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Chris O'Meara/AP

Nationwide, home sales are up, mortgage rates are down and in many places, owning a home is as attractive as renting for the first time in years.

For generations, owning a home has been a key part of the lifestyle most Americans aspire to. But when the mortgage crisis exploded in 2007, it brought down the U.S. housing market — and the entire economy along with it.

The ensuing recession was an assault on the American dream of homeownership itself. The tidal wave of foreclosures, the crash in home prices and tighter lending standards have left some Americans unable or simply too nervous to buy a house.

In the wake of the housing crisis, a flurry of media coverage has trumpeted how Americans are rethinking homeownership. Pundits asked, "Is renting the new owning?" and a September 2010 Time magazine cover proclaimed, "Why owning a home may no longer make economic sense."

But has renting become "the future of home-dwelling" in America, as one cable news reporter posited?

As Mortgage Rates Fall ...

Monthly rates, in percent, for fixed 30-year mortgages

Notes

May 2012 figure is for the week of May 31.

Source: Freddie Mac

Credit: Nelson Hsu / NPR

In a word: no.

Five years after the market crash of 2007, the desire to own a home is actually very much alive and well. In a recent poll of likely voters by the Woodrow Wilson Center, 84 percent of respondents said homeownership today is just as important as or more important than it was five years ago. Ninety percent still think homeownership is part of the American dream.

'Living The Dream'

At a kitchen table in the Boston suburb of Sharon, Mass., 11-month-old Lilah Medeiros is eating mashed potatoes and making elephant sounds. Her parents, Jared and Emily Medeiros, are in their mid-30s. Both work in a museum, and both are first-time homebuyers.

Is It Cheaper To Rent Or Buy?

In 1989, the annual cost of owning an average home nationally was nearly double the cost of renting an average apartment, as shown in the index below. Now, the costs of owning and renting are nearly the same, according to the index compiled by MIT economics professor William Wheaton.

Notes

Actual costs vary by market. The payment/rent ratio is derived by multiplying the mortgage interest rate times the average house price, then dividing that by the average apartment rent. The index does not account for the "opportunity cost" of making a down payment on a home (as opposed to investing the money), and also assumes no house appreciation and no interest deduction.

Source: MIT Center for Real Estate

Credit: Alyson Hurt / NPR

"We got a nice front yard, backyard, side yard — two side yards," Jared laughs about the family's new digs.

Emily loves the family's new space. "[Jared] does some woodwork stuff. He can do his projects on the weekends, and I can do some gardening," she says.

"I do feel like we are living the dream. We've said it a couple times since we bought the place," she adds. "This is what you always picture — having the space to do this stuff — and now we do."

Around the country, young families like the Medeiroses are buying homes or condos in the city as well as the suburbs.

That desire to own a home, and one's own piece of land, has deep roots in the American psyche.

A Dream With Deep Roots

The term "American dream" became popular in the 1930s, says Bob Shiller, a housing economist at Yale. "But I associate it with the suburban movement that developed after World War II," he says.

"To me, homeownership at that time represented kind of a community spirit. We have neighbors, we like our neighbors, we're active in the community," Shiller says.

The American tradition of actively encouraging home- or farm ownership dates back even further, he says.

"That was the real American dream — [owning] your own farm. So we had the Homestead Act in the 1860s that made it possible for anyone with modest means to buy a farm," he says.

Still earlier, the French historian Alexis de Tocqueville noted the importance of homeownership in his book Democracy in America, published in the 1830s and based on his travels around the country.

"He noticed the independent streak of Americans and their desire to own their own farm and their own home," Shiller says. "He thought that that represented a kind of anti-feudal feeling — that each person in this country is an independent agent. There is no landlord or lord with his thumb on you."

That American dream arguably became pretty warped during the housing bubble. Buying a house meant making big money fast. There was a frantic rush to buy as prices rose, and McMansions sprang up as people used the equity in their homes to move into bigger houses than they needed.

"It was a different spirit," Shiller says of the boom times. "It was not the same American dream."

Buying More Attractive Than Renting

 

Chris Arnold/NPR

Jared and Emily Medeiros purchased their Sharon, Mass., home when they realized it had become more affordable to buy than in recent years.

Today, some might argue that people like Jared and Emily Medeiros are returning to something healthier. The homes on their street in Sharon are well-kept but modest. Many are ranch houses, spread out with nice, big backyards. There are no new McMansions in this neighborhood.

"Most of these ranches were all built in the '50s, so it's ... like a turnover right now," Jared says. "Either the people are moving to Florida or dying or selling their house. And a lot of couples our age with kids, first-time homebuyers, are buying up all the houses around here. You can totally see it. Just lots and lots of families."

The couple says they didn't buy expecting to get rich from rising home values. They simply did the math and decided that, by owning, they could get a lot for their money right now.

The couple paid around $250,000 for their home — less than they would have paid a few years ago for a nice house not in need of major repairs.

Home prices are down about 30 percent on average nationally. Interest rates are super low, while rents are rising.

"We're almost at a historic opportunity, in terms of the cost of owning relative to renting," says William Wheaton, an economist at MIT. "It's hard to think of a time in the last ... two or three decades when it's been as good to buy as right now."

Public Policy A Key Factor

Still, Wheaton says, many of the financial benefits of owning a house are a result of government policy. The government has a hand in making mortgages available and affordable, in part through the mortgage interest deduction for homeowners. Those kinds of incentives are a big reason that 65 percent of Americans own their homes.

The opposite is true in countries with different policies. Switzerland, for example, has the lowest homeownership rate in the developed world, Wheaton says.

