Hip-hop mogul Sean Combs has launched his own channel for cable. Revolt TV aims to bring a new generation - and its love of social media - to music television. Guest host Celeste Headlee discusses the venture with NPR television correspondent and critic Eric Deggans.
In this photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, destroyed weapons and ammunitions carried by Syrian rebels like at the site after they were killed by Syrian government forces according to SANA, near the Otaiba area, near Damascus, Syria, Friday, Oct. 25, 2013. Syrian government troops on Friday ambushed rebels near the capital, Damascus, killing at least 40 opposition fighters, state media reported. The ambush was part of the military's offensive against rebel strongholds around President Bashar Assad's seat of power. (AP Photo/SANA)
In this photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, destroyed weapons and ammunitions carried by Syrian rebels like at the site after they were killed by Syrian government forces according to SANA, near the Otaiba area, near Damascus, Syria, Friday, Oct. 25, 2013. Syrian government troops on Friday ambushed rebels near the capital, Damascus, killing at least 40 opposition fighters, state media reported. The ambush was part of the military's offensive against rebel strongholds around President Bashar Assad's seat of power. (AP Photo/SANA)
U.N. and Arab League envoy on Syria Lakhdar Brahimi listens to a journalist during a join press conference in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, Oct. 26, 2013. (AP Photo)
DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Syria's state media say government forces have retaken a Christian town north of Damascus after a week of clashes with al-Qaida-linked fighters who had recently captured key parts of it.
The state-run SANA news agency says the army "restored security and stability" to the town of Sadad early on Monday.
The town had been in opposition hands since last week, when al-Qaida-linked groups captured a checkpoint that gave them control of the western part of the town.
The fighting came as the U.N.-Arab League envoy headed to Syria for his first trip to the country in almost a year. Lakhdar Brahimi had arrived in Beirut earlier on Monday and left for Damascus.
Brahimi is trying to prepare a peace conference on Syria supposed to take place in Geneva next month.
Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-10-28-ML-Syria/id-ddfc45598b9348ba8a948b1f7b507b28Mingdong Chen, a suspect in the murder of a five people in Brooklyn's Sunset Park neighborhood, is taken by police from the 66th precinct, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2013 in New York. The Chinese immigrant, who neighbors said struggled to survive in America, was arrested in the stabbing death Saturday night of his cousin's wife and her four children. (AP Photo/ Louis Lanzano)
Mingdong Chen, a suspect in the murder of a five people in Brooklyn's Sunset Park neighborhood, is taken by police from the 66th precinct, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2013 in New York. The Chinese immigrant, who neighbors said struggled to survive in America, was arrested in the stabbing death Saturday night of his cousin's wife and her four children. (AP Photo/ Louis Lanzano)
Women gather on the steps of an apartment building opposite the scene of a brutal fatal stabbing, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2013, in New York. Police say a mother and her four young children were killed in a late night stabbing rampage at a Sunset Park, Brooklyn, home. A Chinese immigrant, 25-year-old Ming Don Chen, was arrested Sunday on five counts of murder in the deaths of his cousin's wife and her four children. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)
Crime scene detectives investigate the scene of a multiple fatal stabbing Sunday, Oct. 27, 2013, in New York. Police said a mother and her four young children were stabbed to death in a brutal rampage just before 11 p.m. Saturday in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn. The New York Police Department said a suspect, 25-year-old Ming Don Chen, a Chinese immigrant, was arrested Sunday on five counts of murder in the deaths of his cousin's wife and her four children in the stabbing rampage in their Brooklyn home. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)
A crime scene detective leaps up the steps at the scene of a multiple fatal stabbing Sunday, Oct. 27, 2013, in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, in New York. Police said a mother and her four young children were stabbed to death in a brutal rampage just before 11p.m. Saturday. The working-class neighborhood is home to many Chinese immigrants. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)
Crime scene specialists work at the scene of a fatal stabbing, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2013, in the Brooklyn borough of New York. Police say a mother and her four young children were killed in a late night stabbing rampage at the Sunset Park, Brooklyn home, far right. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)
NEW YORK (AP) — When relatives of a Chinese immigrant mother of four young children banged on the family's door, it opened to a grisly sight: a man dripping with human blood who is now charged with stabbing the five to death with a butcher knife.
