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Sports March 29, 2019

How Katie Sowers Became The Second Woman To Coach Full-Time In The NFL

NPR’s Audie Cornish speaks with Katie Sowers about how she became the second woman in history to hold a full-time coaching position in the NFL.



AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

Katie Sowers knows football. She grew up playing in her backyard with her twin sister in Kansas City, Mo.

KATIE SOWERS: Any chance that we had, we would go one-on-one, put, you know, helmet, pads – everything – and just, you know, go as hard as we could at each other.

CORNISH: She went on to play with the best – for the Kansas City Titans and internationally for the U.S. Nearly two years ago, she joined the San Francisco 49ers as an offensive assistant, making her the second woman in history to hold a full-time NFL coaching position. Then just last week, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers hired two female coaches. News like that feeds Katie Sowers’ optimism about the future of women in coaching. But it’s not an easy path for anyone. Sowers told me she got her big break when she met Scott Pioli. He’s now assistant general manager for the Atlanta Falcons.

SOWERS: I really got to know him. He got to know me, about my passion, my love for football, my love for coaching. And he really became my mentor. And if it wasn’t for him, I would definitely not be where I am today. There was a point where, you know, I owned a home. I was the athletic director for the city of Kansas City. You know, I had a mortgage to pay. And this opportunity came up in Atlanta to be an intern. And a lot of people don’t know this, but he actually paid for my rent in Atlanta so that I would be able to afford my mortgage that I was still trying to pay. And, you know, I was blessed to have such a great mentor in my life.

CORNISH: What strikes me about your story is that it’s in fact probably not unusual, right? Like, (laughter) I’m sure a lot of young male coaches, someone takes them under their wing.

SOWERS: Yeah. This is a world of its not necessarily what you know but who you know that really opens the doors for you. And I’m not saying that you don’t have to know anything. But if you work on yourself and you get everything in line that you need, you continue to learn, build yourself, that other stuff follows when you network and you find those right people that are really willing to reach back and help you up.

CORNISH: So that last part is probably the most important. And I ask because, you know, for instance, in the NFL they have a diversity coaching fellowship, right, that was established back in the late ’80s. But you haven’t seen a pipeline of women marching into the league and coaching positions.

SOWERS: Right.

CORNISH: So where do you think it falls apart? Is the idea that, well, we can’t have a woman ’cause she won’t have pro experience? Or we can’t have a woman ’cause she won’t have coached enough? Or we can’t – like, what follows that, we can’t have a woman because?

SOWERS: It’s an assumption that we can’t have a woman because she’s not as knowledgeable. She doesn’t know the game. She doesn’t have the experience. And that’s my own opinion because no one’s ever told me a woman can’t. It’s just what I observe. I think we live in a society where it’s often assumed that men know things until they prove they don’t, and it’s assumed women don’t know things until they prove they do. And that hinders a lot of opportunities.

CORNISH: We heard about your experience in the positive, meaning, a coach takes you under his wing, helps you as you work your way up. What has been your experience in terms of encountering sexism? Like, when you have maybe interviewed for other kinds of coaching jobs, what have you been told?

SOWERS: I actually – I won’t mention what team it was, but I did interview with a team prior to coming to San Francisco. And the interview went extremely well. And I sat down with one of the coaches, and he said that they were actually shocked by how much they really liked me and said they would love to maybe open up opportunities for me down the road, but at that moment that they weren’t ready to have a female on staff. And I absolutely respected their honesty because they could have easily just told me, you know, someone else was better fit for the position and moved on. But…

CORNISH: Did they say why they weren’t ready?

SOWERS: They felt like they knew that I had a background with Kyle.

CORNISH: Kyle Shanahan. He’s head coach of the 49ers.

SOWERS: Right. And they felt like it was going to be a better situation for me to not pass up that opportunity to come with Kyle. Because, you know, it’s kind of like a been there, done that, thing. They know how it goes. Which, what teams will start to find is it’s really not different to have a woman on staff. It’s just like everybody else. But it’s new.

And, you know, it was interesting ’cause I told that to Coach Turner, who’s our running backs coach, and we had some really interesting conversation just about some of the similarities that he faced, you know, as an African-American male trying to get into the coaching world about 40 years ago or 47 years ago, or something like that. So it was really a unique conversation, and I appreciated going through that experience but I know it’s something that hopefully down the road other women won’t have to encounter.