More In This Series

How Homes Structure The American Dream June 3, 2012

Sizing Up The American Dream

In the diverse U.S., the idea of "the American dream" means different things to different people.

On The Economic Ladder, Rungs Move Further Apart

In recent decades, the dream of economic mobility has faded for many Americans.

That's not because the Swiss particularly love renting, he says. It's just that the economic incentives in that country push them toward it. The tax structure there favors renting: It's easy to get long-term rental leases, and loans are harder to get.

As a result, "only 35 percent of the population of Switzerland owns their home," Wheaton says. "And Switzerland is a very affluent little enclave."

The relationship between policies and behavior should be of interest to American policymakers. Over the next few years, Congress will be restructuring the government's role in the housing market. Those changes could have a significant impact on that key element of the American dream: owning one's home.

Pyongyang, North Korea (CNN) -- For just a moment we can hardly believe what is happening.

The boyish leader takes a step towards the microphone, the massed ranks of the huge army he commands poised before him. And then he speaks.

The adoring crowd who have been chanting his name falls silent.

Kim Jong Un, not yet 30 years old, appears slightly nervous. His voice doesn't waver but his body moves back and forth restlessly and his eyes dart around. If his nerves betray him slightly, his words stay strong.

He stands atop the shoulders of the men who have gone before him, his grandfather and father. Directly below him hang the huge portraits of the man North Koreans call the Great Leader, Kim il Sung, and his son the so-called Dear Leader, Kim Jong Il.

North Korea marks founder's 100th birthday

The third generation of the Kim dynasty pledges to build on his family's legacy. But already, just with this speech, he is veering from their path. It is something his father never did. North Koreans I speak to say they can't recall ever hearing his voice.

North Korea hears from Kim Jong Un

North Korean parade shows off missile

To be here now is "the greatest gift I have received in my life," one man says.

Kim Jong Un is speaking to two audiences: his people and the outside world he stands apart from. The newly-crowned Supreme Leader has a vowed to try to unite the fractured Korean nation, still separated after more than half a century.

"We have suffered the pain of separation for nearly 70 years," he declares. "We have lived as one people on the same land for thousands of years to suffer like this is heartbreaking.

"Our party and our government will work with anyone who truly wants reunification."

But this is not a day for talk of peace. This is a military parade with all the menace this isolated nation can muster. To North Koreans this says they can defend themselves.

To their enemies, especially the United States, there is a deadly message.

"Our military has become a powerful military able to handle any kind of modern warfare, with complete offensive and defensive capabilities," Kim says.

"The foreign powers are not the only ones with monopoly on military supremacy, and the days of their threatening and lying to us with atomic weapons is forever gone."

It is 100 years since the birth of the founding father of the nation, Kim il Sung. Installed as leader by Russia in 1945 after the liberation and the separation of North and South Korea, he is still revered as a freedom fighter and hero.

To honor his birthday, the military, one of the largest on earth, shows off its arsenal. Soldiers -- men and women -- goose step with precision, while columns of tanks bearing the message "we will smash the United States imperialists" roll across the great parade square.

The latest hi-tech weapons then follow, including drones and missiles that could potentially strike targets thousands of miles away.

This is an army battle ready, a country still technically at war and soldiers determined to follow any order.

"With the strategy of the Great Leader Kim Il Sung, the dear Kim Jong il and Kim Jong Un, and with our bombs and weapons, we will destroy them," a group of soldiers tells me.

In North Korea the army comes first, no expense spared. While it shows off its guns to the world, many people go hungry. The military is well fed, but aid agencies say the country's rural population suffers from chronic malnutrition and stunted growth as they scrounge for food.

In a rare concession, Kim says this regime will not allow people to suffer any more -- as close as he could get to admitting the government had failed the people in the past.

"Our fellow citizens, who are the best citizens in the world, who have overcome countless struggles and hardships, it is our party's firmest resolve not to let our citizens go hungry again," he says.

Across the capital, people watching on are alive to this moment. When I approach one group and merely mention the name Kim Jong Un they explode into chants and loud clapping.

One man beaming at our camera says, "we want to tell the world how proud we are to have such a man to lead us."

Kim has inherited the power, adulation and responsibility few people could possibly be prepared for.

The world is watching and wondering if he will be different from his forefathers and whether he will even survive.

When the parade passes, Kim will face the reality of ruling this poverty-stricken, pariah state.

May 24, 2012 - MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

I'm Michel Martin, and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News.

Coming up, a lot of adults are intimidated by the intense anti-gay rhetoric of demonstrators from the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas. So what do you think happened when a nine-year-old decided to speak out against them? We'll tell you in a few minutes.

But first, we want to talk about gender and sports and a question that is facing officials who are preparing for the summer Olympics. In a world where athletic competition is segregated by sex for reasons of fairness, where do transgender athletes fit in?

Take, for example, Keelin Godsey, the first openly transgender contender for the American Olympic team. Last month, Keelin qualified for the women's track and field Olympic trials in the hammer throw. Keelin was born female, but identifies as a male and, in fact, lives as a male when he is not competing. However, Keelin completes in the female division.

We wanted to talk more about this, so we called Pablo Torre. He is a reporter for Sports Illustrated. Of course, he's one of our regular contributors to our Barbershop roundtable. He co-wrote a piece about transgender athletes for the current issue. Pablo, thanks for joining us.

PABLO TORRE: Thank you, Michel.

MARTIN: So talk a little bit more about Keelin. Why does Keelin compete as a woman when he lives as a man in every other part of his life?

