Think of the itchy skin disorder eczema, or the constant itching caused by some cancers. “A very high percentage of people who’re on dialysis for chronic kidney disease develop severe itch that’s very difficult to manage,” says Dr. Ethan Lerner, an associate professor of dermatology at Harvard Medical School.

Scientists now say they’ve got a much better clue as to how itch happens.

For a long time, the thought was that itch piggybacked on the nerves that feel pain or temperature. But it now looks like itch has its own dedicated highway from skin to brain.

And the molecule that makes itch happen comes as a surprise; it usually hangs out in the heart, where it helps control blood pressure.

It’s a neurotransmitter called natriuretic polypeptide B, or Nppb.

Researchers at the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research wondered what it was doing in nerve cells. To find out, they created a mouse that didn’t make Nppb in its body.

Things that made a normal mouse scratch like crazy had no effect on mice with no Nppb. But when those mice were injected with the substance, they scratched, too.

Nppb seems to be working sort of like an itch-molecule. Take it away and the mice don’t itch. Put it back and the itch returns.

The researchers also found a small group of nerves in skin that produce and use this molecule to send an itch message to the spinal cord.

This research hasn’t been replicated in humans, so it doesn’t prove that human itch works the same way. But the researchers are confident that the molecule is a key clue in defining the long-elusive itch pathway.

The study was published in the journal Science.

Copyright 2013 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

1. How do we locate suspected terrorists?

2. Once located, how do we go after them?

3. If captured, what do we do with them?

In a major speech at the National Defense University in Washington on Thursday, President Obama addressed all three questions that have been the source of shifting policies and fierce national debates for over a decade.

While the president is sure to face continuing criticism from both the left and the right, he laid out his blueprint for counterterrorism in his second term and spoke of a day when the country would no longer be on permanent war footing.

On question No. 1, locating the terrorists, Obama emphasized that the terrorism threat had changed dramatically over the past decade.

The U.S. is no longer hunting for a large, centralized al-Qaida that is deeply rooted in one place (Afghanistan), headed by a prominent leader in Osama bin Laden and possessing the capacity to carry out large-scale attacks.

“Now make no mistake: Our nation is still threatened by terrorists. From Benghazi to Boston, we have been tragically reminded of that truth. We must recognize, however, that the threat has shifted and evolved from the one that came to our shores on 9/11,” Obama said.

“Lethal yet less capable al-Qaida affiliates,” he continued. “Threats to diplomatic facilities and businesses abroad. Homegrown extremists. This is the future of terrorism.”

In contrast to former President George W. Bush, Obama has opposed a large military footprint in favor of smaller, more focused operations and a preference to seek out partnerships with other countries, even problematic ones such as Pakistan and Yemen.

“We must define our effort not as a boundless ‘global war on terror’ — but rather as a series of persistent, targeted efforts to dismantle specific networks of violent extremists that threaten America. In many cases, this will involve partnerships with other countries,” Obama said.

Pursuing Terrorists

On question No. 2, the pursuit of terrorism suspects, the president’s signature program has been the widespread use of drones, not only in Iraq and Afghanistan, but in countries where the U.S. is not at war, such as Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.

Obama expressed a preference to capture suspects alive.

“But despite our strong preference for the detention and prosecution of terrorists, sometimes this approach is foreclosed,” the president said.

He reserved the right to use drone strikes when it is not feasible for U.S. forces or a host country to detain suspects, describing such strikes as effective, legal and moral.

The frequency of drone strikes went up sharply under Obama during his first years in office compared with Bush. But the number has been coming down recently. According to the New America Foundation, which tracks drone attacks, there were more than 100 in Pakistan in 2010. This year there have been a dozen.

The CIA has played a leading role in the drone strikes, and this has drawn criticism from those who say the agency should focus on collecting intelligence rather than carrying out lethal operations. Administration and military officials have indicated that the military is expected to take the lead in drone operations, though Obama did not address this explicitly in his speech.

The president has come under frequent criticism, particularly from liberals, for the secrecy surrounding the drone campaign. The president spoke to this audience as he set down his guidelines for drone strikes:

“America does not take strikes when we have the ability to capture individual terrorists — our preference is always to detain, interrogate and prosecute them. America cannot take strikes wherever we choose — our actions are bound by consultations with partners, and respect for state sovereignty. America does not take strikes to punish individuals — we act against terrorists who pose a continuing and imminent threat to the American people, and when there are no other governments capable of effectively addressing the threat. And before any strike is taken, there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured — the highest standard we can set.”

The Prosecution Of Terrorism Suspects

On question No. 3, prosecuting suspects, Obama said the U.S. had at times violated its own principles.

“And in some cases, I believe we compromised our basic values — by using torture to interrogate our enemies, and detaining individuals in a way that ran counter to the rule of law,” he said.

He again pledged to shut down the Guantanamo Bay prison, something he promised at the beginning of his first term in 2009, though he has made minimal progress.

A total of 166 suspects are still being held, and many are on hunger strikes. Roughly a third of all detainees are from Yemen and have been cleared for release. But Obama said Congress had made it difficult for the administration to either release the prisoners or to put them on trial in the U.S.

“Look at the current situation, where we are force-feeding detainees who are holding a hunger strike. Is that who we are? Is that something that our founders foresaw? Is that the America we want to leave to our children?” the president asked.

The president also called for a site in the United States where terrorism suspects could be tried before military commissions. At present, only a small number of such cases are underway at Guantanamo.

“To the greatest extent possible, we will transfer detainees who have been cleared to go to other countries. Where appropriate, we will bring terrorists to justice in our courts and military justice system. And we will insist that judicial review be available for every detainee.”

Copyright 2013 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Hoffman says that, up until the infamous (and riotous) Rite of Spring debut — on May 29, 1913 — the public had never heard anything like it. Still, it can be viewed as the end of an era, as opposed to the start of something new.