CORNISH: That’s Katie Sowers. She’s an assistant coach for the San Francisco 49ers. Thank you for sharing your story with us.

SOWERS: Thanks so much for having me.

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 March 29, 2019

Republican Strategist Antonia Ferrier Discusses Trump’s Push For New Health Care Law

NPR’s Audie Cornish speaks with Republican strategist Antonia Ferrier about President Trump’s push for Republicans to come up with a health care law that could replace the Affordable Care Act.



AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

It’s deja vu all over again, is most often attributed to baseball great Yogi Berra, but it could just as easily be attributed to anyone following the GOP and health care this week. Earlier, the Trump administration revived its efforts to wipe out the Affordable Care Act, this time by supporting a ruling by a federal judge that the ACA is unconstitutional because of changes to tax law. Now, the move this week caught just about everyone by surprise, but especially congressional Republicans. As he did last time, the president is promising that Republicans will replace the ACA with something better.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We are going to be, the Republicans, the party of great health care.

CORNISH: Antonia Ferrier is a veteran of congressional Republican leadership. She worked with Senator Majority Leader Mitch McConnell the last time Republicans tried to repeal and replace the ACA. She joins us now in the studio. Welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.

ANTONIA FERRIER: Thank you for having me.

CORNISH: So your former boss, Majority Leader McConnell, told reporters that he hopes the president can work something out with Speaker Pelosi. Does that mean he’s sitting this one out?

FERRIER: Well, the reality is that Congress is split in two; the House is controlled by Democrats, the Senate is controlled by Republicans. And if this is something the president wants – it’s his – absolutely his prerogative; he is the president of the United States – then he’s going to have to come to a deal with the speaker. They are the most – two most important people here. And as you did point out, Senate Republicans did try to repeal and replace, and that’s not a deja vu all over again that they would like to experience.

CORNISH: Oh, really? OK.

(LAUGHTER)

CORNISH: So the problem has not been coming up with a plan; the problem is coming up with a plan that anyone can agree on, even within the Republican conference.

FERRIER: Correct.

CORNISH: But has that calculus even changed? I mean, nowadays you have Democrats talking about “Medicare for All.” So it’s a different environment, isn’t it?

FERRIER: It absolutely is. Look, I think the president is right. There needs to be a focus in the Republican Party to figure out what we are for. I think that’s useful.

CORNISH: Why don’t they know? It’s been almost a decade.

FERRIER: (Laughter) Well, that’s a very good question. You know, politics is something – I’m sure your viewers are going to be – listeners, I should say, are going to be shocked to hear that sometimes the easiest political play is to attack policy. And I think, from the Affordable Care Act, when it was passed, it was the largest expansion of government in a generation, and Republicans simply did not support that. The question of what happens once you have a huge new entitlement put into place, pulling it back and replacing it with something else – that’s a whole different ballgame.

So I think it’s very hard at this point to fully repeal and replace this law because states and people have become very used to it. Now, if the president wants to go to a place where he’s coming up with a different sort of idea in terms of coverage, I think that’s worthwhile.

CORNISH: We should point out that this is now heading towards an election year, right?

FERRIER: That’s right.

CORNISH: I mean, what kind of risk does this present for congressional Republicans, that this could be an issue?

FERRIER: Well, I think it’s going to be an issue for both sides because Republicans will attack, as you pointed out…

CORNISH: But Democrats ran and won on it in 2018.

FERRIER: That is absolutely true. But since 2018, the Democrats – and many of them have come out in support of Medicare for All and endorsed the idea of getting rid of private insurance. So I think the waters are pretty muddy. But the reality is, do we really think this is going to happen with Nancy Pelosi being in the House? It seems pretty slim. I think there’s probably more likelihood that I’m going to wake up tomorrow and look like Gisele Bundchen than we’re going to get Nancy Pelosi and Donald Trump to agree on a health care plan.

CORNISH: This has been a failed promise from the Republican Party.

FERRIER: That’s right.

CORNISH: Is this an embarrassment? Is this is a problem, to keep going back to it?

FERRIER: It’s a problem to keep going back for it if they fail, but it’s not a problem if it’s just to present a vision. And if you’re a president running for re-election, as Donald Trump is, maybe this is really about presenting a vision, given the fact that the House is controlled by Democrats.

CORNISH: Antonia Ferrier is a veteran Republican strategist. She’s now a partner at Definers Public Affairs. Thank you for speaking with us.

FERRIER: Thank you so much for having me.

