August 5, 2016

Fireworks have lit up the night sky in Rio de Janeiro with the start of the Olympic opening ceremony. The pageant is celebrating Brazil’s history and culture, which will include music and dance.

Transcript

KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:

The opening ceremony for the Rio Olympics has been a swirl of dance, music and a vintage biplane flying through the stadium and seeming to soar out over the city. And, of course, there’s the athletes Parade of Nations. NPR’s Melissa Block is in Rio, watching the ceremony. And she’s with us now. Hi there.

MELISSA BLOCK, BYLINE: Hey, Kelly.

MCEVERS: So we should explain that you are way ahead of us of knowing what’s going on. NBC, the U.S. rights holder for the Olympics, tape delayed the ceremonies by an hour in the East. It’ll be four hours delayed here on the West Coast. So tell us what we missed.

BLOCK: OK, so spoiler alerts to everybody listening because we do have a jump on you from here in Rio. We have seen a lot of exuberant dance, as you would expect, from – everything from samba, to funk, to native dance, even a bit of twerking. We saw supermodel Gisele Bundchen embodying “The Girl From Ipanema.” Although, Kelly, I have to tell you when I picture that tall and tan and young and lovely girl walk to the sea, I am not picturing her in silver lame and stiletto heels. But that’s just me.

There is also – I mean, on a totally different note, a really strong environmental theme to this ceremony. There was a really somber portion, showing the dire effects of climate change on the planet and sea level rise. There were maps showing Dubai and the Netherlands getting swallowed by the sea. And as part of this green theme, every athlete in this Parade of Nations is being given the seed of a tree – 500 different native species of Brazil. They’re pressing those seeds into soil in capsules. And those capsules are supposed to be planted after the games in one of the Olympic venues to become a new forest.

MCEVERS: So the Parade of Nations, is it still going on?

BLOCK: It is still going on. We are up to – let me check – it was Switzerland a minute ago. And I have to tell you, there was a great moment a few minutes ago. South Sudan just entered Maracana Stadium. There are two new countries who became officially recognized by the Olympic Committee this year – Kosovo is one, South Sudan another. And went the South Sudanese flag bearer came into the stadium, he pumped his fist and did a little dance. And you could they are really excited to be here for the first time.

It’s worth noting that there are a number of athletes who are going to compete later on in the games, in the second week, who aren’t even here in Rio yet. So they’re obviously not taking part in this parade. And there are also some athletes who compete early – you know, this weekend, who aren’t marching in the parade because this is a really long night to be on your feet, and they want to preserve their strength.

MCEVERS: I understand organizers had drastically cut the budget for this opening ceremony. What led to that?

BLOCK: Right. Well, you know, Brazil is in a severe economic crisis. It’s been undergoing a terrible recession. And one of the creative directors of the ceremony, the noted film director Fernando Meirelles, said that look, when we started we were rich. And then we had to cut, cut, cut. We had to get rid of some of our toys, as he put it. He also, though, put it in perspective. He said, look, when 40 percent of the homes in Brazil have no sanitation, you can’t really be spending a billion reals for a show.

And they’ve actually used the term MacGyvering in terms of how they’re approaching this. In other words – and I have to confess, I’ve never seen the show – but I gather the idea is that this is a secret…

MCEVERS: Oh, yeah.

BLOCK: …Agent who improvised – you know better than I.

MCEVERS: Absolutely.

BLOCK: Who improvises with – I’m revealing my ignorance here – improvises with everyday items, fixing big problems, you know, with makeshift fixes. I have to say, it looks pretty great. If they’re MacGyvering, they’re doing a really a good job.

MCEVERS: Quickly, what’s still to come tonight?

BLOCK: Legendary singers Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil. Interim…

MCEVERS: Wow.

BLOCK: …Brazilian President Michel Temer will pronounce the games open. He has said he does expect to be booed. But he quoted a Brazilian writer who said that at Maracana Stadium, even the moment of silence gets booed.

MCEVERS: That’s NPR’s Melissa Block in Rio de Janeiro, covering the Olympics. Thanks so much.

BLOCK: You bet.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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Business August 5, 2016

U.S. Economy Continues Growth Ahead Of Presidential Election

With new jobs numbers out Friday and the recent anemic growth in the GDP, NPR takes stock of the economy three months before the election.

Transcript

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

It’s been a good summer for people looking for work. The Labor Department says U.S. employers added 255,000 jobs last month. That’s a lot more than expected, and it’s the second month in a row in which the economy grew by more than a quarter million workers. These monthly reports are going to start to play a role in how voters see the economy as we get closer to the November election. Here’s NPR’s Scott Horsley.

SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Tom Maher runs a temporary employment company in Dayton, Ohio, a major center of manufacturing, warehousing and swing-state politics. Late last year, Maher’s business weathered a slowdown in hiring. But so far, he says 2016 has been a story of steady growth.

TOM MAHER: We have more work available than we have people to take the jobs.

HORSLEY: With unemployment just 4.9 percent, Maher says many businesses he recruits workers for are having to pay more.

