.

"If [the child is] looking particularly ill, you should definitely call the doctor," says Dr. Sean O'Leary, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Children's Hospital Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus and member of the infectious disease committee for the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The new condition associated with COVID-19 is called Pediatric Multi-System Inflammatory Syndrome. Symptoms include persistent fever, extreme inflammation, and evidence of one or more organs that are not functioning properly, says cardiologist Jane Newburger, a professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and director of the Kawasaki Program at Boston Children's Hospital.

"It's still very rare, but there's been a wave of cases. Physicians and scientists are working hard to understanding the mechanisms at play, and why only some children are so severely affected," Newburger says.

Some symptoms can resemble features of Kawasaki Disease Shock Syndrome. Kawasaki Disease is an acute illness in children involving fever, together with symptoms of rash, conjunctivitis, redness in the lips, tongue and mucous membranes of the mouth and throat, swollen hands and/or feet, and sometimes a large group of lymph nodes on one side of the neck, says Newburger. Some children with the condition develop enlargement of the coronary arteries and aneurysms in those blood vessels.

A small percentage of Kawasaki cases go on to develop symptoms of shock – which can include a steep drop in systolic blood pressure and difficulty with sufficient blood supply to the body's organs. Kawasaki disease and KDSS more often affect young children, although they can sometimes affect teens, Newburger says.

Some cases of the new inflammatory syndrome have features that overlap with KD or with KDSS — including rash, conjunctivitis, and swollen hands or feet. The new inflammatory syndrome can affect not only young children but also older children and teens.

But patients with the new syndrome have lab results that look very different, in particular, "cardiac inflammation to a greater degree than we typically see in Kawasaki shock syndrome," which is usually very rare, O'Leary says. In New York City and London, which have seen large numbers of cases of COVID-19 cases, "those types of patients are being seen with greater frequency."

Some patients "come in very, very sick," with low blood pressure and high fever, O'Leary says. Some children have had coronary artery aneurysms, though most have not, he adds.

Other patients exhibit symptoms more similar to toxic shock syndrome, with abdominal pain, vomiting and diarrhea and high levels of inflammation in the body, as well as the heart, O'Leary says. Most cases are treated in the intensive care unit, he says. Treatment includes intravenous immunoglobulin, which can "calm the immune system," says Newburger, as well as steroids and cytokine blockers.

The evidence so far from Europe, where reports of the syndrome first emerged, suggests most children will recover with proper supportive care, says O'Leary, though one adolescent, a 14-year-old boy in London, has died, according to a report published Wednesday in The Lancet.

Most children with the syndrome, O'Leary and Newburger note, have either tested positive for a current infection with the coronavirus, or for antibodies to the virus, which would suggest they were infected earlier and recovered from it.

And, according to case reports, some of the kids with the inflammatory syndrome who tested negative on coronavirus tests had been exposed at some point to someone known to have COVID-19. The inflammatory syndrome can appear days to weeks after COVID-19 illness, doctors say, suggesting the syndrome arises out of the immune system's response to the virus.

"One theory is that as one begins to make antibodies to SARS-COV-2, the antibody itself may be provoking an immune response," says Newburger. "This is only happening in susceptible individuals whose immune systems are built in a particular way. It doesn't happen in everybody. It's still a really uncommon event in children."

In late April, the U.K.'s National Health Service issued an alert to pediatricians about the syndrome. Reports have also surfaced in France, Spain and Italy, and probably number in the dozens globally, Newburger and O'Leary say, though doctors still don't have hard numbers. Newburger says there needs to be a registry where doctors can report cases "so we can begin to generate some statistics."

"Doctors across countries are talking to each other, but we need for there to be some structure and some science so that everybody can interpret," she says.

Earlier this week, the New York City Health Department issued an alert saying 15 children ranging in age from 2 to 15 had been hospitalized with the syndrome. Newburger says that she's been contacted about cases in New Jersey and Philadelphia, as well.

While the syndrome's precise connection to the coronavirus isn't yet clear, O'Leary says the fact that the children in most of these cases are testing positive for exposure to the virus, one way or another, provides one point of evidence. The sheer number of cases — small in absolute terms, but still "much higher than we would expect normally for things like severe Kawasaki or toxic shock syndrome" — provides another, he says.

And then there's the fact that most reports of the syndrome have come out of the U.K. and New York City, places that have been hit with large numbers of COVID-19 cases.

"It's pure speculation at this point," he says, "but the U.K. cluster kind of went up about a month after their COVID-19 infections went up, which would suggest that it is some kind of an immune phenomenon."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

The East Bay Municipal Utility District Wastewater Treatment Plant in Oakland, California. Stanford researchers are testing sewage in hopes of tracking the emergence and spread of COVID-19 outbreaks.; Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

With coronavirus testing still lagging behind targets, many health officials are searching for other ways to assess the spread of the outbreak. One possibility? Looking at what we flush.

SARS-Cov-2 is often spread through sneezes and coughs, but it also leaves the human body through our waste. Scientists around the world are now testing sewage for the virus, using it as a collective sample to measure infection levels among thousands of people.

While the field of "wastewater epidemiology" existed before the coronavirus pandemic began, it's now rapidly expanding in the hope that it can become a front-line public health tool.

"Normally when I tell people I work with poo, they're not super interested," Stephanie Loeb, a post-doctoral researcher at Stanford University, told NPR in an interview over Skype. But, she says: "There's really a lot of information in our waste."

In the basement of a university building, Loeb pulls samples from freezers filled with vials of raw sewage, collected regularly from 25 wastewater treatment plants around California. Each is a snapshot of that community's health.

"It's this perfect mix, you know," says Krista Wigginton, a professor of environmental engineering at the University of Michigan, also working on the Stanford project. "The entire community is putting samples in at the same time."

She says by the time the virus reaches wastewater treatment plants, it's still possible to read its RNA.

"These are virus particles that are mostly intact, but that are no longer infective," Wigginton says. "That's what it looks like at this point."

The idea is that measuring overall virus levels in sewage over time could indicate whether an outbreak is growing or shrinking, potentially showing that trend earlier than patient testing would.

"That's a real-time measurement of what's happening in the community," says Wigginton. "Whereas some other tools we have, like the number of confirmed cases in clinics, sometimes those are delayed by quite a bit of time because people don't go get checked until maybe their illness has progressed by quite a bit."

The approach is already used for other diseases, such as polio. Health officials are working to eradicate polio around the globe and in Israel, an outbreak was spotted early through the wastewater system.

Stanford University isn't the only group working on coronavirus detection in sewage.

"We have a lot of nicknames," says Newsha Ghaeli, co-founder of the start-up Biobot. "I think some of our customers joke around that we're the 'sewer girls.'"

Biobot is currently testing sewage from about 150 communities across the U.S. Originally, the company was using sewage to monitor the opioid crisis, but quickly started offering coronavirus testing.

"It really caught fire," says Ghaeli. "Within ten days, we hit internal capacity."

Ghaeli says in some cities, they've been able to detect coronavirus in sewage the same week the first cases appeared. Other projects in France and the Netherlands have produced similar results.

In a more challenging scientific feat, the team is also working to estimate the number of individuals who have coronavirus in a community, based on the levels found in sewage.

Calculating that depends on knowing how much virus individuals shed, and some people seem to shed for a longer time than others, complicating the math. Other things could also affect the virus levels, such as how long it takes for the wastewater to reach the treatment plant and rainy weather, which causes runoff to flow in the sewage system in some communities, diluting the samples.