“In some ways, The Rite can also be seen as much as a culmination as a revolution,” Hoffman says. “It was the culmination of what one music scholar called ‘musical maximalism.’ Throughout the 19th century, the orchestras were getting bigger and bigger; the power and intensity of unlimited musical expression with orchestral forces had been growing. And with The Rite of Spring, maximalism reached a kind of peak.”

Where to go from there? The composer, Hoffman says, went just about anywhere he wanted, stylistically speaking.

“If Stravinsky started out as a revolutionary, it wasn’t too long before he became a counterrevolutionary,” Hoffman says. For his 1920 ballet Pulcinella, Stravinsky borrowed from music written in the 18th century and gave it a fresh twist. It was a far cry from the jagged rhythms of The Rite.

“This piece ushered in a whole new style, or trend, in 20th-century music,” Hoffman says. “It was called neo-classicism. The big forces were stripped down; old musical forms were resurrected and the emphasis shifted to a kind of musical cleanliness. There was clarity, sparkle, pungency, humor, even irony in the music.”

It was ironic in the sense that Stravinsky was capable of shaking the heavens. But in Pulcinella and his other neo-classical works — like the Dumbarton Oaks Concerto — he chose small groups of musicians to bring these modest old musical forms to life in a new language. Stravinsky was always remarkably adventurous.

“He went wherever his artistic ideas took him and wherever he thought he could do something good and interesting,” Hoffman says. “Later in his life, he even wrote pieces in the so-called 12-tone style pioneered by Arnold Schoenberg.”

But is there a unifying Stravinskian trait? Hoffman points to Pablo Picasso for an explanation.

“I think there’s a parallel with Stravinsky,” Hoffman says. “His style never stayed exactly the same, but there’s always something in his music that grabs you. Something that’s inescapable. And that’s why we still care about Stravinsky. The revolutions, the counterrevolutions, all the categories, all the trends he set, they’re all important. But ultimately, they are only important because they were the work of a unique genius.”

Miles Hoffman is a violist with the American Chamber players and the author of the NPR Classical Music Companion.

Copyright 2013 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Both soldiers were killed in February of 1991. Jack was 34. “They were the cover for a medical mission. The helicopter lost its top rotor blade, and they didn’t make it back,” Sally says.

After Lue’s son Tom joined the Army in 1979, “he did something absolutely stupid: He learned how to jump out of perfectly good airplanes,” she says. “But he loved it,” She learned he died the last day of the war. He was 31.

“I worked in Wal-Mart, and we found out the war had ended. I was ecstatic when I went home and came home to a driveway full of cars. Not knowing at that time, until my stepson came out, and told me Tommy was gone,” she says.

His death was in the newspaper, and Sally saw it.

“I wanted somebody to talk to because it wasn’t like World War II and Vietnam when everybody had a neighbor who’d lost somebody, so I wrote to you. I thought if you responded maybe I’d have somebody that I could talk to about how you felt and how I felt.” Sally says.

The letter, Lue says, spoke to her. “Those words ‘If you need help and you want to talk, I’m here,’ and that’s what I needed.”

And that’s what Sally needed, too, she says, or else she wouldn’t have reached out. “The last 22 years would have been hell without you, Lue.”

“It would have been hell without you, too,” Lue says.

“Because what’s in our hearts we share,” Sally says.

“When you’re the mother and your child dies in that horrific way, the memory gets tolerable but never really, really goes away,” Lue says.

“I don’t know what I would do if on a bad day, I couldn’t pick up and the phone and call you and share it,” Sally says.

“Neither could I.”

Audio produced for Morning Edition by Katie Simon.

Copyright 2013 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

The Associated Press reports that of the local Scout leaders voting at their annual meeting in Texas, more than 60 percent supported the proposal. The policy change approved by the 1,400-member National Council would take effect Jan. 1, 2014, the organization said.

Here’s a statement issued by the BSA after the vote:

“For 103 years, the Boy Scouts of America has been a part of the fabric of this nation, with a focus on working together to deliver the nation’s foremost youth program of character development and values-based leadership training.

“Based on growing input from within the Scouting family, the BSA leadership chose to conduct an additional review of the organization’s long-standing membership policy and its impact on Scouting’s mission. This review created an outpouring of feedback from the Scouting family and the American public, from both those who agree with the current policy and those who support a change. …

“The resolution also reinforces that Scouting is a youth program, and any sexual conduct, whether heterosexual or homosexual, by youth of Scouting age is contrary to the virtues of Scouting. A change to the current membership policy for adult leaders was not under consideration; thus, the policy for adults remains in place.”

As Reuters reports, the National Council’s decision came amid intense lobbying by gay-rights activists and members of conservative organizations.

The group GLAAD praised the Scouts’ decision:

“Today’s vote is a significant victory for gay youth across the nation and a clear indication that the Boy Scouts’ ban on gay adult leaders will also inevitably end,” said GLAAD spokesperson Rich Ferraro. “The Boy Scouts of America heard from religious leaders, corporate sponsors and so many Scouting families who want an end to discrimination against gay people, and GLAAD will continue this work with those committed to equality in Scouting until gay parents and adults are able to participate.”

As NPR’s Kathy Lohr reported on Wednesday:

“The most recent debate over the [no gays] policy began in January. One idea was to allow local troops to decide whether to allow gay members. Some conservative organizations objected. So the Boy Scouts conducted a survey and came up with the latest proposal, which would allow openly gay youth to participate. For the past couple of months, groups have been lobbying, protesting and threatening to leave the group if the proposal passes.”

