July 30, 2016

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Sports July 30, 2016

Volleyball Plus Soccer Makes Footvolley

Footvolley is a sport played like it sounds: A volleyball is kicked around like soccer with no hands. The U.S. and other countries are sending teams to Brazil, but it’s not an Olympic sport yet.

Transcript

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

The 2016 Summer Olympic Games begin next Friday, but sports fans might be drawn to a game taking place outside of the Olympics on the beaches of Rio. It is footvolley. And, as the name implies, it’s a combination of volleyball and soccer. It’s catching on in the U.S. And, as NPR’s Greg Allen reports, it will get international exposure during this year’s games in Brazil.

GREG ALLEN, BYLINE: On a beach in Sunny Isles in a town just north of Miami, Benny Astorga is putting members of the USA footvolley team through training drills.

BENNY ASTORGA: Good. Come on. Let’s go. Put it away. Good.

ALLEN: He tosses up a volleyball as the players use their feet then their chest to keep the ball in play, and finally a head shot puts it over the net. It’s basically volleyball played soccer-style. Astorga says that’s how the game got started in Brazil in the mid-1960s. Soccer players were looking for a game to play on the beach.

ASTORGA: It was banned to play football on the sand. They saw some open-court nets, decided, you know, go over there and see who could keep it up the longest and a sport grew out of it, you know?

MELONY POVIONES: People see it, and they’re like – they’re in awe because they’re like, oh, my goodness, I’ve never seen it before.

ALLEN: Melony Poviones is one of the women on the USA footvolley team set to compete in Rio. The U.S. team will be one of 23 countries taking part in a competition that’s not officially part of the Olympics, but instead is billed as a cultural event. Poviones is from South Florida where the Brazilian-born game is gaining popularity. She’s 24 and grew up playing soccer. She discovered footvolley while recovering from a knee injury.

POVIONES: I used to see the guys playing, so I kind just asked one day. I was like, hey, can I join? Because I played soccer my entire life. So they were like yeah, cool, jump in. And I was – I started getting the hang of it, and I started to love it.

ALLEN: Another team member Sergio Menezes was born in Brazil, grew up in the U.S. He was inspired to get serious about the game nearly 20 years ago. One day, he and some Brazilian friends were on the beach when they were challenged to a game of footvolley. He recalls the challenger, a Brazilian in Miami on vacation, beat them badly.

SERGIO MENEZES: So he just got frustrated. He said you guys are terrible. You know, you’re not real Brazilians. So, that kind of stuck. It was me, a couple of friends of mine. We were all Brazilians looking at each other going, man, we got to learn this sport.

ALLEN: Within a few years, Menezes was into footvolley in a big way. He helped found the U.S. Footvolley Association and began holding tournaments. Later, he and others secured a national sponsor and began the Pro-Footvolley Tour. Menezes is a player, but also a footvolley promoter. It’s a fast-paced game, he says, with a lot of fun, excitement and potential for growth of beach volleyball. In footvolley, the money play, the one that gets fans on their feet, is something called the shark attack.

MENEZES: The shark attack is when a player thrusts his body sort of like he’s going towards the net and at the very last second, he slams it with the bottom of his foot. And it’s very hard to defend because it goes straight down. Yeah, that’s our slam dunk.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: Goes up and…

(APPLAUSE)

ALLEN: That’s a shark attack earlier this year at a pro-footvolley event on Florida’s Hollywood Beach. Menezes helped convince Brazilian footvolley groups to push for an event at this year’s Olympics. The Brazilian Olympic Committee agreed to an international tournament in late August at the beach volleyball arena on Copacabana Beach. It’s not quite an Olympic event, not even an official demonstration sport, but Menezes and other footvolley enthusiasts are thrilled.

MENEZES: What it is it’s when a guy and a girl started going out, and they don’t know what it is. But there’s something there. OK? That’s what it is. I mean, if you’re in Rio and you’re in the Olympic stadium, it’s an amazing sport, and the world’s going to see it. I mean, it’s the first step.

