July 26, 2019

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Sports July 26, 2019

The Latest From This Year’s Tour De France

NPR’s Ari Shapiro talks with Damian McCall of the Agence France Presse to give us the latest developments from the Tour de France after a stage of the race was cancelled due to extreme weather.



ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

Cyclists in this year’s Tour de France have faced some of the hottest temperatures in France’s history. Then, today, it was snow and hail that led officials to stop the race midway through. That decision meant a new cyclist is now wearing the yellow jersey just two days before the race wraps up. Agence France Presse’s Damian McCall is in the Alps covering the race.

Welcome back to the program.

DAMIAN MCCALL: Hello, everybody. Here from the Alps. You’re quite right. The heat wave yesterday, when it was about 100 Fahrenheit, made way to hail, rain and floods. It’s pretty cold here. It must be about 55 degrees Fahrenheit.

SHAPIRO: And what impact did that have on the riders?

MCCALL: Well, it had a massive impact on the writers because a key stage of the race, about – let’s say about 5 kilometers after the young Colombian Egan Bernal launched his astonishing attack, there was a sudden hailstorm on the other side of the mountain. So there was two riders racing downhill at 90 kilometers an hour. That’s very fast, indeed, on racing bicycles.

SHAPIRO: And that’s dangerous in good weather, but when you’ve got ice and snow on the road, that seems extremely treacherous.

MCCALL: Yeah. There’s been a kind of slide. You know, we’re above the tree lines, so you’ve got this sort of gray rock on the mountains. Imagine the kind of shale on the mountainsides that sort of poured down onto the roads. So for about 100 meters of hailstone and shale blocking the road, it was impassable. There was no way they could have done anything with it. The race organizers scrambled to send the motorbike after the two leaders and tell them to stop.

SHAPIRO: Just to stop in the middle of the race? Wow.

MCCALL: Yeah. So what they did was they neutralized the race, and they took the times at the crest of the summit that they’d just crossed. And the riders didn’t know what was going on. And Bernal and Yates refused to stop initially. They said – they’re two young riders saying, no, no, no. No way, not now. We’re not stopping now (laughter). And they said, it’s OK, mate, don’t worry. You’re going to have the yellow jersey because we’re taking the times from the final crest.

So it was very peculiar. It’s unprecedented in the Tour de France. So we do now have a new yellow jersey. Julian Alaphilippe’s 14-stage tenure is done and dusted. France’s dreams are in tatters (ph).

SHAPIRO: And do you think this is going to change the final calculation of who wins?

MCCALL: Absolutely. So whoever comes out on top tomorrow night will be the winner. And right now Bernal has a 46-seconds lead. If – there may be one last twist in the tale. You never can tell with sport, sport being sport being sport. But my money, firmly – you know, mortgage your house; put it on, again, Bernal.

SHAPIRO: For a long time in this race, it looked like it was going to be the first time in years a Frenchman won. Now that that Frenchman no longer looks to be the favorite, are French people feeling a little bit crushed?

MCCALL: They will be feeling crushed because what happened today was really heartbreaking for them. Before Alaphilippe snapped on that climb, the other French rider they thought would be in with a chance if Alaphilippe snapped pulled out of the race with a torn muscle in his thigh. You know, he was actually in tears on the bicycle. And these guys are some of the toughest athletes you can possibly imagine. For him to clamber into the back of a team car, absolutely broken, really hurt a lot of French fans. And so, yeah, their dreams are gone. There’s no Frenchman in the reckoning.

SHAPIRO: Damian McCall is a reporter with Agence France Presse covering the Tour de France.

Thank you so much.

MCCALL: Thank you and bye-bye.

Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

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 July 26, 2019

The U.S. Has Nearly 1.9 Billion Acres Of Land. Here’s How It Is Used

The U.S. is a big place, nearly 1.9 billion acres. Stacey Vanek Smith and Cardiff Garcia from NPR’s daily economics podcast, The Indicator, look at how all that land is divvied up.



MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

There are 1.9 billion acres of land in the continental United States. But how does that land get used? The co-hosts of NPR’s daily economics podcast The Indicator, Stacey Vanek Smith and Cardiff Garcia, use a familiar fast-food meal to answer that question.

CARDIFF GARCIA, BYLINE: The U.S. is enormous. It’s hundreds of millions of acres big, and it’s full of resources, not to mention some of the most productive land on Earth.