"There's a lot of research that needs to be done before we can say this number in wastewater means this many cases in the community," says Wigginton.

The advantage of testing sewage is that it may capture individuals who are less likely to go to a doctor's offices.

"Every person that is using the toilet has a voice," says Mariana Matus, Biobot's other cofounder. "And they can be taken into account for public health resources and prioritization of resources."

While it's still early in the technology's development, some see it being helpful in detecting new waves of the outbreak.

"I think it is potentially a new role that utilities can play," says Doug Yoder, deputy director of the Miami-Dade Water and Sewer Department in Florida, which serves 2.3 million people. "There has been, at the community level, not a whole lot of data about conditions community-wide."

Miami-Dade County has been sending sewage samples to Biobot for six weeks now, which have shown their virus levels going up and down a bit.

"We've seen in a couple instances the virus counts increase by a factor of six," he says. "And then the week following, it went back down. This data may not yet be ready for primetime in terms of community decision-making, but it has potential and promise for being able to see trends."

Health officials are eager for the information, he says, as one more way to gauge what's really happening with their local outbreak.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Emily Quinn speaks from the TED stage at TEDWomen 2018; Credit: /TED

Part 1 of the TED Radio Hour episode The Biology Of Sex

Artist Emily Quinn is intersex. She's one of over 150 million people in the world who don't fit neatly into the categories of male or female. She explains how biological sex exists on a spectrum.

About Emily Quinn

Emily Quinn is an artist and activist. She worked at Cartoon Network on the Emmy Award winning show, Adventure Time. While there she partnered with interACT and MTV to develop the first intersex main character in television history. She came out publicly as intersex in a PSA alongside the character's debut. She later worked as the Youth Coordinator for interACT: Advocates for Intersex Youth.

As an activist, she speaks about intersex issues before audiences and through her YouTube channel: intersexperiences. As an artist, her most recent projects include a genderless puberty guidebook and a portrait series of intersex people that will be exhibited at medical schools across the U.S. in 2020.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

; Credit: /Janice Chang for NPR

The high school senior sitting across from Franciene Sabens was in tears over the abrupt amputation of her social life and turmoil at home. Because of the coronavirus, there will be no prom, no traditional send-off or ceremony for the graduates of Carbondale Community High School in Carbondale, Ill. And Sabens, one of the school's counselors, could not give the girl the one thing Sabens' gut told her the teen needed most.

"I want to hug them all, but I really wanted to hug that one," Sabens remembers.

Instead of a desk between counselor and student, there were miles of Internet cable and a computer screen. No hug. No private office. This is Sabens' new normal.

"Zoom is just not gonna ever bridge that gap," she says. "That one was pretty rough."

The job of the school counselor has evolved over the years, from academic guide to something deeper: the adult in a school tasked with fostering students' social and emotional growth, a mental health first responder and a confidant for kids, especially teens, who often need a closed door and a sympathetic ear. But the closure of nearly all U.S. schools has forced counselors like Sabens to reimagine how they can do their jobs. And the stakes have never been higher.

Why students need counselors now more than ever

Between closed schools, social isolation, food scarcity and parental unemployment, the coronavirus pandemic has so destabilized kids' support systems that the result, counselors say, is genuinely traumatic.

Sarah Kirk, an elementary school counselor in Tulsa, Okla., is especially worried about her students who were already at-risk, whose families "really struggle day to day in their homes with how they're going to pay the next bill and how they're going to get food on the table. Being home for this extended period of time is definitely a trauma for them."

For so many children, Kirk says, "school is their safe place. They look forward to coming. They don't want to leave when the day is over. And to take that away from them, I do worry about the traumatic experience that will cause for many of our students."

Counselors say part of the trauma comes from students being isolated from each other.

"In a middle school, that social piece is so important," says Laura Ross, a middle school counselor in Lawrenceville, Ga. Yes, they do a lot of connecting via social media, and that's still happening, "but that face-to-face and being with their friends... they're missing that."

Students are also experiencing a kind of grief "over what they've lost," Sabens says, especially seniors. "Losing out on the end of their senior years — something that they've dreamed about their whole life... has really been overwhelming for them. So there have been a lot of tears. There have been a lot of questions... 'What did we ever do to deserve this?'"

Unfortunately, there are no easy answers. Instead, Sabens says, she tries to let students know "that it's OK to not be OK. I mean, most of the world is not OK right now... It's OK to grieve about what you're losing because it is tragic."

Brian Coleman, a high school counselor in Chicago, says trauma is nothing new to many of his students, but he hopes awareness of the potentially traumatic effects of school closures means "trauma-informed care is going to really, really explode in ideally healthy, meaningful ways."

That means school leaders should right now be planning for the future, asking how they can best support students when they come back to school, Ross says, "making sure that we're prepared to deal with some of those feelings that are going to increase — of anxiousness, of grief, of that disconnect that they had for so long."

Broken connections

Not only are many students grieving and struggling with new trauma, it's also harder now for school counselors to help them. That's because counselors have lost one of the most powerful tools they had before schools closed: access. Before, counselors could speak to entire classrooms about bullying and how to manage their feelings, plus they enjoyed office space where students could drop in for a quick visit or schedule a tough conversation.

"I think about my eighth graders," says Laura Ross in Lawrenceville. "My office is in their hallway. I mean, they just stop by to say hello. They stop by when they're upset, just to come in and talk and, you know, figure out their feelings."

But all of that has changed. Today, a face-to-face video meeting is the closest a counselor can get to the old ideal. Before that can happen, though, Sabens says she has to find her students.

"Email, email, email, email — lots of emails," she says, calling it her "primary mode of communication with the students."

Connecting is even more complicated for elementary school counselors whose students generally don't have cell phones or email addresses. In Tulsa, Sarah Kirk says this inability to speak directly with children is "exactly what keeps me up at night."

So far, Kirk has mostly been in contact with parents and caregivers. "That's whose [phone] number I have... But it's really up to the parent if they want to hand the phone over [to the student]." She worries that, if a child is not OK at home and needs help, she won't know.

Kirk's focus on these calls has also shifted away from academics toward "the basic needs of our kids... making sure they have enough food. We're making sure they're safe."

Evelyn Ramirez, a first-year middle school counselor in rural Redwood Valley, Calif., agrees: "Our main priority right now is just to check the welfare of each student."

Ramirez, a first-generation Mexican-American, says online learning can put additional strain on immigrant and low-income families. "I feel for the students whose parents don't know English or don't really know how to help their students."

"It's no longer private"

NPR spoke with counselors across the country, from California to Georgia, Oklahoma to Ohio, and nearly all said they worry about even the best-case scenario — when they're able to connect with a student face-to-face using video chat technology. Their fear: privacy.

At school, "we have some sort of office space... where students can feel like they're having a private conversation with counselors," says Coleman in Chicago. "Now we're asking them to be vulnerable in some capacity at home. And for so many students, home is a space where they're triggered or they don't feel comfortable sharing ... because it's no longer private."

Yes, the student's bedroom door may be closed, says Ramirez in Redwood Valley, but "at any given point, someone can walk in or, you know, mom's down in the living room. She can probably hear [our] conversation." And that might keep students from really opening up about things like basic stress or even abuse.

The same holds true for many elementary school counselors.

"We do small group counseling for kids [who] are adjusting to a variety of changes, and there's an element of confidentiality that's built into that group," says Marie Weller, an elementary school counselor in Delaware, Ohio. "So I can't do a group online. I can't use Canvas or Zoom or Google Hangouts for a group because I can't get the confidentiality. So [I'm] trying to figure out, how can I check in?"