Mingdong Chen, 25, faced five counts of murder Sunday, a day after the brutal killings of his cousin's wife and her four children in Brooklyn's Sunset Park neighborhood.
Two girls, 9-year-old Linda Zhuo and 7-year-old Amy Zhuo, were pronounced dead at the scene, along with the youngest child, 18-month-old William Zhuo — all found in a back bedroom, police said. Their brother, 5-year-old Kevin Zhuo, and 37-year-old mother, Qiao Zhen Li, were found in the kitchen and taken to hospitals, where they also were pronounced dead.
The five "were cut and butchered with a kitchen knife," said Chief of Department Philip Banks III, the New York Police Department's highest-ranking uniformed member.
The victims died of stab wounds to their necks and torsos, and Chen has implicated himself in the killings, Banks said.
"It's a scene you'll never forget," he said.
Chen had been staying with the family on the first floor of the two-story brick house for about a week.
He was unemployed after being fired from a string of restaurant jobs he couldn't hold down for more than a few weeks at a time, according to neighbors and relatives in the working-class neighborhood dominated by a large community of immigrants from China.
Almost a decade after coming to the United States as a teenager, he still was fluent only in Mandarin Chinese, Banks said.
"He was bouncing around," said Banks.
Chen apparently was jealous of fellow immigrants' successes in America.
"He made a very soft comment that since he came to this country, everybody seems to be doing better than him," Banks said.
The children's father, his cousin, was not home late Saturday evening; he was working at a Long Island restaurant, one neighbor said.
The mother tried to call him because she was alarmed about Chen's "suspicious" behavior earlier in the evening, Banks said.
When she couldn't reach her husband, Li called her mother-in-law in China, who also could not immediately reach her son. The mother-in-law then reached out to her daughter in the same Brooklyn neighborhood, Banks said.
The sister-in-law and her husband went to the house at about 11 p.m. and kept banging on the door till someone answered, police said.
It was Chen, "and they see that he's covered with blood," Banks said. "They don't know who this person is."
The couple fled, called 911, and detectives investigating another matter nearby responded quickly, Banks said.
Yuan Gao, a cousin of the mother, came by the house Sunday and stood on the tree-lined street with well-tended row houses, half a block from the neighborhood thoroughfare, its open air markets, Chinese restaurants and shops bustling with Sunday morning shoppers. Many walked over to the house, milling around and discussing the most horrible crime they could remember.
But almost none spoke English, and the few who did remained tight-lipped.
Some said that at Chen's last temporary home, days before the killings, late-night arguments were loud enough to be heard outside.
Gao said he had moved to the area recently and was staying with whoever would take him for brief periods of time.
Bob Madden, who lives a block away, was walking his dog on Saturday night when he saw the young man being taken away in a police cruiser.
"He was barefoot, wearing dungarees, and he was staring, he was expressionless," Madden said.
The suspect was in custody Sunday, but is still awaiting arraignment. It was unclear whether he had an attorney.
Banks said Chen had at first resisted arrest and, while being processed, assaulted a police officer.
Neighbor May Chan told the Daily News it was "heartbreaking" to learn of the deaths of children she often saw running around and playing.
"They run around by my garage playing. They run up and down screaming," Chan said.
"The father was freaking out," she said. "He just came home from work and saw the police and they told him. He was hysterical."
Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-10-28-Brooklyn%20Stabbings/id-fe3dc71c9fb74e5f9b43d408f0eda5abEIGHT STATES COMMIT TO 3.3 MILLION NEW ZERO EMISSION CARS AND TRUCKS BY 2025
October 24, 2013
Today the governors of eight states announced an ambitious partnership to accelerate the adoption of plug-in electric vehicles. Together, the states will develop fueling infrastructure and EV-ready building codes, purchase electric vehicles for state fleets, and expand incentives and public education programs to dramatically increase number of plug-in electric and fuel cell vehicles.
The eight states are: California, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
In response, Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune released the following statement:
"The Sierra Club applauds these eight states for leading the way nationally with this ambitious plan to slash carbon pollution by putting 3.3 million new electric and zero-emission cars and trucks on American streets. When it comes to fighting climate disruption, EVs are where the rubber hits the road.
