Pynchon, Lahiri finalists for National Book Awards

United States author Jhumpa Lahiri poses with her book 'The Lowland' during a photocall for the shortlisted authors of the 2013 Man Booker Prize for Fiction at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, Sunday, Oct. 13, 2013. The media presentation of short listed authors is a tradition ahead of the the winner of the 50,000 pounds (US$80,000) prize being announced on Tuesday, Oct. 16. (AP Photo/Sang Tan)

United States author Jhumpa Lahiri poses with her book 'The Lowland' during a photocall for the shortlisted authors of the 2013 Man Booker Prize for Fiction at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, Sunday, Oct. 13, 2013. The media presentation of short listed authors is a tradition ahead of the the winner of the 50,000 pounds (US$80,000) prize being announced on Tuesday, Oct. 16. (AP Photo/Sang Tan)

NEW YORK (AP) — Thomas Pynchon, Jhumpa Lahiri and George Saunders were among the finalists Wednesday for the National Book Awards.

A month after releasing long-lists of 10 in each of the four competitive categories, the National Book Foundation announced the five remaining writers for fiction, nonfiction, poetry and young people's literature.

Winners receive $10,000 and will be announced at a dinner ceremony in Manhattan on Nov. 20.

All five fiction nominees are well established, from Pynchon, whose "Bleeding Edge" is set in Manhattan around the time of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks; to Lahiri, whose "The Lowland" was a Booker finalist; to Saunders, whose "Tenth of December" was the rare short-story collection to make-best seller lists. The other finalists are Rachel Kushner, nominated for her highly praised "The Flamethrowers," and James McBride, known to millions for "The Color of Water" and a finalist for "The Good Lord Bird."

The nonfiction list features three books by New Yorker staff writers: Lawrence Wright's Scientology investigation "Going Clear"; George Packer's dire account of contemporary America, "The Unwinding"; and Jill Lepore's biography of Benjamin Franklin's sister, Jane Franklin, "The Book of Ages." Also nominated for nonfiction are Wendy Lower's "Hitler's Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields" and Alan Taylor's "The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832."

For poetry, the finalists are Frank Bidart's "Metaphysical Dog," Lucie Brock-Broido's "Stay, Illusion," Adrian Matejka's "The Big Smoke," Matt Rasmussen's "Black Aperture" and Mary Szybist's "Incarnadine."

The young people's literature nominees are Kathi Appelt's "The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp," Cynthia Kadohata's "The Thing About Luck," Tom McNeal's "Far Far Away," Meg Rosoff's "Picture Me Gone" and Gene Luen Yang's "Boxers & Saints," a two-volume graphic novel.

Four of the fiction finalists were published by imprints of the recently merged Penguin Random House, which released 10 of the 20 nominees overall.

The long-lists were started this year as part of an effort to increase awareness of the awards and lead to more sales. New York publishers, several of whom are represented on the foundation's board, have complained that fiction nominees in recent years have been too obscure and have cited Britain's Man Booker Prize as a model. Besides establishing long-lists, the foundation has expanded the pool of judges, once exclusively fellow writers, to include journalists, booksellers and librarians.

The foundation would likely settle for the success of the National Book Award fiction winner from 2012, Louise Erdrich's "The Round House," which has sold more than 300,000 copies. Erdrich's publisher, HarperCollins, gave much of the credit to the award.

Honorary winners include Maya Angelou, whose medal will be presented by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, and E.L. Doctorow, who will be introduced by the publisher emeritus of The Nation and former National Book Award winner Victor Navasky.

The National Book Foundation, which presents the awards, is a nonprofit organization that sponsors numerous writing and educational events and programs.

Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2013-10-16-National%20Book%20Awards/id-a80ff05969b14391a0882db1e0d48d04
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Belgians Pretend To Be A Film Crew To Nab Suspected Pirates

Robert Siegel speaks with Nicholas Kulish of The New York Times about two suspected Somali pirates who were arrested in Belgium over the weekend after being lured as consultants for a movie based on the life of one of the alleged pirates.

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ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

One of the great conceits of crime fiction is the notion that criminals are often masterminds capable of cleverly outfoxing the cops who are pursuing them. In the real world, the contrary is closer to the truth. Criminals are often not too bright and they are capable of self-defeating stupidities.

The most recent evidence of that is the case of Mohamed Abdi Hassan, a Somali pirate. Abdi Hassan is now in custody in Belgium, having been lured there by a honey pot designed to trap the man who can steal just about everything else. His captors offered Abdi Hassan a movie deal.

New York Times reporter Nicholas Kulish, who's in Nairobi, has written about this. Welcome to the program once again.