Getting creative

In Lawrenceville, Laura Ross admits: These have been trying times. But there's also a surprising upside, she says. The distance from students has forced her to get creative about how she uses technology to build a bridge back to them.

Before the outbreak, Ross helped create an after-school club for students who identify as LGBTQ+. When school closed, Ross set up a Google Classroom and asked if the club's members wanted to continue to meet virtually. "They definitely did. And the reactions were just a relief that they were still going to have the support of that club... the place that they could truly be themselves."

Ross says they even meet at the same time each week, just on Zoom.

On her last day in the office, before Ohio closed its schools, Marie Weller remembers starting to leave — then hesitating beside the childlike puppets she sometimes uses in her classroom counseling presentations. "Huh," she thought. "Maybe I'll be able to use these."

Weller and her fellow elementary school counselors say one important part of their job is making sure all students have the social-emotional skills and coping strategies they'll need to navigate a complex world. How can they do that now, from home?

Weller improvised.

She set up a smartphone camera in her house, surrounded by those puppets — a kind of surrogate classroom audience — and set about recording mini counseling lessons from her kitchen. Instead of the chime she normally uses to begin a lesson, she rings a mixing bowl with a red spatula. To teach kids about how and why they should filter what they say, leaving hurtful thoughts unspoken, she opens the coffee maker to show them how a real, paper filter works.

Weller does her own editing and even got permission from folk music favorites The Irish Rovers to use their song "What's Cooking In The Kitchen" as her opening theme. The resulting videos are brief, rich and charming, with lines like, "Your brain's amygdala acts like a guard dog."

And in Tulsa, Sarah Kirk is doing something similar, posting videos where she's sitting on the floor of her house, surrounded by colorful pennants and stuffed animals. Her dog, Crew, a cuddly 80-pound sheepadoodle (nearly as big as Kirk), even makes a camera-blocking cameo.

In her first episode, Kirk read a story meant to reassure children she can no longer hug. It's about how we all have an invisible string that connects us, even when we're far apart.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Eight-year-old Mariana Aceves is doing her math homework — subtraction by counting backwards — while sitting on the bed she shares with her mom, Lorena Aceves.

They're sitting on the bed because they have nowhere else to go: they live in an 8-foot-by-12-foot room called a tiny house. It's part of Seattle's transitional housing where people experiencing homelessness can live until they find a job and a place of their own.

There's room for the bed they share, a TV shelf, "and a little tiny plastic dresser, and then all of our clothing and our food goes underneath our bed," Lorena Aceves says.

Tens of millions of kids are taking classes online at home right now because of the coronavirus pandemic. That's hard enough for most families. But, if you're homeless and have no computer, sketchy wifi, and no quiet place to study, it's even more difficult. That's the case for the one and a half million school kids currently experiencing homelessness across the U.S.

When Seattle's schools closed in March, Aceves had to quit her new job, because she couldn't find childcare. She and her daughter have been holed up in their tiny house ever since.

"It's the boredom," Aceves says, "and me trying to reach out and find resources — work, a car, things like that — while also making sure that she's entertained."

Aceves and her daughter have a tiny amount of private space. Other homeless families have no privacy at all.

Sixteen-year-old Capelle Belij is living with his parents at a shelter, part of a network of family shelters in the Seattle area run by the nonprofit Mary's Place.

The Belijes share a room with two other families, divided only by curtains.

"My friends, like, come up to my bed space and ask if I want to play or something," Belij says. "If we had our own place, I could learn better."

Three-quarters of children and youth considered homeless live doubled-up with another family. That's the situation for the family of 17-year-old Michelle Aguilar. She's part of KUOW's youth reporting program, called RadioActive.

"I can't really find a specific space where it's like quiet and calm and I can actually have wifi," Aguilar says.

Since Aguilar's shared bedroom doesn't have wifi, she ends up in the living room or kitchen with the rest of her family.

"And they just, like, continue their chaotic life of yelling and screaming and, like, playing music and listening to the TV and cooking," she says.

"Whenever I'm, like, in the environment of it being really loud," Aguilar says, "I tend to, like, read over and over and over and over the assignment."

"We're definitely very concerned with there being an achievement gap during this time," says Tisha Tallman, the executive director of the National Center for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth. "The longer this goes, the more likely our children are to fall behind."

And, Tallman adds, schools provide much more than an education: many homeless kids get two meals per day there, and they rely on it as a safe and stable place to be.

Back in her tiny house, Lorena Aceves is trying to keep her daughter's education on track with a strict schedule of math, reading, and typing.

"Even though this is frustrating," Aceves says, "we are having this time together and that's something typically that we don't have."

Aceves says it's good to feel close to her daughter during a time that she has to stay far away from nearly everyone else.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

; Credit: /Dani Pendergast for NPR

Friday, March 13, was the last time Alexandra Sullivan saw her fellow yearbook staffers in person.

"We were trying to get as many pictures of people as possible 'cause we knew we wouldn't be able to take any more," Sullivan, 18, says.

Like most U.S. public school students, Sullivan is learning from home now. And much like her lessons, her work on the yearbook continues.

Sullivan is the yearbook profiles editor at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. She's one of 10 seniors who were also on staff two years ago, when a gunman opened fire at their school. Back then, she and her classmates had to adapt to an unimaginable tragedy. Now, they have to adapt again – this time, to the pandemic.

"This book has to get done and we'll do whatever we have to do to finish it," she says, "which is exactly how we approached the '18 book."

Senior Caitlynn Tibbetts, the yearbook's co-editor-in-chief, was also on staff when the shooting happened. She says there's a collective grief among seniors over what their class — which has already lost so much — is losing now. They won't be able to dance together at prom, or walk across the stage at graduation.

"This class especially has gotten screwed over so much through the past four years," Tibbetts, 18, says. "The last two months were supposed to be the best, and they were supposed to make up for everything that we've been through. And it's really hard on us to kind of just watch it all disappear."

Amid all the uncertainty, she says, one thing is clear: The yearbook must get done, and it must get to students.

High school yearbooks are like time capsules. They record theater productions, which teams went to state finals, who was voted most likely to succeed.

And when a news event makes history – leaving a mark on students and society – it's the yearbook's job to document it. At Stoneman Douglas, that's meant changing plans just weeks before the yearbook is due.

Yearbook advisor Sarah Lerner says, "Having done one under unthinkable circumstances before, I hate to say that we're kind of, you know, used to it, but, for the seniors on staff, we are."

Two years ago, after the shooting, the yearbook staff pivoted to include remembrances of the victims. Tibbetts and Sullivan stepped up to help write them, and anything else that was needed at the last minute, while other yearbook staffers took time to attend funerals.

This year, they're making room for two new spreads about the pandemic.

"One of them is more of a factual-based one, how it's affected our community, including businesses," Tibbetts explains. "The other spread is focused on the effect it's had on us personally, both with online schooling and especially with seniors."

Logistically, putting the yearbook together and writing the new sections has been a challenge. Unlike 2018, they can't be in the same room with each other to finish the design.

"We have to social distance and our parents wouldn't let us go out," Tibbetts says.

They mainly rely on a group chat with everyone on the staff. "It can get hectic," Tibbetts says, "especially when it's all happening at like 12 a.m."

Lerner and her students missed the original deadline to finish the book, on April 6. But the printer, Walsworth, says the company is being flexible with Stoneman Douglas and other yearbook staffs across the country. Lerner says she's aiming to get the book in by the end of April.

Once the printed copies come back, more than 1,200 books will somehow have to be distributed to students. Lerner has some ideas for how to do that safely.