TORRE: Yeah. I think this is, you know, the most thorny question, maybe. How could you call yourself a man and yet be able to compete as a woman? And, for Keelin, it's a matter of identity. You know, Keelin's identity was formed as a women's sports athlete before Keelin came out as transgender male. And the reality is, for a lot of college athletes who are transgender, they have scholarships. They have spots on their teams in elite sports and they're physically that gender, physically female, for example, in Keelin's case.

And, really, that's enough for a governing body or at least it should be enough. The fact that there is no physical transition, there is no difference between Keelin, physically or medically, between him and a biological woman. And so, for Keelin, it's a matter of choosing and fulfilling that other part of their identity as an elite athlete.

MARTIN: Does the Olympic Committee actually have rules in place about this? I think many people might remember, you know, the South African runner who is a woman, identifies as a woman, but who had such a masculine appearance that some of her competitors were complaining. And this was actually a very difficult and emotional episode. So are there rules governing how this is to be handled?

TORRE: Yeah. Competitive equity, when it comes to transgender athletes, is really, you know, the third rail of the topic, specifically males competing as females because of that physical advantage that comes from being a man.

Caster Semenya, the South African runner you just mentioned, is intersex. So a lot of the similar issues in that nexus of gender in sports. But for transgender athletes in particular, dealing with that disjointed agreement between body and mind, gender and sex, there are rules.

And IOC was actually the first in 2004 to really come out with a comprehensive codified policy that acknowledged and welcomed transgender athletes. The problem is that the requirements that the IOC laid out involved not only hormone therapy, meaning if you're a male, you take estrogen and you suppress testosterone, and if you're a female, you take testosterone to boost that male competitive athletic advantage that we just talked about.

But, for them, they also require surgery, just physical cosmetic differences, changes to genitalia. And so that's the big hurdle and that's something the NCAA actually just, in the last year, has been able to legislate away. They only require hormones, isolating that as the big differentiator between the male and female genders when it comes to competitive elite athletic sports.

MARTIN: Well, what does that mean in Keelin's case? I mean, as I understand it, Keelin has not undergone hormone therapy and certainly has not undergone gender reassignment surgery. Is that why he is eligible - even though he lives as a man - is eligible to compete as a woman?

TORRE: Exactly.

MARTIN: What is the...

TORRE: Exactly. So...

MARTIN: So you have to forego the kinds of therapies that would support your transition to another gender if you want to compete at that level. Is that the issue?

TORRE: Exactly. If you want to stay within your birth sex athletically, you need to forego testosterone, which is really the big thing. Testosterone is the thing that gives rise to so many of a man's physical athletic advantages.

And Keelin - you know, let's make no mistake about this. This has been incredibly tough and, at times, tormenting and torturous for Keelin Godsey. A person who identifies fully as a male and wishes to live as a male in all walks of life, but it's this passion for sports and the opportunity to make the Olympic team in the sport that he has competed as since, you know, for years now. That's the thing that's on the other side of the Olympic rainbow, as it were.

As soon as Olympic contention is done, as soon as the Olympic trials are over or - fingers crossed - the London games are over, Keelin will be taking testosterone and physically transitioning, he told us in Sports Illustrated. And that's, you know, this other second dream beyond Olympic contention that Keelin hopes to finally fulfill.

MARTIN: If you're just joining us, you're listening to TELL ME MORE from NPR News.

We're talking about the dilemma of the transgender athlete with Sports Illustrated writer Pablo Torre. He recently wrote a piece about this. So, are there more transgender athletes than we know about? I mean, having a rule in place since 2004 suggests that there are more gender-related inquiries than perhaps the general public is aware of.

TORRE: The NCAA told us that, since 2006, there have been about 40 inquiries from athletes and their attorneys asking about what rules are in place for trans-athletes. And you have elite athletes saying that they speak to over 100 world class level athletes around the world.

And, certainly, you've had a steady stream of athletes, Keelin Godsey being one. Kye Allums, the transgender - first openly transgender division one athlete to come out at George Washington on the women's basketball team in 2009, was another big data point.

But, certainly, you have an increasing number of people who are coming out and that's, one hopes, is because of a little shift in culture. You know, we're very far away from where we need to be in terms of tolerance and acknowledgement that transgender people and transgender athletes exist. But there are more of them coming out, it seems, year over year. And one hopes that's because they feel more comfortable and they're seeing these governing bodies actually acknowledge them in the actual bylaws of the sport.

MARTIN: Let's take it from a different direction, then, since we are talking about a relatively rare situation. I mean, first of all, competing at an elite level is a relatively rare circumstance, anyway. So - and then you're taking people who are transgender within that very small subset. What is the big deal if you assume that no one is taking a substance or a drug that would enhance his or her performance? What's the big deal?

TORRE: I think there are two things to keep in mind. Number one is the impact of a single transgender athlete on a college campus or in a sport or on a team is so explosive. And we've seen that with Kye Allums, for example, who...

MARTIN: Yeah. Tell me about that.

TORRE: Yeah.

MARTIN: How so?

TORRE: Kye came out as a man and was on the women's basketball team at George Washington, a starter, a pretty good player. Came out in season and, really, the entire team was flooded with transgender talk, media inquiries. The coach was overwhelmed, he told us.

And really, you know, the teammates - there became this very awkward dynamic where teammates said they wished that Kye had not come out until after graduation. The coach, Mike Bozeman, told us that he wished that a sports psychologist had come in earlier rather than later. It's just one of those issues that is such a lightning rod for discussion that just the presence of one can really upend a team and athletic program...