NICHOLAS KULISH: Thanks for having me.

SIEGEL: And I want you to explain this: Mohamed Abdi Hassan was in Somalia, he was wanted for allegedly having ordered the seizure of a Belgian ship in 2009, how did the Belgians get him to fly to Brussels?

KULISH: Well, what they did was they came up with a ploy to lure him there, saying that they were working on a film - that they wanted him to come in star in a film about his glorious career as a pirate.

SIEGEL: And he bought this? He thought that they were for real?

KULISH: Well, they spent, you know, they spent months later the groundwork for this, slowly convincing him that they were for real. They first approached him through an associate who the prosecutors are describing as an accomplice.

(LAUGHTER)

SIEGEL: OK. So here is Mohamed Abdi Hassan and friend, thinking they've come to ink a movie deal, I guess, as Variety would say. They had seized a ship in 2009, held a ship and its crew for 70 days. How big a deal is Mohamed Abdi Hassan in the world of Somali piracy?

KULISH: You know, he's a very big deal. United Nations investigators have described him as, quote, "one of the most notorious and influential leaders," end quote, in the Hobiyo gang. He's alleged to have been involved in the hijacking of a Ukrainian transport ship with tanks on board, and of the Saudi-owned Sirius Star, a supertanker the size of an aircraft carrier.

SIEGEL: Now, if this weren't a real arrest with real consequences, and a real prosecution that we're told is going to come of that, I would suspect this is all promotion for the Tom Hanks movie, "Captain Phillips," that's opening, which is about an act of piracy by Somali pirates. A mere coincidence or did somebody play on jealousy among pirates, to make this fellow feel that he should have his own movie?

KULISH: I think that in this case the movie and other movies about Somali piracy - that are either in production or waiting to come out - sort of upped the plausibility factor; made it realistic that people will be trying to get him and to come and star this kind of film.

SIEGEL: Hey, by the way, I gather has a very colorful nickname.

KULISH: Yes, his nickname is Afweyne which means big mouth. And I guess that could describe the kind of greediness that a pirate may be known for.

SIEGEL: But he's retired as a pirate, I gather.

KULISH: Yeah. You know, he announced at the beginning of the year, the end of last year he announced that he was retiring after eight years in the lucrative business.

SIEGEL: I gather the Belgian prosecutor who announced all this was proud of the ruse. Fair to say?

KULISH: You got a sense from the prosecutor's comments that they were pretty proud of their stratagem. You know, he wanted everyone to know that it was the movie deal that lured them there. It wasn't a bland news conference but a little bit of crowing, you might say.

SIEGEL: But I assume this is the last time that prosecutors will be able to use the movie deal lure to get a pirate out of Somalia to Europe.

KULISH: I imagine if you were a Belgian documentary filmmaker working on a movie about pirates, you would be pretty unhappy today.

SIEGEL: Nicholas Kulish, thanks for talking with us. That's New York Times reporter Nicholas Kulish in Nairobi, talking about the case of Mohamed Abdi Hassan now in custody in Belgium, where he'll be tried for his alleged past acts of piracy.

Thanks for talking with us.

KULISH: Thanks a lot for having me.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

SIEGEL: You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

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iPhone 5S sales outpace 5C two to one -- analyst

According to data from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, 64 percent of all iPhone sales in September were iPhone 5S units.

Apple's iPhone 5S is more than twice as popular as the company's iPhone 5C, according to a new report.

During September, the iPhone 5S accounted for 64 percent of all Apple smartphone sales, easily topping the iPhone 5C's 27 percent share, according to data obtained by All Things Digital from research firm Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP). Just 9 percent of customers bought the iPhone 4S last month.

Despite its lead in September, the iPhone 5S might not always be such a popular choice among consumers, CIRP co-founder Josh Lowitz told All Things Digital in an interview published on Monday. Historically, the latest and greatest iPhone handsets perform well among early adopters, but as time goes on, more consumers enter the market and take the opportunity to save some cash on lower-end products.

That is essentially the scenario that played out last year, according to CIRP. During October 2012, the iPhone 5 scored 68 percent of all Apple smartphone sales, easily outpacing the 23 percent share for the iPhone 4S and the iPhone 4's 9 percent sales share. Soon after, however, Apple's legacy products started to close that gap.

Apple's iPhone 5S: A close look

Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57607354-37/iphone-5s-sales-outpace-5c-two-to-one-analyst/?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=News-Apple
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Supreme Court takes on affirmative action in Michigan ban case

Justice Sonia Sotomayor attacked the amendment passed by Michigan votes in 2006 that ended affirmative action, arguing it would bring back segregation.  But Chief Justice John Roberts said colleges can still aim to diversify without racial preferences. Michigan is one of eight states that have banned affirmative action. NBC's Pete Williams reports.