However, there's one important yearbook tradition they may not be able to save.

"We may not actually get to sign books this year," Lerner says. And that's been hard to accept.

"As a teacher, I really like to get my students to sign my book, you know, and I like to sign theirs and I like to see the kids carrying them around at school."

Lerner says she's sad that might not happen this year. But at least this time, the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School aren't on their own.

"Unlike the 2018 books, this situation is not unique to us," she says. "So there's comfort in knowing that all staffs are going through the same issue. It's not just us."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

; Credit: Fanatic Studio/Gary Waters/Science Photo Library/Getty Images

There has been a rise in the number of minors contacting the National Sexual Assault Hotline to report abuse. That's according to RAINN, the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, which runs the hotline.

By the end of March, with much of the country under lockdown, there was a 22% increase in monthly calls from people younger than 18, and half of all incoming contacts were from minors. That's a first in RAINN's history, Camille Cooper, the organization's vice president of public policy, tells NPR.

Of those young people who contacted the hotline in March, 67% identified their perpetrator as a family member and 79% said they were currently living with that perpetrator. In 1 out of 5 cases where the minor was living with their abuser, RAINN assisted the minor in immediately contacting police.

"As a result of looking at the information that we had from those sessions, it was clear that the abuse was escalating in both frequency and severity," Cooper says. "So a lot of the kids that were coming to the hotline were feeling pretty vulnerable and traumatized. And it was a direct result of COVID-19, because they were quarantined with their abuser. The abuser was now abusing them on a daily basis."

Lockdown orders are first and foremost public health and safety measures. But statistically speaking, home is not the safest place for every young person. RAINN reports that about 34% of child sexual abusers are family members. Closing schools and canceling youth activities like sports removes children from the watchful eyes of "mandatory reporters" — those trusted adults, like teachers, nurses and child care providers, who are required by law in most states to report suspicions of child abuse or neglect.

However, Cooper says her organization has confirmed with authorities around the country that the child welfare system is still operating during the pandemic. That is, an official report of current and ongoing abuse will still trigger an investigation, and, if necessary, a child will be removed from the home.

"[Child welfare workers] will be coming to the home in person and proceeding with a formal investigation and a child forensic interview and things like that," she says. If the abuse is farther in the past and the child is not quarantined with the accused, Cooper says, the interview may take place over video chat.

In the meantime, RAINN and other child welfare organizations are lobbying to make it easier for children to report abuse. Cooper says, "One of the solutions we came up with that we are now currently working directly with the leadership in Congress on is to get all of the online learning platforms that children are interacting with to have a reporting function on that platform in plain sight for children."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

; Credit: /Hanna Barczyk for NPR

What will happen on college campuses in the fall? It's a big question for families, students and the schools themselves.

A lot of what happens depends on factors outside the control of individual schools: Will there be more testing? Contact tracing? Enough physical space for distancing? Will the coronavirus have a second wave? Will any given state allow campuses to reopen?

For all of these questions, it's really too early to know the answers. But one thing is clear: Life, and learning for the nation's 20 million students in higher education, will be different.

"I don't think there's any scenario under which it's business as usual on American college campuses in the fall," says Nicholas Christakis, a sociologist and physician at Yale University.

So why are so many colleges announcing they will be back on campus in the fall?

In many cases, it's because they're still trying to woo students. A survey of college presidents found their most pressing concern right now is summer and fall enrollment. Even elite schools, typically more stable when it comes to enrollment, have reportedly been tapping their waitlists.

In the midst of all this uncertainty, it's worth looking at some of the ideas out there. With the help of Joshua Kim and Edward J. Maloney, professors and authors of the book Learning Innovation and the Future of Higher Education, here are some potential scenarios for reopening colleges and universities:

All virtual

Perhaps the most obvious option for the fall is to continue doing what they've been doing this spring. Colleges have signaled that they're planning for this option — even if it's a last resort. California State University, Fullerton, was one of the first to announce publicly it was planning for a fall semester online.

"Obviously we want to resume in-person teaching as soon as possible, but we also need to make sure that we're safe," says Ellen Treanor, who helps lead strategic communication at the school. Treanor says it made a lot of sense to assume the school would start online. "What would be the easier way to transition? It would be easier to transition beginning virtually and then transitioning in person," she said. "The faculty [needs] to be prepared."

With virtual classes, students can remain at home, although some colleges are exploring bringing them back to campus, where they could use the school's Wi-Fi to take online classes.

Delayed start

A delay in the semester would allow a school to wait it out until it was safer to reopen. One option is to push back a month or two, starting in October or November. Another idea is to push a normal start to January. In that case, the spring semester would become the fall semester, and potentially students could stay on campus through next summer to make up the spring semester. Boston University floated a version of this January start date when it announced a number of plans it was exploring.

One downside to a late start is what students will do in the meantime, especially those who don't have financial stability and rely on campus or the university to be a safe and stable home.

Some online, some face-to-face

This would be a hybrid model, with a combination of virtual and in-person classes. It may be a good choice for campuses that don't have enough classrooms to allow adjusting face-to-face teaching to the requirements of social distancing.

"You might have some of the larger classes being taught online simply because it's harder to imagine a 150- or 350-person classroom," says Maloney, who leads the Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship at Georgetown University. "So you might see that class split up into multiple sections." For large, entry-level classes, colleges may have a lecture component online and then meet in smaller groups in person.

"The hybrid model doesn't have to just be about modality," Maloney says. "It can be, but it could also be about fundamentally rethinking what the core structure has been for those large classes."

Of course, shifting larger classes online may not be enough, by itself, to alleviate the health concerns of having students on campus. Early research from Cornell University found that eliminating such classes didn't lessen student interactions with each other.

Shortened blocks

In block scheduling, students take just one course at a time for a shorter duration, typically three or four weeks. Colorado College, a liberal arts school south of Denver, has been using this model for 50 years. The college adopted this style of classes because "it allows [students] to take a deep dive and really focus in unique ways on the single subject," says Alan Townsend, the provost there. In a typical year, the school offers eight blocks.

In addition to its intensity, block scheduling is attractive right now because it allows flexibility. Colleges that use it have the opportunity to change the way classes look every three weeks — since there are multiple start and stop points. (With a semester, you have only a single start and then, often 16 weeks later, an end.)

"It's easier for us to now think creatively for next year," Townsend says. "Different students can make different choices. That's really hard to do with a semester-based system, but the blocks allow us to do that a little bit more flexibly."

The school is also entertaining the idea of sending faculty abroad to teach a block for international students who might not be able to enter the U.S, or adding summer blocks to give students even more opportunities to take classes.

Only some on campus

Some colleges have suggested bringing only freshmen back to campus and having upperclassmen either delay their start, or be online and remote.

The idea centers on research that shows just how important a student's first year of college is as a predictor of graduation. Adapting to campus can be a challenge, so this would allow first-year students to get comfortable and have extra support on campus.

Since upperclassmen are already familiar with how campus and classes work, the theory goes, they can more easily adapt to an online environment. Other versions of this approach would have students who have housing needs come back to campus first, and then, over time, phase in other groups of students.

All these options seek to keep the population density of the campus lower while still maintaining some face-to-face interactions.

On campus, with some changes

Social distancing, improved testing and contact tracing could help colleges reopen their campuses.

"Every school is trying to figure out a way to have students come back and do whatever we can while also protecting public health," says Learning Innovation co-author Joshua Kim, director of online programs and strategy at Dartmouth College.

