Editing Lady Liberty; Talk With The Animals; Assault Weapons Ban Redux?

Plus, an American woman's unlicensed medical center in Uganda leaves 105 kids dead

Stories And Podcasts You May Have Missed Julia Rendleman for NPR Renee Bach was a 20-year-old missionary from Virginia when she started taking in malnourished children in Uganda. Her critical care center was unlicensed, and for a time, there was no doctor on staff. Yet from 2010 through 2015, Bach says, she took in 940 severely malnourished children. In the end, 105 of them died, and now two Ugandan moms are suing. When the assault weapons ban was passed in 1994, a number of caveats had to be attached for it to squeak through Congress. The bill banned semi-automatic weapons that could be converted to automatic fire, as well as magazines that could hold 10 rounds or more. It also let owners keep the guns they already had, and it would disappear after a decade if not renewed. Polls suggest some appetite for bringing the assault weapons ban back, and at least one Democratic candidate for president wants to buy back existing weapons, too. The question of whether grass-fed beef is better is complicated: Grass feeding takes more time and more land, but it helps with soil erosion and is closer to how cows evolved to live. But much of it is shipped halfway around the world to the U.S., and any difference in greenhouse gas emissions is up for debate. Ken Cuccinelli, acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, told NPR’s Morning Edition this week that the Statue of Liberty’s message should come with a caveat: tired, poor, huddled – sure, fine, but no freeloaders. The Trump administration is expanding rules that can deny green cards and visas to applicants who use or may need government benefits, and Cuccinelli defended the move, saying it’s entirely in line with American values. He later suggested on CNN that Emma Lazarus’ poem had been intended primarily to welcome Europeans. South Korea’s government has begun opening detox centers, hoping to cure some of the country’s youngest Internet junkies. "My hands get shaky, I can't concentrate," says one 14-year-old in the first days of her in-patient program. "When I go back to the dormitory to get some rest, I keep thinking of Facebook. There are hearts there I can collect from a game, but they'll go away if I don't take them in three days.” Local, regional and national governments are putting resources into the fight against Internet and gaming addiction. An NPR analysis has found that 52% of ICE detainees are held in rural areas, and that that number is rising, possibly because of lower labor and land costs. That makes harder for an immigrant to see their families — and less likely to get legal aid, which in turn makes it much more likely they’ll have to leave the country. And that can have deadly consequences: Jimmy Aldaoud died two months after U.S. officials deported him to Iraq, even though he didn’t speak Arabic, had severe mental and physical health issues, and had lived in the U.S. since 1979 when he was 1 year old. The goal of the census has been to count every person in America, with totals being used to shift congressional seats and funding, but the Trump administration may be changing that. The definition of who is included in the definition of “every person” has evolved before, expanding to include freed slaves and more Native Americans. The White House has been pushing for a citizenship question on the census, and immigration advocates worry they want to ignore noncitizens when deciding which states gain and lose positions in the House of Representatives. Podcasts of the Week Getty Images/iStockphoto For a long time, researchers resisted the urge to look for human qualities in animals, but they’re starting to look at behavior in new ways. In 2018, an orca made headlines when she carried her dead calf on her back for weeks. Was that grieving? We know that dolphins make distinctive clicks and whistles. Do they constitute a language, and could we learn to speak it? On this episode of TED Radio Hour, scientists explore the ways animals may be like us, and the implications for how we treat them. No country imprisons more people than the United States – and that includes China, which has four times the number of people. Throughline looks at the causes behind mass incarceration, from the roots of the American penitentiary system to Jim Crow and tough-on-crime laws that have disproportionately locked away African Americans. Polly Murray was raising her family in Connecticut in the '60s and '70s when she started to develop health problems. Over several years, she saw a grab bag of experts, who examined her for lupus, psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, thyroid problems and hypoglycemia, but nothing could be pinned down. Then her kids started experiencing her symptoms too. New Hampshire Public Radio’s Patient Zero podcast goes back to where Lyme disease began. Sister Helen Prejean is best known for her work with death row inmates, dramatized in the movie Dead Man Walking. She speaks with Fresh Air’s Terry Gross about her new memoir and the spiritual journey that took her from entering the convent in 1957 to joining the social justice movement in the 1980s. Videos Of The Week NPR If you’ve see one Irish pub, you’ve seen them all. Or the 2,000 of them outfitted completely by this company, anyway. In the 1970s, Irish architecture student Mel McNally spent his final year in school studying the design of local bars, partly as an excuse to drink with his buddies. What resulted was a business collecting everything anyone would need to start their own public house, packing it into shipping containers and sending those containers to customers all over the world. That means the bit of Dublin you wander into in Hong Kong will give you more or less the same experience as the one in your neighborhood. Please meet our new class of interns. Go easy on them, though – they’re still very green. And yellow and blue and purple and red and pink. And mostly furry. It’s a very diverse group, though they all hail from Sesame Street. The Picture Show Becky Harlan The District of Columbia’s primary exports these days may seem to be Sound and Fury, but a stone’s throw from the White House and Congress is an oasis of calm. Gangplank Marina is a laid-back bit of “don’t worry, be happy” where about 150 boat-dwellers care less about your professional pedigree than about the beer you're bringing to happy hour. Residents have stayed afloat through big changes in the nation’s capital, though the future is less certain. — By Christopher Dean Hopkins What do you think of today's email? We'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: bestofnpr@npr.org Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here. 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