ALLEN: The first step for a fledgling sport that Menezes hopes eventually to see as a medal event at a future Olympics. Greg Allen, NPR News, Miami.

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Health July 30, 2016

The Costs Of The Pulse Nightclub Shooting

A makeshift memorial continues to grow outside the Pulse nightclub, the day before the one month anniversary of a mass shooting, Monday, July 11, 2016, in Orlando, Fla.

A makeshift memorial continues to grow outside the Pulse nightclub, the day before the one month anniversary of a mass shooting, Monday, July 11, 2016, in Orlando, Fla. John Raoux/AP hide caption

toggle caption John Raoux/AP

Mario Perez lives in Miami, but he was in Orlando for a housewarming party Saturday, June 11. After the party, the 34-year-old went to Pulse for Latin night.

At 2 a.m., he heard gunshots. Loud. He knew it was real.

“And the minute he started shooting, I got hit from the side, I got grazed by a bullet,” Perez says. “My first instinct was to fall to the floor, that’s what you’re taught to do.”

He heard gunshot after gunshot after gunshot. It was too many to count. But then there was a brief break in the firing, and Perez ran out the back of the club. He hid inside the kitchen of a nearby 7-Eleven until police and paramedics showed up. He was taken to Orlando Regional Medical Center, and was at the emergency room from 3 a.m. until 8 a.m.

The gunshot wound on his side is purple and swollen, and he has nerve damage from the bullet fragment. He cut his elbow from glass on the floor of the nightclub and received six stitches. Perez doesn’t know how much bills coming from specialists, X-rays or other tests may cost him. But his bill from Orlando Regional Medical Center’s emergency department: $20,000.

“$20,000,” Perez said. “That’s the quote, that’s what they told me.”

Perez has no health insurance. He’s working for a temp agency right now and doesn’t have the money to be seen by a doctor for follow-up care in Miami.

So just how much will the Pulse nightclub shooting cost all of the victims? It’s a difficult, if not impossible question to answer right now. At last check, there were 56 people brought to the hospital, including three patients who spent two weeks in the intensive care unit, and one patient is still in the hospital in critical condition.

Embry Howell is a senior fellow at the Urban Institute, a think tank in Washington, D.C. She studied the average cost of a gunshot victim in 2010. Using that benchmark, she estimates the hospital costs from the Pulse shooting will be about $1 million.

“And I would imagine that would be an underestimate,” Howell said.

Howell said many of the victims may be in the same boat as Mario Perez – uninsured.

“They’re young, primarily Latino and living in Florida,” she says, a state that has not expanded Medicaid to its population.

“My guess would be you have a high rate of uninsured,” she concludes.

Ted Miller is a researcher with the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation. He has been studying the cost of firearm injuries for more than two decades. He used the 2011 shooting of former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords and 18 others in Arizona to make what he calls a conservative estimate.

That estimate: $4 to $7 million dollars in medical costs and mental health costs for victims and survivors of people who died. That’s the lifetime medical costs for the survivors, the costs of surgery, the cost of rehab. But it doesn’t count the long-term costs for those who are severely injured.

“They said some time ago that there were six people in ICU who would have long time, serious consequences,” Miller said. “And my guess is most of those folks will have traumatic brain injuries that will have continuing lifetime care.”

Miller also makes a broader estimate beyond just the medical costs. That includes the cost of the police response, the cost to employers – and the dollar value of those 49 lost lives.

“I estimate that the total cost of the Orlando shooting is around $385 to $390 million,” Miller says. “To put that in context, on that same day, the cost of other gunshot wounds in the U.S. was probably about $600 million. So about one and a half times the cost of the Orlando incident. That tells you that there are a lot of people killed and injured by firearms every day in this country,” he says. And, he explains, “Suicide deaths account for the largest share of gun violence costs.”

What’s not included in Miller’s $385 million estimate is the cost of mental health counseling for people who were in the club but not physically shot – and friends and family of those there. And then there’s the cost of fear: People being afraid to go out to a dance club, or maybe skipping a visit to the theme parks.