Update at 7:15 p.m. ET. Conservative Groups Disappointed

“We are deeply saddened,” Frank Page, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s executive committee, was quoted by the AP as saying after learning of the result. “Homosexual behavior is incompatible with the principles enshrined in the Scout oath and Scout law.”

The Assemblies of God, another conservative denomination, said the policy change “will lead to a mass exodus from the Boy Scout program.”

Copyright 2013 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

The Colorado Springs Office of Emergency Management is offering another round of free sandbags today to residents affected by potential flooding, starting at 5 PM. The sandbags are free while supplies last, and will be handed out at the Verizon Wireless building on Garden of the Gods Road. According to a press release from the city, volunteers will be on hand to help residents fill them and load them into vehicles. The city is encouraging residents to speak with a consultants to help manage mitigation on private properties. For more information and a link to possible consultants, click here.

OFA’s mission is to promote the president’s agenda on a wide range of issues, from guns to immigration. But now that it’s focused on global warming, there’s some tension with the agenda inside the administration.

This week, Organizing for Action unveiled a website urging supporters to “Call Out the Climate Change Deniers.” The group recently produced a video highlighting Republicans who question the science of climate change — including House Speaker John Boehner.

“Every time we exhale, we exhale carbon dioxide,” Boehner says in the montage. “Every cow in the world, you know, when they do what they do, you’ve got more carbon dioxide.”

For Obama’s supporters, this campaign helps create an us-and-them, black-and-white standoff. On one side, Obama and the scientific community who conclude man-made climate change is real. On the other, members of Congress who are unconvinced.

“The end goal here is obviously to spur action behind climate,” says Ben LaBolt, a former White House spokesman who consults with Organizing for Action. “Few issues have motivated supporters to join Organizing for Action like climate change.”

That’s where things get complicated. While OFA’s mission is to advance the president’s agenda, some environmentalists are frustrated with that agenda when it comes to climate change.

For example, protesters have marched against the Keystone XL pipeline for more than a year — including a demonstration that brought thousands to the White House.

Last week, Peter Bowe, the head of a Baltimore dredging company, testified in support of the pipeline, telling a congressional committee it’s all about jobs.

He said it’s “not the construction jobs from the pipeline itself, but ongoing jobs every year for decades to come — all related to the production of oil from the Alberta oil sands deposits.”

Obama spoke last Friday at that dredging company in Baltimore.

“You guys are an example of what we can do to make America a magnet for good jobs,” he said. “After all, y’all know a thing or two about growing the economy.”

The White House insists the president’s speech had nothing to do with Keystone. But the situation shows how awkward this is for Obama, caught between protecting the environment and trying to create jobs.

Organizing for Action’s global warming campaign does not extend to this key environmental debate of the day.

“Ultimately, the president’s position on Keystone has been to let the State Department review process play out,” LaBolt says. “And Organizing for Action is going to do the same thing.”

OFA says if people want to lobby the president on Keystone, they can join other groups.

But the pipeline is not the only area where environmental groups are frustrated with Obama.

“Existing power plants are America’s biggest global warming polluter,” says Dan Lashof with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “They’re responsible for about 40 percent of our carbon dioxide emissions. And EPA has both the authority and the obligation to set standards to curb those emissions.”

But Obama’s nominee to run the Environmental Protection Agency, Gina McCarthy, recently told a Republican senator that the agency is not developing any regulations to limit emissions from existing power plants.

Last week, a Senate committee voted along party lines to approve McCarthy’s nomination. OFA and environmental groups both urged the full Senate to approve her. That’s one thing they agree on. What the Obama administration does after she’s in the job is a different story.

Copyright 2013 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

When Elysha O’Brien, a college professor in Las Vegas, decided to submit six words about her cultural identity, she knew exactly what she wanted to say: “Mexican white girl doesn’t speak Spanish.” Like many others who have written to The Race Card Project, she grew up in bilingual household but never learned the language of her elders.

O’Brien says she often feels like she has a foot in two worlds, but is never fully accepted in either. Whites often assume she is Greek or Mediterranean because her face is slightly angular and her skin fairly pale. But when she encounters others who share her Mexican heritage, they often don’t pick up signals that suggest cultural camaraderie.

“When I go into a community of Hispanics, they just assume that I’m white,” O’Brien says. “Once we start talking, sometimes they’ll say, ‘Well, why don’t you speak Spanish?’ And I say, ‘Well, my parents didn’t teach me.’ ”

O’Brien was raised in a household where both parents spoke Spanish — but not to their children. They are Mexican immigrants and made a collective decision to ensure the next generation mastered English without the hint of an accent. Spanish was the secret language they used when they argued or talked about Christmas presents.

O’Brien’s father is one of eight children, and among her 45 cousins, all but three speak English only. When she asked her parents, aunts and uncles why they didn’t pass on their native language, they all gave the same reason: They faced bias, or worse, when speaking Spanish outside the home. They were rapped on the knuckles at school or denied jobs and other opportunities.

Her family experienced so much prejudice in Fort Worth for speaking Spanish in school that they didn’t want their children to endure that, O’Brien says. “They didn’t want their children to get slapped on the wrist, they didn’t want their children to get shushed in the lunchroom. They wanted their children to assimilate into the culture.”

O’Brien absorbed that message, she says. At one point in her teen years, she would de-emphasize her heritage when other Mexican-American kids would tease her for not speaking Spanish, she says. “It was my parents’ language; it wasn’t my language. When you’re kind of rebellious and you’re trying to find your identity, I used to say, ‘Well, I’m not Mexican, my parents are.’ ”

As an adult, even saying those words out loud is difficult for O’Brien. “I think it sounds very flip. It sounds very much like I’m trying to make amends for a really deep wound — just trying to put a Band-Aid on something instead of digging out the infection that’s there,” she says.