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 March 28, 2019

Wells Fargo CEO Quits In Wake Of Consumer Financial Scandals

Wells Fargo CEO Timothy Sloan is questioned by the House Financial Services Committee earlier this month. He will step down immediately, the company announced Thursday.

J. Scott Applewhite/AP


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Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan will step down immediately, the company announced Thursday.

“It has become apparent to me that our ability to successfully move Wells Fargo forward from here will benefit from a new CEO and fresh perspectives,” Sloan said as part of the announcement.

He is the second Wells Fargo CEO to resign in about 2 1/2 half years, as the big bank has been buffeted by scandals. The most prominent involved bankers creating deposit and credit card accounts for millions of customers without their knowledge.

Wells Fargo was ordered to pay $185 million in penalties and fines in 2016 for creating unwanted accounts by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Earlier this month, Sloan testified before Congress, assuring the House Financial Services Committee that “Wells Fargo is a better bank than it was three years ago, and we are working every day to become even better.”

But lawmakers from both political parties were skeptical.

And a few days later, the company revealed in a filing to a government regulator that Sloan would be getting a $2 million bonus for 2018.

That prompted California Democrat Maxine Waters, who runs the House Financial Services Committee, to call for him to be “shown the door.”

The troubles have been mounting for Wells Fargo over the years.

In an unrelated case, the consumer bureau also imposed a $1 billion fine against Wells Fargo for overcharging customers for mortgages and auto loans. The fine was part of a larger settlement of charges the bank originated and sold mortgage loans that included false information in the years leading up to the financial crisis.

Sloan took over as CEO when John Stumpf stepped down in October 2016, in the wake of outrage over the accounts scandal.

Sloan said during the hearing that as many as 3.5 million unauthorized accounts had been opened, according to an audit.

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Health March 28, 2019

How A Lawsuit Challenging Obamacare Could Affect People With Pre-Existing Conditions

NPR’s Ailsa Chang talks with Sabrina Corlette from Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms about how a lawsuit against Obamacare could impact people with pre-existing conditions.



AILSA CHANG, HOST:

One of the central goals of the Affordable Care Act is to protect people with pre-existing conditions. That means insurers have to cover sick people. The Trump administration announced earlier this week that it supports a federal lawsuit challenging the existence of the ACA. Wiping out the health care law could mean that people with pre-existing conditions won’t be able to get coverage or will have to pay more for insurance.

To talk about all this, we’re joined now by Sabrina Corlette. She’s a professor at the Center on Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown University. Welcome.

SABRINA CORLETTE: Thank you.

CHANG: So we throw around this phrase a lot – pre-existing conditions – when we’re talking about health care. Can you just first lay out exactly what is a pre-existing condition?

CORLETTE: Well, that can be very much in the eye of the insurance company. In fact, before the Affordable Care Act, many companies maintained lists of up to 400 different conditions that might cause somebody to be denied a policy or to be charged more. And that could range from serious conditions like HIV, AIDS, hemophilia, cancer or could be fairly minor – asthma, glaucoma…

CHANG: Glaucoma.

CORLETTE: (Laughter) Exactly. All of those things could trigger what was called underwriting, where they would screen somebody out or carve out the treatment that you might need to treat that condition and not pay for it.

CHANG: And where did this idea of the pre-existing condition come from in the first place?

CORLETTE: Well, most insurance companies, their business model is based on avoiding risk. They worry that people will wait until they’re sick to sign up for coverage. So to protect themselves from that, they came up with a variety of tools that allow them to screen out people who might cost them money. And that includes denying policies.

It includes charging a higher premium than they would a healthy person. It could mean that they don’t cover certain parts of the benefit package. For example, if you had a history of asthma, they might say, well, we’ll cover you but nothing having to do with an upper respiratory condition.

CHANG: Right. But it sounds like what you’re saying is, this concept of the pre-existing condition, it’s an invention by the insurance industry. This is not some medical term from the medical profession. This is an insurance-invented word or idea.

CORLETTE: That’s absolutely right.

CHANG: So in a way, though, insurers have a point. It is more expensive to cover someone who has an illness.

CORLETTE: Yes, that’s right. And they do worry that, without certain protections in place, people will not buy coverage when they’re healthy and then, you know, when they’re in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, they’ll call up the insurance company and say, please sign me up for a policy. And if that happens, then the system just doesn’t work because premiums will be too expensive and unaffordable for everybody else.