MARTIN: Well, so what? I'm...

TORRE: ...if not handled directly.

MARTIN: But let me ask you this. But so what?

TORRE: Sure.

MARTIN: I mean, Jackie Robinson upended the Brooklyn Dodgers and the fans and was an object, you know, had to deal with a lot of stuff.

TORRE: Exactly.

MARTIN: But if there is no argument being made that these athletes have a competitive advantage over other athletes and it can be demonstrated that they don't - an unfair advantage. Right? Again, I have to ask, what's the big deal?

TORRE: Let's just talk about what happens when you have a transgender athlete coming out. I mean, what we're talking about is a civil rights issue on principle. It's the idea of finding a space for somebody who has the right to identify as whatever gender they wish and making sure that they're accommodated in the way that any other "normal," quote, unquote, athlete should be. And that's just something that structurally and on principle isn't in place yet. And it's something that awareness has yet to catch up with. It's something that you need to be able to be prepared for when it happens.

MARTIN: On the other hand, let's look at it from a different direction. On the other hand, that the window in which an elite athlete is going to compete is relatively short. OK? So, is there an argument to be made about why can't you just wait until your playing days are over?

TORRE: Yeah. I mean...

MARTIN: What about that argument?

TORRE: And that's something that every transgender athlete has heard. The problem is that we need to recognize how tough it is to suppress who you are. You talk to a transgender athlete. There's a reason, for example, why you look at surveys of levels of victimization, levels of bullying, levels of discrimination and just thoughts of suicide on the fact that they can't express who they are. And that's something that's incredibly, incredibly tough.

And that was something that I was, you know, I was really moved by when talking to transgender athletes, personally, which was they want to be able to express themselves in some way. Sports is not built to accommodate somebody who fits outside of the traditional gender binary. That's just the fact of how sports was segregated and that's why it is that way.

MARTIN: Before we let you go, how is Keelin preparing for the Olympics and how are - I assume he - I'm calling him he, even though he's competing as a woman...

TORRE: Right.

MARTIN: ...in the women's division because he prefers to live as a man. So, how is he doing and what are his chances? Is he a top contender? Is he going to make the team is, I guess, my question.

TORRE: Keelin has a real shot. He finally hit the minimum qualifying mark last month in May. And really, you know, the top three finish and you go to London. There is a tough field, but Keelin really has a shot and God knows that if Keelin were to make the Olympic team, that would be the biggest moment, a watershed moment, more than anything else, in the history of sports and transgender athletes.

MARTIN: Pablo Torre is a reporter for Sports Illustrated. He wrote about transgender athletes in the latest issue, which is on newsstands now. Of course, he's a regular in our Barbershop roundtable and he was with us from our bureau in New York. Pablo, thanks so much for joining us.

TORRE: Thank you, Michel.

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Earthworms

This is the VOA Special English Agriculture Report.

What can you do with earthworms? Some people use the creepy crawlers to catch fish. But others put worms to work making compost. Compost looks and feels like good soil. Gardeners and farmers add it to soil to make plants grow better.

You can make compost from food waste at home with or without the help of worms. How the worms help is by first eating and processing the food. It comes out the other end of the worm as rich compost.

Kim Gabel from the University of Florida Extension service in Key West suggests using red worms known as red wigglers.

KIM GABEL: "The red wigglers are the best varieties for doing it because they are more of a surface feeder. Because different worms live in different strata, or portions of the earth."

You need a container to hold the waste and the worms. The size of the composting bin depends on how much compost you want to make. You need about a kilogram of worms for each half a kilogram of daily food waste that you add.

Kim Gabel says the bin needs holes so the worms can get air.

KIM GABEL: "The worms do breathe. So that is a very important factor, along with they also like to be in the dark."

So cover the bin to keep out the light.

One thing worms do not like is very high temperatures. Kim Gabel lives in the warm climate of southern Florida. She keeps her worm bin indoors. Unpleasant smells can be prevented by controlling the amount of food waste added to the bin and avoiding meat or bones.

For composting with worms, you need bedding that is moist but not too wet. The amount of water you add will depend on the bedding material you use. Kim Gabel uses newspaper cut into strips about two and a half centimeters wide. Add two handfuls of soil for every half square meter of bedding material and mix well.

Spread the worms over the bedding. The worms will start to wiggle their way down. Remove any worms that remain on top of the bedding after two hours.

When you feed the worms, place the food about two and a half centimeters below the surface of the bedding and cover it.

The worm's waste, or castings, should be ready to use as compost within two to six months.

To remove the compost, you can push it all to one side of the bin. Place new bedding and food on the other side. Within a few weeks the worms will move to the new bedding. Now you can remove the compost and fill the empty space with new bedding.

And that’s the VOA Special English Agriculture Report, written by Jerilyn Watson. Have you ever made compost with worms? Tell us your story at voaspecialenglish.com. I’m Jim Tedder.

 

 

 

Andrew Redington/Getty Images

Bo Van Pelt celebrates his hole-in-one during the final round of the Masters on April 8. New research suggests that golfers may be able to improve their games by believing the hole they're aiming for is larger than it really is.

Psychologists at Purdue University have come up with an interesting twist on the old notion of the power of positive thinking. Call it the power of positive perception: They've shown that you may be able to improve your golf game by believing the hole you're aiming for is larger than it really is.

Jessica Witt, who studies how perception and performance are related, decided to look at golf — specifically, how the appearance of the hole changes depending on whether you're playing well or poorly.