Orlando Regional received 44 of the shooting victims. A hospital spokeswoman says some patients have insurance coverage, some don’t. The hospital is going to look for payment sources from the community or the state, such as victim funds that are raising money across the country. But she says the hospital expects unreimbursed costs of more than $5 million.

Pulse shooting victim Mario Perez is calculating his personal costs. He’s worried he’s going to lose his job. He’s anxious knowing millions of dollars have been raised to help victims, but his bills are arriving now. He started his own GoFundMe campaign but it’s only raised about $600.

“As long as it gets covered, I’m going to be fine,” Perez said. “If they don’t cover it, I’m stuck in a hole. I don’t know what I’m going to be able to do if they don’t assist me.”

This story is part of a reporting partnership with NPR, Health News Florida and Kaiser Health News.

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Business July 30, 2016

For Democrats, The Weak GDP Report May Have Silver Linings. Maybe.

At their party’s convention this week, Democrats highlighted positive economic news from the Obama era, including the dramatic plunge in unemployment and persistent growth in output.

But then on Friday, after the gathering had ended, the Commerce Department said the economy grew at only 1.2 percent during April, May and June. Most economists had believed that the gross domestic product, a measure of all goods and services, had been growing at about 2.6 percent this spring.

So when the disappointing number was revealed, many Republicans pounced, suggesting that voters would not want to continue having a Democrat in the White House.

For example, Republican Ari Fleischer, a former spokesman for President George W. Bush, tweeted: “Want to know why Hillary could lose to Trump? It’s because the economy grew just 1.2%.”

And Ralph Benko, senior economic advisor to American Principles Project, a conservative think tank, said in a statement that “the new economic numbers cannot possibly represent good news for Team Clinton.”

But a deeper look at the data reveals a potentially more encouraging interpretation for Democrats.

The GDP data showed the weakness was in inventory accumulation. Businesses turned cautious this spring and whittled down inventories rather than make big commitments to the future.

But at the same time, consumers were springing to life, increasing their spending by an annualized rate of 4.2 percent – a healthy pace.

Economists say shoppers are in good shape for several reasons: cheap gasoline is leaving more cash in wallets; interest rates are low; unemployment is just 4.9 percent and wages are up 2.6 percent from a year ago.

So shopping is up too. The National Retail Federation recently predicted back-to-school spending would hit $75.8 billion — up more than 11 percent from last year’s $68 billion. “We are optimistic that overall economic growth and consumer spending will continue to improve,” NRF President Matthew Shay said in a statement.

So if Americans are buying now, then businesses will have to restock this fall, ahead of the holiday shopping season. That could mean more jobs or longer hours for a lot of people, including factory workers, truck drivers, distribution-center workers, store-shelf stockers and so on.

Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at IHS Global Insight, put it this way in his written assessment: “The big drop in inventories is a bad news/good news story. The bad news is that it cut second quarter growth. The good news is that the change in inventories will likely be positive in the third quarter, which will add to growth.”

And here’s another silver lining for Democrats: slow spending by businesses in the first half of the year could help hold down interest rates for everyone in the second half.

“The weak GDP report makes an increase in the fed funds rate at the Federal Open Market Committee’s next meeting, in mid-September, very unlikely,” PNC economist Gus Fuacher said in a statement.

Keeping rates low will help consumers who need to borrow for cars, homes and other purchases.

In other words, the economy could shape up like this in the fall for average workers: an inventory buildup could generate more jobs and longer work weeks; low interest rates could spur more consumer spending; and falling gas prices could put many Americans in a more positive mood.

Or not. Perhaps the drop in inventories signals a real decline in the economy. Maybe by November, the weak growth turns into a real recession. Anything is possible.

But for now, most economists are still holding to a somewhat brighter interpretation of the GDP data. “While the top-line growth rate for the second quarter of 2016 was disappointing, it does not reflect the underlying growth rate of the U.S. economy, which is in the 2 percent to 2.5-percent range,” Behravesh said.

He continues to forecast 2.5 percent growth for the second half of the year.

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