CHANG: OK. But even if the Trump administration is successful in ending the Affordable Care Act in the courts, is it politically possible at this point to completely take away protection for pre-existing conditions because it’s popular among voters in both parties?

CORLETTE: Right. So if the court rules in favor of the Trump administration, these protections will be gone at the federal level. And so Congress would have to step in and restore them. Unfortunately, we have a pretty divided House and Senate, and it’s hard to imagine them coming to agreement. That said, interestingly, the number of states have stepped up to try to enact these protections at the state level.

But there are limits. For example, states are not allowed to pass laws that affect people with employer-based insurance. That’s really a federal responsibility. So states can protect people in the individual market – folks who are buying on their own. But for most of us in employer-based plans, that really would need a federal law change.

CHANG: Sabrina Corlette is a lawyer and professor at Georgetown’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms. Thanks so much for coming into the studio today.

CORLETTE: Thank you.

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 March 27, 2019

Companies Organize To Make It Easier To Buy Renewable Energy

Power lines and power-generating windmills rise above the rural landscape on June 13, 2018, near Dwight, Ill. Driven by falling costs, global spending on renewable energy sources like wind and solar is now outpacing investment in electricity from fossil fuels and nuclear power.

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Going green is often easier said than done, but a new business organization is hoping to change that. While focusing on large-scale energy buyers, the group plans to push for changes that could make renewable power more accessible for all Americans.

Companies from a variety of industries — including Walmart, General Motors, Google and Johnson & Johnson — are forming a trade association to represent firms that purchase renewable energy and remove barriers that make it complicated to shift away from carbon.

The new organization, the Renewable Energy Buyers Alliance, is building on years of work between corporations and climate advocacy nonprofits. Currently, about 200 companies, cities and universities are involved.

Miranda Ballentine, the CEO of the new trade group, says the organization will help push energy markets and public policies to make it easier to actually choose to buy green energy.

It’s harder than you might think for a company to choose renewables, Ballentine says.

“Especially in today’s day and age, when we see many renewable energy technologies that are meeting or beating brown [conventional] power prices, you would think, ‘Hallelujah! The day has come, clean energy is here, we can now just go out and buy it.’ But there are a number of barriers,” she says.

One is the way energy markets are set up. They vary by region — some areas allow more choice than others. But in many locations, buyers can’t select a source for the energy they get from a utility.

“They can’t actually say, ‘I want power from that wind project over there,’ ” Ballentine says. “They literally cannot contract directly for certain sources of power.”

In other cases, there are technological challenges. “Some renewable energy technologies like wind and solar don’t produce 24/7 — they produce when the sun is shining and when the wind is blowing,” Ballentine says. “And we as energy consumers … we need our power 24/7,” she says.

REBA hopes to flex its purchasing power to support technological innovation and push utilities to offer more green options — calling for changes to public policy where necessary.

“The demand side of the equation really has a unique role to play and really has a unique voice and ability to drive the clean-energy market,” Ballentine says.

Many companies have set green energy targets as part of overall sustainability efforts — whether out of a sense of corporate responsibility or in the pursuit of positive PR.

But Steve Chriss, director for energy and strategy analysis at Walmart, says there’s a financial calculation as well.

Walmart has “a great desire to operate as cleanly and sustainably as possible,” he says. “But we also want to operate at the lowest possible cost. With where renewable energy costs have come, we feel that in a number of markets renewable energy is going to be the best cost option.

“It’s not just a specialty play for the interests of a few [companies] who are really into it,” he says. “It’s really about a business play to deliver the lowest-cost resources possible.”

Walmart, operating on a massive scale, organizes multiple sources of renewable power — from rooftop solar to complex arrangements with utilities. Other companies might be interested in green power, but “don’t necessarily have the scale or capabilities of a Walmart” to pursue those options, Chriss says.

REBA will aim to open access to green energy to all its members, not just the most powerful mega corporations.

“As access points increase, more gets done, economies of scale drive lower costs,” Chriss says. “We try to look towards … getting to where renewables can be the lowest-cost resource in every market.”

Priya Barua, a senior manager for utility innovation at the World Resources Institute, says the work of the new trade group could have implications well beyond its members. The institute is one of the four nonprofits that helped establish REBA.

“It’s not just creating options for [corporate and industrial] customers, but using their collective buying power … to create options in the market that would benefit everybody.”