So she took a large poster board to a golf course with circles of different sizes drawn on it. Some circles matched the size of the golf hole, some were larger and some were smaller. As golfers finished their rounds, she showed them her poster board and asked them to select the circle that matched the size of the hole.

After she got the golfers' scores, she did some math: "The golfers who did better and had a lower score selected larger circles as matching the size of the hole," Witt says. The good golfers overestimated the size of the hole by 10 to 20 percent.

But then Witt wondered whether this difference in perception could be put to use to improve a golfer's game. So she tried an experiment. In her lab, she made an artificial putting green and used an optical illusion to make the golf hole appear larger or smaller than it really was.

Wikimedia Commons

Which Orange Circle Is Larger? In this optical trick, known as the Ebbinghaus illusion, both orange circles are the same size. (Go ahead, measure!) When small circles were projected around a golf hole, golfers perceived the hole to be larger and subsequently made more putts.

The trick involved projecting small circles of light around the hole to make it look larger, or projecting large circles of light around the hole to make it look smaller. It's an optical trick called the Ebbinghaus illusion, which you can see here on the left.

"The illusion wouldn't interfere with the putting; it would only change what people perceived," Witt says. The hole itself never changed sizes.

As she writes in the journal Psychological Science, the result was clear: "When people perceived the hole to be bigger, they also made their putts more successfully." Witt thinks the change in perception to make a task seem easier will apply in a lot of different circumstances.

Perception And Confidence In Other Activities

"These effects aren't specific to athletes," she says. "We find them in everybody, in all kinds of tasks. So if you have to walk up a hill to get to work, if you're tired or low energy or wearing a heavy backpack, that hill looks steeper or a distance looks farther. So it's apparent in everybody, not just in athletes."

Witt says along with a positive perception comes confidence — if the hill doesn't seem too steep, or the golf hole appears bigger than it really is, that altered perception gives you confidence in your abilities.

But Tim Woodman, who heads the School of Sport, Health and Exercise Science at Bangor University in Wales, says for athletes at least, just having more confidence doesn't guarantee top performance.

"It's not quite as simple as the more confident you are, the better," he says. "It's the more confident you are, the better — up to a certain point." He says that confidence is important, but self-doubt can help, too.

"If you're good at something but you doubt yourself a little bit, you're more likely to try that bit harder," he says. "Whereas if you are confident and you know you're very good at something, you might just slack off a little bit and move into some sort of cruise control, and then actually not perform very well."

Woodman says top athletes find the right balance between confidence and uncertainty to perform at their peak.

KBS World Radio News for Learners 2012-4-21

(8회분 : 4/21일~4/13일) *1회당 10분~13분 정도

 

Jeff Gilligan

Bird-watcher Jeff Gilligan snapped this photograph of a small boat in distress. Gilligan and others say the cruise ship he was traveling on did not stop to help the stricken craft.

 

Jeff Gilligan

A zoomed-in view of the photo taken by Jeff Gilligan, of a boat drifting in the Pacific. When he saw the image, Adrian Vasquez — the boat's only survivor — said, "That's us."

It was international news recently when a small fishing boat was found adrift in the Pacific Ocean, several hundred miles from the Panama town where it launched. After 28 days at sea, only one of the three men who had been onboard was still alive. The other two died from lack of water and exposure.

Now there are allegations that weeks earlier, while all of the men were still alive, an American-based cruise ship, the Star Princess, spotted the drifting boat — but sailed on without stopping to help.

The Star Princess is a luxury cruise ship operated by Carnival. It has four pools, a nine-hole putting green, a casino, and cabins for some 2,000 passengers.

In March, on a cruise around South America, the passengers included three bird-watchers, two from Oregon and one from Ireland. They were on deck daily to watch for seabirds, using powerful binoculars and spotting telescopes.

On March 10, one of the birders, Jeff Gilligan from Portland, Ore., saw something through his binoculars out on the water, more than a mile away.

"We put our scopes on it," he says, "and we could see a moderate-sized boat with a person standing up in it, waving a dark piece of cloth."

Telling The Ship's Crew

One of the other birders on the Star Princess was Judy Meredith from Bend, Ore. She says, "We all watched him for a bit and thought, 'This guy's in distress. He's trying to get our attention. And he doesn't have a motor on his boat.' We could see that."

Meredith went inside to try to place a call to the ship's bridge, to alert the crew about what they'd seen. The only crew member she could find was with the ship's sales team.

"He called the bridge and I sort of talked through the story," she says. "And I was trying to have a sense or urgency in my voice — and tell them that the boat was in distress, and they were trying to get our attention."

A crew member used Gilligan's telescope to look at the drifting boat. Gilligan says, at that point, "We were a bit relieved because he had confirmed that he had seen what we were describing. We expected the ship to turn back or stop or something."

But soon, the bird-watchers realized that wasn't happening.

Gilligan says he and the other birders could only hope that the captain of the Star Princess was taking the appropriate steps — perhaps contacting Panamanian or other authorities, who would conduct search-and-rescue operations.

Meredith says they never heard back from the crew. In desperation, she marked down the ship's coordinates and sent an email to a Coast Guard website, without results.

The Captain's Log

When she got home, Meredith contacted Princess Cruises to see what action was taken. She says a customer relations representative told her the captain reported a different version of the incident — and that according to the captain's log, the ship had been passing through a fishing fleet.

Meredith says she was told that the Star Princess contacted the boat and "that they were asking the ship to move to the west, because they didn't want their nets to be damaged. And that the ship altered course. And they were waving their shirts because they were thanking the ship."

