I'm Michel Martin and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. Today, as you would expect, we are continuing to follow events in Moore, Oklahoma, where residents are recovering from the impact of a deadly tornado. We decided to call on leaders from Joplin, Missouri. Two years ago today that town was also hit. So we thought this would be a good time to check in on Joplin's recovery and see if there are any lessons Joplin residents can offer their neighbors.
As Moore, Oklahoma continues to recover after this week's deadly tornado, survivors of the 2011 Joplin, Missouri tornado are marking the second anniversary of that disaster today. Host Michel Martin discusses Joplin's recovery, and what lessons it might hold for Oklahoma, with Joplin Mayor Melodee Colbert Kean and school superintendent C.J. Huff.
Finally today, I'm still thinking about that massive Powerball jackpot last weekend. That caused me to think about what's wrong with Powerball — the most important thing, of course, being the fact that I didn't win. You know you feel the same way. I'm sure I would have been a good winner. Like Oprah, I would use my powers for good and not evil. Like, I might buy a Bentley out of the showroom window, just to prove to myself that I could. But then I'd settle down and endow scholarships, and fix up blighted storefronts, and invest in local businesses.
Now we'd like to turn to a story that more than five months later is still painful. In the aftermath of the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School last December, the Newtown, Connecticut community had many tough decisions to make. One of them was just what should happen to the elementary school where 26 people were killed.
Debris litters a park adjacent to a neighborhood that was destroyed by Monday's tornado in Moore.
Credit Rick Wilking / Reuters/Landov
Volunteers form a chain as they retrieve clothing and other household items at a home destroyed by a tornado, across the street from Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore, Okla., on Wednesday.
Credit Adrees Latif / Reuters/Landov
A resident walks past a fallen roof after salvaging belongings from her home in Moore. The National Weather Service said Monday's tornado produced winds in excess of 200 mph, making it a top-of-the-scale EF5.
Credit Adrees Latif / Reuters/Landov
A sign reads "God Bless Moore" as workers make repairs to Warren Theatre after the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore was devastated by a tornado. The massive tornado on Monday afternoon flattened entire blocks of the town, killed at least 24 people and injured about 240.
Credit Rick Wilking / Reuters/Landov
Jon Booth carries debris from his mother's tornado-destroyed home across the street from Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore.
Credit Ed Zurga / EPA/Landov
Pastor Roger Murphy unloads a truck full of goods donated by Caliber Collison of Fort Worth, Texas at OKC Faith Church in Oklahoma City. The goods will be delivered to Feed the Children to be distribute to help the Moore, Oklahoma tornado victims.
Credit Jewel Samad / AFP/Getty Images
Electric company employees work to restore power in a tornado devastated neighborhood on in Moore. As rescue efforts in Oklahoma wound down, residents turned to the daunting task of rebuilding a US heartland community shattered by a vast tornado that killed at least 24 people.
Credit Jewel Samad / AFP/Getty Images
Tornado victim Todd (who only gave one name) looks through a pile of clothing at a road side relief camp in Moore. The twister, two miles across, flattened block after block of homes as it struck mid-afternoon on Monday, hurling cars through the air, downing power lines and setting off localized fires in a 45-minute rampage.
Credit Charlie Riedel / AP
Susan Kates salvages items from a friend's tornado-ravaged home on Wednesday in Moore, Okla. Cleanup continues two days after a huge tornado roared through the Oklahoma City suburb, flattening a wide swath of homes and businesses.
Credit Rick Wilking / Reuters/Landov
Volunteers form a chain as they retrieve clothing and other household items at a home destroyed by a tornado, across the street from Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore, Okla., on Wednesday.
The powerful tornado flattened entire blocks in the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore. Early Wednesday, the death toll remained at 24, with scores more people injured and displaced.
Luke Tanner, 7, gets vaccinated for measles at a clinic near Swansea, Wales, in April. Wales is at the center of a measles outbreak that has been linked to one death.
Great Britain is in the midst of a measles epidemic, one that public health officials say is the result of parents refusing to vaccinate their children after a safety scare that was later proved to be fraudulent.
More than 1,200 people have come down with measles so far this year, following nearly 2,000 cases in 2012. Many of the cases have been in Wales.