O’Brien, who has a doctoral degree, now says she emphasizes her Latino heritage out of pride. But she also hopes her career path and education might serve as a beacon for others. For years, she never asked her students to address her as “Dr. O’Brien”; “professor” or even her first name would do.

But that changed when she met a Latina student who gushed about meeting a Mexican-American Ph.D. for the first time. Now, she says, “I do make a point to tell people, ‘Hey, I’m Mexican and I’m a female and I have a Ph.D. There are not very many of us who have all of those three things.”

O’Brien and her husband, an educator of Irish and Italian descent, have three boys — a blend of cultures not easily captured on official forms. Recently, O’Brien says, she had to fill out a form for her children that required checking a box for ethnicity. “And there was a box for “white,” there was a box for “black,” a box for “Asian” and a box for “Hispanic.”

“And my son says, ‘Well, where’s the Italian box?’ ” O’Brien recalls. “And I said, ‘Well, that’s just if you’re white.’ And he goes, ‘And what about Irish?’ I said, ‘Well, that’s white, too.’ ”

“But Hispanic’s there and Italian isn’t?” her son asked. “And … I couldn’t really answer him,” O’Brien says. “But it’s interesting that when you look at the Hispanics … Mexicans are very different from Cubans, and Cubans are very different from Puerto Ricans, and Puerto Ricans are very different from Peruvians. But yet we are all lumped together as Hispanic, and we are all assumed to … speak the same language.”

O’Brien is determined that her sons will speak both English and Spanish. She hopes that will deepen their relationship with their Mexican-American grandparents. The elders on her family’s side, she says, display a more gregarious part of their personality when speaking in their native tongue. As an academic, she says she also wants her boys to have the “brain plasticity” that learning another language allows.

And, while her parents experienced bias when speaking Spanish in public decades ago, O’Brien says she would have greater opportunities if she had dual language skills today — and wants her sons to have that advantage.

She acknowledges that her sons will ultimately decide how to identify themselves as adults, but she wants to make sure they emphasize their Hispanic roots when seeking opportunities, like applying to college.

“My children have the O’Brien last name and they’re all fair-skinned and they appear white,” O’Brien says. But when filling out school forms, “I always make sure I check off that ‘Hispanic’ box. Because I know that as a white male, they’re not going to be given certain privileges as if they were a Mexican male, which perhaps is slightly racist on my own part, but I want them to be able to have access to things.”

‘Not Really Mexican’

Allen Nunez Wickham lives In Molalla, Ore., just outside of Portland. He sent his six words to The Race Card Project knowing his father would play a prominent role in his submission, “Grandma didn’t let Dad speak Spanish.” Both of his parents came to the U.S. from Mexico as children.

Because he doesn’t speak with a noticeable accent, he “passes” or blends in better with other ethnic groups. Consequently, Nunez Wickham says, he’s heard charges that “he’s not really Mexican” because he doesn’t speak Spanish. “After a while,” he says, “I just started calling myself Chicano because it was like more of an American-Mexican.”

But his family displays “Nunez,” his mother’s maiden name, with pride. “I use it deliberately,” he says.

He spoke with NPR’s Michele Norris about the pros and cons of being closer to his family’s cultural heritage.

Copyright 2013 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

But a recent investigation found that many federal inmates actually die while their requests drift through the system.

One of them was Clarence Allen Rice.

Rice operated a leasing company in Iowa for decades. But when the market went south in 2004 and many of those leases plunged into default, a jury found that he turned to fraud. Rice was sentenced to just under six years and sent to a Minnesota prison camp in 2011. But in some ways, that was only the beginning of his trials, says his wife, Christine.

“He got sick — very sick,” she says. “And when they get sick, they don’t tell the families. And so I wouldn’t know why I hadn’t heard from him.”

Weeks passed, and Christine found out her husband of four decades had bile duct cancer. She asked the prison doctor what to expect. His response? “He said something to the effect of, ‘Well, if he’s alive in three months, he’ll be very lucky,’ ” she recalls.

The doctor said he had started the paperwork so that Rice could apply for early release. In the meantime, Rice got transferred to a prison medical facility near the Mayo Clinic, where the family was told he would have to restart the paperwork for compassionate release. Under the prison rules, Rice — not his doctors or his family — was responsible for filling it out.

Michael Horowitz, the Justice Department’s inspector general, studied the compassionate release program, and found it is poorly managed and rife with confusion.

“If you’re going to tell inmates that they can only apply if they show that they have less than a certain number of months to live, there needs to be some standards in place so that the people processing these papers understand they’ve got to make the decisions quickly,” he says.

Mary Price, a lawyer at Families Against Mandatory Minimums, which advocates for inmates and their relatives, says only about two dozen inmates a year get compassionate release, though thousands may be eligible under that program — including more than 100 inmates who are over age 80.

“It’s been neglected for so long, and that neglect can translate into real cruelty at the end of the day,” Price says. “It’s not intended cruelty — it’s the cruelty that flows from a program that has been for the most part abandoned and left to run at all different levels, essentially on its own.”

Members of Rice’s family say they were on their own, too. His petition for early release was denied — because, they heard, the warden wanted him to serve more time. Then they muddled through appeals as Rice got worse, while his family members struggled to squeeze into tight limits on visiting hours. There was no allowance made for inmates who were terminally ill, they say.

Rice’s final decline happened right after Christmas 2012, when he went from walking short distances to the visiting area to being completely bedridden. His wife, Christine, spent several days going back and forth to the facility.

“I wanted to be able to share with my children, you know, Dad’s thoughts to them about what made him proud, what he would encourage, encourage them to do,” she says. “I had to memorize it all to the best of my ability because, you know, he wasn’t writing any letters. He wasn’t making any phone calls.”

She drove home, only to get a call later from the prison doctor.