Eventually, the bird-watchers learned of a news story from Ecuador. The Ecuadorean coast guard had picked up a small fishing boat near the Galapagos Islands with just one survivor aboard: 18-year-old Adrian Vasquez.

Vasquez told a harrowing tale of leaving Panama for an overnight fishing trip, then losing power and spending the next 28 days drifting. During that time, the two other fishermen with Vasquez died.

It seemed improbable, but Meredith and the other bird-watchers wondered, "Could this be the boat they saw?" In Panama, reporter Don Winner with the website Panama-Guide.com tracked down Vasquez and recorded video of the interview.

Winner showed Vasquez a photo the birders had taken of the fishing boat they saw.

"That's us," Vasquez said. He and the other men used their orange flotation devices to try to signal to get someone's attention, he said. Winner asked him about the Princess Star.

"Yes, we saw a cruise ship," Vasquez said. He said one of the other fishermen, Oropeces Betancourt, 24, died the following day. The third fisherman, Fernando Osario, 16, died five days later.

'Three People Were Alive'

International maritime law clearly requires ships that come upon other vessels in distress to render assistance, if they can do so without endangering themselves.

In a statement, Princess Cruises says, "We're aware of the allegations that Star Princess supposedly passed by a boat in distress that was carrying three Panamanian fishermen on March 10. At this time we cannot verify the facts as reported, and we are currently conducting an internal investigation on the matter."

Princess isn't commenting on the earlier version of the story Meredith says she got from a company customer services representative.

Meredith says the experience has left her feeling sick about what Vasquez, his friends and their families had to go through.

"Three people were alive on the day they saw us and the day we saw them," she says. "They tried everything they could think of to signal us. And our boat went by, and his buddy died that night."

The Star Princess is registered in Bermuda. An official with Bermuda's Department of Maritime Administration says his office is in contact with Princess about the incident but hasn't determined yet whether it will conduct a full investigation.

 

Courtesy of Angela Caragan

Angela Caragan's A Cupcake Co. offers gourmet cupcakes for special events. Like more than 20 million other small-business owners in the U.S., she has no employees.

The House is scheduled to vote Thursday on a GOP measure to cut taxes on small businesses.

Now, the mental image most of us have of a small business is probably something like this: a handful of employees, a shop, maybe a restaurant or a little tech firm.

It turns out the reality of the nation's 28 million small businesses is, in many cases, quite different.

House Republicans say their tax cut would help millions of small businesses.

"This is a bill which will directly help small businesses create jobs," says Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., the majority leader and author of the bill.

The total cost of the one-year measure is $46 billion. An analysis commissioned by a pro-GOP outside group and now posted on Cantor's website says if the tax cut only lasts for one year, it will create 40,000 jobs. Some quick back-of-the-envelope math puts that at more than $1 million per job.

NPR asked House Speaker John Boehner whether that was cost-effective.

"I think we expect it will create far more jobs than that," says the Ohio Republican. "But listen, small businesses who file as individuals, as I did in my business, face enormous challenges. And rather than pay these taxes, that money could stay in their business to help them buy more equipment, hire more workers and expand their business."

 

Courtesy of Makini Howell

Small-business owner Makini Howell offers up vegan fare in Seattle. With her family, Howell owns a minimart, a vegan sandwich wholesale business, and small group of vegan restaurants.

But Seattle small-business owner Makini Howell says the bill wouldn't help her at all.

Well, technically, the tax cut might help her a little. With her family, Howell owns a minimart, a vegan sandwich wholesale business, and a small group of vegan restaurants. All told, Howell has about 30 employees.

"It was great to open up and to be able to create like 25 more jobs than were there and to become a viable part of the neighborhood that we're in," she says. "That was awesome."

Less awesome are the company's profits at the end of the year, because its margins are thin and so much gets poured back into the business.

"The reality is, you make $25,000, $35,000," she says. "My income has decreased steadily since I became a small-business owner."

Under the bill from House Republicans, small-business owners — those with fewer than 500 employees — would be able to deduct 20 percent from their business income, with some exceptions. For Howell, the tax savings would work out to a few hundred bucks.

"For a business like mine, if you just do the math, it's not going to help," she says.

It's not like she'd turn down the extra cash, but it certainly wouldn't be enough to hire anyone else or to make a major equipment purchase.

Much larger firms and much more profitable companies would get most of the tax benefit, says Joe Rosenberg of the Tax Policy Center. "Your typical small business — what we might think of as your mom and pop store — is probably not going to see much benefit from this tax provision," Rosenberg says. "The largest benefits go to larger businesses that report a lot of income."

Although the image of a small-business owner is someone like Howell, under the Small Business Administration definition used by the House bill, a business with 499 employees could also be considered small.

Some 99.9 percent of the businesses in the country are small by this definition. And according to SBA data, the vast majority of them — more than 20 million firms — don't employ a single person, other than the owner.

Angela Caragan is the owner of A Cupcake Co. in Northern California. She's also the chief pastry chef, marketing director — the whole thing. Last year, she made less than $1,000 baking gourmet cupcakes. But for her, it's not really about the money.

"It's my way of sharing a little bit of smile and happiness with someone on their special day," Caragan says.

Like many people who report business income on their taxes, Caragan has another job. A full-time job. She wouldn't qualify for the tax cut, because businesses are required to have employees to take advantage of it.

So the full-time freelance photographer, or consultant who works alone, would be out of luck. Although the assumption is that many of these sole proprietors would reorganize their books and add a family member to the payroll, to get in on the new tax break.