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Health March 27, 2019

Federal Judge Again Blocks States' Work Requirements For Medicaid

Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin, a Republican, speaks to state legislators in 2018. Bevin, who is running for re-election this fall, asked the federal government to impose work requirements on many people who receive Medicaid. Bevin’s predecessor, a Democrat, did not seek these requirements when he expanded the program under the Affordable Care Act.

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For a second time in nine months, the same federal judge has struck down the Trump administration’s plan to force some Medicaid recipients to work to maintain benefits.

The ruling Wednesday by U.S. District Judge James Boasberg blocks Kentucky from implementing the work requirements and Arkansas from continuing its program. More than 18,000 Arkansas enrollees have lost Medicaid coverage since the state began the mandate last summer.

Boasberg said that the approval of work requirements by the Department of Health and Human Services “is arbitrary and capricious because it did not address … how the project would implicate the ‘core’ objective of Medicaid: the provision of medical coverage to the needy.”

The decision could have repercussions nationally. The Trump administration has approved a total of eight states for work requirements, and seven more states are pending.

Still, health experts say it is likely the decision won’t stop the administration or conservative states from moving forward.

In a statement, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma suggested the rulings would not dissuade her efforts to approve work requirements in other states.

Many health law specialists predict the issue will ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court.

Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin, a Republican, has threatened to scrap the Medicaid expansion unless his state is allowed to proceed with the new rules; if he follows through with that threat, more than 400,000 new enrollees would lose their health coverage. He said the work requirement would help move some adults off the program so the state has enough money to help other enrollees.

Bevin, who is running for re-election this fall, had threatened to end the Medicaid expansion during his last campaign but backed off that pledge after his victory.

Arkansas officials have not said what they plan to do.

In his decision on Kentucky, Boasberg criticized HHS officials for approving the state’s second effort to institute work requirements partly because Bevin threatened to end the Medicaid expansion without it.

Under this reasoning, the judge said, states could threaten to end their expansion or do away with Medicaid “if the Secretary does not approve whatever waiver of whatever Medicaid requirements they wish to obtain. The Secretary could then always approve those waivers, no matter how few people remain on Medicaid thereafter because any waiver would be coverage-promoting, compared to a world in which the state offers no coverage at all.”

The decision by federal officials in 2018 to link work or other activities such as schooling or caregiving to eligibility for benefits is a historic change for Medicaid, which is designed to provide safety-net care for low-income individuals.

Top Trump administration officials have promoted work requirements, saying they incentivize beneficiaries to lead healthier lives. Democrats and advocates for the poor decry the effort as a way to curtail enrollment in the state-federal health insurance entitlement program that covers 72 million Americans.

Despite the full-court press by conservatives, most Medicaid enrollees already work, are seeking work, go to school or care for a loved one, studies show.

Critics of the work policy hailed the latest ruling, which many expected since Boasberg last June stopped Kentucky from moving ahead with an earlier plan for work requirements. The judge then also blasted HHS Secretary Alex Azar for failing to adequately consider the effects of the policy.

“This is a historic decision and a major victory for Medicaid beneficiaries,” said Joan Alker, executive director of the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families. “The message to other states considering work requirements is clear — they are not compatible with the objectives of the Medicaid program.”

Sally Pipes, president of the conservative San Francisco-based Pacific Research Institute, called the ruling “a major blow” to the Trump administration but said this won’t end its efforts. “The Department of Health and Human Services is very committed to work requirements under Medicaid,” Pipes said.

“It is my feeling that those who are on Medicaid who are capable of working should be required to work, volunteer or take classes to help them become qualified to work,” she added. “Then there will be more funding available for those who truly need the program and less pressure on state budgets.”

Several states, including Virginia and Kentucky, have used the prospect of work rules to build support among conservatives to support Medicaid expansion, which was one of the key provisions of the Affordable Care Act. That expansion has added more than 15 million adults to the program since 2014.

Previously the program mainly covered children, parents and the disabled.

Particularly irksome to advocates for the poor: Some states, including Alabama, which didn’t expand Medicaid, are seeking work requirements in the traditional Medicaid program for parents who have incomes as low as $4,000 a year.

The legal battle centers on two issues — whether the requirements are permissible under the Medicaid program and whether the administration overstepped its authority in allowing states to test new ways of operating the program.

Alker said that state requests for Medicare waivers in the past have involved experiments that would expand coverage or make the program more efficient. The work requirements mark the first time a waiver explicitly let states reduce the number of people covered by the program.