“She called me, and she hadn’t been there for several days because of the holiday and the weekend,” she recalls. “She said, ‘Well, he’s changed dramatically since I saw him last. You should come.’ ”

Christine jumped in her car and drove about three hours to the prison. Her son and her sister-in-law followed close behind. But Christine says officials wouldn’t make an allowance for her sister-in-law to come in during the visit, so she sat outside in the parking lot. Rice died that same night, in early January, about three months after his diagnosis.

“You want to spend more time with someone on their death bed,” Christine says. “But we had just the opposite — more limiting,” in part because the medical facility where Rice had been moved was higher security than the prison camp where he resided before he got sick.

Daughter Alanna Rice looks back at it this way: “A person really is more than just the worst thing they’ve done in their life,” she says. “Just because he was convicted doesn’t take away all the love and the support that my dad gave me, and my siblings, and his church and his community.”

Alanna Rice says it’s too late to change things for her father, but maybe not for others in the system.

“If talking about it and making people aware of it can help conditions for families and prisoners in the future, I think my dad would really like that,” she adds.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons didn’t want to talk on tape for this story. But in a statement to NPR, and in response to the critical inspector general report, prison leaders say they will do a better job of letting inmates know about the program, cut down on how many people need to approve the requests, and start tracking them electronically.

Making all those changes could take two years.

Copyright 2013 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Attorney General Eric Holder sent a letter to Congress on Wednesday explaining that only one of the four dead U.S. citizens was explicitly targeted. Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical cleric born in New Mexico, died in Yemen in September 2011 after an American drone fired on his vehicle. Holder said al-Awlaki had become a senior operational leader in al-Qaida’s affiliate there, helping to direct an underwear bombing plot aimed at Detroit on Christmas Day in 2009, and a separate, thwarted attack a year later involving bombs placed in printer cartridges in cargo planes.

Al-Awlaki’s targeting required approval from several federal agencies and the highest levels of the U.S. government, Holder wrote, and appropriate congressional committees were briefed on the decision a full year before he was killed.

“The decision to target [al-Awlaki] was lawful, it was considered, and it was just,” Holder wrote.

Three other Americans who have been killed under the drone program were not directly targeted. Samir Khan, an al-Qaida propagandist, died sitting next to al-Awlaki. And al-Awlaki’s 16-year-old son died weeks later in a strike aimed at an outdoor café in Yemen.

The fourth person — Jude Kenan Mohammad — is much less widely known. A former North Carolina resident, Mohammad faced terrorism charges including conspiracy to provide support to terrorists and conspiracy to murder people overseas in 2009. A federal indictment from that year said Mohammad left the U.S. in October 2008, allegedly to travel to Pakistan to engage in violent jihad.

In his letter, Holder characterized the release of information as one step in “extensive outreach efforts to communicate with the American people.” Members of Congress and national security experts across the political and ideological spectrum have called on the White House to be more transparent about its targeted killing program, particularly when U.S. citizens are on the so-called kill lists.

But the attorney general said some information would remain under wraps, including a still-classified document that sets out the “administration’s exacting standards and processes for reviewing and approving operations to capture or use lethal force against terrorist targets outside the United States and areas of active hostilities.” He said lawmakers would get private briefings on that document, approved by the White House this week.

President Obama is scheduled to deliver an important national security speech Thursday at the National Defense University, which will cover the legal and policy framework for counterterrorism operations.

Update at 6:25 p.m. ET. Human Rights Groups React

The letter did little to satisfy Zeke Johnson of Amnesty International USA. In a statement, Johnson says, “The Obama administration continues to claim authority to kill virtually anyone anywhere in the world under the ‘global battlefield’ legal theory and a radical redefinition of the concept of imminence. President Obama should reject these concepts in his speech tomorrow and commit to upholding human rights, not just in word but in deed. An independent investigation into all alleged extrajudicial killings should begin immediately, with remedy for any killings found to be unlawful.”

And Dixon Osburn of Human Rights First said he welcomed more information about the program, but remains “deeply concerned that the administration appears to be institutionalizing a problematic targeted killing policy without public debate on whether the rules are lawful or appropriate.” Osburn called on the White House to make public the still-classified document institutionalizing targeted killing.”

Copyright 2013 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Yet Republican Sen. Tom Coburn’s position on federal aid came under close scrutiny in the hours after the tragedy. The issue is a complicated one for Coburn and his fellow GOP senator, James Inhofe: Both have been consistent critics of FEMA spending and recently voted against aid to victims of Superstorm Sandy, which ravaged swaths of New Jersey and New York last year.

Coburn told CQ.com Monday that he’d “absolutely” ask for budget cuts to offset the federal disaster relief spending.

But he did not refer to those offsets in a statement Tuesday morning, saying only that he had spoken to Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano about a response from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“We still don’t know the scope of devastation and won’t for some time,” Coburn wrote. “But, as the ranking member of the Senate committee that oversees FEMA, I can assure Oklahomans that any and all available aid will be delivered without delay.”

Sensitive to the perception that Coburn had opposed disaster aid bills in the past but was now requesting federal assistance when his home state was affected, the senator’s office sought to clarify his stance Tuesday afternoon.

“Dr. Coburn has opposed disaster aid bills in the past because he believes disaster funding should be used to pay for disasters, not a wish-list of parochial or backlogged priorities that have nothing to do with helping victims,” an aide wrote. “”If an additional emergency aid package is necessary, Dr. Coburn will not change his long-standing position on offsets.”

Three of the state’s five members of the U.S. House also voted against Sandy aid; Republican Reps. Tom Cole and Frank Lucas supported the $60.2 billion aid package.

In an interview Tuesday with NPR, Cole said he was proud of the vote.

But Coburn and, to a lesser extent, Inhofe have become the faces of pushback on federal emergency spending even though their state is one of the biggest recipients of U.S. disaster aid.