STACEY VANEK SMITH, BYLINE: And this got us thinking. The U.S. has all of this land, and it’s been such an amazing resource for the country and for the economy. How exactly are we using this resource? And Cardiff, I will present you with the object that I think best represents how we use land in the U.S. But, first, I want to speak with Lauren Leatherby. She’s a data journalist from Bloomberg News. And she went through the reports issued from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

It’s about 1.9 billion acres of land that we’re dealing with, entirely. What was the biggest use of land in the U.S.?

LAUREN LEATHERBY: Cattle.

VANEK SMITH: Cattle (laughter).

LEATHERBY: Just livestock in general. About 41% was used for either grazing or to grow food for livestock – was, really, pretty surprising to us.

VANEK SMITH: What was the second biggest use of land in the U.S.?

LEATHERBY: Forestland. And that’s a combination of unprotected forestland, which means that it’s not a part of a national park or state park, and about 14% was owned by corporations. But it was quite striking to see this massive chunk of the U.S. designated as forestland, and about 2% of that goes away and then comes back every year (laughter) – gets replanted.

VANEK SMITH: (Laughter).

But that still leaves us with about 700 million acres. So what is the third biggest use of land in the U.S.?

LEATHERBY: So that’s cropland. Cropland is about a fifth of the U.S. But what’s interesting is that the amount of food that we eat from all of that cropland, a lot of it is used for livestock. And so that’s corn for livestock, soy for livestock.

VANEK SMITH: All told, that is nearly 1.6 billion acres of land for just those three uses. And then we get to a relatively small category, which is urban areas.

LEATHERBY: That’s by far the fastest growing. In the past 10 years, it’s been growing at a rate of about 1 million acres per year. So that’s the size of about Phoenix and LA and Houston combined, every year, growing in urban area.

VANEK SMITH: After going over the land use data myself, I came up with this object that I think really represents in one word – I guess it’s actually two words – how we use land in the U.S. It’s a Happy Meal. OK, so the main events of the Happy Meal is of course the beef burger.

GARCIA: Yes.

VANEK SMITH: And this is of course the largest use of land in the U.S. – that is, cow pasture – 654 million acres, plus the feed for the livestock, which is 127.4 million acres. And then of course there is the paper that the Happy Meal box is made out of. That is the second largest use of land in the U.S. – unprotected forest. That’s 538.6 million acres. Wheat for the bun – 21.5 million acres. Also in the box – the fries. A million acres of potatoes are grown in the U.S.

But also, private land ownership, which is also on the rise. Most of the top landowners in the U.S. are cattle ranchers and oil barons. So if we add all of these things up together, that is roughly 1.5 billion acres of land of the 1.9 billion available all wrapped up in this Happy Meal.

GARCIA: Cardiff Garcia.

VANEK SMITH: Stacey Vanek Smith, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

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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Health July 26, 2019

Dialysis Firm Cancels $524,600.17 Medical Bill After Journalists Investigate

Sovereign Valentine, a personal trainer in Plains, Mont., needs dialysis for his end-stage renal disease. When he first started dialysis treatments, Fresenius Kidney Care clinic in Missoula charged $13,867.74 per session, or about 59 times the $235 Medicare pays for a dialysis session.

Tommy Martino/Kaiser Health News


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Tommy Martino/Kaiser Health News

Fresenius, one of the two largest dialysis providers in the U.S., has agreed to waive a $524,600.17 bill for a man who received 14 weeks of dialysis at a clinic in Montana.

NPR, Kaiser Health News, and CBS This Morning told Sovereign Valentine’s story this week, as part of the “Bill of the Month” series, a crowdsourced investigation that seeks to understand the exorbitant health care bills faced by ordinary Americans.

On Thursday, a representative from Fresenius told Sovereign’s wife, Dr. Jessica Valentine, that the company would waive their unpaid bill. Instead, they will be treated as in-network patients, and Fresenius will seek to negotiate with their insurer a rate higher than what the insurer has already paid. The Valentines are responsible only for their $5,000 deductible, which Sovereign, who goes by “Sov,” has already hit for the year. That leaves them with $0 left to pay on their in-network deductible.

“It’s a huge relief,” Sov said. “It allows me to put more energy back into just taking care of my health and not having stress hormones raging.” Sov said he hopes his experience will shed light on the problem of balance billing and help other patients in similar situations.

A 50-year-old personal trainer, Sov was diagnosed with kidney failure in January and sent for dialysis at a Fresenius clinic 70 miles from his home in rural Plains, Mont. A few days later, Sov and Jessica learned that the clinic was out-of-network and that they would be required to pay whatever their insurer didn’t cover.