MAHER: We’ve been working very hard over the last 12 to 18 months to convince our clients that we do need to begin to increase hourly rates, and we’re starting to see success now. The rates are going up, but I don’t think they’re up as high as they need to be.

HORSLEY: Nationwide, wages are on track to grow nearly 3 percent this year, well above the rate of inflation. And hundreds of thousands of new workers entered the labor force last month. In theory, that positive economic news should be good for Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton since voters have less incentive to shift course in the White House. But there’s a caveat.

NATHAN GONZALES: How the economy is doing is less important than how voters think the economy is doing.

HORSLEY: Nathan Gonzales who edits the Rothenberg-Gonzales Political Report says just as Republicans may have overplayed the message of gloom and doom at their convention last month, Democrats have to be careful not to pop the economic champagne corks too quickly.

GONZALES: Democrats, I think, have to walk the line between promoting positive jobs numbers and economic data that’s out there, but still understanding that there is a segment of the American people who don’t believe that the economy is working for them.

HORSLEY: Those are the voters Donald Trump’s been targeting. Trump is set to deliver an economic speech in Detroit on Monday, and today he announced the members of his economic advisory council. One of those members UC, Irvine Professor Peter Navarro says buried beneath the jobs number is a tangle of discouraging economic data, including a growing trade deficit.

PETER NAVARRO: We’re strumbling (ph) along. We’re probably stronger than the rest of the world at this point because we’re a – such a great nation. But it’s far from good enough. We’re vastly underperforming, and at the end of the day the problem all gets down to bad trade deals.

HORSLEY: The Trump campaign has also been highlighting figures showing lackluster economic growth in recent months of just 1.2 percent. White House economist Jason Furman argues the underlying growth rate is stronger than that. He notes consumer spending during the three-month period was up more than 4 percent.

JASON FURMAN: And when people are nervous, they hold back their spending. That’s not what we’re seeing now. We’re not seeing nervous consumers. We’re actually seeing consumers that are optimistic, that are positive, that are out there spending money because they are making more money and believe that their future is strong.

HORSLEY: Voters have a few more months to consider how they feel about the economy, and the candidates’ competing economic prescriptions before they decide how one important job gets filled. Scott Horsley, NPR News, Washington.

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Health August 5, 2016

Zika Cases Surge In Puerto Rico As Mosquitoes Flourish

A health department pickup truck sprays insecticide against mosquitoes in a San Juan, Puerto Rico, neighborhood in January. Alvin Baez/Reuters hide caption

toggle caption Alvin Baez/Reuters

The Zika outbreak in Puerto Rico is expanding rapidly.

Recently, the island has been reporting more than a thousand new cases of Zika each week.

The situation is expected to get worse before it gets better.

“We are right now probably in the month or 6 weeks of peak transmission,” says Tyler Sharp the lead epidemiologist for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Zika operation in Puerto Rico.

Previous outbreaks of dengue fever and chikungunya, which are transmitted by the same mosquito as Zika, Aedes aegypti, suggest the hot, wet summer months in Puerto Rico now are just right for Zika to flourish, Sharp says.

“The more rains you get, the more mosquitoes you get. The more mosquitoes, the higher the rate of transmission,” he says. “And also the mosquitoes like warmer temperatures and are able to replicate the virus more efficiently at at least slightly higher temperatures.”

He calls August in Puerto Rico the “Goldilocks zone” for Zika virus replication.

The island has already had more than 8,000 confirmed cases of Zika. The CDC predicts that by the end of the year, 20 percent to 25 percent of the roughly 3.5 million people on the island could be infected with the virus.

Many of those people would have mild symptoms or even none at all. But such a widespread outbreak means that thousands of pregnant women could be exposed and their babies might be at risk of having severe Zika-related birth defects.

And the tools to fight Zika are limited.

Public health officials weren’t able to stop previous outbreaks of dengue and chikungunya while they were in progress, Sharp notes. Zika is even more complicated because it’s transmitted by both mosquitoes and sexually activity.

“So we have things that we think can be effective,” he says. “We know that individuals can take approaches to reduce their risk of infection. But in terms of breaking the epidemic, or stopping transmission, there’s nothing that we know about that’s been scientifically evidenced to show that this will work, that this is the solution.”

There’s no silver bullet.

Even the insecticides that are being used to spray homes or fog some high-risk neighborhoods have been losing their punch. Mosquitoes have been developing resistance to them.

“What we’ve seen in Puerto Rico, as we see in many regions, is that there is a wide variety of resistance not to all insecticides but to many of them,” Sharp notes. “And that [resistance] can change over time depending on what’s being used in the communities, in the population.”

A plan for aerial spraying of an insecticide called Naled caused an uproar here. San Juan’s mayor called the plan “environmental terror” and late last month the governor blocked the proposal. Naled is the same chemical that’s being sprayed from planes over parts of Miami to combat Aedes aegypti mosquitoes there.

Sharp says the efforts against Zika in Puerto Rico rely primarily on people. People protecting themselves from mosquito bites and people attacking mosquito breeding grounds. The only good news is that if previous outbreaks of dengue and chikungunya are any guide, the high levels of Zika transmission here should start to fall in September or October.