A 2011 analysis by the Center for Public Integrity found that Texas and Oklahoma “combined for more than a quarter of FEMA’s declared disasters since Jan. 1, 2009.”

Eleven GOP senators who represent the states with the most FEMA-declared disasters since the start of 2009, according to the study, voted against a bill “designed to keep the agency’s disaster relief fund from running out of cash.”

Republicans had referred to the FEMA funding issue as a manufactured crisis, and later, in debate over Sandy spending, Inhofe called the proposed aid bill a “slush fund” for special interests.

But in an MSNBC appearance Tuesday morning, Inhofe characterized the Sandy aid bill as “totally different” from legislation that would provide assistance to Oklahoma.

“They were getting things, for instance, that was supposed to be in New Jersey,” Inhofe said. “They had things in the Virgin Islands, they were fixing roads there. They were putting roofs on houses in Washington, D.C. Everybody was getting in and exploiting the tragedy that took place. That won’t happen in Oklahoma.”

Early Tuesday, Coburn’s Senate website contained no mention of the tornado that hit the city of Moore. Rather, it led with the headline “Sequester This” on a list that, among other things, proposed cutting “fat” to avoid furloughs and flight delays. One cut he proposed: $5.25 billion from FEMA’s Superstorn Sandy-aided surplus.

The site was later updated with a “how to help” link to nonprofit organizations providing aid to tornado victims in Oklahoma.

While the Washington spotlight focused on the politics of federal aid, Oklahomans remained focused on their tragic reality.

“Everyone’s focused on recovery,” says political analyst Sheryl Lovelady of Norman, Okla. “I don’t think anyone is thinking about politics, even though politicians have been in front of the cameras.”

“I can’t imagine our congressional delegation turning away help for people who have lost everything,” she said. “People here are suspicious of the federal government and how slow-moving it can be. To have the president support getting us all the resources we need, and if the congressional delegation delays? That would not go over well.”

And though Coburn was taking a battering on social media Tuesday morning — accused of everything from holding his constituents hostage because of his call for a budget offset, to being un-Christian — his spokesman John Hart portrayed his boss’s hardline position on offsets for disaster aid as consistent.

As Coburn and Inhofe position themselves in the coming hours and days, House Speaker John Boehner made clear where he stood during a news conference Tuesday morning. In response to a question about whether Congress would require that cuts be found in the budget to pay for Oklahoma aid, he said: “Let me just speak on behalf of all our members, including those from Oklahoma: We will work with the administration to make sure they have the resources they need.”

The speaker added that “our hearts and our prayers go out to those in Oklahoma who are victimized by this storm, especially our colleague, Tom Cole. Moore, Okla., is his hometown, so obviously he’s there, and so I’ve ordered the flags this morning to be lowered to half-staff in honor of those who have suffered through this terrible storm.”

Boehner also ordered flags at the U.S. Capitol flown at half-staff to honor the victims, numbering at least two-dozen, nine of them children, at last count.

Copyright 2013 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Moore Fire Chief Gary Bird put it this way Tuesday: After searches of all damaged buildings, “I’m 98 percent sure we’re good.”

That means the official death toll from the storm remains at 24 — a figure that could still change. More than 230 people are said to have been injured by the twister, which packed winds of more than 200 mph.

Word about the low likelihood of finding any more victims or survivors also means that the mission in Moore is shifting from a rescue operation to recovery efforts.

On Morning Edition, NPR’s Kirk Siegler reported that because hundreds of people have been displaced by the tornado, Red Cross officials are preparing to keep emergency shelters open for weeks. St. Andrews United Methodist Church in Moore has been stocked with food and supplies, Kirk reported, “and donations have also been pouring in” to other shelters nearby.

Also on Morning Edition, NPR’s David Schaper reported about James Rushing, who lived across the street from one of the two elementary schools that were destroyed by the storm. As the tornado approached, Rushing ran from his home to Plaza Towers Elementary, where his foster son was a student. Rushing found shelter with some of the children and staff in a bathroom. Both he and his son were among the survivors.

The sounds “were just deafening,” Rushing says. “You could hear windows … you could even hear wood breaking. It was so loud you couldn’t hear anything but things being destroyed.”

His home was destroyed. Rushing believes he’d be dead if he had stayed there. But even though he and most of the children at the school made it through the storm, Rushing says in reality, “there were no safe rooms in that school. There was no where for these children to take cover but in a bathroom.” Authorities have said that 7 of the 9 children killed during the tornado were students at the school.

NPR’s coverage of the tornado is collected here. Some of the morning’s related news includes:

– The storm likely caused more than $1 billion in damages, according to Oklahoma City’s KFOR-TV.

– Officials say that among those who were injured, “four individuals were struck by vehicles or other large objects, 85 were struck by other objects and 148 sustained cuts or pierces,” The Oklahoman writes.

– “Moore Police spokesman Jeremy Lewis said more than 200 people were rescued from the rubble — all of them Monday night,” says CBS News. “No survivors were found Tuesday, he added.”

– For the first day since the tragedy in Moore, the National Weather Service is not warning that there could be more severe weather in that area.

Copyright 2013 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Industrial hemp could be Colorado’s next cash crop. But until rules are crafted for the growing and processing of the plant, state officials are telling would-be hemp farmers to wait. KUNC’s Luke Runyon has more.

The state’s first hemp crop went into the ground last week in the southeastern town of Springfield, just a few days after state lawmakers passed rules for the sale and taxation of recreational marijuana. What’s not finished is a regulatory framework for industrial hemp. The plant is mostly used for its fiber, in products like clothing and lotions.

Ron Carleton is with the Colorado Department of Agriculture. He says his office phone has been ringing off the hook, with farmers wanting to know how soon they can put hemp in the ground.