"At the same time, we know that, however that works, things will be different. It's probably unlikely that we'll be able to cram students together in large, packed lecture halls or put doubles and triples in residence halls or have big events."

To follow social distancing, professors are measuring their classrooms, calculating how many students could fit in the space if they were 6 feet apart. Deans are planning out how students could enter and exit the classrooms safely.

But it's not just the classrooms that pose a challenge. For residential colleges, it's the dorms.

"Whether or not students are actually learning in the classroom, it's incredibly important for them to have an on-campus experience," Maloney says. So schools are thinking about how they can spread their students out, putting them in places where they normally wouldn't go.

Some ideas include housing students in offices that aren't being used, local hotel rooms or off-campus housing. Institutions are also reimagining campus events, like freshman orientation, since it's unlikely hundreds of students will be in a packed auditorium.

"Rethinking how we do everything we do at a university is part of the process," Maloney says.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

No field trips. No game rooms. No teddy bears. These are some of the CDC's guidelines for reopening schools, childcare centers and day camps safely in places where coronavirus cases are on the decline.

The guidance, which also covers restaurants, churches and other public places, was obtained by The Associated Press, which reports that the White House tried to keep it from coming to light. The New York Times quoted Mark Meadows, the chief of staff, as being concerned that the guidelines were "overly prescriptive."

The CDC does not have authority to enforce its guidance, which is intended for public information only; the actual policy decisions are up to state and local governments. Schools are closed through the end of the school year throughout much of the country, with the exception of Montana, which welcomed a handful of students back this week. Child care protocols are different in different states.

But millions of parents need child care so they can work, and socialization and stimulation for children who have been confined to home by lockdowns for weeks on end. This is the guidance that summer camps and day cares have been waiting for to make decisions about reopening safely.

The guidance says that where coronavirus is spreading rapidly, child care should only serve the children of essential workers. This is the case today in much of the country, which the guidelines refer to as "Phase 1".

In Phase 2, programs can expand to serve all children with enhanced social distancing measures, and in Phase 3, with a lower risk, social distancing will continue.

Recommended measures include:

Handwashing;

Cloth masks for staff;

Regular disinfection of all surfaces;

Six-foot distance "if possible," head-to-toe positioning with bedding;

As much outdoor air as possible — open windows, fans;

Restricting mixing of groups;

Restricting visitors, and staggering dropoffs and pickups to reduce contact among parents;

Limiting sharing of materials like art supplies or toys. Disinfecting them in between use.;

Avoiding soft toys that can't be easily disinfected;

Not using common areas like dining halls or playgrounds if possible. If it is necessary, stagger visits and disinfect in between;

Adjust operations based on local health data;

Monitor absenteeism.

The guidelines also emphasize keeping attendance at such programs local, to limit children bringing the disease from high to low transmission areas.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Audrey Hepburn I am not, but every once in a while, a girl’s gotta go for the gamine look, right? The ankle-length or capri trousers, the ‘50s pink and black color scheme. This is not the ‘’Breakfast at Tiffany’s” Audrey Hepburn, but the 1957 “Funny Face” Audrey, the intellectual beatnik girl who agrees to do a photo modeling shoot for Fred Astaire in exchange for a trip to Paris, where she can to worship at the feet of her “empathicalism” guru, Professor Flostre, who turns out to be just another “mec” on the make.
 
Of course I had to sneak in some commentary in this ensemble: the shirt in sweetheart-pink with stylized black silhouettes of classic runway shapes over the years …  and the shoes, with the pink-and-black face of a sassy manga girl. This one I like. Some of the sex-bomb manga girl illustrations look more like teen boy fantasy porn versions of those classic Keane portraits of solemn-faced, big-eyed children.
 
If you think Meryl Streep was a tough cookie in “The Devil Wears Prada,” check out the original: Kay Thompson and her star turn as the glamorous, tyrannical fashion mag editor in “Funny Face”! [Why do the handbags carried by women in the movies always look empty? Par for the fantasy, I suppose.

The only woman who comes close to achieving the empty handbag is the Queen, who, if rumor is believed, carries only a handkerchief and lipstick and eyeglasses in hers, maybe one or two other items, and on Sunday some money for the church collection plate. I’m convinced she keeps it handy mostly as a prop. Poor lady: it’s always a sedate British-made Launer handbag and she orders four new ones a year. Maybe at least in her imagination she goes online and buys a Stephen Sprouse Louis Vuitton neon graffiti bag, just for the heck of it.]
 
The Harry Potter cast did a little bit about the Queen’s handbag for her 80th birthday:

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Robert F. Kennedy's speech at the Ambassador Hotel. Sandi Gibbons the woman in the white dress on the bottom right.

She’s spent her life on both sides of the microphone.

For half of her career she was a reporter, finding herself in places like the Ambassador Hotel ballroom on the night Robert F. Kennedy was shot, and in the courthouse covering Charles Manson.

For the other half of her professional life, she spent a lot more time in L.A.’s courthouses as the spokeswoman for the L.A. County District Attorney’s office. She served three DAs, and now she’s hanging it up. Her retirement lunch was attended by three past and present DAs, with a fond message from a fourth, and as many of her reporter and DA friends could fit in the restaurant.

RELATED: Veteran reporter, DA spokesperson Sandi Gibbons is retiring

Sandi Gibbons has tales to tell, and here she recounts a few funny, moving and plain old perplexing ones from her life in court. And I can tell you from knowing her, she is one great dame.

Correction: Original headline spelled Sandi Gibbons' name "Sandy"

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Patt Morrison and Stephen Hawking at Cal-Tech. ; Credit: Dave Coelho/KPCC

The renowned physicist, cosmologist and lover of Indian food is at Caltech for his annual dinner and lecture visit. I broke naan across from him Thursday at dinner, which was cooked by a class of adept Caltech students.

I had a short interview with him, and with the student-chefs, which will be airing on “Off-Ramp” soon. As we took the photograph, I had just made a little joke, which accounts for his smile [producer Dave Coelho didn’t get a smile, but maybe he’s not as funny nor as glamorous as I am].  

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

; Credit: Michelle Lanz/KPCC

This is my Earth Day homage, with the green cotton poplin coat and the nifty closures. Couture and hardware experts! Can I beseech you to tell us what this type of closure is called? The round metal gizmo is a grommet, but what do you call the short bar at the end of a chain that goes through the grommet to secure it?

I hope there’s some fanciful medieval word for it, because in my fevered romantic brain, it has the feel of the kind of clothing closure that might have been used for a coat of mail or doublet or surcoat or cotehardie or any of a number of divinely archaic phrases for wardrobe items.
 
Can a print still be spring-y when it’s on a black background, like this one? I’ve heard that there’s a new vogue for prints in tshirts. I would welcome that, because I’m weary of the myriad dreary fan-girl T-shirts, and the clever or hip ones meant to show that you are unique, along with the other two-million people wearing the identical shirt. I’ve seen enough devil’s horns and skulls and snakes to fill the Book of Revelations, so let’s just move along, shall we?
 
These shoes I wear, but rarely. Otherwise they doze quietly in their red flannel shoe bag: my green patent-leather Louboutins. I’d coveted them since seeing them new in a shop in London, when they cost about as much as my plane ticket. I lay in wait for years for someone to put them up on eBay.

The name of the style is “Iowa.” Did the person in charge of naming styles for M. Louboutin know that Iowa is a flat agricultural state smack dab in the middle of the United States? Or perhaps he or she simply liked the esthetics of a word with three vowels and a consonant. What leads me to suspect the latter is the fact that Paris has a wanna-be TexMex cafe named “Indiana.”