"This announcement is possible because the president's strong new fuel economy standards have put electric vehicles in the fast lane. Sales doubled in the first half of 2013, and more models are available now than ever before. Last month, more than 35,000 people attended events in 98 cities across the country during National Plug In Day.
"Today's announcement will ensure that all new cars won't just use less gas, many won't use gas at all.
"The facts speak for themselves, EVs are cleaner and more efficient than internal combustion engines and U.S. automakers have roared back to life by betting big on efficiency and the new innovative auto technologies that Americans demand."
One of rock's most beloved and contrarian figures has died. Lou Reed epitomized New York City's artistic underbelly in the 1970s, with his songs about hookers and junkies. He was 71.
Reed died Sunday morning on Long Island of complications from a liver transplant earlier this year, his literary agent, Andrew Wylie, said.
The famous iconoclast actually got his start as a staff songwriter pumping out pop tunes in a wannabe hit factory called Pickwick Records. Reed recalled his days as a frothy pop lyricist in a 1989 NPR interview.
"When I first started out I really liked the spontaneity of it, cause you know I've got a B.A. in English — not that that means I should be good at it, but it gives me some kind of background in it," he said. "I thought I was pretty fast."
Lou Reed was fast. In more ways than one. He went from hit factory to Andy Warhol's Factory, the epicenter of trashy, avant-garde experimentation in '60s New York. Warhol mentored Reed and his band, The Velvet Underground. He urged them to keep things gritty. The band's Welsh co-founder, John Cale, told NPR in 2000 that the band was never easy listening.
"We were not user-friendly at all," he says. "Anyone listening to a bass guitar and regular guitar coming out of the same amp — it couldn't have been a really great listening experience."
Beyond their sound, The Velvet Underground disturbed even hard-core scenesters with graphic songs about debauchery and doing drugs. In an interview on WHYY's Fresh Air, drummer Moe Tucker remembered performing the song "Heroin": "We got fired from the Cafe Bizarre," she said. "The woman came rushing up to us and said, 'If you play one more song like that you're fired.' "
They did, and they were, and the band's albums did not sell very well. Reed left and embarked on a spotty solo career that reflected his up and down life enthralled with New York's darker corners and the hustlers who hid there.
"Walk on the Wild Side" became Reed's only Top 40 hit, partly because a number of radio station programmers had no idea what it was really about. The album it came from, Transformer — co-produced by David Bowie — brought Reed critical acclaim and attention. Which Reed, in characteristic fashion, hated. That played out in interviews, including one in 1989 with NPR's Bob Edwards, who asked Reed about his choice of subjects.
"I mean, it might be harder to write about a chair," he said. "As a matter of fact, it would be harder to write about a chair. I mean, I could write a song about a chair: Who sat in this chair. Who built this chair. How long had this chair been here. You could do that."
And a few years later, while promoting his album The Raven, Reed vented to another NPR host, who wanted to know how other journalists had somehow mixed up Reed's original lyrics with the writings of Edgar Allan Poe.
"Well, if you're deaf, dumb and retarded, it's easy. I can't believe people interview me for this stuff and don't notice," he says. "I grade them and I put them on my website when they fail really badly, to warn other people, other musicians: 'Watch out for this interviewer.' It's like talking to a squirrel."
As ornery as Reed was with journalists, he was often supportive of other artists. He influenced REM, The Replacements and Talking Heads, and he collaborated with musicians ranging from Metallica to a young woman he met at a concert.
"I just said, 'Hey, hey Lou Reed. This is Emily Haines.' " Haines talked to NPR in 2012 about her band, Metric. She said Reed asked her if she would rather be in The Beatles or The Rolling Stones. She said The Velvet Underground. Then she asked if he would sing on her album. "I just asked him, and he said, 'Yes.' "
When Reed was not onstage or working with other artists, he was happiest in New York City, where he mellowed into a Lower Manhattan elder statesman, riding his bike, practicing tai chi and taking photos. He could get cranky about his own composition.
"I did not place that stupid bird there," he said in an interview he gave Weekend Edition in 2006, walking around his neighborhood with his camera. "The light comes and goes so quickly when it's perfect. You know that. There's a certain time in the morning, certain time around dusk, where the light is golden."
An ephemeral moment, like Warhol's Factory. Or a city sunset. "And I wanted to catch that," he said. Lou Reed caught it — on celluloid and vinyl.
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