Dallas Morning News reporter Alfredo Corchado talks with NPR’s Michel Martin about President Trump’s meeting with President Enrique Pena Nieto at the G-20 summit amid tensions over the border wall.

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

We’ve got one more story coming out of the G-20. A bit of a surprise was President Trump’s down with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto on Friday. Now, this comes after a visit between the two that had been set for Washington, D.C., earlier this year was canceled because of the ongoing dispute about that border wall that President Trump wants Mexico to pay for. Just before their meeting started on Friday, reporters asked President Trump if he still intended to have Mexico pay for the war, and he said, absolutely. But according to official reports of the meeting, the wall didn’t come up.

Curious about the disconnect, we called Alfredo Corchado, who covers the border and Mexico for the Dallas Morning News. I started by asking him about reaction to the meeting in Mexico because the Mexican press had called it a humiliating moment.

ALFREDO CORCHADO: Another humiliating moment. And it wasn’t just Mexico who covered it. I mean, it was covered all over the world. And I think that’s the strategy behind, you know, the Mexicans once again trying to show that the two countries have a relationship. And to be fair to the Mexicans, I think optics aside, officials on both sides will agree that the relationship has improved from January, from that encounter that never happened in D.C. And I think they’re learning that to deal with President Trump, you focus on what he does and not what he says. But even that one word – absolutely – just played all over the world. And, you know, Mexico again had egg on his face.

MARTIN: Do we know about what they did talk about? They say – both sides actually say, like, they didn’t talk about this border wall or this proposed tax on Mexican imports. But what did they talk about? I mean, we say that, for example, President Trump’s long talked about his displeasure with the U.S. trade deficit with Mexico. He says he wants to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement or NAFTA. Did they talk about this?

CORCHADO: Yeah, they talked about that. I mean, officially, the officials will say, you know, from both sides the meeting was very productive, emphasizing how things are well between both countries. There is something that the foreign minister from Mexico spoke to Mexicans during a radio interview which I thought was interesting. It wasn’t really covered by the White House press, but apparently they talked about the need for a guest worker program, something similar to the Bracero Program which from 1940 to the 1960s, 5 million Mexicans received contracts to work in the United States legally as seasonal workers.

And that’s interesting because in the last few years, we’ve seen that the Mexicans coming to the United States has really fallen to an all-time low throughout the United States whether, whether it’s the meatpacking industry in the Midwest or the agricultural fields in Central California. So there is a kind of a growing sense of nostalgia for the Mexicans. I think employers are beginning to really miss the Mexicans. And the fact that the two sides even broached the issue I thought was quite significant.

MARTIN: Alfredo Corchado is the former Mexico bureau chief for the Dallas Morning News. He’s currently a correspondent covering the Borderlands and Mexico. He’s writing a forthcoming book about the U.S.-Mexico relationship. And he was kind enough to join us from El Paso. Alfredo, thanks so much for speaking with us.

CORCHADO: Thank you, Michel.

Copyright © 2017 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.

Carol McDaniel has a perennial challenge: Attracting highly specialized acute-care certified neonatal nurse practitioners to come work for Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, Fla.

They are “always in short supply, high demand, and [it is a] very, very small group of people,” says McDaniel, the hospital’s recruitment director.

So, about six months ago, McDaniel says, the hospital started using a new recruitment tactic: It buys lists of potential candidates culled from online profiles or educational records. It then uses a technology to set up a wireless fence around key areas where the coveted nurses live or work. When a nurse with the relevant credentials enters a geofenced zone, ads inviting them to apply to All Children’s appear on their phones.

The system also automatically collects data from the user’s cellphone so it can continue to advertise to them, even after they leave the geofenced area.

The result? She’s getting responses from three to four job candidates a week; she got almost none before.

As the unemployment rate falls and fewer people are jobless, recruiters are using increasingly aggressive and innovative ways of trying to get the attention of potential job seekers — and mobile phones are becoming a key part of how that is done.

Geofencing uses GPS and radio frequency identification to set up a virtual, wireless perimeter — around an event, a zip code, a neighborhood — so that people in that area receive messages or advertisements on their cellphones. The technology is perhaps best known for its use sending coupons to potential customers passing by stores.

