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Puerto Rico, In the News for the Wrong Reasons | On The Media | WNYC Studios

Activists hold up the Puerto Rican flag during a protest outside the Connecticut state Capitol on Wednesday, Feb. 28, 2018.
( Susan Haigh / AP Images ) Summary Transcript

It seems that Puerto Rico gets a surge of mainstream news coverage whenever President Trump tweets insults about the island’s struggles after the force of Hurricane Maria. This week, he claimed that his administration’s response was an “unsung success” and then — facing the criticism that nearly 3,000 people died in the aftermath — he claimed on Twitter that the death toll was a fabrication by Democrats.

What to do but despair? Yarimar Bonilla, in a Twitter thread and a Washington Post column, argues that Trump’s lies could be an opportunity. Instead of allowing the president to drag the debate back to the basic facts of Maria, she talks to Bob about how Puerto Ricans and their allies could harness the attention for deeper understanding of how the island’s problems do not begin or end with President Trump.

This segment is from our September 14th, 2018 episode, Doomed to Repeat.

Why the Business Press Didn’t Warn Us | On The Media | WNYC Studios

September 14, 2018

Ten years ago this week, the Wall Street investment firm Lehman Brothers collapsed, setting in motion the financial crisis that devastated the world’s economy. The news coverage reflected a state of abject shock. And yet, many of the warning signs had been there all along — with some reporters claiming that they had, indeed, been pointing them out.

So why the disconnect? Bob speaks with Dean Starkman, author of The Watchdog That Didn’t Bark: The Financial Crisis and the Disappearance of Investigative Journalism, who says that the very nature of business journalism in the lead up to the crisis can offer us some clues about what went wrong — and how it might go less wrong in the future.

This segment is from our September 14th, 2018 episode, Doomed to Repeat.

Doomed to Repeat | On The Media | WNYC Studios

Russ Lewis covers his eyes from a gust of wind and a blast of sand as Hurricane Florence approaches Myrtle Beach, S.C., Friday, Sept. 14, 2018. ( David Goldman / AP Images )

The anniversary of a disaster gives us a moment to reflect on whether we have learned the right lessons — or any at all. This week, we examine the narratives that have solidified ten years after the financial crisis, and one year after Hurricane Maria.

1. Political anthropologist Yarimar Bonilla [@yarimarbonilla] on how we can focus our attention on Puerto Rico’s structural challenges even as the president spouts falsities about the “unsung success” of the federal response to Hurricane Maria. Listen.

2. Dean Starkman [@deanstarkman], author of The Watchdog That Didn’t Bark: The Financial Crisis and the Disappearance of Investigative Journalism, on how the signs of the financial crisis had been visible leading up to it but many journalists were looking elsewhere. Listen.

3. Brown University professor Mark Blyth [@MkBlyth] takes on the most popular narratives of the financial crash. Listen.

4. Copenhagen Business School business historian Per Hansen on Hollywood’s depiction of the board room and Wall Street from 1928 to 2015. Listen.

A year after Maria | Public Radio International

Tanzina Vega, the host of The Takeaway, is in Puerto Rico reporting on how attitudes on the island have shifted since Hurricane Maria. Vega tells host Marco Werman that since residents have had to fend for their own in the wake of the disaster, they’ve by necessity become more self-reliant.

Hear from people at the front lines of climate change

Leo Cerda is pictured at a San Francisco demonstration pushing for action on climate change in September 2018. Credit: Elena Graham/PRI

PRI’s The World September 19, 2018 · 3:00 PM EDT By Carolyn Beeler

Billions of people all over the globe are already feeling the impacts of climate change — from the deserts of Somaliland to the peat bogs of northern Canada. Here are some stories from the front lines of climate change that we gathered at the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco in mid-September (listen to each person talk by clicking the audio players below the images).

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Films capture Hurricane Maria’s health impact on Puerto Ricans

Alberto Rodríguez engineered his own electrial system to care for his wife. They’re featured in a new, short documentary from Univision. Credit: Screengrab from video

PRI’s The World September 21, 2018 · 4:15 PM EDT By The World staff

Alberto Rodríguez has designed an impressive power system for his home in Puerto Rico. A wind turbine and solar panels lead to batteries that are then converted to power for the home.

But Rodríguez isn’t trying merely to keep the lights on — he’s trying to keep his wife, Mirella, alive. Mirella suffered a stroke about a month after Hurricane Maria came ashore last year. Maria knocked out power to their home, and so if Mirella was to come home from the hospital, Rodríguez had to find a way to generate a stable power supply.

So he did.

…(read more).

Antarctic ice loss climbing at faster rate than scientific community first thought in western side of continent

Snow is blown off of the calving front off of Thurston Island in western Antarctica in this photo, taken in November 2014. New findings show the western side of Antarctica to be more vulnerable to warming oceans — and increased ice loss — than first thought by the scientific community. Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center / CC BY 2.0

Living on Earth July 07, 2018 · 7:00 AM EDT By Stephen Schmidt

To someone living in the Earth’s Northern Hemisphere, ice loss in Antarctica may seem like a distant area of concern.

Not true, says Andrew Shepherd.

Shepherd, a professor of Earth observation at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom, recently led a group of 80 researchers stationed across the planet to collect data, observations and insights into the ice loss of the Antarctic Ice Sheet.

…(read more).

Climate change clues in Greenland | Public Radio International

Scientists used to think that the Greenland ice sheet wouldn’t melt even if the world warmed up significantly. Now a group of researchers isn’t so sure, and they’re hunting around for more clues to what may lie ahead for the huge island and for us. Janet Babin reports in the second of her three-part series on Greenland, New York and climate change.

Refugee crisis hits record number of displaced persons globally

CGTN America
Published on Sep 27, 2018

For a fifth year, global refugee numbers have reached a new, record high. Some 68.5 million people are now displaced by violence or persecution. With crises emerging and hot spots growing, the United Nations is trying to contain a problem that has no easy solution.