When I went there, it was chockablock with images of Indians, who have nothing to do with TexMex food and are not much associated these days with the state of Indiana.
 
For the life of me, I can’t remember where I got the bracelet, but the blue-green-colored “art glass” cabochons practically glow, like that magnificent iridescence that you find in nature. It goes by the fine name ‘’goniochromism,’’ which you should really start throwing around more in general conversation. It’s the purview of butterfly wings and peacock feathers and  scarabs and abalone shells, of course, and of that changeable taffets which seems to have a recrudescence every few years on the racks of prom gowns, and probably should not.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Patt Morrison's ensemble for Aug 8, 2013.; Credit: Dave Coelho/KPCC

What shall we call this color scheme? How about ‘Manhattan Mermaid’?

The petrel blues, the turquoises, the aquas – and then that uptown/downtown black, in this case a black linen duster over a Peter Max-style splashy-print silk dress. The way the hem pools at the sides a bit reminds me of the cut of Pre-Raphaelite ladies’ tunics; I’d love to dress “period” for a week to see whether I’d like it.

Imagine, a week of hoop skirts … a week of 1950s tailleurs … a week of bustles … a week of hobble skirts … a week of liberated Pre-Raphaelite velvet gowns!

The hat is so unmistakably summer in fabric and color that it doesn’t get out of the hatbox as much as it should, poor thing. And the shoes – I did not get them together, honest, but even though the prints don’t match, it’s the dissonance that makes them work better together than if they had.

The fabric is a very textured canvas and printed like batik. [They are not the soul of comfort – oh what a dreadful pun, but is there any other kind of pun? – but they look smart hooked over the railing of a chair in a chic bistro, which is where I intend to take them!]

And the bracelets, one from a great-aunt who had a fine eye for jewelry – the turquoise is almost Persian, it’s so green, but it’s more likely to be American. The cuff is definitely Southwest, with the rope-pattern trim and the irregularly shaped bezels, although the turquoises themselves are symmetrical.

Because I’m left-handed, my right arm bears the singular honor of being “ornamental,” and bearing the burden of the bling.

Summer on, ladies!

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

; Credit: Michelle Lanz/KPCC

Someone just told me that pink and gray were Vassar’s colors. I would say, “Go Vassarettes!” but, one, Vassarette is a line of brassieres, and, two, the Vassar mascot is The Brewer, for the profession of its founder, Matthew Vassar. You go, Seven Sisters girls and guys!

The scarf is one of two I picked up on vacation – for some reason insect themes are big just now. This one has little gray ants marching over a pink field, a reminder of – what? Teamwork? Conformity? Time to call the exterminator? The other scarf, which I’ll wear presently, is the color of a ripe nectarine, with a pattern of vividly colored beetles. Scarabus chic. Dashing, no?

The glittery pink shirt is one more example of that contrast that I like, against the matte gray knit of the sweater (indoor-outdoor wear for L.A. summers, going from AC to Fahrenheit in a flash). Which explains the vast and shady hat – like a veranda on my head!

I was surprised at myself for buying these shoes – silver and bright pink; when would I ever be wearing that? But there they are, slingbacks made by “Emma Hope’s shoes, Regalia for feet,” an irresistible name.

The oval seal with the maker’s name reminded me of the oval seal on shoes made by Rayne, the 19th-century London shoemaker that had shod the women of the royal family for decades (but not the last two generations of those chic ladies: Diana, Princess of Wales, and Katherine, Duchess of Cambridge).

Please don’t blame Rayne for the Queen’s inordinate fondness for platform peeptoe shoes – her mother made her do it. Literally. Those royal ladies – the Queen, her late mother and late sister, Margaret – were quite short, and those shoes boosted their height. But still …

Here is Rayne’s website for a look at some of the glamorous and glorious shoes for feet past and present – including Anna Pavlova’s, prima ballerina assoluta. Mary Quant designed for Rayne. And before you look, that old caution:  If you have to ask how much …  

A pair of Rayne shoes is on my fantasy list for thrift-store finds, along with a Fortuny dress and a wild Schiaparelli hat. I believe, I believe...

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

COVID-19 Research and Development Sean's pick this week is COVID-19 Research and Development by MathWorks. We were recently introduced to this page which highlights uses of... read more >>

Pedestrians walk by the Castro Theatre that has a marquee announcing that they are closed due to a statewide ordinance banning gatherings of more than 250 people in San Francisco, California. ; Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Hollywood has come to a stand still. The film and entertainment industry has been hit hard by the coronavirus outbreak as theaters close, film releases and events are being postponed, and studios are putting a pause on film production.

The gravity of the coronavirus is being felt all throughout the country and Hollywood is not coming out of the outbreak unscathed. Social distancing measures being enforced to help control the outbreak has studios and theatres taking a huge hit. It’s predicted that about 170,000 people in the film industry will lose their jobs. Many of the lowest-paid positions and freelance jobs have been the first to go. From events to films, the industry is trying to strategize around the outbreak with no clear picture on how long these conditions could last. Hollywood unions, activist groups and nonprofits are coming together to help provide some kind of emergency relief for workers who are getting hit the hardest. It’s been a period of economic shock for the entertainment industry and it’s still too early to see what Hollywood could look like after the outbreak is over.

Today on AirTalk, we check-in with people in the entertainment industry who have been impacted by the outbreak and where might Hollywood go from here. If you work in entertainment, we'd like to hear from you! How are you coping as most productions are shut down? Join the live conversation by calling 866-893-5722.

Guest:

Andrew Wallenstein, co-editor-in-chief at Variety; he tweets @awallenstein

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Alex Wolff in Human Capital.; Credit: Vertical Entertainment/Human Capital (2019)

Larry Mantle and KPCC film critics Lael Loewenstein, Claudia Puig and Tim Cogshell review this weekend’s new (streaming and VOD) movie releases.

• "Human Capital" on DirecTV

• "Crip Camp" on Netflix

• "The Platform" on Netflix

• "Blow The Man Down" on Amazon Prime Video

• "Phoenix, Oregon" on film's website

• "The Dog Doc" on Amazon Prime Video

• "Hooking Up" on Xfinity OnDemand

​CORRECTION: The film Human Capital is available on all on-demand platforms as of March 20th.

Guests:

Claudia Puig, film critic for KPCC and president of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association (LAFCA); she tweets @ClaudiaPuig

Lael Loewenstein, KPCC film critic and film columnist for the Santa Monica Daily Press; she tweets @LAELLO

Tim Cogshell, film critic for KPCC, Alt-Film Guide and CineGods.com; he tweets @CinemaInMind

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

KJ Apa and Britt Robertson in "I Still Believe" ; Credit: Lionsgate/I Still Believe (2020)

Larry Mantle and KPCC film critics Amy Nicholson and Wade Major review this weekend’s new movie releases.

• "I Still Believe" on VOD

• "Banana Split" on VOD 

• "Vivarium" on VOD

• "Resistance" on VOD

• "Vitalina Varela" on GrasshopperFilm.com

• "Uncorked" on Netflix

• "Dosed" on film's website

• "The Occupant" on Netflix

• "Tape" on VOD

• "There's Something In The Water" on Netflix

Guests:

Amy Nicholson, film critic for KPCC, film writer for The Guardian and host of the podcasts ‘Unspooled’ and the podcast miniseries “Zoom”; she tweets @TheAmyNicholson

Wade Major, film critic for KPCC and CineGods.com

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Talia Ryder and Théodore Pellerin in "Never Rarely Sometimes Always".
; Credit: Focus Features/Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020)

Larry Mantle and KPCC film critics Lael Loewenstein, Peter Rainer and Christy Lemire review this weekend’s new movie releases and share their picks for the best movies and TV shows to binge, rewatch or see for the first time while you’re staying at home.