“A lot of folks believe that industrial hemp has considerable promise and so they’re interested in when they can start.”

Carleton cautions farmers against jumping into the hemp game too quickly. It’s still illegal at the federal level. That kept Yuma County farmer Michael Bowman from planting hemp this spring.

“The risk of getting caught in this federal web is small, but it’s not nonexistent.”

State officials have until March of next year to come up with rules for governing hemp growers.

One of the biggest-selling bands of all time — and one of the most controversial — The Doors came together in 1965, after Manzarek moved to Los Angeles and recruited Jim Morrison to sing with his college band. Manzarek grew up on Chicago’s south side and resisted piano lessons when he was young, until he heard Chicago blues and jazz on the radio. His keyboard playing on such Doors classics as “Light My Fire,” “Riders on the Storm,” “Break on Through (to the Other Side)” and more provided a blues and jazz counterpoint to Morrison’s poetic swagger.

After Morrison died in 1971, The Doors recorded two albums with Manzarek singing some of the lead vocals, but the band eventually broke up. Manzarek recorded several solo albums, collaborated with poets, and produced for other bands, including X, another trailblazing Los Angeles group. In 1998, Putnam published Manzarek’s autobiography to critical acclaim, though Light My Fire: My Life with the Doors, was more about Morrison than Manzarek. He also wrote two novels. In 2002, Manzarek reunited with The Doors’ guitarist Robby Krieger to play the band’s songs live.

Copyright 2013 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Douglas Shulman, an appointee of President George W. Bush who left the IRS last November, and acting commissioner Steven Miller (who is losing his job because of the scandal) are due at the 10 a.m. ET hearing.

Also set to testify: J. Russell George, the Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration, who reported last week on the “inappropriate” criteria that some IRS personnel used when considering the applications for tax-exempt status from groups who identified themselves as “tea party” or “patriot” organizations.

On Friday, Miller told a House committee that “foolish mistakes were made by people trying to be more efficient in their workload selection.” He insisted the actions were not partisan. Republican lawmakers did not buy his explanation. Democrats, while expressing outrage over the singling out of some groups, tried to make the case that because the extra scrutiny began in 2010 — when Bush-appointee Shulman was running the IRS — partisanship was not a factor.

Tuesday’s hearing will be Shulman’s first opportunity to address the scandal in public. We’ll watch for news from the hearing and update.

Related post: Turnabout Is Fair Play: Senators Have Many Questions For IRS.

Copyright 2013 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

As Tuesday dawned, the official death toll from the monster tornado that roared through Moore, Okla., on Monday stood at 51.

But Amy Elliott, a spokeswoman for the Oklahoma state medical examiner’s office, was warning that officials believe at least another 40 people had been killed. Some of those are thought to be children in one of the schools that was destroyed by the powerful storm.

More than 200 people were injured when the storm’s winds (said to have been blowing at up to 200 mph) leveled buildings across a wide swath of land. The cost — in lives and damage — from the storm is expected to exceed that from a tornado that devastated the same part of the nation in May 1999. That twister left behind “46 dead and 800 injured, more than 8,000 homes damaged or destroyed, and total property damage of nearly $1.5 billion,” as NOAA has reported.

Tuesday was bringing incredible stories — some of survival, some of heartbreaking loss.

On Morning Edition, NPR’s Wade Goodwyn reported that 4th, 5th and 6th graders attending Moore’s Plaza Towers Elementary School had been evacuated to a nearby church, where they found shelter. “Kindergarteners through 3rd grade children hunkered down at the school,” Wade reported. At least seven children died in the destroyed school’s basement. Searchers were continuing to look for more victims.

Meanwhile, forecasters were warning that more severe weather was possible in the area Tuesday — and across much of the nation’s midsection. According to the National Weather Service, the threat extends “from the Great Lakes across the Mississippi River Valley and into central Texas.” What to watch for: “very large hail, damaging winds and tornadoes.”

As we reported Monday, President Obama has signed a disaster declaration late Monday, ordering federal aid to supplement state and local recovery efforts in the area.

We’ll be following the news as the day continues. So hit your refresh button to make sure you’re seeing our latest updates. We’ll add related posts as well. Note: As happens during news events such as this, there will be information that later proves to have been incorrect. We’ll focus on what’s being reported by NPR and other news trusted news outlets, and on information provided by officials with direct knowledge of the situation. If some information proves to have been wrong, we’ll correct the record and explain what happened.

Update at 8:10 a.m. ET. “All I could see was destruction”:

Associated Press photographer Sue Ogrocki saw the tornado warnings on television Monday and headed toward Moore. She writes that “by the time I got to Moore, all I could see was destruction.”

Ogrocki was at one of Moore’s elementary schools as rescuers brought children out alive. “I know students are among those who died in the tornado,” she says, “but for a moment, there was hope in the devastation.”

Update at 7:55 a.m. ET. About 100 Rescued From Rubble So Far.

Though the death toll is expected to rise, there is this good news: CNN says it’s been told by authorities that about 100 people — so far — have been found alive and rescued from the rubble of destroyed buildings.

Update at 7:25 a.m. ET. “2-Mile Wide Lawnmower Blade”:

Monday’s tornado was like “a 2-mile wide lawnmower blade” that chewed up everything in its path as it went through Moore, Oklahoma Lt. Gov. Todd Lamb (R) just told CNN.

Update at 7:20 a.m. ET. Listening For Voices:

From The Associated Press: “Rescuers walked through neighborhoods where Monday’s powerful twister flattened home after home, to listen for any voices calling out from the rubble.”

Update at 6:45 a.m. ET. News Conference Expected; Lightning And Rain In Area:

TV crews in Moore are packing up to head for shelter as rain resumes and lightning can be seen in the sky. Meanwhile, CNN says police officials expect to hold a news conference at 8 a.m. ET.