McDaniel says she loves how targeted the technology is. She even tries to poach workers by sending ads to nurses as they go to work at rival hospitals. And because it’s so targeted, she says, it’s far more cost-effective.

“We have invaded their space in which they live and work, so it’s a much better use of our dollars,” she says. “We’re not just throwing out a wide net and seeing who comes through the pipeline.”

McDaniel admits it’s a bit creepy and “Big Brotherish,” but says people who respond say they’re flattered because, unlike a general advertisement, it’s directed at them. And, if they don’t like it, they can simply opt out.

“A lot of people look at it as a compliment, and it makes them kind of feel good for the day. ‘Wow, Johns Hopkins reached out to me,’ ” she says.

Salt Lake City trucking firm C.R. England has been using the technology for a couple of years, setting up geofences around truck stops and other areas where it needs to recruit more drivers, who are always in short supply.

C.R. England competes with much bigger companies, and drivers might switch employers over a slight increase in pay, or an extra rest day between runs. So reminding drivers of opportunities at the company is key, says Wayne Cederholm III, vice president of driver recruitment.

“There’s not a lot that differentiates these carriers, so the smallest thing can make a big difference,” he says. Also, because 75 percent of job applications come via mobile phones these days, that has become central to recruitment, Cederholm says.

That is especially true for those recruiting among the younger workers, whose gateways to the world are their phones.

“People really don’t spend nearly as much time on the traditional job boards,” says Jacob Rhoades, vice president of marketing for Parker Staffing Services in Seattle. The company saw a 40 percent increase in Web traffic and an uptick in resumes after it set up geofences this spring at area college graduations.

“It’s tough for a small business, especially in the Seattle hiring market, to get our name out there, considering we compete against companies like Amazon,” Rhoades says.

And the price is unbeatable. His latest experiment in geofencing was more effective and cheaper — as little as half a cent per view — than traditional campaigns he’s done before.

With a pledge to move on from the internal combustion engine, Volvo announced Wednesday that it’s going all electric. The company says all the vehicles it makes will be electric or hybrid starting in 2019. The development comes as Tesla prepares to sell its first mass market electric car later this month.

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

Volvo, the maker of sturdy, boxy, safe, if sometimes boring cars is going electric. The Swedish car company says all of its vehicles will have electric technology by 2019. NPR’s Sonari Glinton has more.

SONARI GLINTON, BYLINE: There are essentially three big stories in the car business right now – electric cars, China and self-driving. And this one story has all three. Here’s Volvo’s CEO, Hakan Samuelsson, to kick off the electric part of this story.

HAKAN SAMUELSSON: We are making a strategic change in the future of our development. All cars released to the market after 2019 will be electrified.

BRIAN MOODY: Well, it is a big deal on the one hand. But on the other hand, it sort of depends on what they mean by all-electric.

GLINTON: Brian Moody is with Autotrader. Now, Volvo says it’s not exactly going to be Tesla overnight. Essentially the company will move to have all its cars be fully electric plug-in hybrids or hybrids. The company is easing away from the internal combustion engine. And Moody says increasingly we probably won’t notice.

MOODY: It will begin even more so the idea of mainstreaming electric cars to the point where we’re just thinking of the car and how it works regardless of how it’s powered.

GLINTON: OK, now the China part. Joel Levin is with Plug In America. It’s a group that advocates for electric car drivers. Volvo has a Chinese owner, Geely. And Levin says China right now is full steam ahead when it comes to electric cars.

JOEL LEVIN: My expectation is that a lot of these cars that Volvo is going to be producing are intended for the Chinese market, not for the U.S. market. So partly, Volvo is making a deeper commitment to the Chinese market with electric cars.

GLINTON: All right, let’s count here – electric, China. Oh, Brian Moody with Autotrader says if the cars are electric, it’s easier for them to drive themselves.

MOODY: The self-driving car leader needs to have a certain amount of electrification in the car. The more crude a car is, the more analog, for lack of a better word, that a car is, the harder it’s going to be to produce these systems that will make it drive by itself.

GLINTON: The analysts say Volvo won’t move to electric cars immediately. It’ll be gradual. They’ll slide in there. Sonari Glinton, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “ELECTRIC BOOGIE”)

MARCIA GRIFFITHS: (Singing) You got to feel it.

UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) It’s electric.

Copyright © 2017 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.

The Pentagon may soon be prohibited from using anti-virus software and other products from Kaspersky Lab. The Moscow-based company is alleged to have ties to the Kremlin, which Kaspersky denies.

KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:

Other than vodka, the Russian product most familiar to Americans is probably the antivirus software made by Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab. And the Pentagon might soon be prohibited from using any Kaspersky products. The House and Senate Armed Services Committees have both just approved such a ban for the military. They cite ties to the Kremlin, which Kaspersky denies. NPR’s David Welna has our story.

DAVID WELNA, BYLINE: Things began to look bad for Kaspersky Lab in the middle of a hearing that the Senate intelligence committee held in mid-May. Six intelligence agency chiefs sat at the witness table, and Florida Republican Marco Rubio had a question for all of them.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

MARCO RUBIO: Kaspersky Lab software is used by, if not hundreds of thousands, millions of Americans. To each of our witnesses, I would just ask, would any of you be comfortable with Kaspersky Lab software on your computers?

WELNA: Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats was the first to answer.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

DAN COATS: A resounding no for me.

WELNA: Then National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

MICHAEL ROGERS: No.

WELNA: One by one, all six said no. For James Lewis, a cybersecurity expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the chorus of no’s came as no surprise, given that the firm’s owner, Eugene Kaspersky, studied at a KGB cryptography institute.

JAMES LEWIS: And he still has a company that operates out of Moscow. So for an intelligence agency, those are going to be red flags.

WELNA: Lewis says his own suspicions about Kaspersky were piqued by a conversation with Russia’s ambassador to the U.N.

LEWIS: One day, he came up to me and he said, in Russia, we have saying that once you are a member of security service, you never leave. And I said, well, that’s not true in the U.S. And he said, well, it should be. And then he walked off. And as he was walking away from me, I thought, what did he just tell me about Eugene Kaspersky?

(SOUNDBITE OF YOUTUBE VIDEO)

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Please put your hands together for Kaspersky Lab’s very own chairman and CEO, Eugene Kaspersky.

WELNA: A video that Kaspersky Lab posted last year on YouTube shows the company’s owner striding onto a stage in front of employees with its North American division. Kaspersky’s message to them was the world needs our products.

(SOUNDBITE OF YOUTUBE VIDEO)

EUGENE KASPERSKY: The world is vulnerable. It’s a dark age of the cybersecurity.

WELNA: Kaspersky Labs said its CEO was not available to talk to NPR, but his firm did issue a statement saying, quote, “it is completely unacceptable that the company is being unjustly accused without any hard evidence to back up these false allegations.” Over the weekend, Kaspersky told the Associated Press that reports were true that FBI agents had recently visited at least a dozen Kaspersky employees in the U.S. And while Kaspersky also acknowledged having former Russian spies on his staff to the AP, he denied any wrongdoing.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

KASPERSKY: The company stays on the bright side of the cybersecurities. So we do all the best to protect our customs. We stay in the bright side and never, never, never go to that dark side.

WELNA: Some who know the firm well hold it in high regard.

RICK HOLLAND: Kaspersky in the cybersecurity community has a very good name.

WELNA: That’s Rick Holland at Forrester Research. He tracked Kaspersky Lab for years.

HOLLAND: I know many people that work there. I know many Americans that work there, so they’re thought very highly of. But given the political climate, it’s kind of not surprising that you would see this come up again.

WELNA: And despite doubts about Eugene Kaspersky, cybersecurity expert Lewis has praise for his firm.

LEWIS: They make a good product. They do good research. I use some of their research myself. So there’s no question about the company or what it makes. There’s questions about where it happens to be headquartered.

WELNA: Do you use Kaspersky to safeguard your computer?

LEWIS: (Laughter) No.

WELNA: The Pentagon has not said whether it uses Kaspersky products, but the threat of a ban clearly has Eugene Kaspersky worried. He’s now offering to move more of his company’s research to the U.S. and even make its source code available for American officials to inspect. David Welna, NPR News, Washington.

MCEVERS: We should say Kaspersky Lab is among NPR’s financial supporters.