• "Never Rarely Sometimes" on VOD (for rent on Amazon Prime & FandangoNOW)

• "Bacurau" on virtual cinemas, including Laemmle's and Alamo Drafthouse

• "Slay The Dragon" on VOD, including iTunes

• "About A Teacher" on Amazon Prime Video

• "Dolphin Reef" on Disney+

• "Elephant" in Disney+

Guests:

Lael Loewenstein, KPCC film critic and film columnist for the Santa Monica Daily Press; she tweets @LAELLO

Peter Rainer, film critic for KPCC and the Christian Science Monitor

Christy Lemire, film critic for KPCC, RogerEbert.com and co-host of the ‘Breakfast All Day’ podcast; she tweets @christylemire

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Kunjue Li (L) and Hing Chi-Lee (R) in Tigertail.; Credit: Netflix/Tigertail (2020)

Larry Mantle and KPCC film critics Claudia Puig, Tim Cogshell and Charles Solomon review this weekend’s new movie releases and share their recommendations for what to binge-watch while you’re stuck at home during COVID-19.

• "Tigertail" on Netflix

• "School Life" on Netflix

• "Love. Wedding. Repeat." on Netflix

• 'Stray Dolls" on VOD (AppleTV, Google Play Redbox * FandangoNOW

• "Sea Fever" on VOD (Spectrum On Demand, AppleTV, Google Play, Vudu, Redbox & FandangoNOW)

• "Strike" on VOD (Redbox, FandangoNOW & Vudu)

• "The Main Event" on Netflix

Guests:

Claudia Puig, film critic for KPCC and president of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association (LAFCA); she tweets @ClaudiaPuig

Tim Cogshell, film critic for KPCC, Alt-Film Guide and CineGods.com; he tweets @CinemaInMind

Charles Solomon, film critic for KPCC, Animation Scoop and Animation Magazine

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Justin Timberlake and Anna Kendrick in Trolls World Tour.; Credit: Universal Pictures/Trolls World Tour (2020)

Larry Mantle and KPCC film critics Lael Loewenstein, Amy Nicholson and Charles Solomon review this weekend’s new movie releases and share some of their recommendations for movies and TV shows to discover, rediscover and binge-watch while you’re at home.

• "Trolls World Tour" on VOD (Vudu, FandangoNOW, AppleTV, Amazon Prime Video , Microsoft Store & more)

• "The Quarry" on VOD (FandangoNOW, Google Play, DirecTV On Demand)

• "A White, White Day" on The Frida Virtual Cinema

• "Away" on Laemmle's Virtual Cinema and Amazon Prime Video

• "Selah And The Spades" on Amazon Prime Video

• "The Booksellers" on VOD (Google Play) and virtual cinemas, including Laemmle's and The Virutal Frida Cinema

• "Endings, Beginnings" on VOD (iTunes and FandangoNOW)

• "Sergio" on Netflix

Want to see what our critics are watching and recommending you watch during stay at home? Click here to see a full list of our FilmWeek critics' favorite TV shows and films to binge-watch during COVID-19.

Guests:

Amy Nicholson, film critic for KPCC, film writer for The Guardian and host of the podcasts ‘Unspooled’ and the podcast miniseries “Zoom”; she tweets @TheAmyNicholson

Lael Loewenstein, KPCC film critic and film columnist for the Santa Monica Daily Press; she tweets @LAELLO

Charles Solomon, film critic for KPCC, Animation Scoop and Animation Magazine

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Chris Hemsworth and Rudhraksh Jaiswal in Extraction.; Credit: Netflix/Extraction (2020)

Larry Mantle and KPCC film critics Christy Lemire, Angie Han and Wade Major review this weekend’s new movie releases on streaming and VOD platforms.

• "Extraction" on Netflix

• "Bad Education" on HBO

• "Circus Of Books" on Netflix

• "Why Don't You Just Die!" on VOD (iTunes, Amazon & Google Play)

• "Beastie Boys Story" on Apple TV+

• "Robert The Bruce" on VOD (iTunes, Amazon, FandangoNOW & Google Play)

• "1BR" on VOD (iTunes) & DVD

• "The True History Of The Kelly Gang" on VOD (iTunes, Vudu & Google Play)

Guests:

Angie Han, KPCC film critic and deputy entertainment editor at Mashable; she tweets @ajhan

Christy Lemire, film critic for KPCC, RogerEbert.com and co-host of the ‘Breakfast All Day’ podcast; she tweets @christylemire

Wade Major, film critic for KPCC and CineGods.com

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Circus of Books storefront.; Credit: Netflix/Circus Of Books (2020)

Rachel Mason had, to a certain extent, the normal upbringing you’d imagine a family of five with small business owner parents would have. But in her documentary, ‘Circus of Books’, she pulls the curtain on the double-life her parents led as modest business owners and pillars of the LGBTQ community.

Karen and Barry Mason established West Hollywood’s Circus of Books on Santa Monica Boulevard in the 1980s. What seemed like an unassuming bookstore was actually a gay porn shop that became an institution in the LGBTQ community during a time when homosexuality was still largely unaccepted. The store was far from being a “bookstore with a circus theme”. The Los Angeles-based shop was the central hub for gay pornography around the country, once one of the main distributors for adult films. 

While the store was becoming a home for gay culture and pride, the Masons largely kept their business a secret from colleagues, friends, family, even their own children. It’s a central conflict that Rachel Mason explores throughout the film as the daughter of two shop owners caught between the pressures of maintaining a traditional family image and making a living as gay pornography distributors.

Today on FilmWeek, we’re joined by ‘Circus of Books’ director Rachel Mason for a conversation on her documentary and the experience of creating a film with her parents and their secret as the subject.

‘Circus Of Books’ is currently streaming on Netflix. For more on the film from LAist’s Mike Roe, click here.

Guest:

Rachel Mason, director of the Netflix documentary ‘Circus of Books’ and daughter of Circus of Books owners Karen and Barry Mason; she tweets @RachelMasonArt

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Terry Donahue and Pat Henschel in "A Secret Love"; Credit: Netflix/A Secret Love (2020)

Larry Mantle and KPCC film critics Lael Loewenstein and Tim Cogshell review this weekend’s new movie releases on streaming and on demand platforms.

• "Bull" on VOD (iTunes & FandangoNOW)

• "A Secret Love" on Netflix

• "Deerskin" on virtual cinemas, including Laemmle's & The Frida Cinema

• "The Wretched" on VOD (iTunes & Google Play)

• "The Half Of It" on Netflix

• "All Day And A Night" on Netflix 

• "Vanilla" on VOD (Vudu, Google Play & iTunes)

• "South Mountain" on VOD/DVD (iTunes, Amazon, Google Play & Vudu)

• "Working Man" on VOD (iTunes, Google Play, FandangoNOW & Vudu) 

Our FilmWeek critics have been curating personal lists of their favorite TV shows and movies to binge-watch during self-quarantine. You can see recommendations from each of the critics and where you can watch them here.

Guests:

Lael Loewenstein, KPCC film critic and film columnist for the Santa Monica Daily Press; she tweets @LAELLO

Tim Cogshell, film critic for KPCC, Alt-Film Guide and CineGods.com; he tweets @CinemaInMind

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Michelle Obama in "Becoming".; Credit: Netflix/"Becoming" (2020)

Larry Mantle and KPCC film critics Claudia Puig, Peter Rainer and Christy Lemire review this weekend’s new movie releases.