By Pete Williams and Daniel Arkin, NBC News

Demonstrators crowded the sidewalk outside the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday as the justices took on the hot-button issue of affirmative action, hearing oral arguments in a case about Michigan's voter-backed ban on using race as a criterion in college admissions.

The gathered advocates urged the top court to stand by a 2003 ruling which held that the country's colleges can choose to use affirmative action practices in deciding which students to admit.

At issue is whether a 2006 Michigan constitutional amendment that blocks the state from taking account of race and gender in public education, employment and contracting constitutes discrimination or preferential treatment.

"It's wrong to treat people differently based on your race or the color of your skin," said Michigan's attorney general Bill Schuette, whose office is defending the Proposal 2 measure. "So we're saying: 'Equal treatment under the law.' That's our approach in Michigan."

---

But opponents of the ban sued and won in a federal appeals court, arguing that the prohibition is tantamount to discrimination, blocking only minority students from seeking preferences in school admissions.

Andrew Burton / Getty Images

Students protest in support of affirmative action, outside the Supreme Court during the hearing of "Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action" on Oct. 15, in Washington.

During Tuesday’s courtroom argument, Mark Rosenbaum, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union who argued to strike down the Michigan measure on behalf of University of Michigan students and faculty, said that other groups pursuing preferential treatment in school admissions could appeal to administrators, only race may not enter the conversation.

“I want the same rule book. I want the same playing field. The problem with Proposal 2 is that it creates two playing fields,” Rosenbaum said, according to the Associated Press.

Shanta Driver, a Detroit-based lawyer also arguing in support of affirmative action on behalf of the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, called on the justices to bring the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause “back to its original purpose and meaning, which is to protect minority rights against a white majority, which did not occur in this case.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor was the most outspoken justice on the bench about the Michigan ban, at one point saying: "It was intended to bring back segregation, and appears to have done just that."

When Michigan Solicitor General John Bursch, the state's representative in court, suggested Michigan could get rid of legacy admissions as a way to admit a more diverse student body, Justice Sotomayor remarked: "The minorities finally get in and have children, and now you want to do away with alumni preferences."

And yet a bare majority of the justices appeared to believe that Michigan's ban could withstand a constitutional challenge.

Chief Justice John Roberts asked: "Why can't a state say, 'Do all you can to achieve diversity without racial preferences?'"

And Justice Antonin Scalia defended the Michigan measure, which 58 percent of the state's voters approved, saying: "It's not a racial classification. It's the elimination of racial classification."

No matter the outcome of Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, any ruling is likely to fan the flames of the decades-old debate over affirmative action.

A ruling that strikes down the Michigan ban could send dominoes toppling across the country, potentially threatening bans in seven other states — Arizona, California, Florida, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma and Washington.

And a move to uphold the Michigan amendment could represent a victory for affirmative action opponents, who may attempt to recreate their wins at the ballot box in other jurisdictions.

Tuesday's oral arguments came just four months after the justices avoided a major decision on the race-based admissions policy at the University of Texas at Austin, ruling instead to send the closely-watched case back to the lower court.

In a June 7-1 vote, with Justice Elena Kagan having recused herself, the justices said an appeals court did not apply the proper standard in determining whether the university's policy runs afoul of the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution.

That case, Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, was brought by a white student who claimed she was turned away from the University of Texas while racial minority students with lower standardized test scores were mailed acceptance letters.

The Michigan case arrives at the Supreme Court after time in front of a federal appeals court in Cincinnati.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in an 8-7 decision, said the Michigan provision violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution as it places a burden on affirmative action boosters who would be forced to launch their own extensive, circuitous campaign to strip the constitutional provision, according to the AP.

That burden "undermines the Equal Protection Clause's guarantee that all citizens ought to have equal access to the tools of political change," Judge R. Guy Cole, Jr., write for the majority on the Cincinnati appeals court.

Opponents allege that due to the ban, proponents for racial considerations in admissions are blocked from directly lobbying universities like those seeking to use other advantages — such as family alumni "legacy," for example.

Instead, those opponents would be required to push for the passage of an entirely new amendment to the state constitution, reversing the 2006 voter-backed measure, Reuters reported.

The Michigan case, like the Texas one, will be heard by only eight of the top court's nine justices. Justice Kagan, who prior to her 2010 appointment was the U.S. solicitor general and managed some affirmative action litigation, has rescued herself.