Mary Altaffer/AP

A tax service company in Brooklyn, N.Y, on Tuesday, the filing deadline for federal taxes.

More than 99 million federal taxpayers had filed their returns as of Tuesday, with more than 80 million of those expecting a refund.

People who file at the last minute — and Tuesday is this year's deadline — are somewhat more likely to owe money to the government. And if Congress and the president don't act, next year could see many more Americans paying higher taxes.

That's not because either President Obama or presumptive Republican challenger Mitt Romney advocate a tax increase for most Americans.

Last week in St. Louis, Romney received applause when he declared: "Instead of raising taxes, I'm going to cut 'em."

Obama is almost as tax averse, limiting his call for tax hikes to the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans. He has called for tax hikes only for those making $250,000 a year or more.

A Bush-Era Tradition

And yet, the way the tax law is now written, 2012 could mark the end of more than a decade of rock-bottom taxes.

"Potentially, we could see the biggest tax increase in modern history" in 2013, says Bob Williams of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.

The tax cuts championed by President George W. Bush a decade ago, and extended in 2010, are due to expire at year's end. That would mean higher taxes at every level of income, as well as higher taxes on dividends, inheritance and capital gains.

"The biggest hits would be on the very wealthy," says Williams. "Those are the people who've benefited most from the Bush-era tax cuts. But people at the very bottom would be hit as well."

All of this will happen automatically unless Congress and the president act in concert to prevent it.

"It's the do-nothing option," says Williams. "If Congress does nothing, taxes go up automatically."

Not everyone is alarmed by that.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg told CBS last month that taxes have to go up for everyone in order to put a dent in the federal budget.

"Most of this country is middle class. And that's where most of the tax revenue is. So if you want to raise $4 trillion over the next 10 years, which gets you halfway — only halfway — to a balanced budget, everybody's taxes have to go up," said Bloomberg.

Action, Or 'Benign Neglect'?

Economist Diane Lim Rogers of the deficit-watchdog Concord Coalition agrees that stemming the tide of red ink will require more tax revenue. But she sees some problems with letting the Bush-era tax cuts expire all at once.

"It wouldn't be the worst thing that could happen," says Rogers. "I think economists would prefer that instead of things happening out of benign neglect, that better things could happen out of good policymaking."

And Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke warns that a sudden, automatic increase in tax rates across the board next year could weaken a still fragile economy.

Rogers says a better approach would be to gradually close some of the special loopholes and deductions in the tax code that cost the government more than $1 trillion a year.

"The federal government spends a lot of money on benefit programs for the rich," says Rogers. "It just spends that money through the tax system rather than on the direct spending side of the budget."

But any big rewrite of the tax code is politically challenging.

Hopes for a grand budget bargain fell apart last year when Obama pressed for more tax revenue, and Republicans refused. If Obama wins re-election in November, Bloomberg thinks the threat of automatic tax hikes will give him more negotiating leverage with Congress.

"All the president has to do is say, 'I am going to veto any bill that tries to stop the automatic ending of the Bush-era tax cuts for everybody,' " explains Bloomberg. "And then everybody's taxes will go up."

There are plenty of pop culture references to the dangers of a close mother-son relationship going all the way back to the Oedipus myth, or more recently, the movie "Psycho."

(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "PSYCHO")

JANET LEIGH: (As Marion Crane) Do you go out with friends?

ANTHONY PERKINS: (As Norman Bates) Well, a boy's best friend is his mother.

SULLIVAN: The idea is if you're a man and your mother raised you with too much affection, then she has prevented you from being tough and independent, or conversely, if you're a mother of boys and you keep them too close, you will make them feminine, weak or even awkward. But for millions of men, the opposite has turned out to be true.

That's the basis of a new book by Kate Lombardi, a writer and mother herself. It's called "The Mama's Boy Myth: Why Keeping Our Sons Close Makes Them Stronger." Kate Lombardi joins us from NPR Studio in New York. Kate, welcome.

KATE LOMBARDI: Thanks for having me.

SULLIVAN: Kate, the common wisdom for decades has been that a good mother is one that leaves her son alone. Are boys who grow up with close mothers doomed?

LOMBARDI: Not at all. In fact, boys who grow up with moms who keep them close are kind of inoculated from a lot of behavioral problems they can have later on in life. They're lucky boys if their moms keep them close.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SULLIVAN: And you have a son too.

LOMBARDI: I do. He's now an adult. He's 23. And he and I were very close. And for a long time, I thought that what we had was kind of unique, that I was somehow blessed with this especially sensitive, caring boy. But as I came to find out, I was far from alone.

SULLIVAN: It seems like it's okay for mothers and daughters to have a really close relationship, or even fathers and daughters to have a close relationship, but why have boys been left out of this?

LOMBARDI: You know, it's the only parent-child relationship that's been stigmatized in some way. As you say, mothers and daughters, everyone thinks that's swell. I'm very close to my daughter. It doesn't raise any eyebrows. A dad who is close to his daughter, that's a lucky girl. And certainly, you know, fathers and sons, everyone think that's very important. And it is.

But mothers and sons, that relationship is always looked at with a little skepticism and a little fear. And I think it's really a hangover from the Oedipus complex - for its Oedipus complex.

SULLIVAN: Is that - I mean, is that what you pin all this on? Is that where you think that this mindset came from?

LOMBARDI: I think some of this fear and anxiety around the mother-son relationship really predates Freud. But that said, Freud codified it. And I was amazed how many moms in 2012 were still bringing up the Oedipus complex.