Update at 6:35 a.m. ET. How To Help, Where To Go For Information:

The White House blog has a post that outlines “Resources and Information for Those Affected by Oklahoma Tornadoes.”

Update at 6:30 a.m. ET. President Obama To Address Nation:

The president is expected to make a statement about the tragedy in Oklahoma at 10 a.m. ET.

Related posts:

– VIDEO: A Time-Lapse Of The Tornado In Oklahoma.

– Measuring The Power Of Deadly Tornadoes.

– A Brief History Of Oklahoma Tornadoes.

– Tweets Capture ‘Shock And Awe’ At Tornado’s Deadly Power.

Copyright 2013 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Reporter Julia Kumari Drapkin has spent the past year documenting stories of climate change in Colorado as part of iSeeChange, a project based at sister station KVNF in Paonia. This week’s This American Life features one of her stories. Here’s their synopsis:

“Reporter Julia Kumari Drapkin tells the story of Colorado’s State Climatologist, Nolan Doesken. Doesken has long believed the humans are driving climate change, but never connected it to his own life. Even after several years of some of the most devastating weather his state has ever seen, Nolan considered climate change a worry for the future. Then, last year, he watched as his state experience some of the most extreme weather it ever has. For the first time, Nolan felt like he was looking at what the future would be like where he lives. He felt scared. Julia tells the story of how this has all changed Nolan, and changed what he’s saying to the people of his home state. Julia is the lead producer of iSeeChange at station KVNF, funded by Localore, AIR and CPB.”

You can hear the story at This American Life.

You can also revisit last year’s Western Skies episode “Mother Nature,” which featured Climatologist Nolan Doesken as a guest in the round-table discussion. (March, 2012)

Visit the iSeeChange website.

Here’s the research trail:

Beginning around 2004, several states banned gay marriage. Just before that series of bans, the National Institutes of Health happened to conduct a massive survey of 43,093 Americans. The questions elicited detailed information about respondents’ mental health. (To validate what people reported about themselves, psychiatrists also interviewed samples of the people in the survey, and their medical diagnoses closely matched the findings of the survey.)

Soon after the wave of state bans on gay marriage, in 2004 and 2005, the NIMH conducted a second round of interviews, managing to reach 34,653 of the original respondents. (That’s a high rate compared to most polls and surveys.)

Mark Hatzenbuehler, a psychologist at Columbia University who studies the health effects of social policies, analyzed the data gathered before and after the bans to determine how the mental health of people who identified themselves as gay, lesbian or bisexual had changed in those states.

Hatzenbuehler and his colleagues Katie McLaughlin, Katherine Keyes and Deborah Hasin published their analysis in 2010 in the American Journal of Public Health.

“Lesbian, gay and bisexual individuals who lived in the states that banned same sex marriage experienced a significant increase in psychiatric disorders,” Hatzenbuehler says.

“There was a 37 percent increase in mood disorders,” he says, “a 42 percent increase in alcohol-use disorders, and — I think really strikingly — a 248 percent increase in generalized anxiety disorders.”

To put those numbers in perspective, although Hatzenbuehler did find more than a doubling in the rate of anxiety disorders in states that eventually banned gay marriage, in absolute numbers he found that anxiety disorders went from being reported among 2.7 percent to 9.4 percent of gay, lesbian and bisexual people.

The million dollar question is whether the laws, and the debates around them, were responsible for the change in mental health. To help answer that question, Hatzenbuehler and his colleagues looked at comparable groups and experiences.

“We showed the psychiatric disorders did not increase in lesbian, gay and bisexual populations in states that didn’t debate and vote on same sex marriages,” Hatzenbuehler, says. “There were also no increases — or much smaller increases — among heterosexuals living in the states that passed same sex marriage bans.”

Hatzenbuehler has also found, in a study conducted in Massachusetts, that gay men experienced fewer stress-related disorders after that state permitted gay marriage.

In a study tracking the health of 1,211 gay men in Massachusetts, Hatzenbuehler found that the men visited doctors less often and had lower health treatment costs after Massachusetts legalized same-sex marriage. When the researchers examined the diagnostic codes doctors were giving the men, they saw a decrease in disorders that have been linked to stress, such as hypertension, depression and adjustment disorders.

Hatzenbuehler says that he believes that stress associated with gay marriage debates was the “X-Factor.” He says the quantitative data is backed by what gays, lesbians and bisexuals told the surveyors. “They reported multiple stressors during that period,” Hatzenbuehler says. “They reported seeing negative media portrayals, anti-gay graffiti. They talked about experiencing a loss of safety and really feeling like these amendments and these policies were really treating them as second class citizens.”

Today, about three dozen states ban gay marriage and about a dozen have passed laws that approve it. Some states have laws that permit civil unions but ban gay marriage.

It’s unclear how or whether the upcoming Supreme Court decisions involving the constitutionality of same-sex marriage will affect the mental and physical health of gays and lesbians nationally.

It’s likely many gay, lesbian and bisexual people would see an upholding of same sex marriage bans as an example of prejudice. But it’s also possible the debate around the Supreme Court decisions could have different effects on gays than a local debate involving friends and neighbors.

Hatzenbuehler says his larger point is really that policy makers, judicial leaders and ordinary citizens need to remember that social policies are also health policies.

Copyright 2013 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Governor John Hickenlooper recently fired up a special task force in response to the state’s ongoing drought. As Aspen Public Radio’s Marci Krivonen reports, the group will focus on making sure communities across the state can deal with the effects of drought.

(Above image from the U.S. Drought Monitor.)

Click here for current water restrictions in Colorado Springs.
Click here for the drought response from Pueblo Water Works.