Copyright © 2017 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.

PHOTOS: Christie, family soak up sun on N.J. beach he closed to public https://t.co/cK4Thptfdq

— The Star-Ledger (@starledger) July 3, 2017

Gibson and Fender, two of the biggest companies making guitars are in debt. One reason is declining sales in electric guitars and the waning popularity of guitar heroes in popular culture.

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

This weekend, we asked you to hit us up on Twitter and let us know your favorite road trip songs. We’ll get to those in a few minutes. But first, we want to bring you a couple of stories about some new trends in music. For decades, one of the more defining sounds of American music has been the electric guitar.

(SOUNDBITE OF CHUCK BERRY’S “JOHNNY B. GOODE”)

MARTIN: The legends who played them, from Chuck Berry to Eric Clapton, inspired generations of would-be rockers. But now, electric guitar sales are down. And guitar heroes these days are harder to find. NPR’s Denise Guerra has this report.

DENISE GUERRA, BYLINE: For over a year, Geoff Edgers, arts reporter for The Washington Post, couldn’t shake a statistic out of his head.

GEOFF EDGERS: About 10 years ago, there were about a million and a half electric guitars sold a year. And last year, it was down to about a little over a million. So, you know, 500,000 fewer new guitars being sold, that struck me as dramatic.

GUERRA: That fact inspired him to spend a better part of a year to find out, what’s happened to the electric guitar? He’s talked to the big players in the industry, from the guitar makers – Gibson and Fender – to some guitar-playing legends, sellers and even spent time at the “School of Rock.” He’s found several reasons for the decline – over-production and new technology that can make a guitar sound without a guitar. But the biggest factor, Edgers says, is the lack of a modern day guitar hero.

(SOUNDBITE OF GUITAR)

EDGERS: What I found is a dramatic shift in the sort of role that the electric guitar plays in popular culture, not only in sales but just in, like, life.

GUERRA: Everyone’s definition of a guitar hero is different but only one really matters for retailers. Do they have the power to get people to go out and buy a guitar?

(SOUNDBITE OF GUITAR)

GUERRA: This is Jennifer Batten. She played lead guitar for Michael Jackson’s world tours in the ’80s and ’90s. She says the guitar hero of that era was Eddie Van Halen.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

JENNIFER BATTEN: He was the most innovative, had the most unique sound. He was the first one to have a really wacky paint job on his guitar and having one-piece overalls that were red and black and white. It was just so in your face and special.

GUERRA: The electric guitar was the coolest accessory any kid could have, and Van Halen wasn’t without company. There was Jimi Hendrix…

(SOUNDBITE OF JIMI HENDRIX’S “VOODOO CHILD”)

GUERRA: …Stevie Ray Vaughan…

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GUERRA: …Santana.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GUERRA: Nearly all guitar heroes of that era were men.

(SOUNDBITE OF GUITAR)

GUERRA: Jennifer Batten’s own guitar hero was a dude – Jeff Beck. He inspired her so much, she enrolled in the Guitar Institute of Technology in Los Angeles.

BATTEN: I didn’t realize till the class began that I was the only woman in the whole school. At that time, there was 60 students total – 59 guys and me.

GUERRA: That appears to be changing. Women could be the new hope for the electric guitar. That’s according to Luis Peraza of Atomic Guitar in Maryland. He’s been selling new and used guitars for 24 years. And about five years ago, he started noticing a trend.

LUIS PERAZA: There’s a lot of young women playing guitar and a lot of parents that like taking their kids to, like, these rock schools and camps.

GUERRA: Down the aisle, I found Anna Lachtichinina and Nick Duque testing out some models. Both are in their early 20s. I asked them if they can name any guitar players today with Van Halen-like status.

ANNA LACHTICHININA: There’s not really, like, prominent ones. You know what I mean?

NICK DUQUE: Super famous right now? I mean, I – oh, God. That’s a really hard question.

GUERRA: Geoff Edgers, The Washington Post reporter, says this sort of response really scares the guitar industry.

EDGERS: You know, the electric guitar is not going to go away completely, but you have to ask where it’s going to bottom out.

GUERRA: And that’s why the industry is desperate for a hero. Denise Guerra, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

Copyright © 2017 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.