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Entertainment August 5, 2016

From The 2016 Crop Over Festival, A Feast of Caribbean Soca Music

King Bubba (in the hat) at Crop Over last weekend. His song “Calling In Sick” is a robust tribute to rum. Courtesy of the artist hide caption

toggle caption Courtesy of the artist

Soca music fans subsist in a feast-or-famine world. Feasts come during Carnival — especially Trinidad Carnival, king of them all — when the exuberant, dance-driven tunes are released faster than soca icon Machel Montano can wine his waist (i.e. very, very fast). Famine follows, as we wring every last drop of delight from these soca hits while waiting for another island’s Carnival — there’s one somewhere, most months — to serve up a trickle of new music.

Enter Barbados Crop Over, bequeathing ravenous soca lovers with a banquet. It’s the only Caribbean Carnival that can rival Trinidad’s in terms of quality of parties and musical output. Thanks to a thriving local music scene and a prominent forum for its products — Crop Over annually attracts thousands, from all over the world — Barbados has lodged itself at the forefront of the soca music industry. Pour yourself a Mount Gay on ice and feast your ears on some Bajan gems from 2016’s Crop Over celebration, which wrapped this week on the streets of Bridgetown.

Hear The Songs

Lil Rick, ‘Iz A Bajan’

Hyperactive and hyper-productive — he graced revelers with nearly a dozen hits this Crop Over season — veteran party-starter Lil Rick won multiple Carnival titles with this vigorous homage to patriotism, an ideal tune for Barbados’s 50th anniversary of independence.

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Peter Ram, ‘Good Morning’

“Show them how we does jump up, show them how we does free up,” croons Peter Ram in a tune demanding to be sung along with (especially when it creates dulcet harmony from the word “gross”). The operative word here is “them”: Carnival is about community, so either you get it and you’re with us, or you don’t — and, alas, you’re one of them.

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Marvay, ‘Know The Face’

Ever danced with so many people for so many days, after so many alcoholic beverages at so many different Crop Over fetes — and you just know you know this person you’re wining on yet can’t quite figure out where you know her from, or whether you ever knew her name? This groovy soca song is for you.

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King Bubba, ‘Calling In Sick’

No one can craft a tribute to rum like King Bubba, and this robust hit — designed to maintain high energy levels during the Grand Kadooment parade on Carnival day — upholds his gold standard. “Rum is me only medicine,” sings the King. Nuff said.

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Stiffy, ‘Tek Off Something’

If there were a soca cartoon, Stiffy — with his ribald lyrics and over-the-top stage persona — would be it. This omnipresent Crop Over jam instructs revelers to take off something and “pelt it ‘way,” which might be a metaphor for shedding oneself of all negativity (“bad mind,” as West Indians say) during the life-affirming ritual that is Carnival. Or maybe it’s just license for revelers to liberate themselves from even more articles of clothing.

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Fadda Fox, ‘Dirty Habits’

Here’s the beauty of Carnival: it’s that time of year when the “nasty, dirty habits” that Fadda Fox sings of here — strong rum, dancing a little, er, too close — aren’t really nasty or dirty at all, just standard seasonal bacchanal. Call it Carnival catharsis.

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Marzville feat. Snap Brandy, ‘Bang Bim’

Behold an irrepressibly catchy song containing barely a complete word but plenty of monosyllabic ejaculations — perfect, in other words, for making revelers do as they should during Carnival: shut up and wine.

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Leadpipe & Saddis, ‘Dreams’

The melodies, the harmonies, the sweet and smooth sound of this tune — it’s like Barbadian sugar for the ears.

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DJ Private Ryan, ‘Scorch Summer 16’

Non-Bajan alert! DJ Private Ryan is Trinidadian, and he’s the Funkmaster Flex of soca: the man with the mix everyone is listening to, pre- and post-Carnival. Scorch, meanwhile, is the A-list brand of Carnivals Caribbean-wide — the promotion company with the fetes everyone is trying to get into. Bring them together and behold a soca-driven musical mix that’s nothing short of indispensable.

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August 5, 2016

Best of the Week: Everything You Need to Know About 'Suicide Squad,' the Latest on 'The Avengers' and More

Olympic Opening Ceremony Kicks Off In Brazil

Transcript

U.S. Economy Continues Growth Ahead Of Presidential Election

Transcript

Zika Cases Surge In Puerto Rico As Mosquitoes Flourish

From The 2016 Crop Over Festival, A Feast of Caribbean Soca Music

Hear The Songs

Lil Rick, ‘Iz A Bajan’

Peter Ram, ‘Good Morning’

Marvay, ‘Know The Face’

King Bubba, ‘Calling In Sick’

Stiffy, ‘Tek Off Something’

Fadda Fox, ‘Dirty Habits’

Marzville feat. Snap Brandy, ‘Bang Bim’

Leadpipe & Saddis, ‘Dreams’

DJ Private Ryan, ‘Scorch Summer 16’