States such as Kentucky have predicted the new work requirement would lead to tens of thousands of enrollees losing Medicaid benefits, though they argued that some of them would get coverage from new jobs.

Under the work requirements — which vary among the states in terms of which age groups are exempt and how many hours are required — enrollees generally have to prove they have a job, go to school or are volunteers. There are exceptions for people who are ill or taking care of a family member.

In Arkansas, thousands of adults failed to tell the state their work status for three consecutive months, which led to disenrollment. For the first several months last year, Arkansas allowed Medicaid recipients to report their work hours only online. Advocates for the poor said the state’s website was confusing to navigate, particularly for people with limited computer skills.

While the administration said it wanted to test the work requirements, none of the states that have been cleared to begin have a plan to track whether enrollees find jobs or improve their health — the key goals of the program, according to a story in the Los Angeles Times.

Craig Wilson, director of health policy at the Arkansas Center for Health Improvement, a nonpartisan health research group, said he believes policymakers will appeal court rulings all the way to the Supreme Court.

“As long as they hold on to hope that some judge will rule in their favor, states will continue to pursue work requirements,” Wilson said.

Kaiser Health News is a nonprofit news service and editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation. KHN is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

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Sports March 27, 2019

America's Favorite Pastime Is Back — And Some Wish It Would Just Hurry Up!

A pitch clock behind home plate at Scottsdale Stadium in Arizona, spring training home of the San Francisco Giants. As part of Major League Baseball’s efforts to increase the game’s pace of play, pitch clocks were used on an experimental basis at some spring training games. But the experiment ended in mid-March.

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Baseball is back. Thursday is opening day for the major leagues. All 30 teams are in action. And while the cry of “play ball!” sounds throughout the majors, baseball officials hope the game embraces a companion cry of “hurry up!”

Since 2014, the average time of a nine-inning game has hovered at or above three hours, which may be driving away the younger demographic baseball is trying to appeal to.

When Commissioner of Baseball Rob Manfred made a recent spring training swing through Arizona, he acknowledged pace of play is one of the trends of the game that the league watches carefully.

“We’re thinking we can make small changes in what is still the greatest game in the world,” Manfred told reporters, “in order to make our entertainment product more competitive.”

Baseball unveiled one of those changes during spring training.

It didn’t last long.

Watching the clock on a beautiful day

Earlier this month, it was a classic spring training day in Scottsdale, Ariz. Fans at the San Francisco Giants home park, Scottsdale Stadium, lounged under a hot sun at a game between the Giants and the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Baseball fans lounge on blankets beyond the center field wall at Sloan Park, the spring training home of the Chicago Cubs, in Mesa, Ariz.

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There’s a lot of lounging during spring training. Families sat on blankets on a grassy slope out past the center field wall. Standing nearby, longtime Giants fan Ryan Koven sipped a Pacifico beer and gazed toward home plate.

“You’re supposed to forget time at a baseball game,” Koven said, taking in the scene. “You’re supposed to relax and forget time.”

Which is why Koven, 34, was agitated. That doesn’t happen often at spring training. He watched as a large clock, near home plate, ticked down from 20 seconds every time the pitcher got the ball from the catcher.

“It’s very distracting; I’m looking at it right now,” Koven said, adding, “I’m looking at the pitcher and I see it ticking down, 10 … 9 … 8 … this is a very unbaseball experience right now!”

On this day, it was early in the pitch clock experiment. The clock has been used in the minor leagues for a few years to make pitchers and batters work faster. But not in the majors. And there was grumbling in Arizona, from the stands to major league clubhouses.

“I think this is a big game changer,” said Chicago Cubs pitcher Kyle Ryan, standing in front of his locker. “[Baseball] is America’s sport. [It] kind of stinks seeing it change. But, it is what it is.”

Actually, it isn’t anymore.

The baseball players union shared Ryan’s distaste for the pitch clock. MLB ended the spring training experiment in mid-March, agreeing not to implement it through the 2021 season.

Baseball still wants to hurry up

But baseball officials still are committed to the idea behind the clock — speeding up the game, and specifically, eliminating dead time. They want crisp play for all fans, but especially device-toting young ones who, the reasoning goes, want action and want it now!

Back at Scottsdale Stadium, Giants fan Koven questioned that stereotype.

“I think young people can appreciate tradition,” he said, “and they can get into things that have a history. I think you can sell an old game with a history better than you can speed up an old game, or change an old game to fit new people’s tastes.”