The long-simmering debate over affirmative action dates back to the early 1960s, when President John K. Kennedy first called on federal contractors to take "affirmative action" to hire racial and ethnic minorities, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

In a 1961 Executive Order, President Kennedy directed government employers to take "affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin."

For more than a quarter-century, the Supreme Court has often been at the center of pitched legal and political battles surrounding the issue.

In the watershed Regents of the University of California v. Bakke case in 1978, brought by white aspiring medical student Allan Bakke, the top court outlawed quotas but said educational institutions could balance race against other admissions criteria.

African-American and Latino enrollment at the University of Michigan has plummeted since the prohibition on affirmative action went into affect, according to the AP.

And at California's leading public universities, African-Americans make up a smaller share of incoming freshmen, while Latino enrollment has spiked slightly — although still far below the state's growth in the overall percentage of Latino high school graduates, according to the AP.

Some 86 percent of people surveyed by Pew Research said society "should do what is necessary to make sure that everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed." And yet only a third of Americans surveyed agreed with the statement: "We should make every possible effort to improve the position of blacks and other minorities, even if it means giving them preferential treatment."

Related: NBC News/WSJ poll: Affirmative action support at historic low

NBC News' Polly DeFrank, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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Among The Shutdown Victims: The White House Kitchen Garden

Basil, tomatoes, peppers and lettuces grow in garden beds on the South Lawn of the White House. According to the site Obama Foodorama, the government shutdown has had a dramatic effect on the garden.

Eddie Gehman Kohan/ObamaFoodorama.com

Basil, tomatoes, peppers and lettuces grow in garden beds on the South Lawn of the White House. According to the site Obama Foodorama, the government shutdown has had a dramatic effect on the garden.

Eddie Gehman Kohan/ObamaFoodorama.com

The government shutdown has forced a lot of hard-working people into idleness. That includes most of the staff that tends the famed White House kitchen garden, according to Obama Foodorama.

On Friday, the site reported that only a skeleton crew of National Park Service gardeners remained on duty — permitted to water and remove trash, but not to weed and harvest the more than 30 kinds of vegetables growing there.

This loss of okra, tomatoes and sweet potatoes is more symbolic than anything else — the president and his family are not going to starve for lack of their fall harvest, of course.

But it's another, less obvious effect of the government shutdown on food production. And given all of the hard work that the first lady and her team have put into maintaining the garden, it's a tragedy to see tomatoes rotting on her vines.

More serious, of course, is the severe pressure the shutdown is putting on critical government food assistance programs like WIC, which feeds pregnant women and mothers of young children, and food stamps and the people who rely on them for basic nutrition.

And as we enter Week 3 of the shutdown, other food producers are speaking up about how their livelihoods are being threatened by the absence of critical U.S. Department of Agriculture programs and services.

As Morning Edition's David Green reported Tuesday, Alaskan crabbers and their boats are stuck at the port because they can't get the permits they need to fish. Federal workers who issue those permits are off the job because of the government shutdown.

And according to the American Farmland Trust, farmers are struggling to plan for the future without access to crucial information, such as crop reports from the National Agriculture Statistics Service and other federal resources. "Farmers have to make important business decisions based on educated guesses rather than hard data," the group notes.

The federal government also subsidizes growers of some crops, like corn, when yields are low. And that means another group in limbo are the farmers who aren't sure when they'll be getting their subsidy checks this year. Montana Farmers Union President Alan Merrill told a local news service that farm loans, disaster assistance and conservation program payments all have been put on hold.

Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/10/15/234747012/among-the-shutdown-victims-the-white-house-kitchen-garden?ft=1&f=1053
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Astronauts Use Twitter During Shutdown To Update Space Fans

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LG G Flex curved smartphone revealed in press renders, will launch next month (update: 6-inch display)

LG has admitted that "bendable and unbreakable" smartphone displays are already in production, and we've heard plenty of rumors about a device known as the G Flex which features the new tech. Engadget has come across a trio of renders of the upcoming device, and we have learned from our sources that it will be coming out sometime next month -- pricing and availability (as well as hard specs) are as of yet unknown, however. As you can see in the images (above and below), the G Flex offers a curved display, but LG's version approaches it at a literally different angle from the Galaxy Round that was announced last week: instead of it curving from left to right, the G Flex goes orthogonally from top to bottom. We'll update you with more information and images as we get closer to the device's launch.

Update: Our sources have confirmed to us that the G Flex will indeed have a 6-inch display, as rumored previously.

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/10/13/lg-g-flex-revealed?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000589
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