The wait is over for many Xbox fans. Yesterday, Microsoft unveiled its next generation Xbox gaming console. It's called Xbox One. It's the first major revamp of the gaming system since 2005. In our business bottom line, NPR's Laura Sydell reports the new Xbox is designed to be an all-in-one system, an entertainment hub for movies, TV and games that should appeal as much to grandparents as it does to children.
This illustration from 1846 shows a starving boy and girl raking the ground for potatoes during the Irish Potato Famine, which began in the 1840s.
Credit Marco Thines/Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung
Plant pathologists sequenced the genome of 19th century potato specimens like this one from London's Kew Gardens herbarium, collected during the height of the Irish famine in 1847.
Credit Wikimedia Commons
The funguslike organism Phytophthora infestans causes potato leaves to decay and tubers to rot.
An international group of plant pathologists has solved a historical mystery behind Ireland's Great Famine.
Sure, scientists have known for a while that a funguslike organism called Phytophthora infestans was responsible for the potato blight that plagued Ireland starting in the 1840s. But there are many different strains of the pathogen that cause the disease, and scientists have finally discovered the one that triggered the Great Famine.
Internal Revenue Service Director of Exempt Organizations Lois Lerner as she was sworn in at a hearing held Wednesday by the House Committee On Oversight & Government Reform.
In Orlando, Fla., early Wednesday "an FBI agent was involved in a deadly shooting connected to the Boston Marathon bombing case," NBC News is reporting. A man who was being questioned by the agent is dead. NPR's Dina Temple-Raston and Carrie Johnson have also confirmed the news.
Just how firm the man's alleged connection to the marathon case is, though, remains unclear.
David Greene talks to Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin about the cleanup and recovery efforts in her state after Monday's tornado that devastated the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore.
Yo La Tengo has been able to stick together and make music on its own terms for more than 20 years; in today's climate, that's as rare as it is impressive. In an interview for KCRW, singer Ira Kaplan said the band likes to keep its process in the air and of the moment.
The next mayor of Los Angeles will be City Councilman Eric Garcetti.
In a race in which the two top contenders were both Democrats, the 42-year-old Garcetti has opened a 7- to 8-percentage-point lead over City Controller Wendy Greuel as Tuesday's votes are being counted.
The latest episode of Q2 Spaces takes us to Washington state's Puget Sound and the small sailboat where musician, composer and producer Jherek Bischoff was raised — and to his Seattle apartment, where he surrounds himself with instruments and not much else.
As you heard, repairing the physical damage to Moore, Oklahoma will take a long time. Reducing that time and the damage these storms cause is something Andrew Graettinger is working on. He's a civil engineer, a professor at the University of Alabama, and he was part of a study that looked at the structural impact of the 2011 tornados that ripped through Joplin, Missouri and Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He joins us now. Good morning, Dr. Graettinger.
Finding a parking space, probably not at the top of the list of things you like to do. Well, experts in parking think they might be able to change that. One key, they say, is for developers to think about the parking experience when they're designing malls or apartment complexes, instead of just treating it as an afterthought.
This came up in Florida this week, at the International Parking Institute's annual conference. Reporter Kenny Malone, from member station WLRN, was there.
The Treasury Department's inspector general, who faulted the IRS for flagging conservative groups for extra scrutiny, is now investigating how the agency is monitoring the political activities of tax-exempt groups. These so-called social welfare organizations are not supposed to be primarily about politics, although many seem to be.
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Good morning. I'm David Greene.
LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:
And I'm Linda Wertheimer.
This week, Boy Scouts of America officials will meet in Texas to consider changing the group's longstanding ban on gay members. The first round of voting starts tomorrow. A new membership policy would allow gay youth, but continue to ban adult leaders who are gay.
Here's some news for travelers. If you can't afford or don't want to pay the price for a hotel room, maybe you've used the cheap lodging site Airbnb. If so, you have to take New York City off your list. The popular website has suffered a major setback in court. A judge in New York ruled that an Airbnb user in Manhattan violated local laws when he rented a room to an out-of-towner.
Well, our wings have been clipped by some listeners. Yesterday, we told you about how some scientists in Canada saw their research crops destroyed by geese. We used the term Canadian geese. Listeners like Frank Cohen said we got that wrong.
FRANK COHEN: They're not Canadian geese. They're Canada geese because they don't hold passports, as far as I know, and it's not a nationality. It's a species name