San Francisco Giants fans Aman Grewal (left) and Ryan Koven (right) watch a spring training game at Scottsdale Stadium. Both were against the pitch clock, which was introduced at the beginning of spring training to speed up the game and then discontinued in mid-March.

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“I don’t think that’s a hard sell for young people. I think they may be going at it the wrong way.”

Koven’s friend, 32-year-old Aman Grewal, agreed.

“I still think I’m young,” Grewal said, “and I enjoyed the game the way it was without a pitch clock, for instance.”

Grewal said if baseball wants to appeal more to younger fans, do like the NBA: Make videos and clips of action more available. And, he said, baseball is too buttoned up and needs to let the players have fun.

“When a player does a bat flip and people freak out,” Grewal said, “traditionalists freak out. You know, it’s 2019. They’re pro athletes. Let them entertain.”

Entertain faster

In nearly Mesa, Ariz., lifelong Chicago Cubs fan Bob Weinberg watched a game at the Cubs’ Sloan Park. He has a different, and perhaps surprising take on speedy baseball. Weinberg is 61, a time of life when you really shouldn’t care how long a baseball game takes.

But Weinberg does.

“I love coming out here. I love being outdoors,” said Weinberg. “I’m retired now and living the dream, as they say. But I also understand why people who are younger, without the attention span, don’t want to sit and watch all the downtime in an MLB game.”

Weinberg said constant pitching changes are a major culprit in slowing down baseball.

“I was at a game last year in Milwaukee,” he said. “Brewers and somebody. It was an 8-2 game in the eighth inning and they brought in three pitchers to face three batters. And when you see that, it’s not about the competition or the entertainment. … I’m not sure what it’s about.

“I’ve never, ever walked into a ballpark, and I’ve been to thousands of games, never heard a little kid say to his dad, ‘Gee, Daddy, I hope we see eight pitching changes today!” Weinberg added, sarcastically: “That’s always so exciting to see, that manager walk out of the dugout and wave his arm to the bullpen — that’s my favorite part of the game!”

Weinberg is glad officials are tweaking the rules, even though the pitch clock has gone away. This season, the number of pitcher’s mound visits he jokes about will be reduced. Also, breaks between innings will be shortened.

A little too fast?

Weinberg, who wants the game sped up, and Grewal and Hoven in Scottsdale, who don’t, defy generational stereotypes. But some fit.

Sixty-four-year-old Ned Yost is a baseball lifer. Since 2010 he has been the Kansas City Royals’ manager. At a spring training media event, he answered a few questions about pace of play. Finally, he got fed up.

“I don’t know, man. You want to speed it up?” he asked. “Make it a seven-inning game. That’ll speed it up.”

That may be a little too much, too fast. But such is the debate, as baseball strolls, a little more briskly, into 2019.

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Business March 26, 2019

Boeing 737 Max Software Fix And Report On Fatal Crash Expected This Week

This Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 Max 8, seen last Saturday, is one of those grounded following the crash that killed 157 people.

Mulugeta Ayene/AP


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Boeing says it has a software fix ready for its 737 Max airplanes that will be unveiled to airline officials, pilots and aviation authorities from around the world Wednesday, as the aircraft manufacturer works to rebuild trust among its customers and the flying public following two fatal crashes of the planes in recent months.

Meanwhile, those crashes and the relationship between Boeing and the federal agency charged with regulating it will be discussed at a U.S. Senate aviation subcommittee hearing on Wednesday. Scheduled to testify are the heads of the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board, along with the Transportation Department’s inspector general, who is investigating how the FAA went about certifying the 737 Max as airworthy, and whether regulators relied too heavily on Boeing’s own safety assessments in their review.

Those developments come as transportation authorities in Ethiopia prepare to release preliminary findings on the cause of the crash of an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 Max 8 plane earlier this month that killed all 157 people on board.

A spokesman for Ethiopia’s transport ministry told The Associated Press “a date has not been set but (the preliminary report) will be released later this week.” The spokesman says the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, France’s aviation investigative authority BEA and Ethiopia’s Transport Ministry have been conducting the investigation jointly.

The investigators have said there were striking similarities between the March 10 crash outside of Ethiopia’s capital city Addis Ababa and the crash of a Lion Air Boeing 737 Max 8 into the Java Sea in Indonesia last October. Both planes crashed shortly after takeoff and both followed similar, erratic flight tracks in the air that indicate the pilots may have been struggling to try keep the planes from going into nosedives.