SULLIVAN: So what does a close mother-son relationship look like? What are we really talking about?

LOMBARDI: Well, you know, let me just start by saying what it doesn't look like. It does not - it's not one of these relationships where a mom is dominating or controlling and she refuses to let her son grow up. That's the stereotype. A healthy, loving relationship is one where the mom is, you know, emotionally supportive of her son. She recognizes his individuality, his sensitivity and his vulnerability along with his strengths.

And there's kind of like a synchronicity there. A mom is able to respond to her son with what he needs when he needs it. I don't think it's that different from what a healthy mother-daughter relationship looks like, although I realize that that is a provocative point of view.

SULLIVAN: What has the message been to mothers up until this point? What were they supposed to do with their sons?

LOMBARDI: Moms get messages from remarkably early ages to push their little boys away. And it starts when they're little babies, and it goes on - I mean, I talked to moms who, you know, were comforting, you know, toddlers and told that their boys should learn to man up. One Seattle, Washington, mom told me that her pediatrician told her that when she comforted her boy when he fell, she was modeling anxiety.

These messages go on through the middle school ages and certainly when our boys are teenagers. We get the strong message that the last thing a boy needs is his mother, when in fact, the research shows just the opposite. Teenage boys clearly need their moms, and their moms can play a very positive influence in their life.

SULLIVAN: What kind of research is out there that would say that it is important for mothers and sons to be close?

LOMBARDI: There's a lot out there, and it starts from the time when guys are just, you know, little babies. Starting from very early ages, you see the benefits of keeping them close and the dangers of not. Boys, in particular, really suffer if that attachment is not good. And they go on to have much more aggressive behavior, they're much more disobedient, they're a little bit violent.

There's also some really interesting research that's been done on middle school boys. Boys who were closer to their moms had a little more flexible definition of what it meant to be a guy. They didn't think, for instance, that every time you got challenged you had to fight, or that being a guy means acting tough or going it alone.

Well, it turns out that those boys were a little more flexible in how they viewed masculinity, have less depression and less anxiety than their kind of tougher peer. So the closer to your mom actually translates into better mental health.

SULLIVAN: What has it done for the men out there who can look back at their own relationships to their mother and decide, was I very close to my mother? What kind of difference would you see in the kind of man that comes out of that?

LOMBARDI: Men who are brought up close to their moms go on to have an easier time in a lot of ways. They have an easier time in their adult relationships, because one of the things that moms tend to do with their boys is they teach them emotional intelligence. They teach them to recognize their feelings and talk about them starting from really young ages.

You know, like when they're - you see that kid in the grocery store having a meltdown and the mother goes: Use your words, which is always kind of annoying to me, but in fact, that is what the mom is doing, you know, right through to when she doesn't accept her high school kid coming home and slamming the door and saying: I don't want to talk about it, and then, you know, saying: Well, I know you don't and cool off, but when you're ready, you know, let's try and see what's going on.

Those guys do better in relationships as adults. They have stronger friendships. And most interesting to me, too, is they're actually going to have a better time at work.

SULLIVAN: How old is your son now?

LOMBARDI: My son is 23, and my daughter is 26. I don't like to leave her out of the story...

SULLIVAN: Not to leave her out.

LOMBARDI: ...even we are talking about mothers and sons.

SULLIVAN: What does he think of the book?

LOMBARDI: He is conflicted. He's read it, of course, and I vetted everything with him because I didn't - you know, there are some personal anecdotes, and I didn't want him to be, like, surprised or embarrassed. You know, he's proud of it. And he's not ashamed of our closeness. And, you know, he's a pretty big boost around this stuff.

SULLIVAN: That's Kate Lombardi. Her book is called "The Mama's Boy Myth." Kate, thank you so much for joining us.

LOMBARDI: Thank you so much for having me. It was fun.

To Some Hindus, Modern Yoga Has Lost Its Way

April 9, 2012 - STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

It's MORNING EDITION, from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

And I'm Renee Montagne.

Today in Your Health, we'll meet a woman who's opted for a new, quicker form of breast cancer treatment, a treatment some doctors worry is not as effective as traditional methods.

Let's go first, though, to a new study that suggests that women who are obese or diabetic during pregnancy are much more likely to have a child with autism. NPR's Jon Hamilton reports.

JON HAMILTON, BYLINE: A team of researchers looked at about 1,000 mothers. Half had a child with an autism spectrum disorder. The rest had a child with a developmental delay unrelated to autism, or no developmental problems.

Irva Hertz-Picciotto from the University of California, Davis says the team wanted to know whether autism was more likely if a woman was obese, diabetic or had high blood pressure during pregnancy.

IRVA HERTZ-PICCIOTTO: We found that if women had one of these three conditions, the increased risk for her child was about 60 percent.

HAMILTON: Although the overall risk was still relatively small. These conditions also more than doubled the chance that a child would have some other developmental delay.

Picciotto, whose study appears in the journal Pediatrics, says it appears that obesity and diabetes are affecting early brain development. That could be because they tend to cause inflammation in developing tissues. But she says another possibility is that obesity and diabetes reduce the nutrients reaching the fetus.

HERTZ-PICCIOTTO: We're talking about a fetal brain that could be, in fact, suffering from hypoxia, which is, sort of, a lack of oxygen.

HAMILTON: Picciotto says the findings are especially troubling because obesity and diabetes are on the rise, and so is the number of children diagnosed with autism. Government figures show that a third of women of child-bearing age are obese, and that one child in 88 now has an autism spectrum disorder.

Jon Hamilton, NPR News.