• "Becoming" on Netflix

• "Rewind" on VOD (iTunes) & on PBS May 11th (check your local listings)

• "Spaceship Earth" on virtual cinemas (Laemmle's & The Frida), streaming on Hulu, and VOD

• "Arkansas" on VOD (Spectrum On Demand, DirecTV on Demand, iTunes, Vudu, Google Play, FandangoNOW & Amazon Prime)

• "Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind" on HBO & Amazon Prime

• "Driveways" on VOD (Amazon Prime and Google Play)

• "Walkaway Joe" on VOD (iTunes, Google Play, FandangoNOW & Vudu)

• "Intrigo: Dear Agnes" on VOD (iTunes, Google Play, FandangoNOW & Vudu)

• "Valley Girl" on VOD (iTunes, Google Play & Amazon Prime)

• "On a Magical Night" on virtual cinemas, including Laemmle's & The Frida

• "The Delicacy" on SOMM TV

Guests:

Claudia Puig, film critic for KPCC and president of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association (LAFCA); she tweets @ClaudiaPuig

Christy Lemire, film critic for KPCC, RogerEbert.com and co-host of the ‘Breakfast All Day’ podcast; she tweets @christylemire

Peter Rainer, film critic for KPCC and the Christian Science Monitor

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

UCheck is a free program that allows you to scan a computer for outdated programs and automatically update them to the latest version.  UCheck also has the ability to install numerous new programs onto a computer with the click of a button. This makes it incredibly easy to install wanted programs on a brand new computer with one click. [...]

Qualys BrowserCheck is a cloud service that makes sure your browser and installed plugins are all up-to-date so that you not affected by security vulnerabilities in outdated browser technology. [...]

Scientists have produced a list of seafloor characteristics to determine the health status of the ecosystem it supports. These indicators could improve the quality and consistency of marine conservation efforts across Europe, particularly where the impact of human activities is high.

Populations of otters, grey seals and sea eagles are slowly recovering in Sweden, which is likely to be thanks in part to a ban on organochlorine chemicals, such as PCBs and DDT, in the 1970s, according to a new study. However, the research shows that negative effects of these chemicals on the reproductive health of female animals persisted for more than 15 years after the ban was introduced.

Some Marine and Coastal have been altered over long periods of time, resulting in a loss of knowledge of their true healthy state, new research suggests. In this UK study, researchers used historical records, samples of sediment and present-day diving surveys to reconstruct the true history of shellfish beds on the east coast of Scotland.

4 awesome discoveries you probably didn't hear about this week -- Episode 31

4 awesome discoveries you probably didn't hear about this week -- Episode 32

The National Science Foundation: Creating knowledge to transform our future

Nutella has turned into a global phenomenon, which is boosting the demand for hazelnuts. ; Credit: Ingrid Taylar/Flickr

Nutella, that sinfully indulgent chocolate-hazelnut spread, turns 50 this year, and it's come a long way, baby.

There's even a "Nutella bar" in midtown Manhattan, right off Fifth Avenue, tucked inside a grand temple of Italian food called Eataly. There's another Nutella bar at Eataly in Chicago. Here, you can order Nutella on bread, Nutella on a croissant, Nutella on crepes.

"We create a simple place," explains Dino Borri, Eataly's "brand ambassador," a man so charming that he should be an ambassador for the whole Italian country. "Simple ingredients, few ingredients. With Nutella, supertasty, supersimple. When you are simple, the people love!"

Nutella was the product of hard times. During World War II, an Italian chocolate-maker named Ferrero couldn't get enough cocoa, so he mixed in some ground hazelnuts instead. Then he made a soft and creamy version.

"It was one of the greatest inventions of the last century!" says Borri.

It's a bold claim, but greatness, you have to admit, is a matter of taste. In any case, Nutella conquered Italy and, eventually, the world.

The recipe for world domination, it turns out, isn't too complicated: Sugar, cocoa, palm oil and hazelnuts. Three of those ingredients are easy to get. Sugar, cocoa and palm oil are produced in huge quantities.Hazelnuts, though, which some people call filberts, are a different matter. Most of them come from a narrow strip of land along the coast of the Black Sea in Turkey.

Karim Azzaoui, vice president for sales and marketing at BALSU USA, which supplies hazelnuts to the U.S., says the hazelnut trees grow on steep slopes that rise from the Black Sea coast. The farms are small; grandparents and children help to harvest the nuts, usually by hand. "It's a very traditional way of life," Azzaoui says. "The Turkish family farmers are extremely proud of the hazelnut crop, as it has been part of their family history for centuries. Farmers have been growing hazelnuts here for 2,000 years."

Nutella is now making this traditional crop extremely trendy.

Ferrero, the Nutella-maker, now a giant company based in Alba, Italy, uses about a quarter of the world's hazelnut supply — more than 100,000 tons every year.

That's pushed up hazelnut prices. And this year, after a late frost in Turkey that froze the hazelnut blossoms and cut the country's hazelnut production in half, prices spiked even further. They're up an additional 60 percent this year.

Because they're so valuable, more people want to grow them. Farmers are growing hazelnuts in Chile and Australia. America's hazelnut orchards in Oregon are expanding.

And now, one can even find a few hazelnuts in the Northeastern United States, where they've never been successfully grown before. They're standing in a Rutgers University research farm, an oasis of orchards tucked in between highways, just outside New Brunswick, N.J.

"All the green leafy things you see here are hazelnut trees. But in the beginning, they all used to die from disease," says Thomas Molnar, a Rutgers plant scientist who is in charge of this effort.

The disease, called Eastern Filbert Blight, is caused by a fungus. Some relatives of the commercial hazelnut, native to North America, can withstand the fungus. But the European hazelnut, the kind that fetches high prices, cannot. When the fungus attacks, it ruptures the bark around each branch, and the tree dies.

About 10 years ago, though, a plant breeder at Rutgers named C. Reed Funk embarked on a quest for hazelnut trees that could survive Eastern Filbert Blight. Similar efforts have been underway at Oregon State University, because Eastern Filbert Blight has made its way to Oregon as well, threatening the orchards there.

"I personally went and made seed collections in Eastern Europe, Russia, Poland, Ukraine," says Molnar. "I collected thousands of seeds. We grew them as we normally would, and I'd say that 98 percent of them died."

The other 2 percent, though, did not. They carried genes that allowed them to survive the blight. Molnar cross-pollinated these blight-resistant trees with other hazelnut trees, from Oregon, that produce lots of high-quality nuts. He collected the offspring of that mating, looking for individual trees with the ideal genetic combination: blight resistance and big yields.

Molnar shows me a few candidate trees. They're thriving, and producing lots of nuts. Molnar and his colleagues now are conducting field trials of these trees in 10 locations around the Eastern U.S. and Canada to see whether they yield enough nuts to be commercially successful.

Molnar is optimistic. His efforts have even caught the attention of Ferrero, the Nutella-maker. "They've come here several times," Molnar says. "They've told me, if we can meet their quality specifications, they'd be interested in buying all the hazelnuts that we can produce."

If you just want to get one of these trees and grow hazelnuts in your backyard, though, Molnar does have a warning. "I haven't seen any other food that drives squirrels more crazy than hazelnuts," he says. Squirrels will do almost anything to get their greedy little paws on the nuts before you do.

So your hazelnuts may need a guard dog — one that likes to chase squirrels.