In the Lion Air jet crash Oct. 29, which killed all 189 people on board, Indonesian investigators say an automated flight control system, acting on erroneous data from a faulty sensor, repeatedly forced the nose of the plane down. That system, called MCAS, for Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, is designed to prevent the airplane from stalling. But the Lion Air pilots apparently did not know how to counteract the system or disengage it, and were in a futile struggle to regain control of the plane.

After the Lion Air crash, many pilots complained that had not been made aware of the MCAS system, as it did not exist on previous versions of the 737, nor had they been trained on what to do when the system engages and forces the nose of the plane downward unexpectedly.

It still is not clear if something similar happened on the Ethiopian Airlines jet but the company’s CEO says pilots had been trained on how to handle the new system after the Lion Air crash.

Boeing officials say the company has completed developing software upgrades for MCAS aimed at preventing such occurrences in the future. The system will no longer act repeatedly in forcing the nose of the plane and will act just once if detecting the plane entering an aerodynamic stall. And the MCAS system will rely on data from the two angle of attack sensors on the plane, instead of just one.

In addition, a warning light that alerts the pilot when the angle of attack sensors disagree will become standard instead of being a more expensive option for airlines to purchase, and it will be added to the entire fleet of 737 Max aircraft for free.

A Boeing official says the software upgrades have undergone extensive lab and simulator testing, with pilots in a simulator facing a series of errors and failures, including sensor errors and other erroneous inputs.

The Boeing official says the FAA participated in the evaluation, even demonstrating the software upgrades during a test flight on March 12.

It is unlikely that the FAA will act quickly in certifying the software upgrades and other fixes, especially considering the scrutiny of the certification process coming from Congress and others. And regulators in Canada, Europe, China and other countries say they will no longer rely on FAA data and will conduct their own tests of the MCAS software updates before allowing Boeing’s 737 Max planes in the air again. As a result, some experts say it could be months before the airplanes are allowed back into service.

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Health March 26, 2019

Women Tell FDA That More Research Is Needed On Health Risks Of Breast Implants

Advisers to the FDA concluded a meeting Tuesday on the safety of breast implants. What’s emerged is a lack of scientific certainty about the risks implants pose to millions of women who have them.



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Advisers to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration have spent two days focusing on the safety of breast implants. What’s emerged is a lack of scientific certainty about the risks implants pose to the millions of women who have them. NPR’s Patti Neighmond reports.

PATTI NEIGHMOND, BYLINE: The panel heard from manufacturers, plastic surgeons, researchers and women who got implants for reconstruction after mastectomy or for cosmetic reasons. Tara Huppco (ph) told the panel she was a healthy mom and bodybuilder in her mid-30s when she decided to get implants for aesthetic reasons. Problems started just weeks after surgery, when she became extremely exhausted and could no longer remember the names of colleagues at work.

TARA HUPPCO: I had panic attacks that woke me in the night and anxiety that kept me shut in in my house. My hair stopped growing. My vision was blurry. I couldn’t eat without pain and nausea. Every morning, getting out of bed, my legs were numb and my feet burned.

NEIGHMOND: Huppco was one of dozens of women to address the panel about a range of autoimmune-related symptoms, often called Breast Implant Illness. She had her implants removed about a year ago.

HUPPCO: My symptoms are almost all gone. I am the person that I used to be. And if I knew anything of what could have happened, I would have said, no, thank you to my implants.

NEIGHMOND: Like most women who spoke, Huppco implored the FDA to look more closely at safety concerns and move right away to take textured implants off the market. These implants have a bumpy surface to help them stay in place, but there’s an increasing number of anecdotal reports suggesting they cause autoimmune illness. They’ve also been linked to a very rare cancer of the immune system.

Even so, most members of the panel say there’s not enough evidence yet to rush textured implants off the market and that larger, longer-term studies are needed. Reina Doria (ph) with the implant manufacturer Mentor says the company provides patient education brochures to doctors to help patients understand potential risks of implants.

REINA DORIA: There may be a gap between what we are providing and what information is reaching the patients. We believe the best way to ensure patient understanding of risk is for them to have a conversation directly with their surgeon.

NEIGHMOND: The FDA panel is not expected to make specific recommendations about implants at this point. It is expected to call for more research into implant safety. Patti Neighmond, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF NOUVELLE VAGUE’S “MANNER OF SPEAKING”)

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