The Valentines initially could not find an in-network option, and Sov needed dialysis three times a week to survive. After he underwent 14 weeks of dialysis with Fresenius, the couple received a bill for $540,841.90. Their insurer, Allegiance, paid $16,241.73, about twice what Medicare would have paid. Fresenius billed the couple the unpaid balance of $524,600.17 — an amount that is more than the typical cost of a kidney transplant.

Fresenius charged the Valentines $13,867.74 per dialysis session, or about 59 times the $235 Medicare pays for a dialysis session.

Fresenius spokesman Brad Puffer said that the Valentines should always have been treated as in-network patients because their insurer, Allegiance, is a subsidiary of Cigna, which has a contract with the dialysis company. Under this contract, Fresenius would have been paid a higher rate than what Allegiance paid. The Valentines, he said, were caught in the middle of a contract dispute between the companies.

“In the future, we pledge to better identify situations where we believe the insurer has incorrectly classified one of our facilities as being out of network,” Puffer said in a statement. “This will allow us to address the matter directly with the insurer in the first instance, without them placing the patient in the middle.”

Allegiance declined to comment for this story. Jessica Valentine questioned whether they may owe an out-of-network deductible and is waiting to hear what her insurer says about that.

Like her husband, Jessica is relieved that their bill seems to be resolved but worried that other people with bills like theirs might not be so lucky. She’s also grateful for all the attention their story has garnered. Montana Sen. Jon Tester’s office and their hospital’s insurance broker both offered to advocate for them. “And a nephrologist from Pennsylvania called me at work and expressed outrage and said she forwarded on our story to the medical director of Fresenius on our behalf,” Jessica wrote in an email.

Now that his bill has been resolved, Sov said he’ll be focusing on the next step in battling his kidney disease: a transplant. “I can just save my energy for that,” he said.

Bill of the Month is a crowdsourced investigation by NPR and Kaiser Health News that dissects and explains medical bills. Do you have an interesting medical bill you want to share with us? Tell us about it!

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Entertainment July 26, 2019

Tamino: Tiny Desk Concert

Credit: NPR/Shuran Huang

I was thrilled to have the gifted voice of Tamino gracing the Tiny Desk. But as charged as I was, that didn’t match the excitement that Colin Greenwood expressed as we rode up the elevator. The Radiohead bassist (and bassist for this special performance) shared a brief text exchange with his son, basically telling his hugely accomplished dad that playing the Tiny Desk was “the coolest thing he’d ever done!” That made us all smile.

The attraction that brought Colin Greenwood and these other musicians to bond with Tamino, a young singer of Belgian, Egyptian, and Lebanese descent, is his voice; it’s inescapable. For me a reference point is Jeff Buckley; they both have a way of soaring into the upper registers and into the ether; it’s stunning. I first heard Tamino perform live at a convention center in Austin; he transformed and transcended the relatively soulless space.

The songs performed at the Tiny Desk by the 22-year-old singer come from both a 2018 EP titled Habibi and later that year an album titled Amir. His use of that falsetto had some faces in the NPR audience gasping in astonishment. There’s a yearning in Tamino’s songs that I don’t often hear in popular music — he makes every vowel count. There’s nothing casual about his expressions, whether he’s singing about a sweetheart in the song “Habibi” or despair turned to joy in “Indigo Night.”

Some of the inspiration for Tamino’s approach comes from his heritage and in particular his grandfather Muharram Fouad, a well-known Egyptian singer known as “The Sound of the Nile.” It was his late grandfather’s old guitar that Tamino had first played. He got to know his grandfather’s music through his cassettes. Tamino would later incorporate what he heard into his songs. It’s ageless music that Tamino makes — it’s melodies feel well worn, but it’s also vibrant and intoxicating.

SET LIST

  • “Habibi”
  • “Tummy”
  • “Indigo Night”

MUSICIANS

Tamino: vocals, guitar; Colin Greenwood: bass; Ruben Vanhoutte: drums; Vik Hardy: piano, vocals;

CREDITS

Producers: Bob Boilen, Morgan Noelle Smith; Creative Director: Bob Boilen; Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin; Videographers: Morgan Noelle Smith, Kara Frame, Bronson Arcuri; Associate Producer: Bobby Carter; Production Assistant: Paul Georgoulis; Photo: Shuran Huang/NPR

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